Overview

Alan P. Barr has brought together eleven world-class modern plays by women that show not only their artistry but also their variety and their passion. Drawn from nine different countries (other than the United States and England) that use English as their literary language, the plays reflect the concerns of women across the globe. The imagery and dramatic conventions may shift and the tones vary, but the need to be strong (and its difficulty), the sense of a world that is anything but nurturing or ideal, and the suspect nature of family life and relations are constant themes. The struggle over language, in countries that are very often ex-colonies, conveys the frequent overlap between feminist and postcolonial focuses. The diversity of Englishes on stages from Singapore to South Africa is a lovely curtain call to this theater festival.

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Reviews

This exciting new collection edited by Alan P. Barr will serve as a vital text in any course that aims to expand the canon of modern and contemporary drama written by women in an international or global direction. It makes available for the first time significant plays by women from around the English-speaking world. (Stephen Watt, Chair, English Department, Indiana University; Author, 'Postmodern Drama/Reading the Contemporary Stage'; Editor, 'A Century of Irish Drama: Widening the Stage') In this important and groundbreaking companion volume to his anthology of plays by European women ('Modern Women Playwrights of Europe'), Alan P. Barr makes available eleven postcolonial theatrical works written in English by non-European women from such politically and economically diverse countries as Canada, Ghana, Ireland, Nigeria, Australia, South Africa, and Singapore. Despite their widely differing social, economic, and political situations, these women demonstrate common concerns for their histories and identities as well as remarkably similar attitudes and yearnings. Comprising a symphony of Englishes, their plays will surely enlighten and delight readers wherever English and theater are valued. (Patricia W. O'Connor, Charles Phelps Taft Professor Emerita of Romance Languages and Literatures, University of Cincinnati; Author, 'Mujeres sobre mujeres en los albores del Siglo XXI/One-Act Plays by Women about Women in the Early Years of the 21st Century')

In this important and groundbreaking companion volume to his anthology of plays by European women ('Modern Women Playwrights of Europe'), Alan P. Barr makes available eleven postcolonial theatrical works written in English by non-European women from such politically and economically diverse countries as Canada, Ghana, Ireland, Nigeria, Australia, South Africa, and Singapore. Despite their widely differing social, economic, and political situations, these women demonstrate common concerns for their histories and identities as well as remarkably similar attitudes and yearnings. Comprising a symphony of Englishes, their plays will surely enlighten and delight readers wherever English and theater are valued. -- Patricia W. O'Connor

Author Information

The Editor: Alan P. Barr received his doctorate from the University of Rochester in 1964 and has been teaching and writing about modern drama, Victorian literature, and film ever since. He is the author of Victorian Stage Pulpiteer: Bernard Shaw's Crusade (1974), and editor of Major Prose of Thomas Henry Huxley (1997), Thomas Henry Huxley's Place in Science and Letters: Centenary Essays (1997), and Modern Women Playwrights of Europe (2001), Barr has also published a number of articles in major journals, most recently on Dickens's David Copperfield. He is a professor in the English department and a member of the women's studies faculty at Indiana University Northwest.

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