Feminism and Theatre

Feminism and Theatre
Author: Sue-Ellen Case
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 167
Release: 2008-02-14
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1350316512

This classic study is both an introduction to, and an overview of, the relationship between feminism and theatre. The reissued edition features a new Foreword by Elaine Aston who examines the context in which Case's book was written, the influence it has had, subsequent developments in the field and the continued importance of the work.

An Introduction to Feminism and Theatre

An Introduction to Feminism and Theatre
Author: Elaine Aston
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2003-09-02
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1134882246

At last an accessible and intelligent introduction to the energising and challenging relationship between feminism and theatre. In this clear and enlightening book, Aston discusses wide-ranging theoretical topics and provides case studies including: * Feminism and theatre history * `M/Othering the self': French feminist theory and theatre * Black women: shaping feminist theatre * Performing gender: a materialist practice * Colonial landscapes Feminist thought is changing the way theatre is taught and practised. An Introduction to Feminism and Theatre is compulsory reading for anyone who requires a precise, insightful and up-to-date guide to this dynamic field of study.

Performing the Wound

Performing the Wound
Author: Niki Tulk
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 261
Release: 2022-05-15
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1000580644

This book offers a matrixial, feminist-centered analysis of trauma and performance, through examining the work of three artists: Ann Hamilton, Renée Green, and Cecilia Vicuña. Each artist engages in a multi-media, or “combination” performance practice; this includes the use of site, embodied performance, material elements, film, and writing. Each case study involves traumatic content, including the legacy of slavery, child sexual abuse and environmental degradation; each artist constructs an aesthetic milieu that invites rather than immerses—this allows an audience to have agency, as well as multiple pathways into their engagement with the art. The author Niki Tulk suggests that these works facilitate an audience-performance relationship based on the concept of ethical witnessing/wit(h)nessing, in which viewers are not positioned as voyeurs, nor made to risk re-traumatization by being forced to view traumatic events re-played on stage. This approach also allows agency to the art itself, in that an ethical space is created where the art is not objectified or looked at—but joined with. Foundational to this investigation are the writings of Bracha L. Ettinger, Jill Bennett and Diana Taylor—particularly Ettinger’s concepts of the matrixial, carriance and border-linking. These artists and scholars present a capacity to expand and articulate answers to questions regarding how to make performance that remains compelling and truthful to the trauma experience, but not re-traumatizing. This study will be of great interest to students and scholars of performance studies, art history, visual arts, feminist studies, theatre, film, performance art, postcolonialism, rhetoric and writing.

Female Spectacle

Female Spectacle
Author: Susan A. Glenn
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2009-07-01
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0674037669

When the French actress Sarah Bernhardt made her first American tour in 1880, the term feminism had not yet entered our national vocabulary. But over the course of the next half-century, a rising generation of daring actresses and comics brought a new kind of woman to center stage. Exploring and exploiting modern fantasies and fears about female roles and gender identity, these performers eschewed theatrical convention and traditional notions of womanly modesty. They created powerful images of themselves as ambitious, independent, and sexually expressive New Women. Female Spectacle reveals the theater to have been a powerful new source of cultural authority and visibility for women. Ironically, theater also provided an arena in which producers and audiences projected the uncertainties and hostilities that accompanied changing gender relations. From Bernhardt's modern methods of self-promotion to Emma Goldman's political theatrics, from the female mimics and Salome dancers to the upwardly striving chorus girl, Glenn shows us how and why theater mattered to women and argues for its pivotal role in the emergence of modern feminism.

Unmaking Mimesis

Unmaking Mimesis
Author: Elin Diamond
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2003-09-02
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1134982135

In Unmaking Mimesis Elin Diamond interrogates the concept of mimesis in relation to feminism, theatre and performance. She combines psychoanalytic, semiotic and materialist strategies with readings of selected plays by writers as diverse as Ibsen, Brecht, Aphra Behn, Caryl Churchill and Peggy Shaw. Through a series of provocative readings of theatre, theory and feminist performance she demonstrates the continuing force of feminism and mimesis in critical thinking today. Unmaking Mimesis will interest theatre scholars and performance and cultural theorists, for all of whom issues of text, representation and embodiment are of compelling concern.

Performing Feminisms

Performing Feminisms
Author: Sue-Ellen Case
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 342
Release: 1990-02
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780801839696

A valuable, provoking, important addition to any theatre scholar or practitioner's library, especially since feminist theory is a relative newcomer to the world of theatre.

An Introduction to Feminism and Theatre

An Introduction to Feminism and Theatre
Author: Elaine Aston
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 172
Release: 2003-09-02
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1134882254

At last an accessible and intelligent introduction to the energising and challenging relationship between feminism and theatre. In this clear and enlightening book, Aston discusses wide-ranging theoretical topics and provides case studies including: * Feminism and theatre history * `M/Othering the self': French feminist theory and theatre * Black women: shaping feminist theatre * Performing gender: a materialist practice * Colonial landscapes Feminist thought is changing the way theatre is taught and practised. An Introduction to Feminism and Theatre is compulsory reading for anyone who requires a precise, insightful and up-to-date guide to this dynamic field of study.

Feminist Theatres in the USA

Feminist Theatres in the USA
Author: Charlotte Canning
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 286
Release: 2005-06-28
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1134859643

Feminist Theaters in the USA is a fresh, informative portrait of a key era in feminist and theater history It is vital reading for feminist students, theater historians and theater practitioners. Their continued movement forward will be challenged and enriched by this timely look back at the trials and accomplishments of their predecessors. Canning interviews over thirty women who took part in the dynamic feminist theater of the 1970s and 1980s. They provide first-hand accounts of the excitement, struggles and innovations which formed their experience. From this foundation Cannning constructs a compelling combination of historical survey, critique and celebration which explores: * The history of the groups and their formation * The politics which shaped their work * Their methods and creative processes * The productions they brought to the stage * The reception from critics and audiences

Contemporary Feminist Theatres

Contemporary Feminist Theatres
Author: Lizbeth Goodman
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 616
Release: 2003-09-02
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1134906951

Contemporary Feminist Theatres is a major evaluation of the forms feminism has taken in the theatre since 1968. Lizbeth Goodman provides a provocative and interdisciplinary study of the development of feminist theatres in Britain. She examines the treatment of key issues such as gender, race, sexuality, language and power in performance. Based on original research and fresh data, Contemporary Feminst Theatres is a fully comprehensive and admirably clear analysis of a flourishing field of practice and inquiry.

Feminist Theatre Practice: A Handbook

Feminist Theatre Practice: A Handbook
Author: Elaine Aston
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2005-07-05
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1134771517

A practical guide to theatre-making designed to take the reader through the stages of making feminist theatre. Organised into three instructive parts; Women in the Workshop, Dramatic Texts, Feminist Contexts & Gender and Devising Projects.