Women Centre Stage

This selection of six contemporary plays explores a wide range of issues — familial, social, mythological, political — with women centre stage. The plays are distinct from each other in structure, theme and style, but are bound together by a common thread — the position and role of women in family, social and political systems. Issues such as sexual abuse, in-law relationships, the trauma of ageing, the struggle for women’s empowerment, love and passion, desire and revenge, and dynastic politics are discussed through the varying perspectives of a number of characters, bringing an immediacy and urgency to the subjects under consideration. What is significant about the plays is that they highlight the manipulation of the English language resulting with the introduction of an ‘Indian’ syntax. Multilingualism is used to offset the so-called ‘westernisation’ that has been the by-product of the systematic globalisation of ‘third world’ countries. While the plays are meant to be staged, they are also very reader-friendly and will be entertaining as well as educative for the general reader.

This book examines the political alliances that are built across the diaspora in contemporary plays written by Black women playwrights in the UK. Through the concept of creative diasporic solidarity, it offers an innovative theoretical approach to examine the ways in which the playwrights respond creatively to the violence and marginalisation of Black communities, especially Black women. This study demonstrates that theatre can act as a productive space for the ethical encounter with the Other (understood in terms of alterity, as someone different from the self) by examining the possibilities of these plays to activate the spectators’ responsibility and solidarity towards different types of violence experienced by Black women, offering alternative modes of relationality. The book engages with a range of contemporary works written by Black women playwrights in the UK, including Mojisola Adebayo, Theresa Ikoko, Diana Nneka Atuona, Gloria Williams, Charlene James, or Yusra Warsama, bringing to the fore a gendered and intersectional approach to the analysis of the texts. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars in contemporary theatre, gender studies and diaspora studies.

How to Not Sink by Georgia Christou looks at duty, love and dependency across three generations of women. In Wilderness by April De Angelis, a patient and her psychiatrist head into the wilderness to find out how sane any of us really are. In Chloe Todd Fordham’s The Nightclub, three very different women at a gay nightclub in Orlando are caught up in a terrifying hate crime. Fucking Feminists by Rose Lewenstein is a fiercely funny investigation of what feminism means, and what it has become. Winsome Pinnock’s Tituba is a one-woman show about Tituba Indian, the enslaved woman who played a central role in the seventeenth-century Salem Witch Trials. In The Road to Huntsville by Stephanie Ridings, a writer researching women who fall in love with men on death row finds herself crossing the line. White Lead by Jessica Siân explores the expectations and responsibilities of being an artist and a woman. In What is the Custom of Your Grief? by Timberlake Wertenbaker, an English schoolgirl whose brother has been killed on active duty in Afghanistan is befriended online by an Afghan girl. -- Publisher website

This volume is a collection of interviews that spans feminist views from 1968 to the 1990s. Including over eight years of research. Part of the Comtemporary Theatre Studies series, it will be of special interest to everyone involved in theatre and useful to students and those who oare interested in women's theatre.

This important, landmark survey dispels the myth that there aren't any good plays for women.

This is the first book to survey the participation of women in sport and physical education across Asia, from the Middle East and South Asia through to the Asia-Pacific region. Covering sport and physical activity at all levels, from school-based PE and community sport to elite, high-performance sport, the book provides an important overview of developments in policy, theory and research across this complex and dynamic region. It has a strong focus on gender equity but is informed by important intersecting influences that affect the lives of girls and women and their participation in sport. Including contributions from leading scholars from across the region, the book draws on multi-disciplinary perspectives, including sociology, cultural studies, anthropology, and history, and makes an important contribution to global understanding of diversity, challenges, and achievements in the sporting lives of Asian Women. This book will be a fascinating read for any student, researcher, or policy-maker working in sport studies, gender studies, women’s studies or Asian studies.

Lucy Kerbel's '100 great plays for women' is a guide to a hundred plays that put female performers centre stage, dispelling the myth that 'there aren't any good plays for women'. Women buy the majority of theatre tickets, make up half the acting profession and are often the largest cohort of any youth theatre or drama club. And yet they have traditionally been underrepresented on stage. 100 Great Plays for Women seeks to address this gap by celebrating plays that put female performers centre stage.

This book describes changes in the patrilineal society of the Toba Batak (Sumatra, Indonesia) due to Christianity and Dutch colonial rule (1861-1942) with a focus on customary law and gender relations.