| Chapter 1: | Introduction |
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They quote Emily Dickinson’s diary and poetry in a series of monologues, such as “Some people rely on God, while I put my life to poetry.” Wei represents Emily Dickinson’s writing style—self-reflexive, and using very simple language by staging simplicity.
In this performance, the four actresses sit on four chairs and turn around to recite these lines. As Elin Diamond offers, “The body in historicization stands visibly and palpably separate from the ‘role’ of the actor as well as the role of the character; it is always insufficient and open.”13 When the four actresses say the lines, sometimes their performative bodies signify the historical Emily Dickinson, yet at others, the performers jump out of the character to examine the role that they play, a representation of Dickinson’s self-reflexive poetry.
Wei centered her work on gender themes. On the stage of Whatever Doing, the two chairs with golden covers suggest patriarchal power, whereas the overturned table covered by black cloth with a tiny pair of bloody, antique women’s shoes on its legs suggests women being suppressed and suffering under patriarchy. Among the settings symbolizing the conflict of power, positions, and identities, two actresses struggle restlessly on the chairs, as each of them loses a shoe on their way toward binding their entire bodies with red strings. This is a stylized performance in the manner of Chinese opera, with traditional Chinese music to symbolize the long tradition and history of Chinese women’s foot binding as one of the oppressive customs in Chinese patriarchy.
Wei also adapts Taiwanese literature to carry out theatrical experimentation and present her ideas. As Dolan argues: “This new representation of the female body is neither a closed text that ends in objectification nor is it subjected to inscription in the narrative of compulsory heterosexuality.”