Essays and Scripts on How Mothers Are Portrayed in the Theater: A Neglected Frontier of Feminist Scholarship

This collection examines the nexus of mothering, feminism, and theater. The work analyzes the portrayals of mothers in literature and on the performance stage, and makes a contribution to studies in dramatic literature, women's studies, feminist theory, and theater history. The thorough introduction to this book will make it a valuable classroom tool that could be used by professors of both graduate and undergraduate classes not overly familiar with theatrical history. Included in the introduction is a brief overview of the history of women in theater for the purpose of contextualizing the collected essays. Drawing upon the recent and abundant wealth of research on mothering that is applicable to our study, definitions for the terms motherhood, mothering, and mothers are clearly examined and differentiated. Finally, this work points to connections and developments among the articles, thereby, highlighting links, common themes, and colliding insights.