Staging Politics and Gender (PDF)

political movements of the period. The names of Louise Michel, Nelly Roussel, Vera Starkoff, Mdeleine Pelletier and Marie Lenéru are almost unknown in the context of theatre history. This publication restores them to their rightful place and will be an essential volume in all libraries specialising in theatre studies. In the year when the Nobel prize went to Elfriede Jellinek, known partly for her play that portrays the struggles of Nora once she leaves her "doll's house", it is particularly good to see this study of Nora's contemporary sisters appearing." - David Bradby, Professor of Drama and Theatre Studies, Royal Holloway, University of London.

"The historical continuities highlighted by Beach are among the most valuable qualities of this book. It is now possible to contextualize properly Apollinaire's Mamelles de Tiresias - a nativist, antifeminist play on the burlesque mode - in the face of the feminists' early struggles for abortion and birth-control, and their works for the stage promoting women's issues. Madeleine Pelletier's tragic fate - a medical doctor, she was institutionalized as deranged - is only the best known case of the repression and censorship feminists were exposed to a century ago. The very history of feminist playwrights, journalists and militants of the Belle Epoque has largely been ignored so Beach's book brings both a sense of wonder and relief. Now we have new, fascinating, readable evidence of the debates on marriage and procreation women playwrights produced and brought live to the people. The alliance of socialism and feminism -such as we have applauded it late in the century with Mnouchkine or Duras -is shown as another major phase in the dialectics of politics and art, one illustrated by an Olympe de Gouges two centuries ago. This is a work of superb scholarship, sobriety of tone and style; it conveys admiration and respect for her 'subjects', five women playwrights at the turn of the century. It opens a totally fresh, exciting window on the era : those struggles were stiffled by WWI and Simone de Beauvoir grew up mostly sheltered from them, by circumstance and education. No doubt, the author of The Second Sex - who tried her own, modest sally on stage with Les Bouches inutiles - would have fully shared our enthusiasm for this compelling contribution to the writing of French women's cultural history." - Christiane P. Makward, Professor of French, Francophone, and Women's Studies, Pennsylvania State University"This important and useful study brings extensive and original archive-based research to illuminate an area of French theatre that has been doubly neglected: the anarchist and socialist people's drama of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries . . . a text that should be in all libraries concerned with late nineteenth-century cultural history." - H-France