A Play By Bowen Ames

Genre: Lyric Essay, Dramatic Monologue

Written and Performed By Bowen Ames

Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the first and continual performance of A Play by Bowen Ames, written by Bowen Ames and also performed by Bowen Ames. I am Bowen Ames, and I welcome you. [Hold for applause] Before the performance begins -- I’d like to thank Judith Butler for her influence in the writing of this play. And therein I must thank Jacque Lacan. And in thanking him I not only thank the beloved Judy B., but also all influenced by Lacanian psychoanalysis and phenomenology: Edmund Husserl, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, George Herbert Mead, etc. And of course the structural anthropologists: Claude Levì-Strauss, Victor Turner, Clifford Geertz, etc. And also those believing and fleshing out for me, the speech-act theory: particularly the work of John Searle, etc. I must thank them all for eliciting my understanding of the "performativity" of my identities, and henceforth the performance of A Play By Bowen Ames.

You see, all of these theories have allowed me to explore the ways that my social reality, and I suppose your social reality too, is not a given. It is but a continually created illusion. See me? I am Bowen Ames and I am an illusion you see simply through language, gesture, and all manners of symbolic social signs. See how I wave to my mother right now, sitting there in the second row, third seat from the left, hi mom. You only know that I’m saying hello to her because this gesture, this waving of a hand is but a performance of me… saying hello… to my mother, hi mom.

If you don’t understand, and really you should in order to fully enjoy A Play by Bowen Ames, I will provide an example using the speech-act theory. But first you must understand the speech act, you really should. John Searle terms illocutionary speech acts, those speech acts that actually do something rather than merely represent something. And now that you understand that, I will give an example. The classic example, because I dare not confuse you with the contemporary one, is the "I pronounce you man and wife" of the marriage ceremony. In making that statement, a person of authority changes the status of a couple within an intersubjective community; those words actively change the existence of that couple by establishing a new marital reality: the words do what they say.

And as Judy B. explained to me over our performance of ‘lunch’ “within the speech act theory, a performative is that discursive practice that enacts or produces that which it names.” And that is to say to you, my beloved audience, that a speech act can produce that which it names. And I have named this A Play by Bowen Ames and I welcome you. Please do not use flash photography, in case of emergency use emergency exits. Thank You.