Women, Theatre and Performance New Histories, New Historiographies

by Gale, Maggie B B.; Gardner, Viv

• ISBN13: 9780719057120
• ISBN10: 0719057124
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-06-23
• Publisher: Manchester University Press

Summary

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 Schrouml;der-Devrient, the Comeacute;die Franccedil;ais' "Mademoiselle Mars," Mme. Arnould-Plessey, and the actresses of the Russian serf theatre.

Author Biography

Maggie B. Gale is Senior Lecturer in Drama and Theatre Arts at the University of Birmingham.

Viv Gardner is Professor in Theatre Studies at the University of Manchester.

Table of Contents

Notes on contributors	ix
Acknowledgements	xii
Introduction	1	(6)
Reading the intertheatrical, or, the mysterious disappearance of Susanna Centlivre	7	(18)
Jacky Bratton
The invisible spectatrice: gender, geography and theatrical space	25	(21)
Viv Gardner
Theatre history, historiography and women's dramatic writing	46	(14)
Susan Bennett
Wilhemine Schroder-Devrient: Wagner's theatrical muse	60	(21)
Susan A. Rutherford
Memories of Plessy: Henry James re-stages the past	81	(21)
John Stokes
Elizabeth Robins: hysteria, politics and performance	102	(19)
Joanna Townsend
From fame to obscurity: in search of Clemence Dane	121	(21)
Maggie B. Gale
Workshop to mainstream: women's playwriting in the contemporary British theatre	142	(21)
John Deeney
Feminists perform their past: constructing history in The Heidi Chronicles and The Break of Day	163	(17)
Charlotte Canning
No space of our own? Margaret Macnamara, Alma Brosnan, Ruth Dodds and the ILP Arts Guild	180	(18)
Ros Merkin
Comic militancy: the politics of suffrage drama	198	(18)
Susan Carlson
The gender of Russian serf theatre and performance	216	(20)
Catherine Schuler
Index	236