This collection addresses key questions in women's theatre history and retrieves a number of previously "hidden" histories of women performers. The essays range across the past 300 years--topics covered include Susanna Centlivre and the notion of intertheatricality; gender and theatrical space; the repositioning of women performers such as Wagner's Muse, Willhelmina Schröder-Devrient, the Comédie Français' "Mademoiselle Mars," Mme. Arnould-Plessey, and the actresses of the Russian serf theatre.

Arguing that women use autobiography and performance for expression and as a means of controlling their public and private selves, the contributors of these 11 essays examine the lives and work of a variety of artists ranging from actors as working women in the eighteenth century to monologists and performance artists today. Subjects include several performers, including Alma Ellerslie, Kitty Marion, Ina Rozant, Susan Glaspell, Adrienne Kennedy, Emma Robinson, Lena Ashwell, Tilly Wedekind, Clare Dowie, Janet Cardiff, Tracey Emin, and, in an interview, Bobby Baker, as well as essays on Latina theater and lesbians as performers constructing themselves and their community. Annotation : 2005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

Argues that critics have misunderstood the relationship between male playwrights and women's roles because they have neglected the interpretive skills of the actresses playing those roles. Analyzes hypothetical as well as historical performances to demonstrate how women have invented acting styles to portray women created by playwrights from Ibsen to Beckett. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

A study of actresses playing the role of Hamlet on stage and screen.

In this book, Wendy Arons examines how women writers used theater and performance to investigate the problem of female subjectivity and to intervene in the dominant discourse about ideal femininity. Arons shows how contemporary demands for sincerity and authenticity placed a peculiar burden on women in the public sphere, especially on actresses, who - like professional writers - overstepped the boundaries of what was considered proper behavior for women. Paradoxically, in their representations of ideal women engaged in performance, these writers expose ideal femininity as an impossible act, even as they attempt to perform it in their writing and in their lives.

Spiritualists in the nineteenth century spoke of the "Borderland," a shadowy threshold where the living communed with the dead, and where those in the material realm could receive comfort or advice from another world. The skilled performances of mostly female actors and performers made the "Borderland" a theatre, of sorts, in which dramas of revelation and recognition were produced in the forms of seances, trances, and spiritualist lectures. This book examines some of the most fascinating American and British actresses of the Victorian era, whose performances fairly mesmerized their audiences of amused skeptics and ardent believers. It also focuses on the transformative possibilities of the spiritualist theatre, revealing how the performances allowed Victorian women to speak, act, and create outside the boundaries of their restricted social and psychological roles.

These essays examine the history of women in musical theatre, providing biographical descriptions; interpretations of their productions; and several accounts of how being a woman affected their careers.

First published in 2000, this collection of essays focuses on women theatre artists in the romantic period.

As theatre and drama of the Romantic Period undergo a critical reassessment among scholars internationally, the contributions of women as playwrights, actresses, and managers are also being revalued. This volume, which brings together leading British, North American, and Italian critics, is a crucial step towards reclaiming the importance of women's dramatic and theatrical activities during the period. Writing for the theatre implied assuming a public role, a hazardous undertaking for women who, especially after the French Revolution, were assigned to the private, primarily domestic, sphere. As the contributors examine the covert strategies women used to become full participants in the public theatre, they shed light on the issue of women's agency, expressed both through the writing of highly politicized or ethicized drama, as in the case of Elizabeth Inchbald or Joanna Baillie, and through women's professional practice as theatre managers and stage producers, as in the case of Elizabeth Vestris and Jane Scott. Among the topics considered are women's history plays, domesticity, ethics and sexuality in women's closet drama, the politics of drama and performance, and the role of women as managers and producers. Specialists in performance studies, Romantic Period drama, and women's writing will find the essays both challenging and inspiring.

First published in 2003. The Theatre Arts Audition Books offer one hundred speeches from plays of the past twenty-five years, fifty in a volume for men, fifty in a volume for women. Each excerpt is preceded by a note situating the play and the selection. Speeches come from a wide range of plays, including David Mamet's Oleanna, Caryl Churchill's Serious Money, Martin McDonagh's The Beauty Queen of Leenane, Jim Cartwright's Road, and Timberlake Wertenbaker's Our Country's Good, as well as plays by Anthony Minghella, Mark Ravenhill, Sue Townsend, Alan Ayckbourn, and others. Annika Bluhm has assembled two sparkling collections of monologues that will challenge and inspire the actor