| Popis: |
Although American women have been writing plays since Mercy Otis Warren penned The Adulateur in 1772, it was not until the early decades of the twentieth century, roughly coterminous with the first women’s movement, that a significant number of exceptional dramatists (such as Susan Glaspell, Rachel Crothers, and Sophie Treadwell) would emerge, write the first feminist plays, and vie for their share of both space and acclaim in the theatre arena.1 This initial emergence of a feminist force in the theatre, a force made strong by the comparative plethora of women writers and bolstered by a relatively receptive political climate, proved so unique that it prompted commentary and coverage in daily news-papers and weekly magazines2 — not unlike Gussow’s recent New York Times articles on the newest surge of women dramatists in the 1970s and 1980s — and remains the seminal point of American feminist drama. As theatre history informs us, however, despite the auspicious beginnings of fin de siecle feminist political solidarity and artist accomplishment, not the least of which was Zona Gale’s 1921 Pulitzer for Miss Lulu Bett,3 the strong, articulate and united voice of American women dramatists did not endure and increase, but rather modulated, eventually attenuated, and regrettably, for approximately the next forty-odd years that is, found resonance only when such isolated and individual playwrights like Lillian Hellman, Mary Chase and Lorraine Hansberry occasionally broke the silence. |
