Description
Book SynopsisThe first in a new annual series, Women, Theatre and Performance that will consist of themed volumes on diverse aspects of women''s engagement with theatre and performance. Ranging across three hundred years the essays in this volume address key questions in women''s theatre history and retrieve a number of hitherto ''hidden'' histories of women performers. Resituates women''s, largely neglected, creative contribution within theatre and cultural history and seeks to challenge orthodox readings of both history and text. Topics 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.
Table of Contents1. Reading the intertheatrical or, the mysterious disappearance of Susanna CentilitreJacky Bratton
2. The invisible spectatrice: Gender, geography and theatrical space - Viv Gardner
3. Theatre history, historiography and women's dramatic writing - Susan Bennett
4. Wilhemine Schröder-Devrient: Wagner’s theatrical muse - Susan A. Rutherford
5. Memories of Plessy: Henry James re-stages the past - John Stokes
6. Elizabeth Robins: Hysteria, politics and performance - Joanna Townsend
7. From fame to obscurity: In search of Clemence Dane - Maggie B. Gale
8. Workshop to mainstream: Women's playwriting in the contemporary British theatre - John Deeney
9. Feminists perform their past: Constructing history in The Heidi Chronicles and The Break of Day - Charlotte Canning
10. No space of our own? Margaret Macnamara, Alma Brosnan, Ruth Dodds and the ILP Arts Guild - Ros Merkin
11. Comic militancy: The politics of suffrage drama - Susan Carlson
12. The gender of Russian Serf theatre and performance - Catherine Schuler
