Cermatori - Review of Neoliberalism and Global Theatres (original) (raw)
Related papers
2017
George Bernard Shaw, who introduced social realism to the British stage, is considered to be the most significant playwright of the Victorian era. In his plays, he challenged the typical Victorian representation of female characters and introduced a new woman type who stands as a powerful and independent figure. Shaw's female characters can be analysed in line with the suffragette movement, the fight given by British women to gain their right to vote. In this regard, Shaw's play Mrs Warren's Profession exemplifies a female character who can be considered as an advocate for female liberation and power. On the other hand, his play Press Cuttings, which was specifically written to support the suffragette movement, neither exemplifies the new woman image presented by Shaw in his plays nor contributes to the suffragette movement. Hence, this study aims to discuss the theme of the rights of women and to focus on George Bernard Shaw's Mrs Warren's Profession and Press Cuttings by means of Shaw's involvement in and support for the suffragette movement from the Victorian to the Edwardian era.
Motherliness and Independent Qualities of Women Characters in George Bernard Shaw’s Plays
International Journal of Innovative Technology and Exploring Engineering, 2019
The Present article aims at making an in-depth study of Women Characters in George Bernard Shaw’s Plays in various directions. Shaw, the rationalist has drawn his women in unsentimental and unromantic terms. Most of his women are unpleasant women. As a matter of fact the world of Bernard Shaw has a large place for women. He honoured women showing in his plays that they were not only to be loved, but respected. Shaw was an almost perfect example of the shy man with an inferiority complex. Shaw's family situations and contemporary social conditions must have gone a long way in formulating his concept of woman. Shaw's inferiority complex and androgynous nature must have had considerable impact on his ideas on women.
Journal of Human and Social Sciences (JOHASS), 2023
Mrs. Warren's Profession was written in 1893 by the Irish critic and dramatist George Bernard Shaw, who introduced social realism to the British stage. First performed in 1902 in London, the text is a social critique satirizing the stereotypical Victorian norms. Reflecting Shaw's feminist ideals, the play also contributed to the development of the feminist movement. Mrs. Warren's Profession introduces the-New Woman‖ type who rebels against the stereotyped female representations and male-centered conventions of the nineteenth century. The play mainly revolves around a controversial taboo topic, prostitution. Shaw dramatizes this profession through the two untraditional female characters. Kitty Warren is an audacious woman running a brothel to provide her daughter with better life and education standards and Vivie is a highly-educated and independent woman who expostulates her mother for her profession. Mrs. Warren's Profession stresses that it is the social, economic and moral ills of the society that lead women to choose this profession. This paper, from a feminist lens, links these two non-conformist characters to navigate the ways through which the concept of the-New Woman is represented. This paper also investigates how these characters protest against the stereotypical female roles imposed on them to gain an autonomous identity within society. Thus, this study, through these two female characters, reveals how this play dethrones the myth of the-Angel in the House, the ideal Victorian woman, and sheds light on the modern feminism.
Women Playwrights: Subverting Representational Strategies
2018
Fitzpatrick explores the representation of rape and sexual violence in women’s dramatic writing since the beginning of the feminist theatre movement. The authors’ and theatre-makers’ strategies for representing violence tends to reflect specific cultural circumstances, both in the nature of the violence and in the techniques used to write and stage it. In general these place the female character’s experience at the centre of the dramatic conflict, while seeking to avoid certain pitfalls of staging rape—such exposing the female body to the scopophilic gaze of the spectators. Fitzpatrick examines these strategies, some of which are explicitly feminist, while others draw upon conventions of naturalistic and realistic dramaturgy and performance.
Attempts on (writing) her life: ethics and ontology in pro-feminist playwrighting
Does a feminist dramaturgy exist for male playwrights? The post-1990s work of British playwrights Simon Stephens, Tim Crouch and Martin Crimp variously enact an attrition between female protagonists and male writers. Appraising these "attempts on (writing) her life" requires a feminist criticality that can incorporate the unique, intersubjective relation of playwright and character. What is the gendered relationship of these actors? In the manner of Performance/Philosophy, this essay finds that Levinasian fecundity answers this call – finding a crucial space for continental philosophy in the pro-feminist movement. Drawing on the philosophical significance of “objectification”, this essay argues that ethical portrayals of gender - in Peggy Phelan’s notion of the ‘representational economy’ - bestow a responsibility upon male playwrights to explore the potential to contribute to feminist critical writing. Whether this is a matter of ontology – and the essentialism of sexual difference that accompanies such a position – is weighed against the ethics of men-writing-women.