Katharina Lescailje’s Ariadne and Public Femininity

The paper begins by analysing the ideas, themes and motifs of the theatre texts from the anthology The Generator:: for Manufacturing Any Number of Drama Complexes (Slovenian Experimental Dramatic and Performative Texts from the Modernist Period (1966–1986)). It aims to shed light on the anthology’s selected texts through the female perspective, or rather, its absence. It deals with the consequences that the absence of awareness about the lack of a female perspective in Slovenian drama can have on the representation of women and woman(liness). The paper explores such representations in Slovenian (experimental) drama and raises awareness about the possible effects of patriarchal ideology and its consequences by analysing the plays’ ideas, themes and motifs. In doing so, it pays special attention to the difference between men’s and (rare) women’s playwriting. The texts from The Generator are taken merely as a case study to indicate the presence of particular symptoms in Slovenian (experimental) drama within the anthology’s given period. The paper briefly highlights the differences in the representation of woman(liness) from a broader developmental perspective, from a temporal distance, in the form of a comparative analysis of contemporary women’s playwriting, specifically, Simona Hamer’s 2010 play Nemi lik (The Silent Character).

The paper begins by analysing the ideas, themes and motifs of the theatre texts from the anthology The Generator:: for Manufacturing Any Number of Drama Complexes (Slovenian Experimental Dramatic and Performative Texts from the Modernist Period (1966–1986)). It aims to shed light on the anthology’s selected texts through the female perspective, or rather, its absence. It deals with the consequences that the absence of awareness about the lack of a female perspective in Slovenian drama can have on the representation of women and woman(liness). The paper explores such representations in Slovenian (experimental) drama and raises awareness about the possible effects of patriarchal ideology and its consequences by analysing the plays’ ideas, themes and motifs. In doing so, it pays special attention to the difference between men’s and (rare) women’s playwriting. The texts from The Generator are taken merely as a case study to indicate the presence of particular symptoms in Slovenian (experimental) drama within the anthology’s given period. The paper briefly highlights the differences in the representation of woman(liness) from a broader developmental perspective, from a temporal distance, in the form of a comparative analysis of contemporary women’s playwriting, specifically, Simona Hamer’s 2010 play Nemi lik (The Silent Character).

The paper begins by analysing the ideas, themes and motifs of the theatre texts from the anthology The Generator:: for Manufacturing Any Number of Drama Complexes (Slovenian Experimental Dramatic and Performative Texts from the Modernist Period (1966–1986)). It aims to shed light on the anthology’s selected texts through the female perspective, or rather, its absence. It deals with the consequences that the absence of awareness about the lack of a female perspective in Slovenian drama can have on the representation of women and woman(liness). The paper explores such representations in Slovenian (experimental) drama and raises awareness about the possible effects of patriarchal ideology and its consequences by analysing the plays’ ideas, themes and motifs. In doing so, it pays special attention to the difference between men’s and (rare) women’s playwriting. The texts from The Generator are taken merely as a case study to indicate the presence of particular symptoms in Slovenian (experimental) drama within the anthology’s given period. The paper briefly highlights the differences in the representation of woman(liness) from a broader developmental perspective, from a temporal distance, in the form of a comparative analysis of contemporary women’s playwriting, specifically, Simona Hamer’s 2010 play Nemi lik (The Silent Character).

Reviewed by: Women's Deliberation: The Heroine in Early Modern French Women's Theater (1650–1750) by Theresa Varney Kennedy Sharon Diane Nell Theresa Varney Kennedy. Women's Deliberation: The Heroine in Early Modern French Women's Theater (1650–1750). routledge, 2018. 202 pp. in la poétique (1639), the French dramatic theorist and playwright La Mesnardiére wrote that women on stage should not be portrayed as heroic or clever, since these characteristics contradicted the rules of vraisemblance or verisimilitude (qtd. in Kennedy 2). But, as Theresa Varney Kennedy demonstrates, women playwrights often did not follow his recommendations. Continuing the work of scholars such as Perry Gethner, Nathalie Grande, and Erica Harth, Kennedy focuses on heroines in plays by women from 1637 to 1761. Kennedy is particularly interested in rationality as a possibility for women and the ways in which this theme is developed in plays by women in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. After a brief introduction, Kennedy launches into four chapters, each of which features one of four heroine types: irrational, dutiful, bold and brazen, and deliberative. In chapter 1, Kennedy analyzes the irrational heroine who derives from Jean Racine's female characters, particularly Phédre, but the irrational heroines in the plays that Kennedy includes are not all from tragedies, and not all of them are homicidal or suicidal or both. Also, the irrational actions of each are accompanied by an element of self-awareness, although these characters remain "one-dimensional" (46). Unlike the emblematic Phédre, Kennedy's irrational heroines are "free agents" (18) who wield authority usurped from the patriarchy (44) and, in the end, acknowledge their treacherous motives and take responsibility for their actions (45). For example, Tomyris—the female character penned by playwright Marie-Anne Barbier—fulfills the stereotype that women are unstable and, for that reason, should not wield political power. She also prioritizes her lustful desires over the security of her kingdom. Unlike Phédre, however, her "final violent act"—the execution of Cyrus—"does allow her to reestablish dignity and honor" (44, 30). Dutiful heroines, whose emblematic model is Pierre Corneille's Chiméne (55–56), are explored in chapter 2. Unlike Chiméne, who plays a secondary [End Page 299] role in Le Cid, the dutiful heroines that Kennedy analyzes are the main characters in their respective plays. They also exhibit intelligence and "leadership skills" (57). Yet, while they "challenge the norms and behavior traditionally associated with early modern women," the outcomes of the plays "reinforce patriarchal institutions" (91). For example, Théonise, in Françoise de Graffigny's La Fille d'Aristide (composed in 1758), stoically holds fast to her duty to marry a man she does not love; however, when she sells herself into slavery to save her beloved, the latter buys her from the slave trader and obtains her release from the man to whom she is betrothed so that the two can marry. Kennedy points out that "despite her show of independence and heroic sacrifice, Théonise still remains a commodity—an object of exchange between men" (90). Kennedy turns to bold and brazen heroines in chapter 3. The female leads in this chapter are studied together because they "act upon their emotions, especiallyin the name of romance" (128). All five of the plays that Kennedy analyzes in this chapter were either not performed at all or appeared in productions in "the salon, the théátres de société, and other venues outside Paris" (99). Whereas the irrational heroines of chapter 1 act impulsively out of "lust and vengeance," the bold and brazen heroines are motivated by love and desire (100). The results of their valiant actions are mixed. Triphine, in Françoise Pascal's Agathonphile martyr (published in 1655), defies the patriarchal system by refusing to marry the man chosen for her by her father and is executed (114). Even when things do work out well, as in the case of the Countess, who appears in Le Caprice de l'Amour by Mademoiselle Huau (also known as Madame La Grange de Richebourg), a play that was performed at the French Comedy in The Hague in 1739, not only does the play reinforce...

The paper begins by analysing the ideas, themes and motifs of the theatre texts from the anthology The Generator:: for Manufacturing Any Number of Drama Complexes (Slovenian Experimental Dramatic and Performative Texts from the Modernist Period (1966–1986)). It aims to shed light on the anthology’s selected texts through the female perspective, or rather, its absence. It deals with the consequences that the absence of awareness about the lack of a female perspective in Slovenian drama can have on the representation of women and woman(liness). The paper explores such representations in Slovenian (experimental) drama and raises awareness about the possible effects of patriarchal ideology and its consequences by analysing the plays’ ideas, themes and motifs. In doing so, it pays special attention to the difference between men’s and (rare) women’s playwriting. The texts from The Generator are taken merely as a case study to indicate the presence of particular symptoms in Slovenian (experimental) drama within the anthology’s given period. The paper briefly highlights the differences in the representation of woman(liness) from a broader developmental perspective, from a temporal distance, in the form of a comparative analysis of contemporary women’s playwriting, specifically, Simona Hamer’s 2010 play Nemi lik (The Silent Character).

Fixating on and Fixing the African American Woman's Representation of Self in Modern Periodicals Lourdes Arciniega A free race cannot be born of slave mothers. A woman enchained cannot choose but give a measure of bondage to her sons and daughters. No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother. —Margaret Sanger, The Birth Control Review Margaret Sanger, founder of the first birth control clinics in the United States, published The Birth Control Review, a journal that ran from February 1917 to January 1940, specifically to challenge the Comstock Law, a federal act governing the "Suppression of Trade in, and Circulation of, Obscene Literature and Articles of Immoral Use," in effect since 1873 (Jütte; Kranz), which prohibited the dissemination of birth control information. Sanger had to word her content in a legally ambiguous manner to avoid censorship; thus, her writing straddled a fine line between calling attention to the need for birth control education and avoiding giving direct information on contraceptive devices. From the very first issue of The Birth Control Review, which bore the headline "Shall We Break this Law?", Sanger was forthright in her journal's mission as a powerful forum for reproductive rights activism. The "We" in Sanger's headline called everyone, regardless of gender or race, to participate in the struggle for access to universal birth control education. Thus, in 1919, she edited a special "Negro" issue of The Birth Control Review to address reproductive politics in the context of the African American population.1 Sanger's periodical featured two reproductive-rights texts by African American women playwrights: the drama They That Sit in Darkness by Mary P. Burrill and the short story The Closing Door by Angelina Grimké. This article explores how the African American voices in this issue of The Birth Control Review were carefully chosen by Sanger to promote her own ideology, and not necessarily to further African American interests. Yet, when these African [End Page 231] American playwrights wrote dramas and stories for Sanger's Birth Control Review, they re-created and reinstated the neglected African American woman and mother on stage and set up African American maternity as a controversial site from which to debate reproductive rights and women's rights in general. More importantly, publishing these dramas in Sanger's periodical gave these two women playwrights an opportunity to access and define a ground-breaking public and cultural space more attuned to African American women's voices. As a result of her publication in Sanger's journal, aspiring and unknown playwright Burrill found a multicultural audience for her present and future work. Grimké's short story became the precursor for her canonical play Rachel (1920), the first drama written by an African American woman playwright to enjoy a commercial production. By addressing reproductive rights for Sanger's periodical, these African American playwrights embarked on a journey of artistic transformation that would later bring them theatrical recognition. Burrill and Grimké were part of a rising Little Theatre Movement2 of "resistant" playwrights, to borrow a term that Jill Dolan applies to feminist critics. Dolan argues that resistant readers analyze "a performance's meaning by reading against the grain of stereotypes and resisting the manipulation of both the performance text and the cultural text that it helps to shape" (Spectator as Critic 2). Defying the pressure to tailor their reproductive-rights narratives to the expectations of Sanger's mostly white audience, Burrill and Grimké created innovative African American women's drama that left a theatrical imprint for other contemporary playwrights to follow.3 Writing on the link between drama and periodicals, Susan Smith contends that periodicals were an "important site of public deliberation, contestation and intellectual circulation, at once interlocking and in tension" (xi). Furthermore, she states that drama was a "powerful agent in the attempt to establish and sustain difference and distance between the middle and the lower classes and between the Anglo-Saxon and the various 'Others'" (xv). Documenting and disseminating racial and social anxiety, periodicals were reflections of the continuous struggles for...

From Mad Max to Sane Elaine Elaine Showalter, Hystories: Hysterical Epidemics and Modern Media, New York: Columbia University Press, 1997, £16.39; Picador, 1998, £6.99 But Words Can Never Hurt Me Judith Butler, Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative, New York and London: Routledge, 1997, £40. Women in Theatre: Practitioners’ Voices Lizbeth Goodman, Feminist Stages: Interviews with ‘Women in Contemporary British Theatre, Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1996, £18. Joanne Tompkins and Julie Holledge (eds), Performing Women/Performing Feminisms: Interviews with International Women Playwrights, Australasian Drama Studies Association Academic Publications 2, University of Queensland, 1997. Elaine Aston (ed.), Feminist Theatre Voices, Loughborough Theatre Texts, University of Loughborough, 1997, £7.99. Heidi Stephenson and Natasha Langridge, (eds), Rage and Reason: Women Playwrights on Playwriting, London: Methuen, 1997, £9.99. Life and Death in the Next World Christine Brook‐Rose, Next, Manchester: Carcanet, 1998, £9.95 pbk.

Lives in Play explores the centrality of life narratives to women's drama and performance from the 1970s to the present moment. In the early days of second-wave feminism, the slogan was "The personal is the political." These autobiographical and biographical "true stories" have the political impact of the real and have also helped a range of feminists tease out the more complicated aspects of gender, sex, and sexuality in a Western culture that now imagines itself to be "postfeminist." The book covers a broad range of texts and performances, from performance artists like Karen Finley, Holly Hughes, and Bobby Baker to playwrights like Suzan-Lori Parks, Maria Irene Fornes, and Sarah Kane. The book examines biography and autobiography together to link their narrative tactics and theatrical approaches and show the persistent and important uses of life writing strategies for theater artists committed to advancing women's rights and remaking women's representations. Lives in Play argues that these writers and artists have not only responded to the vibrant conversations in feminist theory but also have anticipated and advanced these ideas, theorizing gender onstage for specific ends. Ryan Claycomb demonstrates how these performances work through tensions between performative identity and the essentialized body, between the truth value of life stories and the constructed nature of gender and narrative alike, and between writing and performing as modes of feminist representation. The book will appeal to scholars in performance studies, women's studies, and literature, including those in the growing field of auto/biography studies.

As women writers attempt to explore their difference and define their specificity, they have come to realize the importance of renewing the primal bond between mother and daughter.' Centuries of patriarchal domination have erected barriers between women, walls of jealousy, misunderstanding, scorn, and silence which must be broken down if women are to liberate themselves, reclaim their matrilineal heritage, and create their own culture. Since the 1970s, women playwrights and theatre groups have often focussed on the difficult mother-daughter relationship in their efforts to dramatize the social and psychological situation of women, their sexuality, interrelationships, and language. By examining a group of mother-daughter plays, we will see how women theatre professionals have used the stage to spotlight this key issue in the feminist critique of patriarchy and to create distinctive forms of feminist dramatic discourse. Mother-daughter plays vary considerably, reflecting their authors' personal experience, culture, sexual orientation, and commitment to feminism. Some playwright-daughters use the stage to rebel against mothers and declare their independence. Whether they portray mothers as devouring monsters or self-sacrificing martyrs, rebellious daughters rarely have much sympathy for their mothers as fellow victims of patriarchy. For others, dramatizing mother-daughter conflicts leads to understanding, acceptance, and reconciliation. Through the act of writing, they communicate the love they feel but could not express to their mothers. For playwrights with daughters of their own, the motherdaughter play is a vehicle for coming to terms with the mixed emotions which accompany the transition from daughterhood to motherhood. For those writers committed to celebrating matrilineage, the motherdaughter play leads to mutual liberation and the renewal of bonds based on equality. While this paper will focus primarily on French women's theatre, let us briefly note the importance of mother-daughter themes for women dramatists in America. In the United States, Ursule Molinaro's one-act play Breakfast Past Noon (1968) angrily presents the mother as an interfering, hypercritical harpy who refuses to treat her forty-three year-old daughter as an adult. To emphasize the lack of true communication, Molinaro uses the unusual technique of indirect discourse in the past tense. Mother and daughter do not speak to each other, they repeat their dialogue of mutual recriminations, criticisms, and sarcasms to the audience. The indirect dialogue escalates in anger and ends in violence as the daughter shoves a lit cigarette in the mouth of her mother who defends herself by choking the daughter. The black humour of Breakfast Past Noon places it at the opposite end of the scale from Honor Moore's poetic drama, Mourning

EDITOR'S NOTE We are happy to present a group of essays covering a wide variety of topics and texts. One may observe that a good proportion of the articles in this number of the Bulletin of the Comediantes deal with plays by women dramatists and with the representation ofwomen in early modern Spanish drama. This is a testament to those who in recent years have rediscovered and studied these plays and playwrights, and who have helped to make the works more accessible to scholars and students ofthe Comedia. We take this opportunity to mourn the passing ofan illustrious Golden Age scholar and member of the editorial advisory board for many years, Professor Willard F. King of Bryn Mawr College. Our colleague Cynthia Leone Halpern, a friend and former student of Professor King, has written a tribute to her mentor. We also remember fondly Professor Ann E. Wiltrout of Mississippi State University, a fine Comedia scholar and a frequent contributor to this journal. Their loss will be felt, but "las obras quedan. ..." Special thanks to Robert Lauer, Darci Strother, and Susan Fisher for their reports on international theater festivals, and to Robert Lauer again for setting up a website for the journal. As always, we acknowledge the work of our board members and contributors, and we invite scholars to submit their work on all aspects of early modern Spanish and colonial Latin American drama to the Bulletin ofthe Comediantes. E.H.F. ...

Reviews: Shakespeare and the Victorians, Victorian Shakespeare, Volume I: Theatre, Drama and Performance., Women's Theatre Writing in Victorian Britain, Theatre, Politics, and Markets in Fin-De Siécle Paris: Staging Modernity, Staging Politics and Gender: French Women's Drama, 1880–1923, Blackface Cuba, 1840–1895, Shoot! The Notebooks of Serafino Gubbio, Cinematograph Operator, the Big Show: British Cinema Culture in the Great War, 1914–1918, Moving

This thesis uses ideas of the male gaze, as defined in the feminist film theory of Laura Mulvey, and dance theory to explore the representation of women and the use of dance in Kuwaiti cinema. The male gaze theory was coined by Mulvey in her 1975 essay ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, in which she focused on the various situations where females are asymmetrically and unequally portrayed in film. Erin Brannigan’s dance theory, as used here, focuses on the communicative, emotional, physical and artistic aspects of the medium of dance in film as a forum for human interaction and expression within specific oeuvres. The interrelationship of film and dance theories is paramount to this study as these theories help to identify and understand the representation of women and the use of dance in Kuwaiti cinema. This thesis argues that the correlation between the male gaze theory and dance theories provides a significant strategy for highlighting the portrayal of women and the use of dance in Kuwaiti cinema. This thesis consists of a written and a practice component. The first acts as a guide to the latter. The written component maps the historical background of Kuwaiti cinema in relation to the representation of women and their dances. It also offers an outline of the feminist film and dance theories of Mulvey and Brannigan that I have used with the aim of investigating how women are represented and how dance by women functions in Kuwaiti cinema. The practical component is a documentary film about dance in Kuwaiti cinema. The film comprises archives, commentary and interviews that state the point of view of the interviewees as they discuss the reality of female representation and dance in Kuwaiti cinema. Furthermore, the documentary also establishes how Kuwaiti film censorship policy affects these elements. The argument discussed in this thesis is that the Kuwaiti films analysed here deploy the male gaze, as defined by Laura Mulvey and other feminist film theorists, but, because of the strict film censorship policy in Kuwait and the country’s traditional and religious outlook, this male gaze has been adjusted to historically specific parameters so as to ensure that the representation of women and dance in Kuwaiti cinema is appropriate to Islamic culture and the customs and traditions of Kuwaiti society.

Since 1660 when actresses first began performing on the English stage, women have forged bright careers in theatre, while men called the shots. Four hundred years of women playwrights, from Aphra Behn to Caryl Churchill, yet plays by women make up less than a quarter of staged productions in the UK, leading to a lack of central roles for women. At a time when many theatres have closed their doors and others are looking to re-open, will they choose to move with the times or fall back on the safety of a tired repertoire? With an overview of influential women in post-war theatre and 25 exclusive interviews with leading women theatre-makers, this book inspires us to create a truly equal and inclusive theatre today. Interviews with: Denise Gough; Vicky Ireland; Jude Kelly; Bryony Lavery; Katie Mitchell; Marsha Norman; Lynn Nottage; Winsome Pinnock; Emma Rice; Daryl Roth and many more.

Reviewed by: Redressing the Past: The Politics of Early English-Canadian Women'S Drama, 1880–1920 Meghan Brodie Redressing the Past: The Politics of Early English-Canadian Women'S Drama, 1880–1920. By Kym Bird. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2004; pp. 269. $70.00 cloth. Part biography, part social history, and part literary analysis, Kym Bird's study of early English-Canadian women's drama begins a project of recovering largely neglected female Canadian playwrights and their work, and situating that work within traditionally male-dominated Canadian drama history. Specifically, Bird takes up the plays of Sarah Anne Curzon, Kate Simpson Hayes, and Clara Rothwell Anderson as well as mock parliaments, and views these pieces through the lenses of the liberal and domestic feminism that characterized the woman movement, 1880-1920. Beyond liberal and domestic feminism, Bird's project effectively reads and troubles women's drama through a series of binaries: masculine/feminine, public sphere/private sphere, Social Purity/Social Gospel, and stage drama/closet drama, to name only a few. The first chapter offers what little biography of Sarah Anne Curzon is available and concentrates on Curzon's Laura Secord and The Sweet Girl Graduate. Bird identifies Curzon as "one of the earliest and most energetic nineteenth-century women's rights educators and activists in Canada" (20), a liberal feminist who championed equal rights for women but also maintained domestic feminist views that purported that women, based on their moral superiority, could serve their country by embracing their duties as mothers in the home. Consistently addressing intersections of motherhood and nation-building, Bird reads Curzon's defense of Imperial Federation, a movement geared toward achieving imperial unity by establishing "closer economic and military ties to the British Empire and acquiring influence over imperial policy" (22), as "a vision of a nation-as-family that is characterized by the feminine and draws its strength from the fierce protectiveness of the mother for her children" (24). Curzon's plays afford Bird an [End Page 325] opportunity to expand upon the gendered nature of closet drama as it reflects nineteenth-century constructions of public/masculine and private/feminine spheres; Bird contends that Curzon transported her work "from the raucous playhouse, with its masculine associations, into the privacy of the feminine drawing room" (33). Within this context, Bird examines Laura Secord, a closet drama,and its engagement with the recuperation of Canadian history and advancement of liberal feminism. Laura Secord dramatizes the true story of a mother-hero who warns Loyalist troops of an impending American attack during the War of 1812; Bird considers Laura Secord the "first self-consciously feminist dramatic text written in nineteenth-century Canada" (3). Through her deft manipulation of the masculine/feminine binary, Bird successfully argues that Laura Secord "reconfigures nationalism and heroism as feminine constructs that represent the moral and rational influence of maternity on the culture of the country" (47). Similarly, Bird reads The Sweet Girl Graduate, a tale of a young woman who disguises herself as a man in order to attend university, as a closet drama that advocates for revision of gender codes while simultaneously reinscribing a maternal imperative (the central character believes that an education will make her a better mother). The plays of both Kate Simpson Hayes and Clara Rothwell Anderson are more biographically situated than those of Sarah Anne Curzon. Even more intriguing than her study of Hayes's plays is Bird's even-handed navigation of the playwright's personal and professional politics. A proponent of Social Purity, Hayes (writing under her journalistic pseudonym Mary Markwell) espoused "marriage and motherhood as women's highest calling" (101) but left her husband, conducted a relatively public relationship with another man without marrying him, and then denied that the two children she had with him out of wedlock were her own. Bird organizes her biographical and literary analysis of Hayes's life and plays into three categories: "gender formation, racial organization, and the dialectic of class construction" (104), concentrating on the Christianity and nationalism that characterized the Social Purity movement. Bird's investigation of two of Hayes's plays, Slumberland Shadows (a children's fairytale play) and The Anvil (a problem...

This research paper sheds light on the representation of traditional women from Punjab and their allegorical representation through Sufi poets and paintings. Women are and continue to be an integral part of art and artistic expression throughout human history from pre-history to modern times. The representation of women as an expression of art is an essential aspect in the history of art. This paper highlights the cultural and traditional depiction of women in the art of Chughtai, Ustad Allah Bux, Amrita Sher Gill and Anna Molka Ahmed through attire and its metaphorical representation. The selected paintings focus on the traditional depiction of Women in Punjab, and provides themes, styles associated in representing the women in paintings of Punjab. Such paintings are very expressive and ideally formalized with great delicacy and devotion, gives importance to womanhood through allegory.The role of females and their interpretation through Sufi poetry explains in visual of painters work choosen as subject matter for explaining. This paper reflects female attire in visuals and poetry. This study is reflecting content analysis of female representation through attire in poetry and painting with context of region Punjab Pakistan.