Abstract

This article explores the role of music in forms of ‘becoming’ in the adaptation of Alan Warner’s novel The Sopranos (1998) for the stage by Lee Hall as Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour (2015). Telling the story of six choirgirls’ visit to Edinburgh for a choir competition, a musical strain in Warner’s novel ameliorates the ‘reprofuturity’ felt by the girls as a pressure leading with deathly inevitably to maternity and small-town conformity (Freeman 2007). In OLPS, the girls perform their own stories as a ‘gig’ incorporating both classical music and cover versions of the songs of popular UK band ELO, affording them opportunities to subvert oppressive gender roles, to deploy music’s erotic and affective charges, and to become musical dramaturgs of their own stories. As a musical play, the author argues, OLPS was a sonorous and affective event that staged the girls’ negotiations with normative pressures through flows of desire which were immanent, fluid and ongoing. Within theatre’s neoliberal and patriarchal economies, its performers deployed musical practices in ways that realized a sense of their own creative potential. In addition to drawing from the materialist feminism of Rosi Braidotti (2002) for its working definition of ‘becoming’, the article uses approaches from feminist and queer musicologists (McClary 1991: Citron 1993; Cusick 2003; Peraino 2013) to explore music’s embodying, relational and temporal processes. In so doing, it points to the usefulness of feminist and queer musicology to performance studies in regard to its interest in the staging of subjectivities and social relations.

摘要

本文探讨了音乐在改编艾伦·华纳的小说《黑道家族》（1998 年）中音乐在“成为”形式中的作用，该剧由李·霍尔（Lee Hall）作为我们 的永恒支持的女士们（2015 年）。讲述六名唱诗班女孩前往爱丁堡参加唱诗班比赛的故事，华纳小说中的一种音乐风格改善了女孩们所感受到的“reprofutury”，这是一种不可避免地导致生育和小镇整合的压力（Freeman 2007）。在OLPS中，女孩们以“演出”的形式表演自己的故事，融合了古典音乐和流行的英国乐队 ELO 歌曲的翻唱版本，为她们提供了颠覆压迫性性别角色、部署音乐的色情和情感指控以及成为音乐剧作家的机会他们自己的故事。作者认为，作为一部音乐剧，OLPS这是一场响亮而富有感情的事件，通过内在、流动和持续的欲望之流，女孩们与规范压力进行了谈判。在剧院的新自由主义和父权制经济中，表演者以意识到自己创造潜力的方式部署音乐实践。除了借鉴 Rosi Braidotti (2002) 的唯物主义女权主义对“成为”的工作定义外，本文还使用女权主义和酷儿音乐学家的方法（McClary 1991：Citron 1993；Cusick 2003；Peraino 2013）来探索音乐的体现，关系和时间过程。这样做，它指出了女权主义和酷儿音乐学对表演研究的有用性，因为它对主体性和社会关系的分期感兴趣。