Incendiary Operations: Performing the Female Soldier on the Contemporary American Stage

Jacqueline Viskup
Theater
UC Santa Barbara

The dramatic rise in theatrical representations of female soldiers raises urgent questions about how gender and war interact to circulate new political discourses about women in the U.S. military, as well as larger feminist dialogues about violence, citizenship, and power in American society. Jacquelin Viskup argues that the onstage image of the female soldier is the most resonant and divisive cultural strategy today for interrogating American society vis-à-vis post-Iraq/Afghanistan conflicts. While American news media and popular entertainment showcase female soldiers as eternal victims in cycles of sexual, psychological, economic, and social oppression, theatrical representations of female soldiers forge a new frontier of activist theater that engages radical coalition politics to incite audiences to alter the current political culture of the United States.