Roses on the Kitchen Table: A Choreopoem

Document Type

Thesis

Publication Date

2004

Disciplines

Arts and Humanities | English Language and Literature

Advisor

Mara Faulkner, English

Abstract

Roses on the Kitchen Table is a choreopoem containing six characters who, through monologues, tell fragmented stories of their lives. Each woman struggles with her desires for her life as they conflict with society’s idea of what women’s desire should be. The women strive to voice the unspoken emotions, the often hidden and silenced inner lives of women, through their monologues. Roses on the Kitchen Table: A Choreopoem is a kaleidoscopic view of six women’s lives. Through their monologues, the six characters seek to define themselves and grapple with their sense of self in a society where gender roles, consumerism, ethics, the environment in which people live, and cultural consciousness are evolving. The women in the piece are not responsible for the power dichotomy between genders; the blame also cannot be placed completely on the men who hover at the edges of the poems. Rather, Roses on the Kitchen Table portrays a gendered description of a society where women’s bodies are a consumer product, where a power dichotomy exists between genders, and where feminism is considered unnecessary and obstructive, problems to which we all contribute.

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