Dress rehearsal: Word play and narrative construction in The Assembly of Ladies

Abstract

In the erotics of theater, words are (theoretically) corporeal. They are up there for public scrutiny. The mind’s eye echoes the mind’s ear. Words act. They are elements of the scenic investiture affecting, synesthetically, light space rhythm pattern sound, but they also resound at the deepest level of the mise-en-scène, through self time memory consciousness as well. Mere words, true. Problematic to the last breath of being. The material elements of theater – like the body itself – situate us.

Keywords: dream vision; narrative structure; performance theory; dream narrators; gender; collective voice