Feminine Focus: The New Women Playwrights

This collection of sixteen essays by leading theater critics offers a fresh and exciting look at modern drama as it is being written by women today. Combining a variety of critical approaches, Brater situates the new women playwrights at the center of a continuing debate about what constitutes power, privilege, and current stage practice. His symposium examines the work of Caryl Churchill, Rochelle Owens, Ariane Mnouchkine, Marsha Norman, Simone Benmussa, Tina Howe, Sarah Daniels, Maria Irene Fornes, Pam Gems, and Ntozake Shange, as well as theater collectives of the 1970s and 1980's, to provide a diverse look at the tension between theoretical matters and questions of dramatic style, performance, and enactment. A mixture of historical, thematic, structural, psychoanalytic, and feminist readings, this collection sharpens our definition of what value and vision mean in contemporary theater.