The Cambridge Companion to Modern British Women Playwrights

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Edited by Elaine Aston and Janell Reinelt

Cambridge University Press

Due/Published June 2000, 293 pages, paper

ISBN 0521595339

This Companion addresses the work of women playwrights in Britain throughout the twentieth century. Chapters explore the historical and theatrical contexts in which women have written for the theater and examine the work of individual playwrights such as Caryl Churchill, Pam Gems, and Timberlake Wertenbaker. The volume brings together a transatlantic team of feminist theater scholars and practitioners. A chronological section on playwriting from the 1920s to the 1970s is followed by chapters that raise issues of nationality and identity. Later sections question accepted notions of the canon and include chapters on nonmainstream writing, including black and lesbian performance.

Contributors: Elaine Aston, Janelle Reinelt, Maggie B. Gale, Susan Bennett, Michelene Wandor, Susan Bassnett, Anna-Marie Taylor, Adrienne Scullion, Mary Trotter, Susan Carlson, Gabriele Griffin, Meenakshi Ponnuswami, Claire MacDonald, Sue-Ellen Case

Contents

Notes on contributors
Chronology
1. A century in view: from suffrage to the 1990s--Elaine Aston and Janelle Reinelt
2. Women playwrights of the 1920s and 1930s--Maggie B. Gale
3. New plays and women's voices in the 1950s--Susan Bennett
4. Women playwrights and the challenge of feminism in the 1970s--Michelene Wandor
5. The politics of location--Susan Bassnett
6. Contemporary Welsh women playwrights--Anna-Marie Taylor
7. Contemporary Scottish women playwrights--Adrienne Scullion
8. Women playwrights in Northern Ireland--Mary Trotter
9. Language and identity in Timberlake Wertenbaker's plays--Susan Carlson
10. Pam Gems: body politics and biography--Elaine Aston
11. Caryl Churchill and the politics of style--Janelle Reinelt
12. Violence, abuse and gender relations in the plays by Sarah Daniels--Gabriele Griffin
13. Small island people: black British women playwrights--Meenakshi Ponnuswami
14. Writing outside the mainstream--Claire MacDonald
15. Lesbian performance--Sue-Ellen Case