Men at Play: Masculinities in Australian Theatre since the 1950s

Abstract

This thoroughly researched book of scholarship is the first on this significant subject, and draws on a major study for its exploration of masculine identity over fifty years of Australian drama and theatre. At the same time it makes highly engaging reading for academics, students and general readers. While masculinity is usually thought of as a quality pertaining to men, it is commonly accepted that some women can be more masculine than others, and indeed that some women are more masculine than some men-the term mannish applies almost exclusively to such women (Halberstam 1998). There can be little argument that the character of Satirino was masculine, even though he was being created in and by the body of a woman. Interpreting the theories of Judith Butler (1988, 1990, 1993), Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (1993) and others that gender is constituted through performative acts, it is possible to argue that Mailman's performance did not just imitate masculinity but that it was an enactment of masculinity itself.