Women, Modernism, and Performance

In this 2004 book, Penny Farfan examines the role of women in the history of modernist theatre.

Women, Modernism, and Performance is an interdisciplinary 2004 study that considers a wide variety of sources in order to clarify the position of women within - and in relation to - modern theatre history. Penny Farfan reveals how playwrights, actors and critics transformed the representation of gender in art and life.Women, Modernism, and Performance is an interdisciplinary 2004 study that looks at a variety of texts and modes of performance in order to clarify the position of women within - and in relation to - modern theatre history. Considering drama, fiction and dance, as well as a range of performance events such as suffrage demonstrations, lectures, and legal trials, Penny Farfan expands on theatre historical narratives that note the centrality of female characters in male-authored modern plays but that do not address the efforts of women artists to develop alternatives both to mainstream theatre practice and to the patriarchal avant garde. Focusing on Henrik Ibsen, Elizabeth Robins, Ellen Terry, Virginia Woolf, Djuna Barnes, Edith Craig, Radclyffe Hall and Isadora Duncan, Farfan identifies different objectives, strategies, possibilities and limitations of feminist-modernist performance practice and suggests how the artists in question transformed the representation of gender in art and life.