Performative neutrality and rape culture in Naomi Iizuka’s Good Kids

Abstract

I offer a critical reading of Naomi Iizuka’s play Good Kids, considering the script, the performance of the play I watched, and the talkback with the cast. I argue that Good Kids enacts performative neutrality about sexual assault. By “performative neutrality,” I mean not a performance of neutrality, but a productive construction of neutrality whereby the play forecloses side-taking. I conclude that performative neutrality buttresses rape culture by exacerbating ambiguity myths, he said/she said, and the miscommunication model of rape.

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