Plays and performance texts by women volume II brings together plays and performance texts shaped by debates around political inequality during the early twentieth century, from 1900 to the end of the First World War. Produced amid heightened agitation for democratic rights, the plays offer staged reflections on women’s lived experience within a context of social, cultural and political upheaval. The volume includes suffrage drama associated with the Votes for Women campaign alongside works that address inequality in the workplace, domestic life and civic participation. Bringing together both familiar figures, including Cicely Hamilton, Elizabeth Baker and Gertrude Jennings, and less well-known but prolific writers such as Netta Syrett, Alice Grein and Alison Garland, the collection broadens the established canon. Each text is accompanied by biographical and production information, while a substantial introduction situates the plays within the theatrical cultures and political conditions of the Edwardian and wartime period.
Price: £25.00
Pages: 488
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Imprint: Manchester University Press
Series: Women, Theatre and Performance
Publication Date:
02 March 2027
ISBN: 9781526174925
Format: Paperback
BISACs:
PERFORMING ARTS / Theater / Playwriting, Plays, playscripts, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Gender Studies, LITERARY CRITICISM / Subjects & Themes / Women, Gender studies: women and girls, Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000
Maggie B. Gale is Chair in Drama at the University of Manchester
Naomi Paxton is an academic and actress (aka Ada Campe)
Introduction: Curating plays by women - an overview
Plays and performance texts
1 Netta Syrett [née Janet] (1865–1943)
Might is Right (1909)
2 Margaret Macnamara [Mack](1874–1950)
Unemployed (1909)
3 Irene Rutherford McLeod (1891–1968)
The Reforming of Augustus (1910)
4 Edith Lyttelton (1865–1948)
The Thumbscrew (1911)
5 Author unknown
What Every Woman Ought to Know (1911)
6 Cicely Hamilton (1872–1952)
Jack and Jill and a Friend (1911)
7 Alison Garland (1862–1938)
The Better Half (1913)
8 Gladys Mendl [Mrs Harry Schütze] (1884–1946)
Su’ l’Pave: Being Half an Hour in the life of a Paper-Seller (1914)
9 Evelyn Glover (1873–1941)
Showin’ Samyel: A suffrage recitation (1914)
10 Cicely Hamilton (1872–1952)
Where Are You Going To (1914) (adapted from Elizabeth Robins’ novel My Little Sister)
11 Gertrude E. Jennings (1877–1958)
Five Birds in A Cage (1915)
12 Alice (Alix) Grein [Michael Orme] (1874–1944)
The Woman on the Window Sill (1917)
13 Elizabeth Baker (1876–1962)
Partnership (1917)
