Jean Cocteau and Federico Garcia Lorca: The search for identity

The traditional, realist, dramatic concept of coherent character identity is ruptured by the two plays Les Chevaliers de la table ronde and El publico. Cocteau's and Lorca's works, which are usually labeled as surrealist due to their apparently disjointed nature, are actually embodiments of the poet-playwrights' continuing attempts to reveal that identity, including gendered identity, is a performance. The metadramatic elements of the plays such as discourse, costumes and gender are unstable and voluntarily changeable; they have repercussions beyond the proscenium. Cocteau and Lorca invite their audiences to consider the performative nature of their identities.