1,720,968 research outputs found
Plays and Performance Text by Women 1880-1930: An Anthology of Plays by British and American Women from the Modernist Period
No full textThis groundbreaking anthology, part of the Women, Theatre and Performance series, brings together an extraordinary mix of one-act and full length plays and solo performance texts written by women. Included in the volume are texts by Beatrice Herford, Ruth Draper, Zora Neale Hurston and G. B. Stern, originally performed across commercial and amateur theatres in Britain and America. Some of the plays have remained unpublished since their original performance - Georgina Weldon's Not Alone, Clothilde Graves' Mother of Three, Rachel Crother's Ourselves and Marie Stope's Our Ostriches. Others are anthologized here alongside plays with which they connect aesthetically and historically, for example, Edith Lyttelton's Warp and Woof, Elizabeth Robins' Votes for Women, Elizabeth Baker's Edith, Sophie Treadwell's Machinal and Aimée Stuarts' Nine Till Six.
The volume, for students and scholars, provides an accessible collection of texts exemplifying the range and breadth of women's theatre writing from the 1880s to the early decades of the twentieth century
'Women Like Us'?
No full textThis article works to excavate the historical depth of representations of working women in comedy, arguing that the constructio∂n of women in comedy has deep historical roots that are reflected in cultural understandings and expectations of women in popular performance today. Catherine Tate's outraged (and outrageous) ‘Nan’ (2004), Mabel Constanduros’ ‘Emily’, a forerunner to her long-running and forthright radio character ‘Grandma Buggins’ (1925–1948) and Fanny Kelly's lovelorn, and lachrymose household servant, ‘Sally Simkin’ (1832), are just three examples among the numerous characters created by female comedy writers and performers over the past 200 years. Delighting their audiences with a potent mix of sentimentality undercut by their deliciously shocking observations about life, these characters work to demonstrate a deeply embedded set of constructs that make up the stereotypical representation of the metropolitan working woman. Deploying a deliberately eclectic mix of approaches from the cultural turn in performance theory and feminist revision, this article uses the methodologies of theatre historiography to make connections between the latest women on the comedy sketch scene and their predecessors, arguing for renewed understandings in our critical appreciation of writing and performing ‘funny’ women
Re: 'Enactment'
No full textScholars, amateur historians and actors have shaped theatre history in different ways at different times and in different places. This Companion offers students and general readers a series of accessible and engaging essays on the key aspects of studying and writing theatre history. The diverse international team of contributors investigates how theatre history has been constructed, showing how historical facts are tied to political and artistic agendas and explaining why history matters to us. Beginning with an introduction to the central narrative that traditionally informs our understanding of what theatre is, the book then turns to alternative points of view - from other parts of the world and from the perspective of performers in fields such as music-theatre and circus. It concludes by looking at how history is written in the 'democratic' age of the Internet and offers a new perspective on theatre history in our globalised world
Performing Herself: Autobiography and Fanny Kelly's Dramatic Recollections
No full textThis unique book contains the never before published script of the first ever one-woman show, written by Fanny Kelly. The script was performed in Britain in the 1830s and 40s, based on Kelly's own experiences and offers a picture of the exuberant and often bizarre Georgian entertainment world.
The performance text is introduced, edited and explained by Gilli Bush-Bailey, who focuses 21st-century revisionist scholarship on Kelly's story. It is an innovative contribution to the modern debate on biographical and autobiographical writing, whilst also being a valuable text for those who wish to study comedy and women's performance. The materials and methods of the modern stand-up routine are already to be seen in this unusual text.
This book will appeal to students and scholars who are involved in performance, theatre history, or biography. It is also an accessible text for the interested general reader
Mabel Constanduros: Different Voices, Voicing Difference
No full textA pioneer of early radio broadcast, Mabel Constanduros wrote and performed numerous sketches, plays and adaptations but known best for her creation of BBC long-running serial The Buggins Family. This chapter considers Constanduros work and her efforts to keep financial and artistic control of her work while maintaining the respectability of a middle-class mother in the pre and post-war years. Trained by Elsie Fogerty at Central, Constanduros found her voice as both an uncompromising professional and well-loved popular performer
Advance Notice
No full textThis note provides a brief introduction to Advance, a project currently being tracked and documented by a research team from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. I am joined by Dr Katharine Low and Dr Sarah Grochala who bring their separate expertise and interest in documenting practices from applied theatre, playwriting and performance to our collaboration with industry partners Tonic Theatre. Funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, Advance is working with (and for) 11 leading theatre companies across England, facilitating reflection and knowledge exchange on the means to achieve greater gender equality in the theatre industry’s workforces and repertoires. A full report on Tonic’s work through Advance will be published later in the year. What follows is not, therefore, an assessment but a pause in the process of critical documentation, a reflection on the terms by which questions on the present project, and projects undertaken within the recent past, might be seen to interact. It hopes to link to earlier key moments, to raise queries and to take notes from colleagues, who are cordially invited to respond to me [email protected] rather than to Tonic Theatre or the participating companies. For a list of these companies see http://www.tonictheatre.co.uk/our-work/initiatives/advance.php
The Gerbini Letters, or, A Tale of Two Mothers
No full textThe book explores the connections between motherhood and the theater both on and off stage throughout the long eighteenth century. Although the realities of eighteenth-century motherhood and representations of maternity have recently been investigated in relation to the novel, social history, and political economy, the idea of motherhood and its connection to the theatre as a professional, material, literary, and cultural site has received little critical attention. The essays in this volume, spanning the period from the Restoration to Regency, address these forgotten maternal narratives, focusing on: the representation of motherhood as the defining female role; the interplay between an actress's celebrity persona and her chosen roles; the performative balance between the cults of maternity and that of the "passionate" actress; and tensions between sex and maternity and/or maternity and public authority. In examining the overlaps and disconnections between representations and realities of maternity in the long eighteenth century, and by looking at written, received, visual, and performed records of motherhood, Stage Mothers makes an important contribution to debates central to eighteenth-century cultural history
Treading the Bawds: Actresses and Playwrights on the Late-Stuart Stage
No full textDrawing on feminist cultural materialist theories and historiographies, 'Treading the bawds' analyses the collaboration between actresses Elizabeth Barry and Anne Bracegirdle and women playwrights such as Aphra Behn and Mary Pix, and traces a line of influence from the time of the first theatres royal to the rebellion that resulted in the creation of a player's co-operative.
Bush-Bailey offers a fresh approach to the history of women, seeing their neglected plays in the context of performance. By combining detailed analysis of selected plays within the broader context of a playhouse managed by its leading actresses, Bush-Bailey challenges the received historical and literary canons, including a radical solution to the mysterious identity of the anonymous playwright 'Ariadne'. It is a story of female collaboration and influence with the spotlight focused on the very public world of women in the commercial business of theatre
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