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Beyond the Binary Gaze: A Study of Leonie Böhm’s Practice in Classical Cross-Cultural Adaptation
JIA Lili
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DOI:10.17265/1539-8080/2026.08.002
Beijing International Studies University, Beijing, China
German contemporary theatre director Leonie Böhm adapts three canonical dramas: Medea, Three Sisters, and A Doll’s House, breaking away from the binary framework of conventional feminist adaptation that merely “opposes the male gaze and asserts the female gaze.” Rather than restoring source plots or reproducing canonical characters, she employs adaptive tactics including excerpting textual fragments from originals, simplifying character archetypes, stripping away extrinsic dramatic conflicts, and centering protagonists’ internal spiritual predicaments. Meanwhile, she capitalizes on theatre’s inherent medial attributes—live temporal synchronicity and autonomous spectator reception—to dismantle the power hierarchy of “seeing and being seen,” thereby forging an innovative paradigmatic theatrical gaze beyond biological sex and predicated on reflexive performer-audience interaction. Taking these three adapted productions as research cases, this paper pinpoints the intrinsic limitations of binary gaze theory as well as theatre’s innate medial strengths to transcend such constraints. It further delivers an in-depth textual analysis across three dimensions: textual adaptation, gender performativity, and scenic audiovisual symbolism. The study elucidates how Böhm’s deplotted and degendered theatrical praxis extricates female figures from the objectified position of representation and spectatorship, granting them subjective agency for internal emotional articulation. Ultimately, this paper distills the inspirational implications of her oeuvre for cross-cultural canonical adaptation, feminine theatrical articulation, and the contemporary theoretical extension of gaze studies.
Leonie Böhm, classical drama, gaze theory, theatrical adaptation, gender performativity
JIA Lili. Beyond the Binary Gaze: A Study of Leonie Böhm’s Practice in Classical Cross-Cultural Adaptation. US-China Foreign Language, August 2026, Vol. 24, No. 8, 286-291 10.17265/1539-8080/2026.08.002
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