The Cambridge Companion to Modern British Women Playwrights

by Edited by Elaine Aston , Janelle Reinelt

• ISBN13: 9780521595339
• ISBN10: 0521595339
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-05-29
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This Companion addresses the work of women playwrights in Britain throughout the twentieth century. The chapters explore the historical and theatrical contexts in which women have written for the theatre and examine the work of individual playwrights. A chronological section on playwriting from the 1920s to the 1970s is followed by chapters which raise issues of nationality and identity. Later sections question accepted notions of the canon and include chapters on non-mainstream writing, including black and lesbian performance. Each section is introduced by the editors, who provide a narrative overview of a century of women's drama and a thorough chronology of playwriting, set in political context. The collection includes essays on the individual writers Caryl Churchill, Sarah Daniels, Pam Gems and Timberlake Wertenbaker as well as extensive documentation of contemporary playwriting in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, including figures such as Liz Lochhead and Anne Devlin.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations	ix
Notes on contributors	x
Chronology	xiii
A century in view: from suffrage to the 1990s	1
Elaine Aston
Janelle Reinelt
PART 1: RETROSPECTIVES
Editors' note	21	(2)
Women playwrights of the 1920s and 1930s	23]	(38)
Maggie B. Gale
New plays and women's voices in the 1950s	38	(15)
Susan Bennett
Women playwrights and the challenge of feminism in the 1970s	53	(20)
Michelene Wandor
PART 2: NATIONAL TENSIONS AND INTERSECTIONS
Editors' note	69	(4)
The politics of location	73	(9)
Susan Bassnett
Contemporary Welsh women playwrights	82	(12)
Anna-Marie Taylor
Contemporary Scottish women playwrights	94	(25)
Adrienne Scullion
Women playwrights in Northern Ireland	119	(15)
Mary Trotter
Language and identity in Timberlake Wertenbaker's plays	134	(23)
Susan Carlson
PART 3: THE QUESTION OF THE CANON
Editors' note	151	(6)
Pam Gems: body politics and biography	157	(17)
Elaine Aston
Caryl Churchill and the politics of style	174	(20)
Janelle Reinelt
Violence, abuse and gender relations in the plays of Sarah Daniels	194	(23)
Gabriele Griffin
PART 4: THE SUBJECT OF IDENTITY
Editors' note	213	(4)
Small island people: black British women playwrights	217	(18)
Meenakshi Ponnuswami
Writing outside the mainstream	235	(18)
Claire Macdonald
Lesbian performance in the transnational arena	253	(15)
Sue-Ellen Case
Index	268