Feminist Views on the English Stage: Women Playwrights, 1990-2000

by Elaine Aston

Overview

Working through a generational mix of writers, from Sarah Kane, the iconoclastic "bad girl" of the stage, to the "canonical" Caryl Churchill, Elaine Aston charts the significant political and aesthetic changes in women's playwriting at the end of the twentieth century. Aston also explores "new" writing for the 1990s in theater by Sarah Daniels, Bryony Lavery, Phyllis Nagy, Winsome Pinnock, Rebecca Prichard, Judy Upton and Timberlake Wertenbaker.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521804677
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	06/24/2010
Series:	Cambridge Studies in Modern Theatre
Pages:	250
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Elaine Aston is Professor of Contemporary Performance, Lancaster University, and is co-editor of the Cambridge Companion to Modern British Women Playwrights (0521 594227).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements; 1. A feminist view on the 1990s; 2. Telling feminist tales: Caryl Churchill; 3. Saying no to daddy: child sexual abuse, the 'Big Hysteria'; 4. Girl power, the new feminism?; 5. The 'bad girl of our stage?': Sarah Kane; 6. Performing identities; 7. Feminist connections to a multicultural 'scene'; 8. Feminism past, and future?: Timberlake Wertenbaker; 9. Tales for the twenty-first century: final reflections; Bibliography; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"...a welcome and necessary contribution to feminist theatre studies. Feminist Views on the English Stage allows Aston broader scope to offer her own observations on the larger shifts and developments in feminist discourses over roughly the last thirty years and to focus on the roles played by specific playwrights. It is precisely this perspective—the informed insights gained through years of teaching, researching, and seeing feminist plays—that makes the book so valuable." Modern Drama

From the Publisher