ABSTRACT

Sports Plays is a volume about sports in the theatre and what it means to stage sports.

The chapters in this volume examine sports plays through a range of critical and theoretical approaches that highlight central concerns and questions both for sports and for theatre. The plays cut across boundaries and genres, from Broadway-style musicals to dramas to experimental and developmental work. The chapters examine and trouble the conventions of staging sports as they open possibilities for considering larger social and cultural issues and debates.

This broad range of perspectives make the volume a compelling resource for students and scholars of sport, theatre, and performance studies whose interests span feminism, sexuality, politics, and race.

chapter |12 pages

Bad at Sports

An Introduction

part Sports/Race|51 pages

Consequential Acts

chapter 1|15 pages

“Surviving against the sharp white [tennis] background”

Black Women's Presence and Absence in Terrence McNally's Deuce and Claudia Rankine's Citizen

chapter 2|14 pages

Dribbling Against the Law

The Performance of Basketball, Race, and Resistance

part Sex Segregation|50 pages

Sex, Gender, and Playing Sport Structures

chapter 4|15 pages

Sport, Space, and Gender

Embodying Alternate Girlhoods with The Wolves

chapter 5|14 pages

Feminism on the Field

Tina Satter's Sports Plays

chapter 6|16 pages

The Believability of Basketball

The Multiple Bodies of the Female Performer in The Tall Girls

part Staged Combats|54 pages

Stage Combats

chapter 8|15 pages

Bruce Lee's Dancing Fight

David Henry Hwang's Kung Fu on Stage

chapter 9|19 pages

Between Power Bombs and Death Drops

Interpellation and Identity in The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity and Queer Indie Wrestling

part Sports Equipment|38 pages

Sportswear Performs

chapter 11|17 pages

“Cheering ain't for show, y'all”

Cheerleaders, Performative Uniforms, and Theatre Affect

chapter |5 pages

Afterword

Theatre, Sports, and Value