We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
"Roll yo' hips—don't roll yo' eyes": Angularity and Embodied Spectatorship in Zora Neale Hurston's Play, "Cold Keener."
- Authors
Cayer, Jennifer A.
- Abstract
As a student of Franz Boas, Zora Neale Hurston's performative response to her anthropological training is uniquely situated between theatre and anthropology. This essay focuses on her work as a playwright and lifelong pursuits in the theatre. It argues how Hurston's continual reworking of the relationship between the performer and spectator via a unique angular dramatic structure—derived from a broad repertoire of visual art and dance and characterized by sudden shifts in theme and audience perspective—was an attempt to solve a growing uneasiness with the authoritative elements of her own ethnographic practice. The essay analyzes how angularity operates on the levels of theme, staged space, and perspective in "Cold Keener"; explores her relationship to both Harlem Renaissance and contemporary critical interlocutors; provides a brief history of Hurston's theatrical aspirations and actual work in the New York theatre; and suggests the ways in which theatre is a natural outgrowth of her work as a folklorist and is a significant aesthetic intervention.
- Subjects
ESSAYS; COLD Keener (Theatrical production); HURSTON, Zora Neale, 1891-1960; THEATER anthropology; LITERATURE &; folklore; PRIMITIVISM in literature; AFRICAN American history
- Publication
Theatre Journal, 2008, Vol 60, Issue 1, p37
- ISSN
0192-2882
- Publication type
Essay
- DOI
10.1353/tj.2008.0060