FALL 1996 55
Tea for Two: Performing History and Desire in Sabina Berman's
Entre Villa y una mujer desnuda
Sharon M agnarelli
A resounding commercial success, Sabina Berman's recent play,
Entre Villa y una mujer desnuda (1993), may appear to be merely another
dramatization of the problematic nature of contemporary relationships.1
Nonetheless, the play proffers neither patriarchal power mongers nor
victimized female "others." On the contrary, as I shall argue, it is an insightful,
if indeed amusing, analysis of gender identity. Rather than simply denouncing
(or, inversely, perpetuating) traditional gender roles (male or female), Berman
shows them to be citational performances as she provides a "historical"
account of gender identity and demonstrates that we are all products (as well
as producers) of our historical, gendered circumstances. While there are any
number of focal points from which to analyze this play, I shall center on
three areas that may initially appear to be strange bedfellows: historiography
and/as narrativity, desire (both narrative and erotic), and the performance of
gender. As I hope to demonstrate, however, these three topics are not only
closely interrelated in this play; they are also underlined (if indeed
unexpectedly) in the ritualistic serving and drinking of tea, which provides
one of the play's principal leitmotifs.
The plot line of the frame play can be summarized as follows. The
almost middle-aged Gina and the middle-aged history professor, Adrián, are
involved in a "modern" relationship predicated on its lack of commitment.
Encouraged by her son's friend, Ismael, Gina decides to force Adrián to
make a commitment but discovers he is seeing another woman. Ismael
consoles her, but he is soon replaced by Adrián with his promise of marriage
and a son. When Adrián and Gina meet again for the first time after his
unexplained absence of three months, she rejects him because she is now in
love with Ismael; Adrián reacts by throwing himself out the window, which,
in spite of his melodramatic gesture, is on the ground floor. Some time later,
he returns to her apartment one last time and is seduced by its new owner,
56 LATIN AMERICAN THEATRE REVIEW
Andrea, Gina's former business partner. The play concludes when, after a
dramatic build-up, Adrian's erotic performance proves to be less than
award-winning, and Andrea is left holding, not the proverbial bag, but a glass
of cognac in each hand. Although unquestionably a feminist critique, this is
not just Gina's story, but Gina's and Adrian's story; yet it is also Andrea's
and Ismael's, two secondary characters who occupy what might be labeled
liminal positions within and between the traditional, mutually exclusive,
binary gender poles. To emphasize the effects of history on gender identity,
Bermanjuxtaposes these scenes of contemporary life with scenes protagonized
by Pancho Villa, the fictitious-historical character from the monograph Adrián
is writing. In this respect, the Mexican playwright provides an insightful
analysis of the power of discursive practices and dramatizes how narrative
(in the form of history, popular culture, or even the stories told us by others)
author(ize)s the gender roles we cite and perform.
Throughout this essay, I shall call upon Judith Butler's theories in
Gender Trouble and Bodies that Matter, where she posits that one's
subjectivity or identity is the product of citational and performative acts that
simultaneously repeat and enact previously author(iz)ed roles. I shall argue,
however, that the performance of those citations often encompasses some
degree of modification that responds to a tacit negotiation with one's
audience.2
Butler defines performativity as "the reiterative and citational
practice by which discourse produces the effects it names" {Bodies 2).3
As
she insists, any statement, even one traditionally considered constative, is
performative to the extent it authorizes or brings into focus (makes "real," in
some sense) that which it names ~ that is, even as the performance repeats, it
creates and author(ize)s anew.4
And, in Butler's theoretical structure, a norm
"takes hold to the extent that it is 'cited' as such a norm, but it also derives its
power through the citations it compels" (Bodies 13). This is not to suggest,
however, that the citational performance is necessarily voluntary, chosen at
will, for as Butler further notes, "The 'activity' of this gendering cannot,
strictly speaking, be a human act or expression, a willful appropriation, and
it is certainly not a question of taking on a mask; it is the matrix through
which all willing first becomes possible, its enabling cultural condition"
(Bodies 7, emphasis added). Within this theoretical framework, I would like
to suggest that Berman presents gender performance (whether one is male or
female) as an on-going process of negotiating one's way through a finite set
of historically permissible acts which are ultimately linked to and result in
the performance of citational (previously authorized) desires ~ narrative and
erotic.5
I shall further argue that in the Berman play, the various nuances of
performance (as conscious, theatrical production, as a system within which
FALL 1996 57
social identity is rehearsed and given form à la Butler, and as sexual activity)
overlap while at the same time these nuances are linked to narrativity and
citationality. That is to say, gender performance is a citation or stylized
repetition, enactment (perhaps to some degree conscious but certainly not
completely) of previous narratives (ones that exist in the world or ones that
are creations of our inclinations toward narrativity).6
Entre Villa y una mujer desnuda begins as friends and business
associates, Gina and Andrea, drink tea and discuss Gina's affair with Adrián.
Although the title promises a historical play, Berman provides a new twist to
the traditional historical project, first by giving voice to a female rather than
to the "conquering male," whose voice is the conventional source for historical
narrative, and second by allowing her narrative to deviate from the public
and often violent events that frequently define the realm of historiography.7
Specifically, Gina recounts the typical series of events that occur when Adrián
appears at her door every two or three weeks. Thus, the opening of the play
is citational in a number of ways. First, Gina is narrating their "history,"
articulating their prior "ritualistic," habitual actions — themselves citational
and performative, to a large degree reenactments, with minor variations, of
1950s cinema and other popular narratives. Second, although less obvious,
the opening words, "Cada dos o tres semanas" (23), which refer to the
(in)frequency of Adrian's visits, repeat the temporal motif which is one of
the structuring elements of any historical narrative. That is, the play opens
by calling attention to both its historicity and its potential for narrativity. At
the same time, that opening line serves as a marker (if indeed indirectly) of
the negotiative aspects of Gina's performance. When her interlocutor, Andrea,
repeats that line, the time frame, with the minor modification of a change in
inflection (an added question mark), Gina's narrative and "historical" authority
and position are challenged. As a result, she amends the number to "O cuatro
días," in a gesture that signals her compliance to the expectations of her
audience. Her "history," her narrative, and her performance will attempt to
conform to her perception of her audience's (narrative) desires ~ indicated
by means of their words, inflections, gestures, or even silences. Thus, while
her comportment is certainly citational, it is also creative, performative — the
same but different, a citational performance influenced by the present
audience, just as any discursive practice is, including historiography.8
Without
the interest (desire) of her audience, her dominant position as narrator cannot
be sustained, and she cannot continue to tell "her" story in "her"" way (which,
as we have just seen, is ultimately not "hers" at all). Thus, her modification
signals both the citation and the negotiation as it underlines the circular
58 LATIN AMERICAN THEATRE REVIEW
influence of the (perceived) audience on the performance or the narrative. In
this manner, Berman obliquely posits that historians too may well produce
the tale their audiences are prepared (want) to receive.
But, this is only the beginning, for part of Gina' s narration is reiterated
by Andrea to Adrián as the final act opens: "La miras... fijamente. Respirando
fuerte. La besas. Ella dice: espérate, siéntate, te sirvo un té" (81). Andrea's
citation of Gina's words underlines the fact that her "performance" in the
final act is exactly that. Gina's narrative in the first act leads her to conclude
that Adrián is "lo que se llama un hombre directo" (24). Thus, in the final act
she assumes the role of "direct woman" to provide the performance she thinks
he wants. Paradoxically, however, as noted, Gina's narrative was already
influenced by Andrea, in what is obviously an endless, not to say vicious,
circle. Let us note, however, that Andrea's quotation is not quite accurate; at
no point in the first act does Gina say exactly those words. But, this miscitation
also echoes back to Gina's performance in the first act insofar as
even her first words, "cada dos o tres semanas," already enact a modification
in response to audience expectations, for Adrián had not appeared for a month.9
Thus, this circular series of citational performances proves to be
foundationless, an imitation without an origin, as Butler has suggested gender
performance inevitably is.10
Unreliable (or "misperformed") as the citations
may be, Berman's characters nonetheless repeatedly produce and are products
of a circularity by which, and within which, they author(ize) and (re)negotiate
their roles.11
In this respect, Berman dramatizes the fact that, as Nancy Fraser
has argued, social identities are not monolithic; they are not "constructed
once and for all and definitively fixed. Rather, they alter over time, shifting
with shifts in agents' practices and affiliations" (178). In other words,
individuals assume different discursive positions as they move from one
discursive frame to another, or I would add, even within the same discursive
frame.12
Furthermore, the characters' gender performances prove to be
contingent on desire and vice versa. While Gina assures Andrea that she
does not want to marry the history professor, she does seek a relationship
that encompasses more than the sporadic erotic trysts. To that end, (she tells
Andrea) she insists they have tea in the living room and converse, in what
even she labels part of "un cierto ritual" (23) that leads to the "lucha ridicula"
(25) as she tries to develop a "relationship" (as women are supposed to) and
he tries to get her into bed as quickly as possible (as men are supposed to).
The fact that Gina cannot answer Andrea's question about why she insists on
the ritual tea and conversation underlines the fact that they are merely imitative
FALL 1996 59
practices, symptomatic of both the role(s) she feels sanctioned to enact and
the desires she is authorized to iterate. Thus, Berman suggests that even the
desires the characters perform may be citational, author(iz)ed by previous
narratives and that none of them can perform a desire other than those for
which they have been historically prepared. Obviously, it is no accident that
Berman has chosen to pair history and gender in this work; each is
unquestionably impacted by the other.13
But it is important to note that were
either Gina or Adrián to cease or change their citational performances, and
by implication perform different desires, the other's performance would
become unnecessary, or worse, superfluous and invalid — the pre-text would
not find a proper context. This is literalized in the final act where Andrea's
citational (mis)performance as a "direct woman" invalidates Adrian's
citational performance (Humphrey-Bogart-style lover), and he is left without
a functional role. Quite literally, if indeed humorously, he cannot perform.
Not coincidentally, however, Berman portrays Gina (and ultimately
all the characters) as caught between and among multiple competing master
narratives borrowed from popular culture. On the one hand, the "master('s)"
narrative would lead to the bedroom, with its closed door to block our view,
or the kiss, which would similarly be semi-obscured by the fade out.
Obviously, both endings allude to the fulfillment of erotic desire, but that
resolution is only potential. The desire (in the classical cinematic or novelistic
tradition) is never visibly fulfilled; the film, play, or novel simply ends with
the tacit assumption that it will be. Nonetheless, on the way to that implicit
resolution, the narrative must be sustained, tension (desire) must mount,
fulfillment must be delayed by whatever twists and turns necessary - hence
the ritual tea in this case.14
Otherwise, the mastery, the conquest, will be
shown to be as trivial (and as unmasterful) as indeed it is. On the other hand,
the other "master" narrative cited would end with marriage and "happily
ever after," which Gina is supposed to desire but apparently does not (or so
she says, but this too may well be a citational performance of "modern
woman").15
So why bother with the living-room formalities, queries her friend,
Andrea. To this Gina can only respond tautologically, "Quiero tomarme un
té con él," words immediately undermined by her, "Carajo, se me olvidó mi
té" (25), a statement which might be understood as, I want it because I want
it, because I am supposed to want it. At the same time we are encouraged to
recognize that what matters is less the end (the fulfillment of desire, erotic or
narrative) than the means, the creation and performance of desire, the narrative
twists and turns that delay the fulfillment (and by implication, death) of desire,
maintain the narrator's central position, and at the same time provide all the
characters with a role, a raison d'etre.
60 LATIN AMERICAN THEATRE REVIEW
Indeed, the play repeatedly destabilizes our notion of ending (telos)
as the "natural" goal of narrative insofar as it emphasizes process and deferral.
At the conclusion of the play, Gina, who may or may not "live happily ever
after" with Ismael, has disappeared from the scene; her end is left hanging,
quite literally. And, as indicated, Adrián and Andrea's climatic bedroom
scene is anti-climatic: both literally and figuratively nothing happens. Andrea
is left holding the drinks, and Adrián may seem to have reached a point of
self-knowledge (implicit telos in much narrative), but, as he exits with shoes
and socks in hand, it is certainly not clear to the audience what (if anything)
he has learned. In this manner the play accentuates the artificiality of narrative
teleology with its arbitrary frame (beginning and end ~ from feigned ignorance
to questionable knowledge) much as it underscores the arbitrariness of
historical teleology through its references to the failure of the Mexican
Revolution, which led to few (perhaps no) changes in the basic power structure,
in spite of Villa's "heroic" efforts to "hacer patria" and his prolific fathering
of sons (teleological goal of erotic desire as figured by the patriarchy).16
Narrative postponement and its links to desire are further
foregrounded in Scene Two of Act I, which interrupts Gina's narrative.
Paradoxically, that scene simultaneously provides an interruption (deferral)
and dramatizes its antithesis (immediate fulfillment of desire, resolution).
The scene is a movie-like enactment of a fantasy of an unproblematic, erotic
encounter. Adrián appears at the door and assumes a Humphrey-Bogart-like
pose before he and Gina fall into each others' arms and he sweeps her off to
the bedroom. Here there are no words and certainly no tea, just the depiction
of two characters prepared to do what Gina will later label "matar el deseo
como un animal."17
Thus, the scene itself is a citation of a citation insofar as
it stages a dramatization of Gina's words which, in turn, cite a movie plot or
romance novel, real or imagined. What is not clear, however, is whose fantasy
or desire this is - Gina's, Adrian's, or Andrea's (or all of the above). Although
the scene enacts his express desire, one must wonder if the wordless movie
scene is not the desire of the women as much, if not more than Adrian's. The
difference may be that he is authorized by previous discourse to express and
perform that desire; they are not, at least not in the same way. Thus, Berman
suggests that they are all trapped in a maze of contradictory discourse and
the internally incoherent roles author(iz)ed by that discourse, discourse and
roles that cite, perform, and perhaps even constitute certain (but not other)
desires for each. And, even more daring, she speculates that perhaps desire
itself is performative and citational, limited to the thinkable, to what we have
been previously authorized to desire.18
Certainly, Gina's re-citation of her
FALL 1996 61
totally trite and repetitive list of desires at the end of Act II, the spatial and
temporal center of the play, suggests that such is the case.19
With this in
mind, we might understand Adrian's (mis)performance in the final scene as
a result of his inability to break with the past, as Andrea advises him, and
focus on what is in front of him, both literally and figuratively, in the form of
new/different/other desires. Or, are we to understand that Adrián perhaps
wants not what he says he wants, but what Gina says she wants — deferral
rather than immediate gratification? Is what seems to be a universal, "natural,"
"feminine" role merely a projection onto her that allows him to believe his
desire is other?
What is apparent is that all characters perform historically endorsed,
ritualized, and more important, engendered social roles, roles delineated by
other narratives, but roles that again may well be imitations without origins.
Adrián, who admits he can think of nothing but his monograph on Villa,
must play the super macho (modeled after Villa) who desires nothing other
than a clean-cut conquest, that is, immediate, wordless, physical gratification/
resolution (be it erotic or mortal), with the violence implicit in cutting off,
truncating the narrative that might sustain, prolong, and heighten that desire.
Let us not forget, however, that the Villa who provides his citational
performance model is already a narrative creation/citation, product of
numerous historiographers, including Adrián himself, who have necessarily
rewritten, re-cited the "original" as a result of their own present (temporal
and physical) circumstances and audience.20
Similarly, as part of the
"negotiation" and in order to accommodate his performance, Gina plays the
domestic(ated) woman who wants a relationship, conversation, and tea desire
postponed.
Further dramatizing the citational and its bidirectional movement,
throughout Act I their conversation/love-life is interspersed with Adrian's
commentary about his monograph on Pancho Villa.21
Again, Berman's point
seems to be that (as Hayden White had earlier proposed) historiography
necessarily partakes of the tropes of narrativity (including its emphasis on
telos and closure). Meanwhile, in a clever use of metatheatre, those
contemporary conversations are juxtaposed with conversations from Villa's
love-life, as Villa himself appears on stage in episodes that in many ways
parallel those of Adrián and Gina in spite of the more than 80 years that
separate them. But, again, the point may well be that by the 1990s Villa's
amorous conquests are quintessential^ narrative fiction. More important,
not only does the Villa narrative provide the basis for Adrian's performance,
but inversely that narrative itself is affected by the performance. This effect
62 LATIN AMERICAN THEATRE REVIEW
is dramatized more directly in Act II as Villa smells the smoke from Gina's
cigarette and hears the tapping of her typewriter.22
We expect the past to
impact the present; it is unusual for a playwright to focus on the reverse, on
the fact that narrativity is inevitably dependent on the present as much as on
the past to the extent that present has been classified as telos. Surely the
present shapes or frames that past in light of the perceived "final mastery."
By means of the metatheatrical segments, the play also underscores
the multiplicity of authorities (sometimes unexpected, often contradictory)
we cite and suggests that this leads to a degree of incoherence in our
performances. For example, although clearly Villa is Adrian's authority
throughout the play, in this first act it is not clear that Gina's delay with the
tea, which takes a while to steep, is not itself a citation of Villa's maneuvers
and tactics ~ designed to delay, increase the desire, before they "matar el
deseo como un animal" (32), intended, that is, to sustain the ("her") narrative,
a narrative/conversation that Adrián would truncate, silencing her with his
erotic telos and subsequent departure. In this respect, the tea becomes the
emblem of ritualistic delay - narrative and erotic even as it intertwines the
two. But, here again Berman dramatizes the effects of two competing master
narratives. On the one hand, Villa is perceived as "un hombre directo," a
perception promulgated by movies and popular myth.23
On the other hand,
numerous history books assure us that many of Villa's military tactics were
carefully planned and that his attacks were delayed, not always immediately,
spontaneously carried out. In other words, Villa's perceived identity ~ even
as it is re-created through narrative — lacks that internal coherence in which
we would like to believe but which inevitably eludes our performative
identities. As Butler has suggested, identity is a narrative ideal more than a
description of experience (Gender 16), and, as figured by Diana Fuss, the I is
"a complicated field of multiple subjectivities and competing identities" (33).
That is to say, both characters are citing and performing multiple, and more
important, conflicting and contradictory narratives. Thus, although the
audience may initially perceive Gina as a descendant of Villa's perceived
victim (Mujer), Berman seems to suggest that to view either woman in the
monolithic role of victim may well be an oversimplification. As suggested,
Gina's delay with the tea in the first act may itself be a citation of Villa's
tactical maneuvers ~ designed to delay and catch the "enemy" off guard and
may ultimately be related to the unthinkable (or at least the unspeakable) ~
her desire.
In this manner Berman implicitly raises the question of the
investment, potential strategic gain, involved in performing any role and
FALL 1996 63
encourages spectators to question why the characters position themselves,
modify their performances, as they do. What are the punitive repercussions
of refusing a role and equally what are the implicit rewards of accepting it?24
De Lauretis theorizes that what motivates individuals to take up one discursive
position as a opposed to another is something of an emotional commitment
and something of "a vested interest in the relative power (satisfaction, reward,
payoff) which that position promises (but does not necessarily fulfill)" (16).25
We might ask if the same premise might not be true of desire, for
surely, Adrian's "vested interest" returns us circularly to the question of desire,
erotic and narrative. Not irrelevantly, for him language is erotic and its goal
is the fulfillment of desire -- even when he assumes ostensibly different roles.26
It should be noted that Adrián rarely converses (engages in meaningful,
two-way communication), although he frequently lectures (engages in
monologue). In this respect, his language not only speaks of conquest, it is a
form of conquest. That his erotic desire is almost indistinct from his narrative
desire is apparent as he speaks of his monograph and is adamant that he does
not like the preliminaries, he wants to be already "montado en el tema [...]
cabalgando" (29, emphasis added). Further citing/performing Villa, he insists
that does not want his monograph to be written with "delicadezas, mariconerías
lingüísticas" and that "Quiero hacer sentir toda lãviolencia del asunto: quiero
que mi libro huela a caballo, a sudores, a pólvora" (30, emphasis added).
Lest there be any doubt as to the underlying, erotic nature of what he says,
his speech ends abruptly with, "¿Y el té?" -- the tea that stands between him
and the fulfillment of desire.
The use of language to talk about and perform desire continues in
the metatheatre protagonized by Villa in Act I, where he is served tea by
Mujer (his nameless victim and object of desire), before he shoots her. There
Villa (like Adrián) can talk of little other than his erotic desire: "Es usted
muy bonita. [...] Es usted, de veras, requete bonita. [...] Es usted requete
preciosa, qué recondenada suerte. [...] Ya me ve amaneciendo arrepechadito
a usté, ¿no es verdá?" (35-36). By talking about his desire, Villa not only
heightens it, he also manages to project it onto the other, making it appear to
be hers rather than his.27
Thus, as she reaches out to him (ostensibly to take
his tea cup, but the gesture can surely be read more metaphorically), he pulls
out his gun rather than his "other weapon" (the one on which Adrián relies in
the metaphor that is literalized with the cannon at the end of the play). That
is, once he has performed a metonymic inversion and the desire seems to
emanate from her, he is able to "kill" it by shooting her.
Similarly, as Gina and Adrián continue to wait for the tea to steep,
they talk about their desire, but they also talk about talk, about what they
64 LATIN AMERICAN THEATRE REVIEW
should say. In this respect, the conversation both performs and constitutes
the desire while in both the frame play and the historical metatheatre, the tea
supplies the pre-text (both literally and figuratively) that allows the characters
to articulate their desires, and by speaking of them, to heighten them. Finally,
frustrated in his efforts to fulfill his desire and reach telos (as Villa does with
his gun), Adrián again resorts to monologue, arguing that there is no such
thing as a natural conversation. Echoing what seems to be Berman's point,
he insists that all acts must be based on inescapable, automatized patterns,
including I would add, the desire they talk about and perform as they talk
about it. Revealingly, Adrian's monologue here also ends abruptly with his,
"Y te deseo," which turns the conversation back to te, to his desire.
Nevertheless, for all their ostensible similarities, histe is significantly
different from her té. Indeed, it is apparent throughout their conversations
that Gina and Adrián are using language differently, based on different
presuppositions or historical-cultural contexts. I would insist, however, that
those differences are first citational and second, exist not only between the
characters but within each one (manifesting themselves in the incongruous
roles each performs). For example, to her earlier response about the tea,
"Está infusándose," he responds, "In-fu-sán-do-se. Qué fascinante" (30).
An invented word, but one we all understand, "infusándose" is not a proper
word in two senses: first, it is not appropriate for an educated professor/
writer, and second, it belongs to a domestic language, a language for which
Adrián has no need. It is not part of the authoritative narratives he citationally
performs.28
Yet, on a more figurative level, the invented participle (articulated
by Gina and repeated by Adrián) also designates the process by which one
character's citational discursive practices are absorbed into another to create
a different substance, a unique performance/identity that combines the
qualities of both, if not always coherently. The creation of the new word
points to and reenacts the formation (performance) of a new subjectivity,
comprised of multiple ingredients.
But why all this focus on tea? Of all the actants Berman might have
used, why specifically tea to embody the deferral of desire, among other
things? I would like to propose that tea functions in this play as both a social
and linguistic referent. First, the taking of tea is obviously a ritualistic, social
event that evokes certain status and requires "correct" (cited and citable)
conversation. Second, a ritual that is foreign to Mexico, it responds to a
desire to be (or appear to be) other. By drinking tea, one defines oneself as
(one becomes) international or cosmopolitan. At the same time, the
"Mexican" ritual is no doubt a citation of the British custom, which in turn is
FALL 1996 65
a citation of the Oriental ritual. In this manner, the tea itself marks the
performativity, the citationality, and the negotiation as I have been discussing
them - the sameness and the difference with which it has been "infused" into
the Mexican culture.29
Furthermore, just as the phoneme te slips back and forth between the
literal and the figurative, much of the theatricality of the play is predicated
on the continual slippage between these two semiotic points of reference.
Thus, when characters utter a figurative expression, the literal meaning is
also underlined - often humorously - in what we might call a literalization of
the figurative. For example, in Act I Adrián prepares to depart as Ismael
arrives. When Gina insists that he wait a moment, the stage directions indicate:
"Adrián cruza adelante una mano sobre la otra, se espera estrictamente un
momento" (38). Indeed, I would argue that the multiple levels of theatre or
performativity we encounter throughout the play (theatre taken as reality as
opposed to theatre recognized as such - metatheatre - etc.) encourage
spectators to consider the multiple levels on which all language must function
and be understood. The slippage among the levels of theatre underscores the
continual slippage between the literal and the figurative, and the effects of
one on the other, as Berman dramatizes the (often humorous) problematics
of a literal reading and performance of a narrative that was initially figurative.30
One might well wonder to what extent our citational gender performances
are also literalizations of what at some point in history was intended to be
figurative. Indeed, the figurative may be but an oblique attempt to reconceive
reality.
The interplay between the literal and the figurative is further
emphasized in Act II when the much younger Ismael urges Gina to force
Adrián to make a commitment. Significantly, in spite of the fact that Ismael
is a generation younger and "differently masculine" insofar as he ostensibly
rejects Adrian's hypermasculine role, he still cites and prompts her to perform
the old narratives.31
Indeed, Adrian's obsession with Villa and the Mexican
Revolution, which he sees in terms of heroes and traitors, is echoed in Ismael's
polar extremes ("Decirle: o todo o nada" [48]) and his definition of "love" in
terms of war: "en el fondo eso queremos los hombres: que alguien nos tumbe
todas, todas, nuestras idiotas defensas', que alguien nos invade, nos haga suyos;
nos libere de nosotros mismos" (49, emphasis added). Although Ismael's
narrative performs an inversion of power positions, making her the conquering
hero, it never challenges the basic structure of the old narrative. Nor does he
ever question the literal acceptance (and by implication, performance) of the
figurative war terminology, although Berman seems to ask, what can we
66 LATIN AMERICAN THEATRE REVIEW
expect from characters who have been taught to perform and desire in this
manner?
Once "conquered," Ismael (who acknowledges he does not know
how to lead) dances with Gina to the tune of a bolero (specifically,
"Desdichadamente," sign of their citational performance of unrequited love
at this point). However, the younger, "differently masculine" man is soon
replaced by Adrián and his old narrative — that is, his ostensible promise of
marriage and a son in what might be viewed as a spoof on Freud's prescriptions
of woman's desire.32
Although Gina thus literalizes a linguistic trope by
falling from the arms of one into the arms of the other, as might be expected
by now, the "other" is not significantly other/different. The similarities
between the two not-so-different males are further underscored in their
professions. Adrián (re)writes history; Ismael designs wooden blocks.
Clearly, both occupations are predicated on and limited to endless repetition
with only minor variation.33
I would hypothesize that the same is true of
gender identity and performance as I have been discussing them. Subtly
emphasizing those limitations of our performances, Berman concludes the
act as Gina and Adrián dance to the tune of a different bolero, "Una y otra
vez" (a title that underlines the inescapability of the citations), and she re-cites
her litany of cliched desires.
The limitations of the desires we are authorized to perform are again
highlighted at the beginning of Act III when Adrián returns to Gina's
apartment for the first time in three months, and she informs him that she has
"fallen in love with" Ismael. That even "love" is citational and has its own
history is humorously underlined in Adrian's reaction: "Por favor, a tu edad
ese lenguaje. Enamorada. [. . .] Existe una bibliografía inmensa sobre ese
estado de ilusión. Desde Platón hasta Freud y los posfreudianos, pasando
por Kierkegaard y Marcuse" (67-68). Adrian's attempts to reconquer her
(by means of whatever words and performance she might desire) are
accompanied by Villa's running commentary. Failing to conquer her with
his macho role à la Villa, and much to Villa's chagrin, Adrián assumes the
role of sensitive modern man (a role which to the audience is clearly
performed in bad faith). Still, Villa takes Adrian's "sensitive" role as personal
insult and injury, literalized via the knife in his back and the bullet wounds
he receives each time Adrián conducts himself as other than a true "he-man."
Thus, Berman literalizes the notion that to attempt to perform a different
citation (to perform and desire differently) is to "poke holes" in the old
narrative. At the same time, she implicitly speculates that perhaps Villa's
narrative initially had to be written in a more masculine extreme to compensate
FALL 1996 67
for the writer's perceived potential inadequacies and that our own subjectivity,
sense of self, necessarily influences our re-writing (performance) of prior
narratives. Or is it simply that "sensitive man" was an unthinkable role in
Villa's time?34
Or, and inversely, would wide-spread acceptance of the
modern, sensitive man role invalidate the previously author(iz)ed role of super
macho and result in a need to re-write it, a re-writing that would again
undermine the ideological goal of both narrative and history? At the same
time, Berman seems to be suggesting that what is needed is a "revolution" in
gender performance. But, she also seems to hold little optimism for that
revolution, which may prove to be as disappointing as the Mexican Revolution.
In the words of Adrián, "¿De qué sirvió la Revolución, la lucha del general
Villa, si sus nietos están igual de chingados que él de escuincle? A otros les
hizo justicia la Revolución" (83).35
As I argued above, sensitive modern
man as performed by Ismael is still fraught with contradictions and fails to
avoid citing and performing prior narratives of hypermasculinity. Telos (as
embodied in progress to the implicitly superior modern man), like coherent
identity, once more proves to be a narrative illusion.36
Act III ends when a despairing Adrián melodramatically throws
himself out Gina's window. Ironically, however, she lives on the first floor.
Here, as when Gina has to tell him to stand still so she can throw the roses in
his face, Berman underlines the citationality of the roles the characters perform
(in these two cases, not unconsciously) and the absurdity or ineffectiveness
of those citations when performed in bad faith: when the pre-text is out of
context.37
In these two instances we laugh, but beneath the laughter lies the
implicit question: how many of our citational performances, even those we
reenact with seriousness and good faith, are equally out of context,
incongruous with other roles we alternately perform?
Again defying our desire for telos (and the telos of desire?), the
implicit resolution of Act III is negated at the beginning of Act IV when the
alive and well Adrián returns to the same apartment, looking for Gina, who
no longer lives there. Undermining both the gesture toward final closure and
all notion of the proper (both in terms of social correctness and propriety),
Gina's apartment and all its contents (presumably including Adrián) have
been sold to Andrea, who is a willing substitute for her friend. In an
impressive, dramatic build-up to a love scene Adrián and Andrea disappear
into the bedroom as Villa rolls out a huge cannon and extends its telescopic
barrel, literalizing the metaphoric link between gun and potency. When he
finally fires, the cannon goes limp and all that comes out is a tiny ball —
much ado about nothing. The play ends with the reappearance of Adrián and
68 LATIN AMERICAN THEATRE REVIEW
Andrea as he departs leaving her holding a glass of cognac in each hand
rather than the tea held by Mujer as she was shot and abandoned by Villa.38
Tea, it would appear, is appropriate only in anticipation of the bedroom scene,
before desire dies/is killed.
Thus, as noted earlier, the ending which is a non-ending, destabilizes
our notion of narrative closure and foregrounds citational performativity. It
would appear that Adrián cannot perform because he and Andrea are citing
different scripts; they belong in different plays. Or is the problem that they
are citing roles that are too similar?39
Her performance as a direct woman in
response to her reading of him as a direct man ultimately fails to authorize,
or even leave space for, the conquering hero role. Indeed, her performance
may come too dangerously close to what we have traditionally interpreted
(or inversely prescribed) as the masculine role. Emphasizing what might be
read as her masculinity, Adrián is fascinated with Andrea's "bigotito," surely
an oblique reference to Berman's own Suplicio de placer. In the first act of
that play, the two characters share a moustache, signaling both an blurring of
well-defined gender roles and the hom(m)osexuality discussed by Irigaray, a
desire, that is, for the same (the masculine) and an erasure of the feminine.40
One might argue that in some sense the moustache functions in an similar
manner in the more recent play to the extent that Adrián desires (to be) and
assumes the role of (cites) Villa, emblem of the macho par excellence and
cannot perform when Andrea performs a role other than the traditional one
of passive (and undesiring?) femininity. That is, her sexual aggressiveness
~ her perceived masculinity or metaphoric bigotito — renders him roleless,
suggesting perhaps that what neither of the male characters is prepared to
accept is the woman as a desiring (and by implication active) subject (rather
than strictly as an object of desire, passive) — in spite of the fact that at times
it is they who project the desire onto the women. And, by "prepared to
accept" I mean quite specifically that neither has a citable model; prior
discourse has not author(iz)ed such a role - that is, a role other than ostensibly
passive victim (although as I noted earlier the passivity of the females may
be more a monolithic perception than an accurate description of their
behavior). For example, epitome of the macho, Villa is nonetheless described
as "con aire desconfiado" (33) when he is with Mujer. During their ritualistic
tea, Villa is clearly attracted to the woman, but he is annoyed that she is not
afraid of him - "Ni yo mérito le impongo miedo" (36).41
Perhaps that is why
he had to kill her, because she too left no room for his conquering-hero role.
When our performative citations leave us no alternatives for present
circumstances, we must create and negotiate anew. But in doing so, we risk
FALL 1996 69
"misperforming," although as I have argued, "misperformances" (pre-texts
out of context) nonetheless provide the foundation for future citational
performances, as Berman amusingly dramatizes at several points. In this
respect, Berman seems to suggest that our prescriptions of masculinity as
fearless potency and femininity as undesiring passivity may be narrative
fictions (wishful thinking) more than reflections of experience, which, again,
is far less monolithic.
Adrián explains the problem differently, however: "No ... pude, y
creo que, por un rato ... no voy a poder... [. ..]... no voy a poder... olvidarla"
(93-94). Let us not forget, however, that earlier in the play, Adrián confessed
that he could think of her only in parts, not as a whole, and that it frightened
him to think that she exists apart from him (65). Furthermore, the fact that he
was quite able to forget Gina frequently when she was available suggests
that, as a historian, he can remember (be interested in, desire) only that which
is past and reduced to discourse. Her absence at this point makes her as
mythical a figure as Villa and thus desirable in a way that the physically
present Andrea is not. Similarly, one must wonder to what extent we should
read Gina's attraction to the much younger Ismael as an impossible desire to
return to an earlier time, either that of her own youth or that when she was the
needed mother ~ both moments, again, that she is supposed to desire, that
have been scripted as authorized desires. Thus, Berman seems to ask what
narratives have taught us to desire only what we cannot or do not have. What
political, strategic ground is predicated on keeping us ever desiring? On the
other hand, we might posit that the la that Adrián cannot forget is generic
Woman, the fiction, narrative that has been made of her, a fiction Villa
encourages him to share with Gina as he tries to cue him on what to say to her
in Act III: "Siempre has sido la misma mujer. Por más que te cambie por
otra, siempre has sido la misma, una sola mujer..." (73) - read, one pre-scribed
role with little space for other positions and other desires.
Or, we might understand that what Adrián cannot forget is the old
narrative, told time and again, and most recently by him. It is no doubt
revealing that in the last act, Andrea asks him to write a different historical
narrative. She wants him to tell the story of her grandfather, Plutarco Elias
Calles, Villa's enemy and from Adrián' s perspective a traitor to the revolution.
She offers to supply him with all the materials he will need, but he cannot or
will not tell a different story, or for that matter, even re-consider the one he
has already told, perhaps because an alternative narrative might destabilize
the one on which he has literally and figuratively staked his life.
In conclusion, Entre Villa y una mujer desnuda unquestionably
underscores the problematics of both gender identity and desire. Nonetheless,
70 LATIN AMERICAN THEATRE REVIEW
Berman offers no prescriptions for change, perhaps because that future
narrative is not yet writable, indeed it may not yet be thinkable. The only
agenda for future action seems to be Andrea's admonishment to Adrián to
break with the past and see, really see, what he has in front of him.42
Quinnipiac College
Notes
1. In his review of theatre in Mexico City during the summer of 1993, Timothy G. Compton
validly summarizes the play as an "insightful focus on relationships between the sexes" (135), "signaling
the need for a new kind of romantic relationship, cautioning against blind acceptance of 'History,' and
exploring the relationship between past and present" (136). Born in 1955, Berman is a relatively young
playwright, author of less than a dozen works. Although none of her other plays has been as commercially
successful as Entre Villa y una mujer desnuda, her Suplicio de placer has certainly received critical
acclaim, as have Águila o sol and Yankee (Bill). An actress and a director herself, she trained under the
well-known Mexican director, Abraham Oceransky, who, in turn, has directed some of her plays.
2. A citation, in the sense I use the term, repeats or reenacts (or even represents) a previously
authorized gesture or patttern, if indeed not necessarily consciously. I would further argue that even if
the performance evinces no variation from the citational model, the lack of modification is still a response
to the tacit negotiation with one's audience. Although my theoretical focus throughout will be Butler,
other feminist critics have proffered similar theories. For example, in 1987 De Lauretis proposed that
"The construction of gender is the product and the process of both representation and self-representation"
(9).
3. Similarly, Butler too has argued, "gender is in no way a stable identity or locus of agency
from which various acts proceede [sic]; rather it is an identity tenuously constituted in time — an identity
instituted through a stylized repetition of acts." See Performative Acts (270, italics in the original).
4. Furthermore, as Jacques Derrida has argued, a performative utterance succeeds only if and
because it repeats a "coded" or iterable utterance — that is, only if and because it is identifiable in some
way as a "citation" (cited in Butler, Bodies 13).
5. Heilbrun expresses a similar notion in a different way when she states, "we cannot tell
stories we have never heard" (108), and later, "We cannot yet make wholly new fictions; we can only
transform old tales . . . . Out of old tales, we must make new lives" (109).
6. For a functional definition of narrativity, I shall borrow from Elin Diamond, who draws
from a number of other scholars to define narrativity as, "the process by which a spectator of any
representational medium will construct a narrative, i.e. a causal chain of events moving toward a telos or
completion" (94).
7. Significantly, a number of Berman's plays have a historical basis, and in them she frequently
emphasizes questions of language and the masculine voice of the conqueror. I think specifically of
Rompecabezas, which deals with the murder of Trotsky, Herejía, which takes place during the colonial
period, and Águila o sol, which deals with the period of the Conquest. Burgess discusses Berman's use
of history in her earlier plays (78-91).
8. Throughout this study I use the term historiography to refer to the narrative of history (as
opposed to historical events themselves).
9. Butler is repeatedly specific about the social enforcement of gender roles: "The
'performative' dimension of construction is precisely the forced reiteration of norms" (Bodies 94);
'"sexed positions' are not localities but, rather, citational practices instituted within a juridical domain
~ a domain of constitutive constraints" (Bodies 108); "Gender is the repeated stylization of the body, a
set of repeated acts within a highly rigid regulatory frame" (Gender 33); "the tacit collective agreement
FALL 1996 71
to perform, produce, and sustain discrete and polar genders as cultural fictions is obscured by the credibility
of those productions ~ and the punishments that attend not agreeing to believe in them . . . . [T]he
historical possibilities . . . are nothing other than those punitively regulated cultural fictions alternately
embodied and deflected under duress" (Gender 140).
10. Butler proposes, "In the place of an original identification which serves as a determining
cause, gender identity might be reconceived as a personal/cultural history of received meanings subject
to a set of imitative practices which refer laterally to other imitations and which, jointly, construct the
illusion of a primary and interior gendered self or parody the mechanism of that construction" (Gender
138).
11. This circular citation/authorization is true of theatre in general. To some extent, what we
observe on stage is an imitation or citation of life off stage or of our illusions of life off stage; yet surely
we would all agree that, inversely, what happens on stage is likely to influence the spectators' future
comportment off stage and the accompanying illusions that pass for "reality."
I would like to insist that my use of the term "role" is not intended to suggest a masquerade
or theatre in the sense of a conscious superimposition of the mask over some inherent essence. Rather,
one negotiates with one's audience (perhaps consciously but more often not) so that the latter will
(mis)take, (mis)recognize role A as opposed to role B (or any number of others) to be one's essence.
Thus, what I call a role is, in the words of Butler, an "enabling cultural condition" (Bodies 7).
12. Fraser further notes, "there are a plurality of different discourses in society, therefore a
plurality of communicative sites from which to speak individuals assume different discursive positions
as they move from one discursive frame to another [and there are] conflicts among social schemas of
interpretation and among agents who deploy them" (185-86). She also posits that social identities are
"nonmonolithic" (186).
13. Quoting Jeffrey Weeks's Sexuality and Its Discontents, Vorlicky notes that '"[i]dentity is
... [a] self-creation . . . on grounds not freely chosen but laid out by history'" (Vorlicky 2, emphasis
added).
14. In his Reading for Plot Peter Brooks also acknowledges that narratives (specifically
plots) shape texts "and by extension, lives" (xii) and the relation between narrative desire and erotic
desire: "Nairratives both tell of desire . . . and arouse and make use of desire as dynamic of signification"
(37). He also posits that the need to tell is "a primary human drive that seeks to seduce and to subjugate
the listener., to implicate him [sic] in the thrust of a desire that never can quite speak its name ~ never
can quite come to the point ~ but that insists on speaking over and over again its movement toward that
name" (61).
15. Not irrelevantly, the "happy ever after" is another desire not visibly fulfilled. It is promised
but not shown.
16. Berman's play on words is surely intentional here. Hacer patria humorously points to
the patriarchal foundations of both fatherhood and fatherland and the perhaps intentional strategic slippage
between the two. Immediately after his mother asks how many grandchildren she has, Villa tells her he
cannot keep track because "andamos haciendo patria" (45), in what is ostensibly a reference to his
patriotic endeavors but which must also be read as a representation of his erotic adventures.
17. Surely the ambiguity of this simile is intentional. Does "like/as an animal" refer to them
and how they are going to "kill" desire ~ they will kill it as an animal does, without a notion of history?
Or does it refer to desire itself, which like an animal, can be killed without qualms?
18. In Bodies Butler refers to "the radical unthinkability of desiring otherwise, the radical
unendurability of desiring otherwise, the absence of certain desires, the repetitive compulsion of others"
(94).
19. She says, "Quiero... Quiero... dormir... cada noche contigo. Quiero despertar contigo,
cada mañana. Quiero desayunar contigo. Quiero que vengas a comer diario aquí. Quiero irme de
vacaciones contigo. Quiero una casa en el campo. Quiero que hables con mi hijo de larga distancia, que
hablen de cosas de hombres, que yo te lleve un té mientras hablas con mi hijo [....] Quiero un collar de
oro con mi nombre [....] Quiero dejar de fumar [....] Quiero otra casa junto al mar [....]" (58).
72 LATIN AMERICAN THEATRE REVIEW
20. As Compton accurately notes, not only does Villa's life affect Adrián, Adrian's affects
Villa's (136).
21. This is a monograph that Andrea will later label a novel and at that one that is "chiquita"
(84).
22. That Gina should be typing Adrian's manuscript is surely another comment on the
discursive contradictions we all experience. In Act I he has objected to her new business, contesting her
"Estamos dándole trabajo a la gente" with "No. Están esclavizándolos" (31). Apparently, his "allowing"
her to type his manuscript (for which she is presumably not paid) is not to be perceived as exploitation
or enslavement.
23. The introductory character descriptions state, "Es el Villa mítico de las películas mexicanas
de los años cincuenta, sesenta y setenta" (20).
24. Each of the characters, including Adrián and Villa, positions him/herself as victim at
some point. That each of the males does it quite consciously should lead us to wonder to what extent the
females do (or do not do) the same.
25. De Lauretis's theory does not pretend to be original, but is her summary of Wendy
Holloway's reading of Foucault.
26. One could argue that in Act I he plays the conquering hero, in Act II the unfaithful lover,
in Act III the sensitive modern man, and in Act IV the self-pitying, middle-aged, defeated "hero."
27. Analogously, Butler has suggested that the naming of erogenous zones is what makes
them erogenous, for language forcibly shapes "the interrelationships through which physical bodies are
perceived" {Gender 114).
28. It is revealing that Adrián criticizes the language usage of both women characters, telling
Andrea that okey is not a Spanish word and questioning her use of agüita, ostensibly setting himself up
as the linguistic authority.
29. For quite a different reading of the significance of taking tea, see Jarrod Hayes, who links
tea with homosexuality.
30. Although my terminology here would suggest that the literal and the figurative are mutually
exclusive binary poles, I perceive them more in terms of an infinite number of shades, mixtures of the
two, along a continuum from one extreme to the other.
31.1 borrow the term "differently masculine" from Robert Vorlicky, who in turn borrows it
from Ken Corbett. Although the latter uses it specifically in reference to homosexual men, in Act Like
a Man, Vorlicky argues that "if gender is viewed as a fluid construct, then all men are necessarily
differently masculine from each another, just as all women are necessarily differently feminine from e
each another" (259). While I certainly agree with Vorlicky, I use the term somewhat more simplistically
here to suggest that, outwardly at least, Ismael does not appear to endorse traditional notions of
masculinity, the hypermasculinity à la Villa that Adrián cites and performs.
32. On more than one occasion Freud suggested that the female's desire for a penis is normally
transformed into a wish for a baby (presumably, preferably male). I would also argue that Adrian's
"promise" to give her what "she wants" (presuming anyone could know what that might be) is more
verbal manipulation, language that overtly serves both a literal and a figurative end. He never actually
says he will fulfill any of her desires; all he says is "Está bien," which literally says nothing, but which
she interprets figuratively as acquiescing to what she wants.
33. There seems to be no indication in the play that Adrian's version of Villa varies from the
official history. Furthermore, he is unwilling to reconsider writing the history of Andrea's ancestors.
34. Sedgwick briefly discusses what she calls the production and deployment of an
extraordinarily high level of self-pity in nongay men which, unlike machismo, is essentially never
named or discussed as a cultural and political fact. She suggests that this "role" is manipulative and
functions to allow the heterosexual male to have it both ways, as it were (145-46). Elsewhere, she
questions the "naturalness of any desire" (172).
35. What Adrián overlooks, what holds absolutely no interest for him, is the fact that, in the
words of Jean Franco, the Mexican Revolution "constituted a discourse that associated virility withsocial
FALL 1996 73
transformation in a way that marginalized women at the very moment when they were, supposedly,
liberated" (102).
36. Nigro has noted that "a major concern in some feminist theatre has been to disrupt narrative
on stage, and challenge the audience's own desire to create tidy and closed narratives" (141). Throughout
this essay I am indebted to Nigro's perceptive analysis of the relationship between narrative and theatre
in three Mexican plays, including Berman's Suplicio de placer.
37. Significantly, the roses, the pre-text, are doubly out of context here since they were given
to her by Ismael.
38. In another amusing literalization of the figurative, Adrián departs carrying his shoes,
suggesting that he did not "ie with his boots on."
39. One wonders if Berman's choice of names is not intended to suggest this. It cannot be
coincidental that the two names, Adrián and Andrea, while not identical, have phonetic resonance.
40. See the Nigro article for a discussion of the moustache in Suplicio.
41. Paradoxically, the "tea" here is not a "tea" for according to Adrián, Villa never ate or
drank anything until his sergeant tasted it to be sure it was not poisoned. Both the phoneme and the
ritual to which it refers suggest participation and partaking of the beverage. Without that, there is no
"tea," and the signifier is empty.
42. For quite a different reading of the play, see the Medina article.
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Berman, Sabina. Entre Villa y una mujer desnuda. Mexico: Ediciones El
Milagro, 1994.
. Teatro de Sabina Berman. Mexico: Editores Mexicanos Unidos, 1985.
Brooks, Peter. Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative.
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Butler, Judith. Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex." New
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. "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology
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