American Women Playwrights and Violence against Women

Abstract

Women’s theater in the United States has a long, still insufficiently acknowledged history. It is a theater that has changed with the times, acquiring new political and theoretical biases, and so it does not lend itself to one-dimensional definitions: should all plays written by women be considered as feminist plays? If they are written for women? If they are about women’s problems and preoccupations—but written for a general audience, or even specifically for a male spectator? If, in more or less sensational fashion, they overturn patriarchal expectations of the well-made play? Many dramatists and critics have delineated their definitions. As far back as 1914, Florence Kiper wrote that a play written by a woman is readily recognized as such because a woman playwright “does not attempt to imitate the masculine viewpoint” and she “sees the feminine experience through feminine temperament” (928).