Michelene Wandor

133 p. ; 20 cm

In this extensively revised and updated edition of her classic work, Look Back in Gender, Michelene Wandor confirms the symbiotic relationship between drama and gender in a provocative look at key, representative British plays from the last fifty years. Repositioning the text at the heart of theatre studies, Wandor surveys plays by Ayckbourn, Beckett, Churchill, Daniels, Friel, Hare, Kane, Osborne, Pinter, Ravenhill, Wertenbaker, Wesker and others. Her nuanced argument, central to any analysis of contemporary drama, discusses: the imperative of gender in the playwright's imagination the function of gender as a major determinant of the text's structural and narrative drives the impact of socialism and feminisim on post-war British drama, and the relevance of feminist dynamics in drama differences in the representation of the fmaily, sexuality and the mother, before and after 1968 the impact of the slogan that the 'personal is political' on contemporary form and content.

Wandor has written a history of creative writing in the UK, analysing its complex relationship with English and literary theory.

"This book takes a radical approach to writing drama. Combining an understanding of theory with extensive experience of teaching dramatic writing, Michelene Wandor has written a succinct and scholarly history of approaches to the craft. She charts its pedagogy in relation to university Drama departments, Performance Studies and creative writing, and analyses how-to manuals of dramatic writing, deconstructing their underlying principles. She argues for a radical rehabilitation of the dramatist at the centre of the text-producing process." "The book includes practical guidelines for classroom/workshop approaches to the pedagogy of dramatic writing. The Art of Writing Drama bridges the pedagogic and vocational, the academic and the professional. The book will be indispensable to academic courses, adult education classes, and anywhere the art of writing drama is taught."--Jacket.