• Editor's Introduction to the Special SectionShifting Shapes: Witch Characters and Witchy Performances
• Chrystyna Dail (bio)

"It's the witch from next door."

—stephen sondheim and james lapine, into the woods (1986)

The Baker's line in Into the Woods introduces the character moments before we gaze upon her: aging and hunched, dressed in tattered rags, and maybe even drooling. In this brief interstitial space between aural and visual perception, the audience erupts in hesitant laughter. Perhaps this is the elicited reaction because many audience members assume the Baker's subtextual intention is that the visitor is actually the bitch from next door. In contemporary US culture, these words often conflate to vilify intelligent, assertive women. And that is precisely what the Witch is in Into the Woods. She is a decisive, hardworking, single mother much maligned by her neighbors' ancestors and populace. She is not lacking in empathy; she also doesn't value one person's loss over another's. The Witch contextualizes what ultimately separates her from the rest of the community in her pre-death song "Last Midnight," addressed to the remaining fairy-tale characters in the woods (The Baker, Cinderella, Little Red, and Jack):

You're so nice.You're not good, you're not bad, you're just nice.I'm not good, I'm not nice, I'm just right.I'm the witch. You're the world.¹ [End Page 103]

For the editors and authors of this special section, Sondheim's lyrics in this moment reinforce the trope of the witch as an outsider standing up to—often politically and ethically—her community. We see this trope replicated throughout theatre and performance history to various degrees: the witch-demons in kyōgen; the virgins in Hrotsvitha's Dulcitius; Adeola and several witch doctor characters in Amos Tutuola's plays; the weird (or "wyrd") sisters in Shakespeare's Macbeth; drag witch Jinkx Monsoon; the men creating Ufe and Wine in Carmen Boullosa's Cocinar Hombres; the "good/bad" witches in iterations of The Wizard of Oz. Onstage witch characters, depending on cultural context, vacillate between being scapegoats for the fears and superstitions of a community and operating as instruments of wisdom and healing. Occasionally feared, often respected, and almost universally marginalized, witch characters are notoriously powerful and sublimely fragile. This duality is perhaps best represented through the Japanese Hannya mask present in Noh and in Balinese performances including the Rangda mask. As performance ethnographer Margaret Coldiron explains, "Whether viewed as a projection of man's fear of woman as 'Other' or as a demonstration of the power of evil to transform that which is 'good,' positive, and nurturing into something wicked, negative, and deadly, there is perhaps no other image as universally fearsome. In both of these masks these contradictory qualities of fiendishness and goodness coincide."² Witch characters may levitate or curse a family, burn or melt, and in more than a few instances, claim no knowledge of magical arts at all. Many of the authors in this special section write about the prevalence of witch tropes or archetypes. But it is perhaps more appropriate to argue that no universal applies to the witch character—except their outsider status. Therefore, treatment of witch characters onstage mirrors what in their offstage communities may be perceived as an innate human desire to destroy or condemn what is feared, misunderstood, or undesired. Interrogating why witches are present in performance allows us to better understand the complex social constructs undergirding a cultural moment. For example, stage witches of Greek and Roman antiquity such as Circe and Medea are knowledgeable herb and root workers but were also described by poets and playwrights in various adaptations through their inviting or distasteful scents. This connection between magic and scent was then projected onto women in antiquity as a whole. As classics scholar Britta Ager argues, "While a variety of scenting agents were important in religious and magical rituals, witches use scented spells in classical poetry less because of the real practices of ancient magicians than because the evolving witch trope equated them first with root cutters, women with access to specialized and dangerous knowledge, and later with wearers...

• 编者特辑《变形记：女巫人物与女巫表演》简介
• 克里斯蒂娜·戴尔（生物）

“是隔壁的女巫。”

——斯蒂芬·桑德海姆和詹姆斯·拉平，走进树林（1986）

贝克在进入树林中的台词介绍了我们凝视她之前的角色时刻：衰老和驼背，穿着破烂的破布，甚至可能流口水。在听觉和视觉感知之间的短暂间隙中，观众爆发出犹豫的笑声。也许这是引发的反应，因为许多观众认为贝克的潜台词是访客实际上是隔壁的婊子。在当代美国文化中，这些词经常混为一谈来诋毁聪明、自信的女性。这正是女巫在进入森林中的目的. 她是一位果断、勤奋的单身母亲，深受邻居祖先和民众的诟病。她并不缺乏同理心；她也不重视一个人的损失而不是另一个人的损失。女巫在她的死前歌曲“Last Midnight”中将最终将她与社区其他人区分开来的背景化为背景，该歌曲是针对树林中剩余的童话人物（面包师、灰姑娘、小红和杰克）：

你真好。你不好，你也不坏，你只是很好。我不好，我不好，我刚刚好。我是女巫。你就是世界。¹ [结束第 103 页]

对于这个特别版块的编辑和作者来说，桑德海姆在这一刻的歌词强化了女巫作为局外人的比喻，通常在政治和道德上站在她的社区。我们看到这个比喻在整个戏剧和表演史上得到了不同程度的复制：狂言中的魔女；Hrotsvitha的Dulcitius中的处女；阿德奥拉和阿莫斯·图图拉戏剧中的几个巫医角色；莎士比亚《麦克白》中的怪异（或“wyrd”）姐妹；拖女巫 Jinkx Monsoon；在 Carmen Boullosa 的Cocinar Hombres中创造 Ufe 和 Wine 的人；绿野仙踪迭代中的“好/坏”女巫. 舞台上的女巫角色，取决于文化背景，在成为社区恐惧和迷信的替罪羊和作为智慧和治疗的工具之间摇摆不定。有时令人恐惧，经常受到尊重，几乎普遍被边缘化，女巫角色是出了名的强大和极其脆弱。这种二元性或许通过能剧中出现的日本般若面具和包括让达面具在内的巴厘岛表演中得到最好的体现。正如表演民族志学家玛格丽特·科尔迪隆所解释的那样，“无论是被视为男人对‘他者’女人的恐惧的投射，还是被视为邪恶力量将‘好的’、积极的事物转化为邪恶的、消极的事物的展示，和致命的，也许没有其他形象普遍可怕。²女巫角色可能会悬浮或诅咒一个家庭，燃烧或融化，并且在很多情况下，他们声称根本没有魔法艺术知识。这个特殊部分的许多作者都写了关于女巫比喻或原型的流行。但也许更合适的说法是，没有普遍适用于女巫角色——除了他们的局外人身份。因此，在舞台上对女巫角色的处理反映了他们在舞台下的社区可能被认为是一种与生俱来的人类欲望，即摧毁或谴责恐惧、误解或不受欢迎的事物。询问为什么女巫出现在表演中，可以让我们更好地理解支撑一个文化时刻的复杂社会结构。例如，希腊和罗马古代的舞台女巫，例如 Circe 和 Medea，是知识渊博的草本和根茎工作者，但诗人和剧作家也通过其诱人或令人反感的气味进行了各种改编。魔法和气味之间的这种联系被投射到整个古代女性身上。正如经典学者布丽塔·阿格所言，“虽然各种香味剂在宗教和魔法仪式中很重要，但女巫在古典诗歌中使用香味咒语并不是因为古代魔术师的真实做法，而是因为不断发展的女巫比喻首先将它们等同于拔根器，获得专业和危险知识的女性，以及后来与佩戴者... 魔法和气味之间的这种联系被投射到整个古代女性身上。正如经典学者布丽塔·阿格所言，“虽然各种香味剂在宗教和魔法仪式中很重要，但女巫在古典诗歌中使用香味咒语并不是因为古代魔术师的真实做法，而是因为不断发展的女巫比喻首先将它们等同于拔根器，获得专业和危险知识的女性，以及后来与佩戴者... 魔法和气味之间的这种联系被投射到整个古代女性身上。正如经典学者布丽塔·阿格所言，“虽然各种香味剂在宗教和魔法仪式中很重要，但女巫在古典诗歌中使用香味咒语并不是因为古代魔术师的真实做法，而是因为不断发展的女巫比喻首先将它们等同于拔根器，获得专业和危险知识的女性，以及后来与佩戴者...