Women, Theatre and Performance

Women, Theatre and Performance
Author: Maggie Barbara Gale
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2000
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780719057137

This collection addresses key questions in women's theatre history and retrieves a number of previously "hidden" histories of women performers. The essays range across the past 300 years--topics covered include Susanna Centlivre and the notion of intertheatricality; gender and theatrical space; the repositioning of women performers such as Wagner's Muse, Willhelmina Schröder-Devrient, the Comédie Français' "Mademoiselle Mars," Mme. Arnould-Plessey, and the actresses of the Russian serf theatre.

Auto/Biography and Identity

Auto/Biography and Identity
Author: Maggie B B. Gale
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2004
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 9780719063329

Arguing that women use autobiography and performance for expression and as a means of controlling their public and private selves, the contributors of these 11 essays examine the lives and work of a variety of artists ranging from actors as working women in the eighteenth century to monologists and performance artists today. Subjects include several performers, including Alma Ellerslie, Kitty Marion, Ina Rozant, Susan Glaspell, Adrienne Kennedy, Emma Robinson, Lena Ashwell, Tilly Wedekind, Clare Dowie, Janet Cardiff, Tracey Emin, and, in an interview, Bobby Baker, as well as essays on Latina theater and lesbians as performers constructing themselves and their community. Annotation : 2005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

A Sourcebook on Feminist Theatre and Performance

A Sourcebook on Feminist Theatre and Performance
Author: Carol Martin
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2002-09-11
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1134844239

This work is a unique collection of key articles on feminist theatre and performance form The Drama Review (TDR). Carol Martin juxtaposes theory and practice to provide an exceptionally comprehensive overview of the development of feminist theatre. This outstanding collection includes key texts by theorists such as Elin Diamond, Peggy Phelan and Lynda Hart and interviews with practitioners including Anna Deveare Smith and Robbie McCauley. It also contains full performances texts by two of the most influential and controversial practiitioners of feminist theatre: Dress Suits to Hire by Holly Hughes and The Constant State of Desire by Karen Finley. A Sourcebook on Feminist Theatre and Performance is an essential purchase for students of theatre studies, performance studies and women's theatre.

Stage women, 1900–50

Stage women, 1900–50
Author: Maggie B. Gale
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 403
Release: 2019-04-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 1526136872

This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. This book presents a collection of cutting-edge historical and cultural essays in the field of women, theatre and performance. The chapters explore women’s networks of professional practice in the theatre and performance industries between 1900 and 1950, with a focus on women’s sense and experience of professional agency in an industry largely controlled by men. The book is divided into two sections: ‘Female theatre workers in the social and theatrical realm’ looks at the relationship between women’s work – on and off stage – and autobiography, activism, technique, touring, education and the law. ‘Women and popular performance’ focuses on the careers of individual artists, once household names, including Lily Brayton, Ellen Terry, radio star Mabel Constanduros and Oscar-winning film star Margaret Rutherford.

Women as Hamlet

Women as Hamlet
Author: Tony Howard
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 315
Release: 2007-02-22
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0521864666

A study of actresses playing the role of Hamlet on stage and screen.

Performance and Femininity in Eighteenth-Century German Women's Writing

Performance and Femininity in Eighteenth-Century German Women's Writing
Author: W. Arons
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2006-10-03
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0230600735

In this book, Wendy Arons examines how women writers used theater and performance to investigate the problem of female subjectivity and to intervene in the dominant discourse about ideal femininity. Arons shows how contemporary demands for sincerity and authenticity placed a peculiar burden on women in the public sphere, especially on actresses, who - like professional writers - overstepped the boundaries of what was considered proper behavior for women. Paradoxically, in their representations of ideal women engaged in performance, these writers expose ideal femininity as an impossible act, even as they attempt to perform it in their writing and in their lives.

Women's Romantic Theatre and Drama

Women's Romantic Theatre and Drama
Author: Keir Elam
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 409
Release: 2016-12-05
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1351871188

As theatre and drama of the Romantic Period undergo a critical reassessment among scholars internationally, the contributions of women as playwrights, actresses, and managers are also being revalued. This volume, which brings together leading British, North American, and Italian critics, is a crucial step towards reclaiming the importance of women's dramatic and theatrical activities during the period. Writing for the theatre implied assuming a public role, a hazardous undertaking for women who, especially after the French Revolution, were assigned to the private, primarily domestic, sphere. As the contributors examine the covert strategies women used to become full participants in the public theatre, they shed light on the issue of women's agency, expressed both through the writing of highly politicized or ethicized drama, as in the case of Elizabeth Inchbald or Joanna Baillie, and through women's professional practice as theatre managers and stage producers, as in the case of Elizabeth Vestris and Jane Scott. Among the topics considered are women's history plays, domesticity, ethics and sexuality in women's closet drama, the politics of drama and performance, and the role of women as managers and producers. Specialists in performance studies, Romantic Period drama, and women's writing will find the essays both challenging and inspiring.

Women, Collective Creation, and Devised Performance

Women, Collective Creation, and Devised Performance
Author: Kathryn Mederos Syssoyeva
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 360
Release: 2016-08-29
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1137550139

This book explores the role and centrality of women in the development of collaborative theatre practice, alongside the significance of collective creation and devising in the development of the modern theatre. Tracing a web of women theatremakers in Europe and North America, this book explores the connections between early twentieth century collective theatre practices such as workers theatre and the dramatic play movement, and the subsequent spread of theatrical devising. Chapters investigate the work of the Settlement Houses, total theatre in 1920s’ France, the mid-century avant-garde and New Left collectives, the nomadic performances of Europe’s transnational theatre troupes, street-theatre protests, and contemporary devising. In so doing, the book further elucidates a history of modern theatre begun in A History of Collective Creation (2013) and Collective Creation in Contemporary Performance (2013), in which the seemingly marginal and disparate practices of collective creation and devising are revealed as central—and women theatremakers revealed as progenitors of these practices.

The Routledge Companion to African American Theatre and Performance

The Routledge Companion to African American Theatre and Performance
Author: Kathy A. Perkins
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 566
Release: 2018-12-07
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 1351751433

The Routledge Companion to African American Theatre and Performance is an outstanding collection of specially written essays that charts the emergence, development, and diversity of African American Theatre and Performance—from the nineteenth-century African Grove Theatre to Afrofuturism. Alongside chapters from scholars are contributions from theatre makers, including producers, theatre managers, choreographers, directors, designers, and critics. This ambitious Companion includes: A "Timeline of African American theatre and performance." Part I "Seeing ourselves onstage" explores the important experience of Black theatrical self-representation. Analyses of diverse topics including historical dramas, Broadway musicals, and experimental theatre allow readers to discover expansive articulations of Blackness. Part II "Institution building" highlights institutions that have nurtured Black people both on stage and behind the scenes. Topics include Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), festivals, and black actor training. Part III "Theatre and social change" surveys key moments when Black people harnessed the power of theatre to affirm community realities and posit new representations for themselves and the nation as a whole. Topics include Du Bois and African Muslims, women of the Black Arts Movement, Afro-Latinx theatre, youth theatre, and operatic sustenance for an Afro future. Part IV "Expanding the traditional stage" examines Black performance traditions that privilege Black worldviews, sense-making, rituals, and innovation in everyday life. This section explores performances that prefer the space of the kitchen, classroom, club, or field. This book engages a wide audience of scholars, students, and theatre practitioners with its unprecedented breadth. More than anything, these invaluable insights not only offer a window onto the processes of producing work, but also the labour and economic issues that have shaped and enabled African American theatre. Chapter 20 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

The Palgrave Handbook of the History of Women on Stage

The Palgrave Handbook of the History of Women on Stage
Author: Jan Sewell
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 850
Release: 2020-04-29
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 3030238288

This book brings together nearly 40 academics and theatre practitioners to chronicle and celebrate the courage, determination and achievements of women on stage across the ages and around the globe. The collection stretches from ancient Greece to present-day Australasia via the United States, Soviet Russia, Europe, India, South Africa and Japan, offering a series of analytical snapshots of women performers, their work and the conditions in which they produced it. Individual chapters provide in-depth consideration of specific moments in time and geography while the volume as a whole and its juxtapositions stimulate consideration of the bigger picture, underlining the challenges women have faced across cultures in establishing themselves as performers and the range of ways in which they gained access to the stage. Organised chronologically, the volume looks not just to the past but the future: it challenges the very notions of ‘history’, ‘stage’ and even the definition of ‘women’ itself.