ABSTRACT
In 1975 Hélène Cixous asked “How, as women, can we go to the theater without lending our complicity to the sadism directed at women, or being asked to assume, in the patriarchal family structure that the theater reproduces ad infinitum, the position of victim” (“Aller” 546)? The question still poses a difficult and important challenge for feminist theater practitioners, critics and spectators. In her strategic answer the roles of critic, spectator, and artist meet. She heralds the “arrival of Woman,” one who “stays beyond the bounds of prohibition,” and whose coming will allow women to go to the theater and “feel themselves loving and being loved, listening and being heard, happy as when they go to the sea, the womb of the mother” (“Aller” 54748). Cixous proposes a joint effort in the recreation of theater as a feminist venture. There must be new artists to create it, new spectators to experience it, and new critics to address it. She mentions her play, Le Portrait de Dora, as “the first step” of her own journey toward the new theater she wishes to see and create (“Aller” 547).
