All about Eve: Apple Island and the Fictions of Lesbian Community

We continue our occasional series on the actuality and the ideology of lesbian performance with a study of Apple Island, a performance space in Madison, Wisconsin. Many of the productions of this ‘women's cultural and art space’ could, suggests Stacy Wolf, be categorized as performance art: She looks at these in the context of other modes and definitions of cultural production, and at the ‘complex interplay of identity and knowledge’ which constructs Apple Island's potential spectators. Looking at both positive and negative critiques of its work, she concludes that the activity through which its refusal of political and performative divisions is best exemplified is the weekly class-cum-performance of country western line dancing, and suggests through folkloric analogy how this helps to define or redefine the meaning of cultural feminism. Stacy Wolf is a doctoral candidate in Theatre and Drama and a lecturer in Women's Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She has also published articles in Theatre Studies, Women and Performance, and the Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism.