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GENDER AS RITUAL AND ‘POETIC RITUALITY’ IN CONTEMPORARY ‘BIOSCIENCE DRAMA’ identities.’ Stanford chemistry professor and birth control pill inventor Carl Djerassi, who was also successful as a novelist and playwright, came forward with two bioscience dramas. The first one is titled An Immaculate Misconception. Sex in an Age of Mechanical Reproduction and was first performed in 1999." It is a comedy of mistaken identity about the biomedical invention of the “intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI),” a revolutionary new reproductive technology allowing men who suffer from low sperm production to genetically father their own children." Djerassi’s first bioscience drama reveals the enduring impact of ritualized gender norms on biomedicine as cultural practice while refering to the same religio-ethical questions as Hochhuth’s IVF play.”° Djerassi’s second bioscience drama, Taboos, premiered in 2006 and was the story of a lesbian couple starting a family by means of IVF, thereby challenging (but not only that) their relatives’ ritualised family and gender identity patterns.”! KENNNUMMER 10/12/2007 [ID — IDENTIFICATIONNUMBER 10/12/2007] by German screen playwright Martin Liittge, premiered in 2000. This youth theater play is the first German-language drama to combine IVF, genetic engineering, and reproductive cloning in the framework of a family drama in order to critically reflect on the potential effects of future developments in IVF — such as the artificial uterus — on ritualised family patterns and gender imagery.”” Other examples of bioscience drama are two plays on human cloning which both premiered in 2002 as a repercussion of the birth of clone sheep “Dolly”: firstly Caryl Churchill’s celebrated A number,” and secondly Igor Bauersima’s futur de luxe, which will be further investigated in this paper." Furthermore, Rainer Lewandowski’s Ich [Me],”° and Tanja Rese’s Blueprint — Duett für einen Zwilling [Blueprint — duet for one twin],*° both feature Giesler: Zur Performativität des Materials, 144-147. Playbook courtesy of the playwright. Carl Djerassi: An Immaculate Misconception — Sex in an Age of Mechanical Reproduction, London, Imperial College Press, 2000. Factually speaking, the ICSI technology was actually developed by four Belgian scientists who announced their invention to the scientific community in 1992, see Gianpiero Palermo — Hubert Joris — Paul Devroey — André C. Van Steirteghem: Pregnancies after intracytoplasmic injection of single spermatozoon into an oocyte, The Lancet — a journal of British and foreign medicine, surgery, obstetrics, physiology, chemistry, pharmacology, public health and news 340.8810 (1992), 17-18. Birte Giesler: Inszenierungen des ‘Doing Family’ in einer biotechnisierten Kultur: Reproduktionstechnologien, Generativität und Verwandtschaft im ‘Biowissenschaftsdrama’ seit Rolf Hochhuths Unbefleckte Empfängnis, Feministische Studien 37.1 (2019), 29-47. Carl Djerassi: Sex in an Age of Technological Reproduction: ICSI and Taboos, Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 2008. Textbook courtesy of ‘Theaterhof Priessenthal’ theater. 23° Caryl Churchill: A number, London, Royal Court Theatre, 2002. Igor Bauersima: futur de luxe, in norway.today. 3 Theaterstiicke, Frankfurt a. M., Fischer, 2003, 63-120. The play premiered in 2003. Playbook orderable online at http://www.rainer-lewandowski. de/, http://www.rainerlewandowski.de The play premiered in 2006. Playbook courtesy of the playwright. * 181 +
