For my final show and tell post, I decided to read Clit Notes by Holly Hughes, as the title seemed intriguing and in the words of Dr. Fletcher, “When else will you get the opportunity to read something called Clit Notes for a grade?” This piece was written in 1991, and while I’m hesitant to call it a play, this piece of performance art was first performed by Hughes herself in September of 1993 (Variety). I cannot find any information on other productions, but this play can be found on the North American Women’s Drama database or in Clit Notes: A Sapphic Sampler along with a few of Hughes’s other works (Database).
This piece is a collection of autobiographical monologues detailing Hughes’s childhood and home life, personal growth as an artist, and experiences with growing up and just living everyday life as a lesbian in today’s society. The narrator opens the piece with a question, asking, “The first time I was in love with a woman?” and proceeds to comically anecdote her crush on a middle-school social studies teacher and the time she learned the true meaning of lesbianism from Dr. David Reuben’s Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex. Next, she discusses her father’s cancer and opens up about her parents’ lifelong refusal to accept her sexuality and her career as an artist. The next scene focuses on her time as a Red Lobster waitress, detailing her struggles as a feminist in a “patriarchal capitalist society,” as well as her ability to use “Performance Art as A Tool for Social Change” in the company talent show. A new scene opens describing her fiery personality as a child and her penchant for mischief, including the time she cut her friend’s hair using toenail clippers and the time she “made out with [her] mom.” The final scene details her first experience with theatre, painting sets for The Sound of Music as punishment, and closes with a discussion on her girlfriend and their time existing in a society that’s quick to condemn.
An interesting dramaturgical choice made by Hughes is the extended metaphor of a professor teaching a class. In the stage directions for the opening of Scene 2, Hughes writes, “She is speaking as though she were a distinguished professor giving a lecture at the famous Performance Artist Correspondence School,” clearly presenting the idea of a teacher with her students. Considering much of this piece is the Narrator teaching lessons through directing personal stories and social commentaries to the audience, the professor analogy is a fitting role for the Narrator. She tells the audience that her first crush on a girl happened to be on her 8th grade teacher, so it is possible that the Narrator is trying to entice the audience and bring them into her world in the same way that her teacher sparked her knowledge and awareness of her world.
The most strikingly noticeable dramaturgical choice that Hughes makes is that there is only one performer on stage the entire piece, the Narrator. Since the Narrator is speaking as Hughes herself, it can be said that there is only one character that is apart of this production instead of having separate actors playing her parents, teachers, coworkers, and girlfriends. I think this choice is made for the greater emphasis to be placed on the story and “lessons” themselves, rather than to make a spectacle of the piece when that is not the most effective method for Hughes’s story to be told. The anecdotes that are shared with the audience, such as the stories of childhood antics and romantic moments spent with her girlfriend, are then more personal and heartwarming.
This piece is a collection of autobiographical monologues detailing Hughes’s childhood and home life, personal growth as an artist, and experiences with growing up and just living everyday life as a lesbian in today’s society. The narrator opens the piece with a question, asking, “The first time I was in love with a woman?” and proceeds to comically anecdote her crush on a middle-school social studies teacher and the time she learned the true meaning of lesbianism from Dr. David Reuben’s Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex. Next, she discusses her father’s cancer and opens up about her parents’ lifelong refusal to accept her sexuality and her career as an artist. The next scene focuses on her time as a Red Lobster waitress, detailing her struggles as a feminist in a “patriarchal capitalist society,” as well as her ability to use “Performance Art as A Tool for Social Change” in the company talent show. A new scene opens describing her fiery personality as a child and her penchant for mischief, including the time she cut her friend’s hair using toenail clippers and the time she “made out with [her] mom.” The final scene details her first experience with theatre, painting sets for The Sound of Music as punishment, and closes with a discussion on her girlfriend and their time existing in a society that’s quick to condemn.
An interesting dramaturgical choice made by Hughes is the extended metaphor of a professor teaching a class. In the stage directions for the opening of Scene 2, Hughes writes, “She is speaking as though she were a distinguished professor giving a lecture at the famous Performance Artist Correspondence School,” clearly presenting the idea of a teacher with her students. Considering much of this piece is the Narrator teaching lessons through directing personal stories and social commentaries to the audience, the professor analogy is a fitting role for the Narrator. She tells the audience that her first crush on a girl happened to be on her 8th grade teacher, so it is possible that the Narrator is trying to entice the audience and bring them into her world in the same way that her teacher sparked her knowledge and awareness of her world.
The most strikingly noticeable dramaturgical choice that Hughes makes is that there is only one performer on stage the entire piece, the Narrator. Since the Narrator is speaking as Hughes herself, it can be said that there is only one character that is apart of this production instead of having separate actors playing her parents, teachers, coworkers, and girlfriends. I think this choice is made for the greater emphasis to be placed on the story and “lessons” themselves, rather than to make a spectacle of the piece when that is not the most effective method for Hughes’s story to be told. The anecdotes that are shared with the audience, such as the stories of childhood antics and romantic moments spent with her girlfriend, are then more personal and heartwarming.
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