Contemporary Women Playwrights

Breaking new ground in this century, this wide-ranging collection of essays is the first of its kind to address the work of contemporary international women playwrights. The book considers the work of established playwrights such as Caryl Churchill, Marie Clements, Lara Foot-Newton, Maria Irene Fornes, Sarah Kane, Lisa Kron, Young Jean Lee, Lynn Nottage, Suzan-Lori Parks, Djanet Sears, Caridad Svich, and Judith Thompson, but it also foregrounds important plays by many emerging writers. Divided into three sections-Histories, Conflicts, and Genres-the book explores such topics as the feminist history play, solo performance, transcultural dramaturgies, the identity play, the gendered terrain of war, and eco-drama, and encompasses work from the United States, Canada, Latin America, Oceania, South Africa, Egypt, and the United Kingdom. With contributions from leading international scholars and an introductory overview of the concerns and challenges facing women playwrights in this new century, Contemporary Women Playwrights explores the diversity and power of women's playwriting since 1990, highlighting key voices and examining crucial critical and theoretical developments within the field.

Concise discussions of the lives and principal works of contemporary women playwrights, written by subject experts.

In this collection of interviews, 30 women discuss some of the important issues in theater today: the position of women in the theater, gender bias in reviewing, censorship and self-censorship, racism, and women writing about domestic violence, birth and other taboo subjects. They also deal with the idea of a female aesthetic, the sources of women dramatists' imagery and language, their place as women playwrights in the tradition of women's writing. These playwrights reflect a complex, resonant impulse to illuminate the varied spectrum of female experience, and also cherish daring, innovative, challenging political plays that represent a successful rebellion against their own censorial impulses. The interviewees cover a wide spectrum of American, British, and international playwrights, including Marsha Norman and Beth Henley, Emily Mann, Caryl Churchill, Ntozake Shange, and China's woman dramatist Madame Bai Fengxi. ISBN 0-688-04405-0: $25.00.

Explores how women playwrights illuminate the contemporary world and contribute to its reshaping

This Companion, first published in 2000, addresses the work of women playwrights in Britain throughout the twentieth century.

The first critical volume to explore the contexts for and influences of female African American dramatists, including their exploration of black history and identity through diverse, courageous, and visionary dramas.

This text was the first monograph to document and analyse the plays written by Black and Asian women in Britain. The volume explores how Black and Asian women playwrights theatricalize their experiences of migration, displacement, identity, racism and sexism in Britain. Plays by writers such as Tanika Gupta, Winsome Pinnock, Maya Chowdhry and Amrit Wilson, among others - many of whom have had their work produced at key British theatre sites - are discussed in some detail. Other playwrights' work is also briefly explored to suggest the range and scope of contemporary plays. The volume analyses concerns such as geographies of un/belonging, reverse migration (in the form of tourism), sexploitation, arranged marriages, the racialization of sexuality, and asylum seeking as they emerge in the plays, and argues that Black and Asian women playwrights have become constitutive subjects of British theatre.