Violence against women in plays bywomen has earned little mention. This revolutionary collection fills that gap, focusing on plays by American women dramatists, written in the last thirty years, that deal with different forms of gender violence. Each author discusses specific manifestations of violence in carefully selected plays: psychological, familial, war-time, and social injustice. This book encompasses the theatrical devices used to represent violence on the stage in an age of virtual, immediate reality as much as the problematics of gender violence in modern society.

Acknowledgements — Preface by Maria Anita Stefanelli — 1. Making Visible. Theatrical Form as Metaphor: Marina Carr and Caryl Churchill by Cathy Leeney — 2. Obscene Transformations: Violence, Women and Theatre in Sarah Kane and Marina Carr by Melissa Sihra — 3. Can the Subaltern Dream? Epistemic Violence, Oneiric Awakenings and the Quest for Subjective Duality in Marina Carr’s Marble - Interview with Marina Carr - Excerpt from Marble by Marina Carr by Valentina Rapetti — 4. “The house is a battlefield now”: War of the Sexes and Domestic Violence in Van Badham’s Kitchen and Warren Adler’s The War of the Roses - Interview with Van Badham - Excerpt from Kitchen by Van Badham by Barbara Miceli — 5. Serial Killers, Serial Lovers: Raquel Almazan’s La Paloma Prisoner - Interview with Raquel Almazan - Excerpt from La Paloma Prisoner by Raquel Almazan by Alessandro Clericuzio — 6. “To Put My Life Back into the Main Text”: Re-Dressing History in The Second Coming of Joan of Arc by Carolyn Gage - Interview with Carolyn Gage - Excerpt from The Second Coming of Joan of Arc and Selected Plays by Carolyn Gage by Sabrina Vellucci — 7. Turning Muteness into Performance in Erin Shields’ If We Were Birds - Interview with Erin Shields - Excerpt from If We Were Birds by Erin Shields by Maria Anita Stefanelli — 8. Afterword: Vocal and Verbal Assertiveness by Kate Burke — Contributors An extraordinary complexity characterizes the encounter between theatre, mythology, and human rights when gender-based violence is on the platform. Another encounter enhances the cross-disciplinary and transnational dynamics in this book: the one between the scholar and the playwright, who exchange views to pursue a theme demanding due attention at an emergence that needs being explored to be understood and combated, and finally turned into a priority action. Through the analysis of a repertoire of contemporary plays and performance practices from English-speaking countries, the contributors explore in detail the asymmetrical relations that exist between men and women, the crimes involved, and the ways in which the protagonists’ minds work differently. The unconventional format adopted for the five central sections that follow two papers centered on Marina Carr’s theatre in comparison with two noteworthy British playwrights’, and that forerun the final stringent remarks about woman’s (like man’s) fundamental right to speak and need for words, offers not just single chapters, however provocative, on an aspect of the theme, but a tripartite session boasting a critical inquiry into the text, the playwright’s response to criticism, and a sample of the author’s creative expression. What emerges is a prismatic, complex, and visceral vision of the plays offered to the public for further elaboration and critique. Beside Carr, those involved are Raquel Almazan, Van Badham, Carolyn Gage and Erin Shields – all of them champions of today’s feminist commitment to denounce, through their art, violence against women.

Behind the Iron Curtain, the politics of sexuality and gender were, in many ways, more progressive than the West. While Polish citizens undoubtedly suffered under the oppressive totalitarianism of socialism, abortion was legal, clear laws protected victims of rape, and it was relatively easy to legally change one's gender. In Gender, Pleasure, and Violence, Agnieszka Kościańska reveals that sexologists—experts such as physicians, therapists, and educators—not only treated patients but also held sex education classes at school, published regular columns in the press, and authored highly popular sex manuals that sold millions of copies. Yet strict gender roles within the home meant that true equality was never fully within reach. Drawing on interviews, participant observation, and archival work, Kościańska shares how professions like sexologists defined the notions of sexual pleasure and sexual violence under these sweeping cultural changes. By tracing the study of sexual human behavior as it was developed and professionalized in Poland since the 1960s, Gender, Pleasure, and Violence explores how the collapse of socialism brought both restrictions in gender rights and new opportunities.

What do the Catholic Church, college sports, Hollywood, prisons, the military, fraternities and politics have in common? All have extraordinarily high rates of sexual and intimate partner violence, and child sexual abuse. Sexual and intimate partner violence is part of the landscape that women and children live with. Women and children are subjected to high levels of sexual and intimate partner violence and in the era of #metoo, Gender, Power and Violence provides a nuanced analysis of the ways in which the organizational structure of an institution, like a college campus or Hollywood, can create an environment ripe for sexual and intimate partner violence and even child sexual abuse. Gender, Power, and Violence looks at the problem of sexual and intimate partner violence through cases, observing the role that institutions play in perpetuating gender based violence, and provide a better understanding about the ways in which institutional structures shape, or have mishandled, gender based violence. Angela J. Hattery and Earl Smith touch on current events that have highlighted the pervasiveness of gender based violence across the institutions they interrogate throughout the book, but also in the entertainment industry, the government, and television journalism. Gender, Power, and Violence gives the reader a better understanding of what factors shape who will be perpetrators, who will be victims, and how organizations respond (or not) when it is reported. It also offers recommendations for transforming these institutions so that they are safe for women and children of all genders.

This book brings together the fields of theatre, gender studies, and psychology/sociology in order to explore the relationships between what happens when women engage in violence, how the events and their reception intercept with cultural understandings of gender, how plays thoughtfully depict this topic, and how their productions impact audiences. Truthful portrayals force consideration of both the startling reality of women's violence — not how it's been sensationalized or demonized or sexualized, but how it is — and what parameters, what possibilities, should exist for its enactment in life and live theatre. These women appear in a wide array of contexts: they are mothers, daughters, lovers, streetfighters, boxers, soldiers, and dominatrixes. Who they are and why they choose to use violence varies dramatically. They stage resistance and challenge normative expectations for women. This fascinating and balanced study will appeal to anyone interested in gender/feminism issues and theatre.

This book questions how feminist beliefs are enacted within an artistic context. It critically examines the intersection of violence, gender, performance and power through contemporary interventionist performances. The volume explores a host of key themes like feminism and folk epic, community theatre, performance as radical cultural intervention, volatile bodies and celebratory protests. Through analysing performances of theatre stalwarts like Usha Ganguly, Maya Krishna Rao, Sanjoy Ganguly, Shilpi Marwaha and Teejan Bai, the volume discusses the complexities and contradictions of a feminist reading of contemporary performances. A major intervention in the field of feminism and performance, this book will be useful for scholars and researchers of gender studies, performance studies, theatre studies, women’s studies, cultural studies, sociology of gender and literature.