TY - BOOK AU - Cima,Gay Gibson TI - Performing Women: Female Characters, Male Playwrights, and the Modern Stage SN - 9781501722561 AV - PN1590.W64 C56 1993eb U1 - 792/.028/082 22 PY - 2018///] CY - Ithaca, NY PB - Cornell University Press KW - Acting KW - Drama KW - Male authors KW - History and criticism KW - Feminism and theater KW - Women in the theater KW - Literary Studies KW - Womens Studies KW - PERFORMING ARTS / Theater / History & Criticism KW - bisacsh N1 - Frontmatter --; Contents --; Illustrations --; Acknowledgments --; Introduction --; Chapter One. Ibsen and the Critical Actor --; Chapter Two. Strindberg and the Transformational Actor --; Chapter Three. The Brecht Collective and the Parabolic Actor --; Chapter Four. Pinter and the Cinematic Actor --; Chapter Five. Shepard and the Improvisational Actor --; Chapter Six. Beckett aJnd the No Actor --; Afterword --; Index; restricted access N2 - Some feminists criticize male playwrights for misrepresenting and thereby victimizing women through patriarchal narratives; other feminists applaud selected male playwrights as creators of "universal" women's roles. In this bold and imaginative book, Gay Gibson Cima delineates previously unacknowledged complexities in the relationship between male playwrights and female characters in the modern theatre. That relationship has been misinterpreted, she maintains, because the contributions of female actors and the variations in their actual performance conditions and styles are too often ignored.Taking into account hypothetical as well as historical performances of works by representative male playwrights from Ibsen to Beckett, Cima sheds important new light on the acting styles invented by women to create female characters on stage. Changes in performance style, Cima observes, may alter conventional modes of viewing and disrupt behavioral codes generated by a patriarchal cultural system.Performing Women is essential reading for theatre critics and historians, feminist theorists, theatre professionals and amateurs, and others interested in film and the stage UR - https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501722561 UR - https://www.degruyter.com/isbn/9781501722561 UR - https://www.degruyter.com/document/cover/isbn/9781501722561/original ER -