Classic Plays by Women

Susan CroftSusan is a writer, historian, curator and researcher. She worked in the USAwith the Omaha Magic Theatre in the early 1980s, returning to Britain towork as a dramaturg with small-scale theatre companies and founding NewPlaywrights Trust, of which she was Director from 1986-89. She taught Creative Arts (Performance) at Nottingham Trent Universityand then was Senior Research Fellow in Performance Arts at ManchesterMetropolitan University to 1996. From 1997-2005, she was Curator ofContemporary Performance at the Theatre Museum where she worked onthe National Video Archive of Performance. She also curated four majorexhibitions including Let Paul Robeson Sing! and Architects of Fantasy andpioneered a range of initiatives to record the history of black and Asiantheatre in Britain. She has written extensively on women playwrights, including: ... She AlsoWrote Plays: an International Guide to Women Playwrights from the 10thto the 21st Century (Faber, 2001) and edited Votes for Women and otherplays (Aurora Metro, 2009). She is working on A Critical Bibliography ofPlays Published by Women Playwrights in English to 1914 (working title)for Manchester University Press and a major anthology Staging the NewWoman, with Sherry Engle. She also runs the project Unfinished Histories: Recording the History ofAlternative Theatre, with Jessica Higgs, a major initiative to record oralhistories and preserve archives of the alternative theatre movement from the1960s to the 1980s. See www.susan.croft.btinternet.co.uk for further details. She lives in London with her husband and two children.

• Introduction Susan CroftPaphnutius (circa 960) extract Hrotswitha The Tragedy of Mariam (1613) extract Elizabeth CaryThe Rover (1677) Aphra BehnA Bold Stroke for a Wife (1718) Susanna CentlivreDe Monfort (1800) Joanna BaillieRutherford and Son (1912) Githa SowerbyThe Chalk Garden (1955) Enid BagnoldTop Girls (1982) extract Caryl ChurchillStones in his Pockets (1996) Marie JonesBibliography