Australian Women’s Drama: Texts and Feminisms (PLAYS)

Title: Australian Women's Drama: Texts and Feminisms (PLAYS)
Author: Schafer, Elizabeth
Price: $24.99

Charts some of the shifts in feminist thinking over the past 25 years and features some of Australia's most renowned female dramatists.

In Vocations by Alma De Groen, two women must try to separate their vocations from the nesting instincts of their mates.

The Chapel Perilous by Dorothy Hewett follows the painful and sometimes farcical life of a defiant young poet, Sally Banner, as she attempts 'through her school days, lovers, marriage and politics 'to extract meaning from her environment. Music by Frank Arndt.

In Historia by Noa lle Janaczewska, a love affair between Polish born Zosia and Australian Zoe invokes a powerful reconsideration of the boundaries placed around ethnicity and nationality, cyberspace and real time, the past and the present.

In Murras by Eva Johnson, Ruby (an Aboriginal woman) struggles against a hostile and racist society. She loses her husband to alcoholism, induced by despair at the loss of his land and culture, and she loses her house under authoritarian governmental rehousing policies. But the tragic events of her life are offset by her courageous strength.

Remember by Jenny Kemp sustains a tension between a mundane domesticity and the surreal, exotic projections of an inner world. The play investigates the long term consequences of the experience of rape.

The Forty Lounge Cafe by Tes Lyssiotis is a lyrical family story spanning three generations and two worlds.

Running Up A Dress by Suzanne Spunner is a collage of performed selves. This play depicts the 'wear and tear' on mother daughter relationships through linguistic exercises on the extended metaphor of dressmaking.

ISBN: 9780868194974
Publishing status: AU In Distributor In BN