Women Experimenting in Theatre

Kate Aughterson has written widely on women’s writing and early modern drama, including, editing The Luckey Chance (2021); Renaissance Woman (1995), The English Renaissance: An Anthology (1998); John Webster: The Plays (2000), Aphra Behn: The Comedies (2003), Shakespeare: The Late Plays (2013), with Katy Shaw, Jim Crace: Into the Wilderness (2017); with Ailsa Grant Ferguson, Shakespeare and Gender (2020) and with Deborah Philips, Women and Experimental Fiction: Early Modern to Contemporary; with Jess Moriarty, Socially Engaged Creative Practice (2024) and Performing Maternities (2024).Deborah Philips has written extensively on women's writing and cultural history. Her books include: And This is My Friend Sandy: Sandy Wilson's The Boy Friend, London Theatre and Gay Culture (2021), Fairground Attractions (2012), Writing Romance: Women's Fiction (2006/2014), The Trojan Horse (2013) with Garry Whannel and Brave New Causes (1998) with Ian Haywood. She is the co-editor, with Kate Aughterson of Women Writers and Experimental Narratives: Early Modern to Contemporary (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021).

• Introduction Kate Aughterson and Deborah Philips.- Chapter 1. Stage (Im)Properties: Aphra Behn’s Radical Stagecraft, Kate Aughterson (University of Brighton).- Chapter 2. Innovative Centilivre, Margarete Rubik (University of Vienna).- Chapter 3. Elizabeth Inchbald’s Dramaturgy, Chelsea Philips (Villanova University).- Chapter 4. ‘Dead, dead, and never called me Mother’ – East Lynne, melodrama and adaptation, Peter Blake (University of Brighton).- Chapter 5. Women Playwright-Managers and the Independent Theatre Society  in Fin-de-Siècle London, Renata Miller (City University of New York).- Chapter 6. See it, be it, say it, play it: representations of militant activism and activists in suffrage theatre and entertainments, Naomi Paxton (Central School of Speech and Drama).- Chapter 7. What was modernism’s problem with the theatre?, Helen Carr, (Goldsmiths).- Chapter 8. 'You have produced a good deal of raw material from which you , and,  or a group of actors may or may not produce a good play':  Shelagh Delaney, Joan Littlewood and the Theatre Workshop production of  A Taste of Honey,  Deborah Philips (University of Brighton).- Chapter 9. Freaks, Prophets, Witches: New Forms, Collaborations and Communions in Women’s Theatre 1969-1992, Susan Croft (Director, Unfinished Histories).- Chapter 10. ‘My sister she wants - / Don’t tell me’: Desire, Negation, Interruption and Agency in Sarah Kane’s Work, Dr Nina Kane (University of Huddersfield).- Chapter 11. Beyond Mimesis: Generic Crossings between Poetry and Drama in Plays by tucker green, Kay and Harris Elisabeth Bekers, Janine Hauthal & Jade Thomas (Vriejat Universitat Brussels).- Chapter 12. Feminist revisions: reframing Greek tragedy in the work of Mnouchkine, Mitchell, Carson and Churchill,  William Mcevoy (University of Sussex).- Chapter 13. We Need To Talk About Essex Girls: Working Class Women and Twenty-First Century British Theatre, Katy Shaw (Northumbria University).- Chapter 14. Decolonizing experimental theatre: Experiments in Living in the Work of Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti, Gabriele Griffin (University of Uppsala).- Chapter 15. British stage design now: Womxn stage designers and experimentation,  Rachel Hann (Northumbria University, Newcastle).- Chapter 16. Feminist Provocations: Experiments with Failure in the Plays of Alice Birch and Ella Hickson, Hannah Greenstreet (Independent Theatre maker).