Repeating Gertrude Stein: Language, Performativity, and Hypermediated Theater

The recent resurgence of artistic and scholarly interest in Gertrude Stein is a direct result of the academy's shift toward performance-oriented analysis, and this essay argues that Stein's writings, especially those concerned implicitly or explicitly with identity, not only mirror contemporary trends in theatrical performance but, in their interrogations of the repetitions of being, also prefigure current notions of social performativity. Focusing on Stein's verbal portraiture and her groundbreaking modernist novel The Making of Americans and on a representative multimediated adaptation of Stein's work by the Gertrude Stein Repertory Theatre, this essay attempts to close the gap between textual performance, live theater, and social performativity by tracing connections between verbal and visual performativity.