Scholarly Works, Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures

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Browsing Scholarly Works, Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures by Author "Bixler, Jacqueline E."

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    From Kerry to Chiconcuac: Marie Jones’s Stones in His Pockets and Sabina Berman’s eXtras
    Bixler, Jacqueline E. (2020-05)
    This article focuses on the Mexican play, eXtras, Sabina Berman's translation and adaptation of the Irish hit play Stones in His Pockets by Marie Jones. Linda Hutcheon, Thomas Leitch, and other contributors to adaptation studies shed light on the process used by Berman to tradapt and glocalize Stones in His Pockets for the Mexican stage, where the combined forces of Hollywood and globalization have likewise ravaged the local economy and where Jones's tragicomic story of exploitation and anonymization played every bit as well as it did in Ireland.
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    Performing culture(s): Extras and extra-texts in Sabina Berman's 'eXtras'
    Bixler, Jacqueline E. (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004-10)
    For almost thirty years, Mexican dramatist Sabina Berman has been writing and producing plays that question and often ridicule notions of gender, political credibility, historical authority, and cultural identity. Her latest play, eXtras (2003), is not a Berman original, but rather a translation and adaptation of Marie Jones's highly acclaimed Stones in His Pockets. The bold, capital "X" and multiple connotations of the title are but the external wrapping of a complicated text / translation / performance that extends from Ireland to Mexico, from actor to audience, and finally from Hollywood to the rest of global culture. Theories of performance and cultural resistance shed light on the complexity and playfulness with which Berman translates, adapts, stages, and ultimately subverts Hollywood's hold on cultural representation and, by extension, the hold of US culture on those parts of the world where dire economic conditions and free-trade capitalism force local culture to sell out to global (i.e., first world) culture. In this intercultural performance of texts and extra-texts, Berman and her own hired "extras" underscore what it means to be an extra in the full sense of the word and in today's global(ized) society.