Performing masculinities in Jane Wagner’s Monologues : the search for signs of intelligent life in the universe

Abstract EN

The performance art monologue has become one of the most important innovative and controversial theatrical forms.

This is due to its increasing demand for both playwrights, directors, actors and even the audience.

The dramatic monologue has many other theatrical terms as monodrama, solo play, one-actor play or solo performance.

The monologue, thus, has all the ingredients to any appealing, unified and successful full-length play.

The character in a solo play has a major objective but encounters obstacles.

Action in a solo-play depends upon four characterization, the audience, unifying elements, and word choice.

The essence of the monologue is that it is a speech given by a single person portraying a character in the story.

Although there is only one character on the stage, numberless characters are evoked by the same character.

Thus staying only with that one character can give the playwright more freedom to dig deeply inside the secret soul.

The aim of this study is to determine how the masculine characters are constructed and function in Jane Wagner’s performance of monologue through her play The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe (1986).

I focus on the male characters, Paul and Lud.

And the men about which the female characters speak.

The study contributes to the discourses concerned with representations of the male body and masculinities, particularly in live performance.