Popular Culture Review Vol. 2, No. 2, July 1991 | Page 35

Lessons From Hollywood

27

not heard of the term, nor for those who have not been persuaded to
enter the theatre where such revolutions are planned to take place.
Artists and cultural theorists, whatever the powers imbued them by
the ascendancy of the sign, cannot become effective reactionaries or
revolutionaries unless someone (arguably, a good many people) is or
are watching their work.
In other words, one can find in Case's work a problem similiar to
that of many of the other theatrical critics who write from a
revolutionary standpoint. In the first instance, little attempt is made
to ascribe any value at all to the commercial theatre, which is
relegated to the position of a non-art form worthy of attack; there is
no acknowledgment that the reaction of a spectator (whether male or
female) to the dominant theatre may be ambiguous and nowhere near
as clear-cut as Case suggests. In other words, subversion and
subversive or oppositional readings on the part of an audience
apparently exist only with the creation of a radical, alternative
theatre which seems—given its radical political posture and selfstyled "guerilla action"—to inevitably be relegated to the fringes.
From that position, perhaps, it will be praised in academic journals,
watched by intellectuals (largely feminist, if the art work is critical
of patriarchy), and studied in universities. Yet it will pass the
general populace by.
Case is not the only feminist critic whose emphasis and
purview is the alternative, fringe theatre. Helene Keyssar devotes
lengthy chapters in her book, Feminist Theatre, to the fringe
playwrights—such as Megan Terry or Michelene Wandor—whose
work has been largely outside of the commercial theatre, whilst
grouping together commercial playwrights—such as Wendy
Wasserstein or Marsha Norman—in a brief collective chapter
perjoratively entitled "Success and its Limits."(6)
Keyssar's main point is that the commercial playwrights are
effectively poor relations of their more academic, theoretically
correct friends—"dramas by women that have achieved commercial
success tend to take fewer theatrical risks and to be less threatening to
a middle-class audience than those performed on the fringe of the
theatre establishment."^) She casts her argument to suggest that
any show that is popular is inevitably less good. She has this to say
about Mary O'Malley: