ABSTRACT: This paper investigates how intimacy, female sexuality, and agency are represented in theatre and film, and how these representations can either reinforce or resist patriarchal power structures. It is particularly interested in how the male gaze shapes narratives about women’s bodies and how performance can reclaim those narratives. Using comparative, text-based analysis, I examine Clare Barron’s Dance Nation, Paula Vogel’s How I Learned to Drive, and Sean Baker’s film Anora (2024), applying feminist theories from Laura Mulvey, Hélène Cixous, and Eva Illouz to interrogate how form, staging, and medium shape representations of female agency. The analysis finds that theatre’s live, embodied nature—particularly Vogel’s memory play structure and Barron’s ageless casting—disrupts the male gaze and allows for the performance of femininity, intimacy, and desire on self-determined terms. In contrast, Anora exemplifies how film can continue to center male spectatorship even when claiming to portray authentic female agency. The study concludes that theatre’s immediacy, shared authorship, and physical presence make it a powerful site for feminist storytelling that resists passive consumption and reclaims the female narrative. This research contributes to feminist performance studies by emphasizing the unique power of live theatre to challenge patriarchal frameworks and offer radical possibilities for the representation of female sexuality and agency.