There Was an Old Woman Who . . . Lost Patience With the Academy and Performed Her Frustration at a Public Meeting

Abstract

Taking as its starting point the nursery rhyme about the old woman who swallowed a fly, this autoethnographic performance text presents a fable of an old woman who first becomes invisible and then realizes that she can reclaim her power, but only once she rids herself of all the “rubbish” she has consumed. The text adopts the traditional format of a play script and references core themes of critical performance studies—gender, power, the body, presence, and meaning. Preserving the integrity of the play script as a literary form, there are no references; however, readers will recognize the implicit theoretical moves in the text. Readers may also note the inevitable challenge of translating the body-in-performance from stage to page. The text was performed by the author for a panel conceived and convened by Bryant Alexander, for the 19th International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry.