Masaryk University

Faculty of Arts

Department of English
and American Studies

English Language and Literature

Eliška Hulcová

Neil LaBute’s the shape of things: A Gender

Reversed Pygmalion
Bachelor’s Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: Mgr. Tomáš Kačer, Ph. D.

2016
 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently,
using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

……………………………………………..
Author’s signature
 I would like to thank my supervisor Mgr. Tomáš Kačer, Ph.D. for his support, my
mother for being who she is, my partner Marek for his patience, and Láďa and Tasci for
being wonderful friends.
Table of Contents
Introduction………………………………………………………………………….…1

Neil LaBute and the concept of the shape of things…………………………………….2

The concept of Pygmalion………………………………………………………………5

Characters……………………………………………………………………………….7

Adam………………………………………………………………………………… ..10

Evelyn…………………………………………………………………………………..14

Evelyn versus Higgins………………………………………………………………….17

Settings and language…………………………………………………………………..20

Limits of art…………………………………………………………………………….23

Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………...…29

Notes……………………………………………………………………………………31

Works Cited…………………………………………………………………………….32

Shrnutí………………………………………………………………………………….35

Summary………………………………………………………………………………..36
Introduction

Transformation stories have been told and narrated for ages. The most obvious

inspiration is the lives of people, which eventually became generalized and included in

archetypal stories, such as legends or fairy tales with characters, who were frequently

said to play with people’s lives. Ordinary mortals were objects of their experiments,

bets or jealousy. The pattern keeps repeating as the people cannot be prevented from

making the same mistakes and behaving the same way over and over again. One kind of

the archetypal story is the transformation of one person into another with George

Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion being one of the modern versions of an archetypal tale,

which examines the topic in depth and explores the social impacts on the transformed

person. It was probably Shaw’s play that became one of the sources of inspiration for

Neil LaBute, the American playwright, and his play the shape of things.

In the thesis, Neil LaBute’s play is perceived as the focal point, where two

directions meet: the first one is a comparison with G. B. Shaw’s play Pygmalion with

the two main characters – Liza and Professor Higgins – playing the main role in the first

part of the thesis, and the general concept of the function of art with attention paid to

LaBute’s the shape of things. The thesis should highlight the parallels between LaBute’s

and Shaw’s plays with attention being paid to the characters of the shape of things and

to answer some questions raised about the role of art linked to manipulation and

transformation. At the beginning, I would like to present Neil LaBute as a writer and the

concept of the shape of things, in which I mention several responses to LaBute’s work

and the topics of his plays, which are restated in his play. The next chapter deals with G.

B. Shaw’s Pygmalion in general, sources of inspiration and the gender-twisted concept.

Furthermore, I attempt to try to draw some parallels between Evelyn, the main female

character in the shape of things, and Professor Higgins, the main male character in

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Pygmalion. I also analyze Adam, who is the gender-twisted Liza; and I pay special

attention to the settings and language of the play as it is an important feature of the play

as well, therefore I analyze its function and purpose of the specific style of LaBute’s

writing. The last part of the thesis deals with limits of art, conceptual art and the

application in the shape of things.

Neil LaBute and the concept of the shape of things

Neil LaBute was born in Detroit, Michigan on March 19, 1963 (Wood xi). He is

one of the most controversial and successful contemporary playwrights with his

legendary plays the shape of things, Fat Pig and In the Company of Men. The American

Theatre magazine sees him as the “American Aesop, a mad moral fabulist serving stiff

tonic for our country’s sin-sick souls” (Istel 39). LaBute’s plays seem to find the worst

in people and this is probably the reason why he is often labeled as an outspoken

misanthrope and obscene misogynist but, as Rachel Weisz, the actress playing Evelyn

in the shape of things, points out “he’s been called misogynist, but he is writing about

misogyny”1 (Istel 40). LaBute is interested in “the human canvas” (Lehman 75) and

likes “to remove the safety net” (Day). He examines the general and most topical

concepts of love, cruelty, deception, loneliness, violence, hatred, manipulation, pop-

culture, the absence of one’s true self in the body, an unstable and uncertain self,

finding the position of self in society and the relation to it, compassion, the oddness of

relationships nowadays, individual and social depravity, criticism of contemporary

culture and doubt. However, “his are ironic, witty plays, morality tales, which as

[LaBute] has said, are either handbooks for behavior or admonitory stories depending

on the audience’s own predilections” (Bigsby 12). Therefore, it always depends on the

audience how they interpret what they see for themselves – the purpose of the play is to

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make the audience immerse in their thoughts and start to think about their life, choices

and behavior.

LaBute is also often compared to Harold Pinter, David Mamet, Edward Bond or

Sam Shepard or, as he claims, the generation of the Angry Young Men movement

because “[the British] identify with words, and my plays are stuffed with language. I

also seem to reinforce the attitude towards Americans” (Jordan 30). Having mentioned

Pinter, Christopher Bigsby makes an apt comparison saying that “LaBute disturbs in the

same way as Harold Pinter, describing a familiar world but one in which motives are

often obscured, relationships seldom what they appear” (8). This is almost like a

summary of the topics of the 20th century drama – it may look ‘ordinary’ but a

Hemingway-related topic of the iceberg theory seems appropriate here: the most

important things are hidden and it is up to the reader/audience to decipher them.

LaBute admits that despite the cruel surface and presentation, he never lost hope

in humanity and men in particular (Istel 41). However, the ultimate cause of the nature

of his plays may be the relation with his father with a psychoanalytical touch because

“he had the power to hurt with words” (Jordan 30) and LaBute confessed that “writing

is a safe vacuum for me because I’m not saying those horrible things to someone’s face.

[…] I feel I have a kind of bravado in my writing which I don’t have in my life” (Jordan

30). Trusting the paper when dealing with psychological issues is a kind of therapy and

in this respect, LaBute resembles the main character of his play, the shape of things, as

he is in the position of a sheepish man like Adam.

Brenda Boudreau deploys gender-oriented perspective and argues that LaBute’s

works are “both a response to cultural standards and expectations of masculinity and a

critique of a way men (and women) respond to these often stereotypic expectations”

(38). There is certainly no single and right point of view to interpret and explain

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LaBute’s plays because men and women perceive the issues differently and adopt

different stances. Boudreau takes a stand as a woman, of course, and claims that in

LaBute’s plays, “women become the enemy to male bonding, one of the few arenas

(even if it proves to be false) that men can collectively define what it means to be a

male” (Boudreau 38). Nevertheless, in general terms, LaBute reveals “the feral snarl

beneath the bland American smile” (Saal 325).

the shape of things is, in short, a modern version of Pygmalion, in which Adam,

the overweight and not very attractive guard at a museum, is seduced by Evelyn, an art

student, who makes him a thesis for his project. Adam is not aware of it, however. He is

maneuvered into being an object of art and exhibited without knowing until the very last

minute. Adam and Evelyn meet at the museum, where Adam works as a guard to pay

off his student loans. Evelyn stands in front of a statue, whose private parts are covered

with a leaf, and holds a can of spray paint in her hand. Adam, who is very shy and

latent, attempts to discourage her from destroying the statue with paint but she resists

and steps over the line – this action may be seen as the actual beginning of the play and

actions that Evelyn commences in order to reach her target and fulfill her intentions.

Compared with the movie, it is a slightly different situation. The movie starts with an

announcement said by a soft female voice that invites the visitors to see the

documentary film on the works of Alex Katz, who is, incidentally, an American

figurative artist (00:00:20) and then continues like the beginning of the play above.

Being a dexterous manipulator, Evelyn induces Adam to undergo plastic surgery, lose

weight, break contact with his friends and eventually become the object of her project.

In the final – and very powerful – scene of the play, Evelyn holds a speech about her

project, in which she reveals everything; Adam is confronted with reality and the real

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purpose of his transformation. We may say that the play is about “manipulative nature

of human relationships and the manipulative nature of art” (Bigsby 88).

Neil LaBute intentionally leaves the audience unconscious of the actual

intentions of the main characters. The play starts with the incident in the museum when

Evelyn wants to spray paint an exhibited sculpture but it is not her real intention, as the

audience learns in the course of the play. The Adam project, which the audience learns

about at the end of the play, lasts eighteen weeks (LaBute 118) and starts when Evelyn

says: “i don’t like the way you wear your hair” and advises Adam to use less styling gel

(LaBute 12). She is determined to make him the art project from the very beginning of

the play. As John Istel aptly summarizes, “in deft, witty scenes, Adam slowly

transforms himself (or is he sculpted?) into a campus hunk under Evelyn’s hip

ministrations, much to the shock and amusement of his friends” (Istel 39)

The concept of Pygmalion

In this chapter, I would like to present ancient Pygmalion, the way this idea

influenced LaBute and various interpretations of the myth in the 20th and 21st century.

In one of his scarce interviews, LaBute developed his thoughts about the original

Pygmalion, the sculptor:

There is something of that Pygmalion sensibility in that desire to mould

something. But whole Pygmalion is driven by a kind of love, there’s far less of

that here because… love is something other than the figure that’s being

molded. It’s the work that she does (Bigsby 87).

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 The first appearance of Pygmalion can be found in Ovid’s Metamorphoses and

tells the story about prince Pygmalion, who carved a sculpture of a woman but felt

hopelessly in love with it. Venus showed mercy on him and transformed it into a

woman – Galatea. The myth has been retold and re-narrated many times2 but Neil

LaBute was so intrigued by the story that he focused on the feminist aspect of the myth

and taking the gender to a different level: Galatea being a man, in fact. As the voice of

the feminist movement became clearer in the 20th century, twisting the deep-rooted

concept was more likely to happen. The idea of transformation of a person occurred in

the minds of many writers, though Graeme Simsion’s The Rosie Project, a recent witty

variation on this topic, for instance, ranks among the less serious ones. The main

character of the book, Don Tillman, is a genetics professor, who is very particular about

his habits and lifestyle and meets his exact opposite. Funny moments are based on the

fact that he creates “The Wife Project”, in which he defines and describes his ideal

partner in a perfectly scientific way, yet he eventually chooses Rosie, who does not

meet any stated criteria. In order to achieve his goal of having a perfect wife, he

prepares sophisticated tests, which Rosie somehow manages to use to her advantage.

Another example may be Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’s Les Liaisons dangereuses, an

epistolary novel about manipulation with people’s feelings and emotions. Yet Neil

LaBute examines the complex topic in rather serious terms and does not hesitate to take

a step further. He employs his favorite topics such as manipulation, morality, crossing

the lines, violence, misogyny and exploitation as a foundation for the development of

the issue concerning the limits in art and morals.

George Bernard Shaw was the first playwright who wrote the modern version of

Pygmalion, in which the gender roles were preserved (Higgins as Pygmalion and Liza

as Galatea) but he was attracted to the feelings of the female character, the patriarchal

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world raised no major voice here. This aspect is even more visible in the musical

version of the play, My Fair Lady. Liza represents the counterpart of archetypal Galatea

– she is aware of her dignity and is not afraid to fight for her rights. As Eck points out,

Higgins “never really cares about the content of [Liza’s] words. He begins to shape

Liza’s speech and manner until she passes as a duchess” (Eck 15). This action parallels

to LaBute’s shape of things, in which Adam has to pass as an artwork at the exhibition

but he is not aware of it, there is no foreshadowing.

In the shape of things, the 21st century Pygmalion, the gender roles remain the

same and Adam is seduced by Eve(lyn) and “an innocent is about to be transformed”

(Bigsby 84). LaBute made an attempt to perform not only a transformation of the main

character in the play, but also to extract social background of G. B. Shaw’s Pygmalion,

travel with it in time and create a little what-if piece. The two plays have a lot in

common and share a number of key concepts. As Christopher Bigsby puts it, “there is a

shape to things. It is simply not that of which others are aware” (83). Neil LaBute

admits the fact he was inspired by G. B. Shaw’s play when he openly refers to

Pygmalion in Adam’s words, when he thanks Evelyn for ‘educating’ him: “thank you…

(cockney) … ‘enry ‘iggins” (LaBute 20). However, Evelyn is not aware of the existence

of such a play and as she hates being confused and ignorant of certain knowledge, she

immediately changes the topic of the conversation.

Characters

Although the play has four characters (Adam, Evelyn, Philip and Jenny), this

thesis analyzes only Adam and Evelyn in depth because they are crucial for the process

of transformation. It is not that Philip and Jenny are not important in the play at all but

they play only supporting roles and serve primarily like evidence of the consequences of

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Evelyn’s deeds. At first, I would like to provide a short introduction to both characters

and introduce the concept of the twisted gender before analyzing the individual

characters in detail.

In short, Adam is a straight, naïve, average-looking, bespectacled college

student, who feels alienated from society and may be perceived as the “good boy”.

Evelyn is an immoral and cruel graduate student of art, rebellious to society: the “bad

girl” – in a nutshell. In the course of the play, the audience find out that there is no clear

distinction between good and evil. The characters of Adam and Evelyn are clearly

inspired by their biblical archetypes and Neil LaBute does not deny it; he admits he

wanted to avoid showing it to the audience directly (Istel 40). In the film version of the

play, the allusion to the Bible is apparent with Evelyn wearing a T-shirt with an apple

on it (00:03:05). The apple thus represents temptation, the proverbial forbidden fruit,

which demarcates the beginning of the fall from innocence. LaBute probably

emphasizes one of the main topics of the play on purpose: the gender reverse.

Originally, the biblical Eve was born from Adam’s rib but through the course of time,

she became emancipated and LaBute presents the 21st century Eve, who twists the idea

of subordination to a man. Evelyn plays the role of the seducer like her biblical

counterpart, yet she has ulterior motives. It is Evelyn, in fact, who mentions the gender

aspect at the beginning of the play. Despite the seemingly leading role Evelyn plays, it

is Adam, who says the first sentence and takes control over the discourse, which

signifies a position of power a man should assume according to all the stereotypical

concepts. He warns her “… you stepped over the line. miss? umm, you stepped over

…”3 (LaBute 1). At the very beginning of the play, it is an attempt to demarcate the

borders, which is performed by Adam. He is the one who is in charge of the venue,

knows the environment and should protect the exhibits. However, Evelyn strikes back,

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when she says “i know. it’s ‘ms.’” (LaBute 1), by which she immediately affirms her

gender and marital status, although it is not necessary and Adam did not mean to start to

talk about this topic. By this, LaBute probably wants to point out the obsession with

gender nowadays; even a harmless joke may be taken seriously and result into serious

consequences. Therefore, Evelyn avoids being manipulated into the gender role Adam

ascribed to her with his masculine point of view of the world. Then she gets back to

Adam’s question and starts to show she is allegedly the stronger one from the

beginning: “i meant to. step over…” (LaBute 1). When Adam objects, Evelyn answers:

“i know. that’s why i tried it . . .” (La Bute 1) The borders here are not virtual, it is a

velvet rope, which separates the sculpture Evelyn wants to spray on. Christopher Bigsby

sees the rope as something “which keeps life and art at arm’s length” (83) and Adam

also mentions the need to keep lines it in his final dialogue, when he discovers the truth

about the ‘Adam project’, when he says that “there’s gotta be a line. for art to exist there

has to be a line out there somewhere. a line between really saying something and just…

needing attention” (LaBute 133).

From the beginning, Evelyn’s actions are deliberate; everything is carefully

planned as if she had a structure of her thesis (which is Adam, as it is revealed at the

end of the play). Her character is typical for Neil LaBute’s plays, as it is accurately

summarized by Bigsby, who claims that “if some of LaBute’s characters never seem to

have become acquainted with decency, others […] precisely exemplify that sense of the

thin line between civility and betrayal, genuine feeling and calculation, concern for

others and concern for the self” (8).

Adam’s low self-esteem and the lack of confidence work in Evelyn’s favor: he is

intrigued that she shows interest in him and is willing to undergo gradual transformation

in order to take her fancy. In the scene described above, he fails to perform the

9
authoritative role he has as a guard in the museum, does not want to confront Evelyn (as

she may lose interest in him) and leaves the responsibility someone else saying “i’d let

next shift talk to you, kick you out or whatever” (LaBute 3). Evelyn’s twisted gender

role is clearly demonstrated on the fact she likes to use dirty words: “i was thinking

more of painting a big dick” (LaBute 7), as swearing is traditionally (and

stereotypically) ascribed to men. However, the character of Adam

creates a portrait of a deeply un-communal country in which what is shared is

liable to be no more than fragmented memories of long-gone television shows,

books and films of minority interest, myths that have survived only in distorted

form, words that no longer mean what they once did, indeed words whose

meaning has been reversed or hollowed out (Bigsby 16).

In her article for New York Times Magazine, Pat Jordan cleverly observes that

“LaBute’s ugliest characters are often the prettiest men” (30) and Paul Rudd, who

played Adam at the premiere and also in the film, adds that “Neil is fascinated by the

handsome frat boys because they have this simmering rage” (30). Here starts LaBute’s

little game of what-if, in which he switches the gender perspective and devises the

character of Evelyn, which has all the traits of the frat boys mentioned above.

Adam

Adam may not be as pitiful as he appears to be at the end of the play. He

voluntarily gets a tattoo with Evelyn’s initials (E.A.T), which may be, as Brenda

Boudreau points out, “obvious symbolism” (Boudreau 52) but also “the threat that

Evelyn is not eating into his flesh [a reference to the play, when Evelyn says these

10
words], but she is eating away his masculinity” (Boudreau 52), his masculinity is

destroyed at the end. Neil LaBute wants the audience to believe that Adam is the abused

and exploited character but this may not be the whole truth – it is a matter of

perspective. He is planning to acknowledge himself through plastic surgery, a major

change in clothing and losing weight but the question whether his actions are successful

remains unanswered – the end of the play does not provide any satisfactory

denouement. After the transformation, he looks like he is a model from the cover of

Men’s Health but he is disappointed and sad in the end as the love he desired remains

unrequited, although he has been given “a systematic makeover” (LaBute 119). The

significant moment occurs at the very end of the play when he “pulls on his old jacket,

huddling there on the ground” (LaBute 118) but it is allegedly too big for him. In this

respect, he is the essential male version of Liza Doolittle from Pygmalion: he does not

belong anywhere now. Although he may be accepted by more people due to his

appearance, he is stuck between two worlds and starts to resemble Evelyn in some

respects:

As Adam becomes more desirable so he accretes power and with power seems to

come a moral ambivalence. He lies, betrays, deceives. It is as though the more

he conforms to a model of the desirable the greater the license he feels able to

claim” (Bigsby 95).

LaBute uses hints to show that Adam is not purely Evelyn’s creation – despite

the fact that Evelyn as a character has a different opinion – and he did not know or

realize anything. Throughout the play, he performs irony and mock-serious utterances,

in which he demonstrates that he is fully aware of what is happening like in the moment

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when he tells Evelyn “you are dangerously close to owning me” (LaBute 40) but is

afraid of the whole truth; irony helps him to demean what he fears to say. In fact, he has

reached his aim: to be accepted by the society but at the same time, he also wants to

remain an individual. However, this is not possible. The appearance is crucial and

“body-image would not have such a profound effect on individuals if they did not

expect their bodies to be malleable and controllable in order to adopt culturally and

socially accepted features” (Jobsky 8).

Adam desires for verification by the society, he is happy to make concessions in

his appearance. At this point, he also conforms to the rules set by fashion magazines

such as Glamour or Cosmopolitan, which play the roles of social norms by showing

beautiful people because “physical beauty is commonly linked to ‘good’ meanings such

as social acceptance, fame, success, and moral goodness” (Jobsky 10). They outline the

lifestyle, right clothes, food and relationships people have to have in order to be fully

integrated in contemporary society, they decide who is socially acceptable and who is

not integral part of the social bubble anymore, they support irrational obsession with

appearance. Jenny, Adam’s female friend, makes an allusion to Cosmo in particular.

The magazines are full of before-and-after, do-and-don’t articles, who praise the

transformations from Ugly Betties into Angelina Jolies, and, more recently, from

Homer Simpsons into David Beckhams as well. These are the transformation from fat

and not handsome men into metro- or lumbersexuals because “slimness is identified as

indicator for discipline, willpower, energy, and self-control in an environment of

overabundance and mass consumption” (Jobsky 14) whereas “fatness is regarded as

indicative for ‘bad’ personality traits such as laziness, lacking discipline, unwillingness

to conform, and inability to manage the body” (Jobsky 10). Evelyn – maybe being

unaware of it – uses the language of these magazines as well: in her final speech, she

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presents an old photo of Adam saying “this in a ‘before’ picture” (LaBute 118) and

using the language of the fashion dictate, she “reshapes [Adam] according to a

particular paradigm” (Bigsby 91), which is the shallow and untrue paradigm she fights

against. In Jobsky’s words, “the mainstream ‘ideal-image’ shows thin, tight, toned , and

almost hairless bodies. […] The face ought to be symmetrical, unmarked and

uncluttered, almost expressionless, and preferably showing Caucasian features” (14).

The texts – and photos in particular – in these types of magazines are uninterested in

moral or personal qualities. Unlike Evelyn in particular, it is them who might be the

sculptors and spin doctors of society; they are implementing thoughts of what is good

and bad, demarcating the lines and limits. However, what has been perceived as

something associated with women only is slowly becoming the matter of men as well.

As Boudreau points out, “while the class position gives [Adam] the time and freedom to

worry obsessively about appearances, it has paradoxically emasculated him, revealing

the performativity of masculinity (and, hence, its vulnerability)” (38). Boudreau also

observes the lack of masculinity in contemporary society, which is rooted in the play:

“the shape of things literalizes how the male body has become the focal point of cultural

anxieties over the loss of masculine power” (38). For Adam, identity seems to be a

concern, yet he is willing to yield. Evelyn supports the magazine-related idea when she

asks the question in her final speech: “how many here [in the auditorium] can say that

they have never looked at their significant other and/or a business associate and sand

‘they’re perfect, they’re great except for just one thing (LaBute 120).

Adam is on the verge of a big transition between his two selves, two identities

but “divergent perception of actual, ought, and ideal self-image can lead to

discrepancies and feelings of discomfort, failure and disappointment” (Jobsky 6). His

friend Phillip does not show any mercy for him and, being shocked by the first stage of

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Adam’s transformation. In the middle of the play, Adam starts to show symptoms of

what the society now sees as the behavior of abused women but not many research

projects about abusing men have been performed. When Phillip meets Adam with a

bandage on his nose, he understands that he probably had a cosmetic surgery but does

not hesitate to ask:

PHILLIP what’d you do, anyway?

ADAM … i fell.
PHILLIP come on…
ADAM seriously, i did…
PHILLIP you sound like a battered wife. ‘i fell…’ […]
ADAM i tripped, i fell… no big deal.
PHILLIP sure it wasn’t the bathroom door? that’s the usual excuse…
ADAM for who?
PHILLIP abused women… (LaBute 72-73)

Adam behaves like one of the mistreated women and uses the same arguments when he

speaks about his rhinoplasty of which he is apparently ashamed. He probably sees it as a

sacrifice a ‘real man’ from Esquire or GQ would not do.

Evelyn

Evelyn plays the role of an archetypal Eve, who tempts and seduces Adam using

art instead of an apple. She starts slowly but surely and becomes more demanding in the

end when “she invites trust in order to betray it” (Bigsby 83). Evelyn is a master of

manipulation. LaBute himself claims “everybody has the ability to be manipulative, to

be hateful and deceitful. I think they have the capacity for very good, as well” (Bigsby

81). Although Evelyn never orders Adam what to do, she uses little inconspicuous hints

that should serve as guidance in his process of self-transformation, Adam is “the granite

block about to be shaped by the sculptress” (Bigsby 84). He is fully aware of the

transformation of his body and himself, yet he does not know the real purpose and

14
Evelyn’s intentions; he argues that he hates running, eating better, lifting and he does it

only because she suggested it (LaBute 19) but she counters: “you shouldn’t do

something you don’t wanna do” (LaBute 19). However, he is taken by surprise, he

might have anticipated a different reaction and replies that “i’m doing it for you”

(LaBute 20). Evelyn is satisfied and adopts a stance, which may be compared to a

relationship of a master and a nice obedient Labrador, when she says “i gave you a

couple of ideas and you’re changing your entire life. i’m very proud of you” (LaBute

20). Evelyn is “no less the moral force in so far as she raises the principal moral issues

in the play even as, in her role as an artist, she denies any responsibility beyond a

commitment to her art” (Bigsby 81). However, Adam is not aware of the fact that he is

in the process of being ‘sculpted’ because Evelyn wants to make him an object of art.

Evelyn also connects masculinity and sexuality, which makes Adam even more

insecure. There are some indications in the text that Adam is not a womanizer in the bed

and Evelyn utilizes the situation in order to lower his self-confidence more; she

blackmails him through sex. However, her speech at the end of the play may be self-

pitiful as she wants to explain to Adam why she did the project: “everything I did made

you a more desirable person, adam. people began to notice you… take interest in you. i

watched them…” (LaBute 128).

Having mentioned that the setting of the film is not in the Midwest but Mercy

college in California, the word mercy is rather symptomatic for the play – it is Evelyn,

who mentions it in her exhibition speech several times, although she is probably the last

person to be linked to mercy at the end of the play. At first, she mentions that she “[is]

at [audience’s] mercy,” which “is fine, i have been my entire academic life – at

someone’s mercy, that is – which reaches back to when i was five. so be it… that’s the

system and one person can’t change it…” (LaBute 117). LaBute employs the irony

15
again because she now tells more about her private life to the audience consisting of

strangers than her boyfriend Adam, with whom she had an intimate relationship. Yet

Evelyn takes the intimacy issue further. At the end of the play, in the grand finale, when

she reveals her shady intentions, she confides in the audience and tells them the story

about her engagement as if they were her best friend: “i was given an engagement ring

two days ago and i haven’t answered the guy yet… so i wanted to do it this evening”

(LaBute 117).

Evelyn is obsessed with crossing the lines and breaking the rules as well as what

can be seen as a scientific approach to her work – as if she speaks about an experiment

with white lab mice, which never knows it is the object of research and experiments,

with all the necessary evidence, materials, sources and data, Adam is her “creation”

(LaBute 120):

the exhibit itself will give you many first-hand examples of my efforts, some

hands-on such as video tapes or sound recordings of our conversations and

others more scientific in nature, as in growth charts, x-rays and accompanying

data. […] however, the hair, the glasses, the excessive amount of weight, offered

a number of physical areas that made him unique and perfect for this project

(LaBute 119)

LaBute highlights it in his stage directions: when Evelyn instructs him to “take [the

jacket] off for a second”, “adam follows her orders” (LaBute 14) and it repeats in the

following act after Adam and Evelyn kiss: “[Adam] looks around self-consciously”

(LaBute 17). LaBute’s notes are austere and scarce but by describing Adam’s behavior

16
repeatedly, he assumed it is a necessary description of the main male character’s

actions.

Yet Evelyn also has the ‘lighter’ side. Although the play ends with Adam

watching the video at the exhibition, disappointed and depressed, we may ask the

question what happens with Evelyn. Despite her utterance that she has “gotta hook up

with some guys from the department” (LaBute 135), it may not be true. After having

revealed her intentions, the horrible truth behind her actions, it is highly probable that

nobody would like to join her at the reception – she has made a life-changing decision

as well. From this point on, she may be perceived as a manipulative and treacherous

woman, which results in losing her friends – just like Adam. However, they are not on

the same level, Adam will be always seen as the seduced and innocent one but the story

is not as black and white as it looks. Evelyn must be aware of the consequences of her

deeds, she is a clever woman, but her soul of an artist is willing to sacrifice her social

life and the fact that she is going to be expelled from university for art, or at least what

she considers art. She surrenders to Adam’s reproach but even if she discovered she

was not right at the end of the play, she would never admit it.

Evelyn versus Higgins

G. B. Shaw’s Professor Higgins from Pygmalion is the male version of Evelyn

and they show many similar or rather identical features. As John Robin Baitz puts it,

“Neil LaBute, like Mr Shaw, has of course, a very big heart. […] Both are fierce

moralists with gimlet eyes and lots of questions. Both are troublemakers, both tortured

by questions of sex, virtue and goodness” (57). Evelyn and Higgins do not apprehend

why the people around them see their doings as something immoral or wrong in general.

They assume they have noble and dignified reasons, which give them the right to

17
perform actions at their own will regardless of other people; they explain their behavior

using higher law and the fact they are researchers – be it linguistics or art. Evelyn

justifies her actions “by reference to a self-serving language” (Bigsby 15).

She mentions it in her final speech: “it does mark the beginning of my systematic

makeover, or ‘sculpting’, if you will, of my two very pliable materials of choice: the

human flesh and the human will” (LaBute 119). She pleads she was assigned some

special homework – although the audience never learns about who was this higher law.

“i knew i’d been given a tall order. ‘change the world.’ so, i decided to do the next best

thing, which was change someone’s world. […] one person changes, and then another,

and then, well, you get it… crude but effective” (LaBute 118). The last three words in

particular sound like they were copied from some Nazi speech in WWII. She is like a

social engineer of the 1940s, who does not see the sick aspect of her deeds – or, if she

sees it, she does not admit that there is something rotten. Adam pays attention to this

aspect in his final speech when he says “you are about two inches away from using

babies to make lamp shades and calling it ‘furniture’. (beat). look, i know they call it the

‘art scene,’ but that’s not all it should make. a scene” (LaBute 133). Moreover, she

thinks that she has done “little more […] than everyone else does who tries to modify

the appearance and person to those they live with or alongside whom they work, though

she acknowledges taking this process a little further” (Bigsby 85).

Both Evelyn and Higgins show the traits of people suffering from Asperger

syndrome when they bear the stamp of having difficulties when speaking to people. As

Bigsby noted, “[LaBute’s] characters frequently lack something more than the tact

required for social living. They lack a concern for the consequences of their actions,

treat life as a game in which their own needs take precedence” (8). Evelyn and Higgins

behave offensively and tyrannically in order to achieve their aims at any cost. The

18
purpose of their manners is rather clear: to attract the other sex but each character uses

different methods. Henry Higgins wants “the streets to be strewn with the bodies of men

shooting themselves for [Eliza’s] sake” (Shaw). Neither Evelyn, nor Higgins realize the

moral aspect of the manipulation they are performing. When Higgins is accused of

walking over Liza and abusing her, he swiftly denies it: “I never had the slightest

intention of walking over anyone. All I propose is that we should be kind to this poor

girl. We must help her to prepare and fit herself for her new station of life” (Shaw). He

does not understand what Mrs Pearce and Colonel Pickering desire. Higgins and Evelyn

are shockingly provoking but they do not really think through the consequences of their

deeds. They are not afraid to call the objects of their interest ‘it’, depraving them of

their humanity and dignity as people – as if they have absolutely no rights. In her speech

at the exhibition, Evelyn justifies her activity by saying that “the piece itself – him – is

untitled since i think, i hope, that it will mean something different to each of you and,

frankly, anyone who sees it. His own name, however, is quite apropos” (LaBute118).

Evelyn also avoids using names when she tells the story of how she met Adam for the

first time and explains the legal issue of her actions:

i first spotted my chosen base material… it’s so funny not to use names! sorry,

but a lawyer actually told me I had to say that, ‘base material’… on january 9 th,

the fifth day of winter semester, as i was actively pursuing another set of ‘base

material’ (LaBute 119).

the shape of things may be seen as a battle of sexes but the winner is missing.

Higgins and Evelyn are determined to perform their plans from the very

beginning of both plays, yet only Liza is aware about the transformation unlike Adam,

19
who remains unconscious of the extent of Evelyn’s manipulation until the bitter end.

Higgins expresses his intention at the very beginning: “In three months, I could pass

that girl off as a duchess at an ambassador’s garden party. I could even get her a place

as a lady’s maid or shop assistant, which requires better English” (Shaw). Higgins tries

to change Liza from the inside and outside: if he changes her speech he is interested in,

he must also perform another metamorphosis – to change her appearance. These two

features must be linked together as they are very closely connected and the English

language is very particular about social classes and groups. Like Evelyn, Higgins is

obsessed with perfection – or at least, what they see as perfection, which is – speaking

of Pygmalion and the shape of things – closely linked to the obsession with truth:

Evelyn wants to reveal it in art and Higgins is trying very hard to conceal it. As Evelyn

says, “i don’t like art that isn’t true” (LaBute 8) but the ending of the play is the

contradiction to her words. She cannot judge and decide what art is the true one,

although she sees herself as an authority, although for her “truth, like art, changes with

the point of view” (Bigsby 83).

Settings and language

The settings of the shape of things is important for the overall purport of the play

as well. It is set in a Midwestern town, which LaBute knows from his childhood, and it

allowed him to

rehearse the beloved stereotypes of Ur-American innocence in an ironic

manner. In aligning them with the general sense of white middle-class

ubiquity suggested by sparse, non-specific sets […], he transfers the worn-out

clichés of a Midwest to a ‘nameless mid-America’, thereby also metonymically

20
 suggesting that the casual cruelties of his Midwestern characters might be

emblematic of the ‘muddled minds’ of middle-class Americans as such (Saal

325).

However, in the film version of the play, the college has a name: Mercy College, which

is, as Christopher Bigsby points out, “an irony […] in a work in which mercy is

precisely not what is on offer” (82). Mercy College is located in California and for

LaBute, it makes better sense because “people […] visit high-price surgeons […] and

where sculpting of body and mind are equally an investment and a way of life” (Bigsby

82), which is very closely related to the topic of the play.

Music plays an important role in the play and the movie as well. Originally, the

soundtrack for the play was provided by The Smashing Pumpkins (Istel 39) but it is

Elvis Costello, who recorded the soundtrack for the movie, which is rather symptomatic

and it seems like LaBute wanted to experiment with two extremes: The Smashing

Pumpkins symbolize the progressive alternative rock performed by almost archetypal

rock stars with scandals, which may highlight the impression from the character of

Evelyn. Costello, on the other hand, has successfully avoided affairs, and his music may

function as a background and non-disturbing music for the whirlwind of events on the

screen and may emphasize the impact of the events more than loud music as such. As

Neil Labute said: “[…] I’m dealing with different ways of approaching the presentation

of the play – in terms of the loudness of music: the music at the opening night was so

loud that Harold Pinter left the theatre” (Istel 39) and he is also proud of confusing the

audience by” the absence of a curtain call” (Istel 40). It is true, of course, that there are

differences between the play and the movie in general, however the comparison may be

21
appropriate here because the play and the movie are written and directed by one person

– Neil LaBute himself.

Neil LaBute has been described as “the new Edward Albee of theater for his

unflinching exposure of evil, hypocrisy, and ennui in modern American life” (Bell 101).

The play is significant in the use of language and the graphic version as well. LaBute

consistently uses lower-case letters – even in the titles of the plays – a lot of three-dot

features, strictly colloquial language with filler words but this is what he finds exciting

about plays:

It’s a strange no-man’s land of language. And I’m quite comfortable there. I put

as many ‘ums’, ‘likes’, and ‘whatevers’ as I can. […] it takes awhile to finish a

sentence because you’re so busy kind of working your way around it and

thinking on your feet about what you’re going to say” (Istel 41).

Speaking of the lower-case letters, there is an obvious parallel to e. e. cummings but

LaBute has a more prosaic reason: “it’s a simple matter of being able to type faster, to

write more and in a way that allows the work to flow out of myself more completely,

without stopping for the ‘shift’” (Bigsby 18).

Looking at the text as a whole, one may notice the dialogues in the play looks

like the exchange in a game of tennis except for the very end of the play when Evelyn

holds a long speech about her attitude to art and the Adam project. LaBute’s language is

often compared to the style of Harold Pinter, which is confirmed by Tom Wilhelmus’s

words:

22
 LaBute’s language is poetic—a poetry of hesitations, clichés, qualifications,

evasions, and doubts—and emulates the practice of contemporary playwrights

such as Beckett, Albee, and Pinter by turning the cliché-ridden speech of the

tribe into carefully constructed art“ (62).

LaBute uses language, which is easy to understand and depicts the hesitant moments

perfectly. To many people, his plays are “through and through American” (Saal 325)

but LaBute manages to depict “the everyday, lazy language that you routinely overhear

in train stations or diners” (Saal 325). His language is fragmental resulting from “the

loss of values that once gave substance to national myths but which now survive only in

broken language and half-remembered pities [the characters] utter without

understanding (Bigsby 11).

Limits of art

The play is not concerned about morality and manipulation only, it is engaged in

issues with greater overlap – to art: To what extent is an artist authorized to shape the

object of his or her work? What is acceptable artistic material? At what point does

creation become manipulation? At what point does creation destroy?

Every interpretation of contemporary art – traditional and conceptual media – is

concluded by a question: What is art? Does it have the right to enjoy special privileges

from the society (special ethical norms and legal treatment)? On the one hand, all

authorities in the world of art enforce their own interpretation or definition of art.

Although the concept of art as a specific communication channel – negotiation,

conveying and sharing the contents, which cannot be communicated by other media and

ways, through experience – is a widely-spread idea the people dealing with the world of

23
art have, it cannot be applied universally. It is only a one-way direction: it explains why

art is what we understand as art. However, it does not serve to distinguish art from what

is not art. One of the most suitable definitions may be the institutional definition of art.

It represents a concept based on several theoretical works, their reception and critical

reflection. It was first introduced by aesthetician and philosopher Arthur C. Danto in

The Philosophy Journal in 1964. His text was simply called The Artworld. In the first

text, Arthur Danto appeals “to separate the objects those are works of art from those

which are not, because … we know how correctly to use the word 'art' and to apply the

phrase 'work of art'” (Danto 572). Although Danto is often given credit for the

institutional definition and also criticized for it, it was philosopher George Dickie, who

transformed it into a real definition. Noël Carroll, who is considered one of the most

important contemporary art philosophers, writes: “If Danto’s artworld is a world of

ideas, Dickie’s is a world of people, of artists and their politics” (14). Danto admitted

that he was “often credited with being the founder of the institutional theory, though in

fact it was George Dickie whose theory it was“ (Rollins 298). Dickie declared that

Danto’s and his approach to the world of art differ in many aspects. Danto emphasized

museums being institutions of power, which are created by power ideas, and describes

the position of an artist or object on the market with ideas operated by institutions

engaged in the segment of art (museums, galleries, businessmen, reviewers etc). Dickie

adopts the term ‘the world of art’ from Danto, yet he radically shifts it. For Danto, it

was the meaning: “Something is a work of art if it has a meaning is about something

and if it embodies its meaning,” (Herwitz, Kelly 126) the validity of the institutional

definition was implicit. When developing his theory, Danto specified several

consequences – qualities, which were constant for institutional criticism: an artwork

should have a subject, should project some attitude or a point of view, should engage

24
audience participation and fill in what is missing within the society, and should insist on

art historical context for its interpretation (Adajian). The motive for Danto’s and

Dickie’s new theories was the rise of conceptual art. Conceptual objects as such did not

bear exceptional features, which distinguished art from non-art. Andy Warhol’s Brillo

boxes became the symptomatic work (Danto 581). Danto noticed that Warhol’s boxes

are about 2 x 103 times more expensive than common boxes with identical qualities,

form and material. Danto thinks that “we cannot readily separate the Brillo cartons from

the gallery they are in” (Danto 581). According to Danto, the object has a nature of an

artwork with its institutionalized context but has not special qualities. This aspect was

elaborated by Walter Benjamin back in 1936 in his famous, quoted and paraphrased The

Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Benjamin introduced the term

‘aura’, which distinguishes authenticity of an artwork from its mechanical

reproductions. According to Benjamin, aura is present thanks to authority and a singular

nature of artworks: it is created by the “second life” of the work, its reception,

institutionalization and ownership changes. It represents the distance between us and an

artwork. When the artwork was reproduced, it was deprived of its aura but it was

becoming democratic and capable of political changes (Benjamin). Christopher Bigsby

claims that “a work of art exists within a framed space. So does the individual, whether

in a gallery or not” (83) but Evelyn in the shape of things is the person who “breaches

the frame” (83). In her final speech, Evelyn talks about “human sculpture on which i’ve

worked these past eighteen weeks, and of whom i’m very proud” (LaBute 118).

The trigger of revaluation of the theory of art and the ideas about the end of art

presented by Danto was the conceptual twist in the 20th century art. The conceptual

twist arose with the invention of the ready-made art introduced by Marcel Duchamp’s

Fountain. Having used the pseudonym of R. Mutt, he exhibited a urinal placed upside

25
down in an art gallery. Two years before, he exhibited a spade as an artwork called In

Advance of the Broken Arm. Arthur Danto related his institutional theory to Duchamp

ready-mades:

Duchamp’s philosophical discovery was that art could exist, and that its

importance was that it had no aesthetic distinction to speak of, at a time when it was

widely believed that aesthetic delectation was what art was all about. (Randol)

Ready-made reassessed demands for art placed by the world of art and the general

public.

In his text about conceptual art published in Artforum in 1967, Sol Lewitt wrote:

In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work.

When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning

and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The

idea becomes a machine that makes the art.

According to contemporary critics, all art after Duchamp was fundamentally conceptual

because he did not aim at aesthetical qualities but an idea to incorporate experienced

reality in art, not the reversed strategy. Conceptual art did not have any common idea,

program or manifesto (although several theoreticians attempted to do so). The uniting

feature is indignation toward art formalisms, criticism of the static character of how the

world of art works (the art business in particular), the request to arrange objective facts

artists substituted by representation of purely subjective experience.

26
 Another question the play asks is: where are the limits/borders of art? What is art

and when can we say it is not art anymore? Similar issues are discussed and analyzed in

Stephen Sachs’s Bakersfield Mist and John Logan’s Red. The two plays also utilize two

famous abstract painters, Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko, to illustrate and support

their message. Sachs has chosen the genre of comedy, in which drama is hidden, and

tells a story of Maud, an unemployed bartender, who lives in a trailer and claims to have

a picture painted by Jackson Pollock. Maud invites Lionel, an art expert, to confirm that

her picture is not a fake. On the contrary, Logan uses the venue of Mark Rothko’s

studio and his dialogues with Ken, his assistant, to demonstrate the aesthetics of art, the

concept of colors and the purpose of art. Both dramas leave the questions unanswered as

the audience never learns whether it is ‘real’ Pollock or if a canvas with several shades

of red is ‘real’ art. According to Christopher Bigsby, “self-mutilation does not become

art by declaring it so any more than does the willful use of other people’s bodies by

declaring it to be an aesthetic gesture inviting an aesthetic response” (86).

Sculpting and sculptures are the essential and omnipresent words speaking of

Shaw’s Pygmalion and LaBute’s the shape of things. The issues of morality, boundaries

or identities are discussed and analyzed. Adam and Evelyn have their conversation

about art theory at the very beginning. She claims that beauty of art is subjective but

Adam starts quoting Oscar Wilde’s words about universal truth in art. Evelyn admits he

is right but objects that she is engaged in practicalities and censorship claiming that the

sculpture they are looking at is not real (LaBute 8). She is the one who contradicts

Wilde and decides what is true and false. Significantly enough, Evelyn is a sculptor, an

artist, who sculpts her thesis and Adam in a single project. She is shaping, carving,

modeling, forming and defining Adam throughout the play to redefine his sexuality and

masculinity and carve out a better man. Evelyn sees herself as a savior of art because,

27
according to her, she shows the ‘real’ art. She is obsessed with revealing art objects –

like at the beginning of the play, when she wants to “deface the statue” (LaBute 6). She

starts to discuss the purpose of art with Adam, who is an English major and does not

understand what Evelyn’s ‘high art’ means. Although Evelyn claims that “beauty of

art… it’s subjective” (LaBute 8) and speaks about aesthetic qualities, she still judges the

sculpture with a leaf on its loins to be “fake, not real” (LaBute 8), therefore it removed

“its subjectivity as art” (LaBute 9) because the local committee objected to his “’thing’.

the shape of it” (LaBute 9). Evelyn does not see the boundary between an artistic and

personal identity and together with her passive-aggressive behavior, she stops at nothing

when she wants to reach what he has in mind – she has all the preconditions to be

successful in what she calls the thesis. She examines “how far the artist can go in his or

her determination to impinge on the sensibility of the observer (Bigsby 83). At the end

of the play, Adam uses irony to moderate the horrible truth he has just discovered – he

is an object of an installation.

ADAM lucky me. i got to be part of your installation ‘thingie’.

EVELYN you are my installation thingie… (beat.) look, if you hadn’t been
here tonight, hadn’t heard all this stuff… wouldn’t you still be
happy? waiting at home for me, hoping this went well, wanting to
make love…
ADAM that’s not the point
EVELYN yes, it is! it’s the total point. all that stuff we did was real for you,
therefore it was real. it wasn’t for me, therefore it wasn’t. it’s all
subjective, adam. everything (LaBute 128-129).

Although Adam looks like a victim at first sight, Evelyn highlights the point she wants

to make – art is subjective and he should probably be happy that he had the great chance

to participate in the project. But Adam’s understanding of art is quite different, he

thinks that “art reaches into other people’s lives as though everything were available for

28
appropriation, art generated less by an interest in form than by personal inadequacies,

becomes a kind of therapy whose price is paid by others” (Bigsby 87) as he mentions it

in his final monologue:

and if i totally miss the point here and somehow puking up your little shitty

neuroses all over people’s laps is actually art, then you oughta at least realize

there’s price to it all… you know? somebody pays for your two minutes on cnn.

someone always pays for people like you. and if you don’t get that, if you can’t

see at least that much. […] it should be more provocative than that. anybody

can be provocative, or shocking, stand up in class, or at the mall, wherever, and

take a piss, paint yourself blue and run naked through a church screaming out the

names of people you’ve slept with. is that art, or did you just forget to take your

ritalin? (LaBute 133).

In other words, he fails to understand that Evelyn is willing to sacrifice and subordinate

everything to what she considers art. According to LaBute, Evelyn is “an art terrorist”

(Bigsby 82) because she expresses her political attitudes with buttons on her clothes:

she wears the picture of Mao and Che Guevara but she is very radical in all the actions

she performs.

Conclusion

Neil LaBute is enfant terrible of the 21st century drama and all his plays have

caused stormy debates about the topics and characters because he addresses the topics

candidly and has no moral or ethical restraints. In his works, he attempts to show the

darker side of human souls without open criticism – the judges are the audience, not

29
him. It is also the case of one of his most famous plays the shape of things. Having been

made into a feature film starring Rachel Weisz and Paul Rudd, the same actors of the

opening night, it has become very popular, although the word ‘popular’ does not aptly

describe the blend of excitement and disgust LaBute famous for.

The main characters of the shape of things are Adam and Evelyn, who seem to

be exact opposites at the beginning but in the course of the play, the audience discovers

they may have more in common than they have ever thought. At the end, Adam is not

the pitiful and poor man transformed by Evelyn without being aware of it, and Evelyn is

not the manipulative and cruel woman, who abused Adam from the very beginning. The

truth lies somewhere in between, although probably closer to Evelyn. I wanted to

demonstrate that the whole process of transformation was Adam’s choice and if he did

not give his consent, nothing would happen. Yet the play deals with more serious

concepts, not only with appearance. Having compared Evelyn to Professor Higgins, I

wanted to demonstrate the traits they share and point out the gender aspect in the shape

of things. Evelyn’s actions are rather shocking, disturbing and provocative but the fact

that she goes beyond the carefully demarcated limits of being a stereotypically fragile

woman is what surprises audiences the most. Moreover, she justifies her actions by art –

a word that can mean anything because there is no authority in the world who may say

what art really is, therefore it makes it difficult to contradict her in this aspect. This is

the reason why I included a short theoretical introduction to the theory of art and linked

it to Evelyn, who, in her quest to reach the truth in art, cannot be stopped by anything

and anybody.

30
 Notes

1 Quotations taken from non-academic sources are transcribed word-by-word,

with contracted forms.

2 More information about the development of the myth – see Stefanie Eck’s

Galatea’s Emancipation

3 In the printed version of the shape of things, Neil LaBute uses only lower-case

letters, the text is quoted accordingly.

31
 Works Cited

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Baitz, John Robin. “Neil LaBute.” Bomb, no. 83, spring 2003, pp. 56-61. Jstor,

www.jstor.org/stable/40426878.

Bell, Thomas. “Place, Popular Culture, and Possibilism in Selected Works of

Playwright Neil LaBute.” Neil LaBute: A Casebook, edited by Gerald. C. Wood,

Routledge, 2006, pp. 101-110.

Benjamin, Walter. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Marxist

Literary Criticism, 2005, www.marxists.org.

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2007. Pdf file.

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edited by Elwood Watson, Marc E. Shaw, Indiana University Press, 2011,

ProQuest ebrary, site.ebrary.com/lib/natl/detail.action?docID=10481726.

Carrol, Noël, editor. Theories of Art Today. University of Wisconsin Press, 2000.

Danto, Arthur C. “The Artworld”. Journal of Philosophy, vol. 51, no. 19, 1964, pp.

571–584. Jstor, www.jstor.org/stable/2022937.

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Saal, Ilka. "'Let's Hurt Someone': Violence and Cultural Memory in the Plays of Neil

LaBute." New Theatre Quarterly, vol. 24, no. 4, 2008, pp. 322-336,

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34
Shrnutí

Práce se zabývá hrou the shape of things (do češtiny překládáno jako Tvar věcí,

stejnojmenný film byl promítán jako Sexuální rekonstrukce) dramatika Neila LaButa,

který je nejvýraznější a také pravděpodobně nejkontroverznější osobností současné

americké divadelní scény. Hlavním tématem jsou genderové aspekty hry v porovnání se

Shawovým Pygmalionem, protože hlavní hrdinka přetváří hlavní mužskou postavu

podle svých vlastních představ. V shape of things se LaBute zabývá mimo jiné tématy

manipulace, lidských vztahů, krutosti, násilí, hledání sama sebe, hranicemi v umění a

postavení člověka v současné společnosti. Práce se primárně zabývá dvěma hlavními

postavami hry, Adamem a Evelyn, kteří symbolizují své biblické archetypy a hledá

paralely s postavami Lizy a profesora Higginse ze Shawovy hry. Koncept umění je

v této hře spojený právě s manipulací a slouží jako jakási vznešená záštita Evelyniných

činů, když se ukáže, že přeměnu Adama z nevýrazného a neprůbojného hlídače v muzeu

na sebevědomého a atraktivního muže využila pouze pro svůj prospěch: Adam si sice je

vědom procesu transformace, ale netuší, že byl vmanipulován do situace, kdy se stane

hlavním předmětem Evelyniny závěrečné práce na universitě a zároveň i uměleckým

dílem, což se on – i diváci – dozví až na konci hry. Evelyn se tak stává Higginsem a

Adam Lizou, což podtrhuje jedno z hlavních témat hry: záležitost pohlaví obrácená

naruby.

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Summary

The thesis deals with the shape of things written by Neil LaBute, who is the

most distinctive and controversial playwright in contemporary American drama. The

main topics of the thesis are gender aspects of the play compared with Shaw’s

Pygmalion because the main heroine transforms the main male character according to

her pattern. In the shape of things, LaBute analyzes the topics of manipulation, human

relationships, cruelty, violence, finding oneself, limits of art and the position of a person

in contemporary society. The thesis primarily focuses on two main characters of the

play, Adam and Evelyn, who symbolize their biblical archetypes, and aims to find

parallels between the characters of Liza and Professor Higgins from Shaw’s play. In

LaBute’s play, the concept of art is linked to manipulation and serves as a dignified

shield of Evelyn’s deeds. It turns out that Evelyn used the Adam’s transformation from

a dull and feeble museum guard into a self-confident and attractive man in her own

advantage: Adam is aware of the process of transformation but he does not know that he

has been manipulated into a situation, when he becomes the main subject of Evelyn’s

thesis at university as well as an artwork; he – and the audience – learn about this fact at

the end of the play. Thus, Evelyn becomes Higgins and Adam becomes Liza, which

highlights one of the main topics of the play: twisted gender.

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