Women Playwrights in Contemporary Spain and the Male-Dominated Canon

Abstract

Prior to the twentieth century, there were almost no women dramatists in Spain. Even today, they constitute a small minority in Spanish theater. The absence of women writers in theater, however, is not unique to Spain.' The cultural imperatives to be docile, domestic, and silent underlie the paucity of women in professional dramaturgy, an art that rewards aggressiveness and verbal virtuosity. Among other factors discouraging women playwrights everywhere are the invisibility of role models, the socially imposed prohibition against women in public space and discourse, and the absence of women's plays within the canon. These barriers are even more formidable in Spain because of the country's cultural heritage: eight hundred years of Muslim occupation (711-1492) followed by centuries (1492-1931) of dominance by a militant Catholic church paradigmatic of patriarchy and the abuse of power.2 In recent years, the emergence in theater of a female voice independent of the male-dominated canon has been further delayed by a renewed insistence upon patriarchal values during the