Scripting Identity: Writing Cultural Experience

In Scripting Identity: Writing Cultural Experience, Theresa Carilli explores how understanding one's identity can assist in the process of writing a performative script. After a brief review of how the Performance Studies discipline interprets the act of performative writing, Carilli shares her own methodology for creating performative texts. By introducing the concept of the primary narrative? the story that is at the core of one's identity? the study demonstrates how several of her students at a working-class university campus (surrounded and influenced by a steel mill culture) exemplify how the primary narrative operates in their narrative creations. With the proposed methodology and scripts as examples, Carilli builds dialogue about new ways to study the communication process.

Theresa Carilli, Ph.D., is a Professor of Communication and Creative Arts at Purdue University Calumet. She has written two books of plays, Women as Lovers and Familial Circles, and co-edited two anthologies: Cultural Diversity and the U.S. Media and Women and the Media: Diverse Perspectives. Carilli has guest-edited Voices in Italian Americana and the Global Media Journal. She lives in Oak Park, Illinois.