Aston Elaine. Feminist views on the English stage. Women playwrights, 1990-2000
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Notes to pages 96–9
born’ (Crave,p.159), and B’s ‘impossible’ inheritance of a broken nose
from his father (Crave,p.162).
62 There is a reference on p.187 to ES3, which I understand in the light
of the dedication of Cleansed – ‘For the patients and staff of ES3’–
to refer to a clinic or ward of a clinic where Kane was treated for
depression.
63 ‘Drama with Balls’, Sarah Kane, Guardian, 20 August 1998,p.12.
6 performing identities
1 See Caryl Churchill, Cloud Nine,inPlays One (London: Methuen,
1985), p.283.AnnaMarieSmith,New Right Discourse on Race and
Sexuality: Britain, 1968–1990 (Cambridge University Press: Cam-
bridge, 1994) states that ‘opinion polls found that homophobic atti-
tudes both became more common and increased in severity in the
late 1980s’ (p.16).
2 Anna Marie Smith, ibid., p.198.
3 A similar homophobic response occurred on the performance scene
in America at roughly the same time. In 1990 the NEA (National En-
dowment for the Arts) decided to defund four artists, three of whom
were gay, while the other, Karen Finley, conjures the abject, defiling,
contaminating body through her work.
4 It was repealed in Scotland in 2000.
5 Sue-Ellen Case, The Domain-Matrix: Performing Lesbian at the End
of Print Culture (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University
Press, 1996), p.11.
6 For further discussion of this point see Janelle Reinelt, ‘Staging the
Invisible: The Crisis of Visibility in Theatrical Representation’, Text
and Performance Quarterly, 14 (1994), pp.1–11.
7 ‘The essentialist risk’ is taken from lesbian critic Teresa De Lauretis,
quoted and explained in Case, The Domain-Matrix,p.12.
8 Sandra Freeman, Putting Your Daughters on the Stage: Lesbian Thea-
tre from the 1970s to the 1990s (London: Cassell, 1997), pp.136–65.
9 Ibid., p.136.
10 Judith Butler, ‘Imitation and Gender Insubordination’, in Diana Fuss,
ed., Inside/Out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories (London: Routledge,
1991), pp.13–31, pp.13–14.
199
Notes to pages 99–104
11 The radical lesbian label has been used reductively against Sarah
Daniels since Masterpieces. While readers might reasonably expect
to find her work discussed in this chapter, I chose to present her
theatre in the themed chapter on abuse (Chapter 3), in part to upset
the expectation that her work only gets taken up in a lesbian context
or is ‘abused’ by it.
12 Mary McCusker, Monstrous Regiment interview in Elaine Aston,
ed., Feminist Theatre Voices (Loughborough: Loughborough Theatre
Texts, 1997), p.71. For Lavery’s comments on her lack of ‘mainstream
recognition’ see her interview in Heidi Stephenson and Natasha
Langridge, eds., Rage and Reason: Women Playwrights on Playwrit-
ing (London: Methuen, 1997), pp.105–14,p.107.
13 Lavery’s first production at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre was
actually in the 1980s when Monstrous Regiment produced Origin of
the Species on the Studio stage in 1984.In2002 Frozen was revived
for the National Theatre, albeit like Churchill’s The Skriker for the
Cottesloe, the studio stage, and A Wedding Story transferred in 2001
to the Soho Theatre, London.
14 Bryony Lavery, Her Aching Heart,inPlays 1 (London: Methuen,
1998), p.99.
15 Claire Grove in ‘The Women’s Theatre Group’, interview, in Elaine
Aston, ed., Feminist Theatre Voices,p.43.
16 Diana Fuss, ed., Inside/Out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories
(London: Routledge, 1991), p.1.
17 Lynda Hart, Fatal Women: Lesbian Sexuality and the Mark of
Aggression (London: Routledge, 1994), p.42.
18 Jill Posener’s Any Woman Can is published in Jill Davis, ed., Lesbian
Plays (London: Methuen, 1987).
19 Fatal Women,p.16.
20 Du Maurier’s novel opens, ‘Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley
again’. Lavery’s attraction to Du Maurier (bi-sexual ‘mistress’ of his-
torical romance), is demonstrated in her adaptation for radio of A
High Wind in Jamaica (2000) and My Cousin Rachel (1994).
21 For a discussion of venues and lesbian theatre, see Sandra Freeman,
Putting Your Daughters on the Stage, Chapter 8,‘ALookatVenues’,
pp.124–35.
200
Notes to pages 104–10
22 See also Two Marias in Plays 1,andFrozen, discussed later.
23 Goliath, Lavery’s adaptation of the Beatrix Campbell study (dis-
cussed in Chapter 7) also opens with a monologue by a dead
driver.
24 The first series of Friends was shown in 1994–5. Other comedy se-
ries towards the close of the decade, however, such as the American
show Will and Grace (1998) or the British series Gimme, Gimme,
Gimme (1999) have examined friendships between roommates who
are straight and gay.
25 Kevin Elyot’s 1995 gay play for the Royal Court, My Night with
Reg works in a similar way. Drawing on conventions of the ‘drawing
room’ play, Elyot overturns expectations of a bourgeois family drama
by populating his domestic interior with a circle of gay friends to
create his black comedy about Aids.
26 See also Lavery’s Origin of the Species in Plays 1, which is set on
New Year’s Eve, and offers a feminist slant to the subject of evolution
as Molly ‘births’ and educates an ancestral ‘daughter’, Victoria, to go
out into the world.
27 Explained in author’s correspondence with Lavery, 2003.
28 A Wedding Story (London: Faber, 2000), Scene Ten, pp.48–51.
29 Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of
Pollution and Taboo (London: Routledge, 1966), pp.36–7.
30 See for example Scene Five in A Wedding Story that recounts Peter
and Evelyn’s wedding and includes a description of Peter’s suit that
meant, as Sally says, that ‘you couldn’t see how packed his lunchbox
was . . . you could only speculate as the size and magnificence of his
fishing tackle’ (p.34).
31 Peggy Phelan, Unmarked: The Politics of Performance (London:
Routledge, 1993), p.4.
32 When Robin fails to cope with the facts of his mother’s illness, Lavery
instructs that he ‘alchemises’themintofilm(A Wedding Story,
p.57). This is Robin’s key strategy for coping with his mother’s ill-
ness and other situations that he finds difficult – for example his
estrangement from his children: if he cannot be with them, he can
fantasise the film script in which they come to seek him out (see
Scene Seventeen).
201
Notes to pages 110–15
33 For a detailed analysis of this point, see Lynda Hart, ‘Identity and
Seduction: Lesbians in the Mainstream’ in Lynda Hart and Peggy
Phelan, Acting Out: Feminist Performances (Ann Arbor: The Uni-
versity of Michigan Press, 1993), pp.119–37. Hart’s analysis in this
essay focuses on the Split Britches show, Anniversary Waltz, which
visually and controversially presented the lesbian relationship of per-
formers Lois Weaver and Peggy Shaw in a wedding context.
34 In 1994 Nagy also had the following plays produced in America:
Trip’s Cinch (Actors’ Theatre of Louisville); Girl Bar (written in
1988, Celebration Theatre Los Angeles), and an adaptation of
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (Denver Centre Theatre,
1994).
35 In Phyllis Nagy, Plays One (London: Methuen, 1998), p.vi.
36 My views expressed in this paragraph are consequent upon detailed
study of Nagy’s theatre and extended discussion with the playwright.
37 Guardian, 4 December 1995,p.7.
38 Phyllis Nagy, interview, in Heidi Stephenson and Natasha Langridge,
eds., Rage and Reason: Women Playwrights on Playwriting (London:
Methuen, 1997), p.27.
39 Guardian, 21 September 1998,p.13.
40 See Phyllis Nagy, afterword to Weldon Rising, in Annie Castledine,
ed., Plays By Women: Ten (London: Methuen, 1994), p.144.
41 Ibid.
42 Weldon Rising originally was published in Plays International in
1992.
43 Stephenson and Langridge, eds., Rage and Reason,p.24.
44 This makes the matricide of Butterfly Kiss rather different, for ex-
ample, to that staged in Martin McDonagh’s The Beauty Queen of
Leenane (1996) where the domestic, social constraints of a harsh and
isolated rural Irish setting ultimately give way to a portrait of filial
madness.
45 One other character also has a direct address moment: Teddy Roo-
sevelt Hayes, Lily’s first lover (see Butterfly Kiss,p.66). The lawyer’s
name ‘Trouver’ is an interesting play on words – trouver, meaning to
‘find’ in French. Similarly, Nagy playfully assigns presidential over-
tones to Teddy’s surname.
202
Notes to pages 115–18
46 Tallulah Bankhead, Bryony Lavery (Bath, Somerset: Absolute Press,
1999).
47 Sloan keeps a photograph of Christine in his wallet which Jenny
steals, leaving a photograph of herself, age 5, that her father also
keeps in the wallet, in full view: ‘young Lily, hidden, at last, by
nothing’ (Butterfly Kiss,p.87).
48 For commentary on this see Jeremy Kingston’s review for The Times,
reproduced in Theatre Record, 9–22 April 1994,pp.447–8.
49 For an analysis of the centrality of the father to Lily’s life and the pos-
sibility that ‘Lily attempts to save Jenny from Sloan through murder’,
see Claudia Barnett, ‘Phyllis Nagy’s Fatal Women’, Modern Drama,
42, 1999,pp.28–44,p.31.
50 Reviews cited are collected in Theatre Record, 26 February–11 March
1995,pp.266–70.
51 Phyllis Nagy, ‘Hold Your Nerve: Notes for a Young Playwright’, in
David Edgar, ed., State of Play: Playwrights on Playwriting (London:
Faber and Faber, 1999), pp.123–32,p.125, observes that:
critics report on them [plays] as if they can be reduced to their
literal, factual components for the benefit of any potential
audience. And when it is impossible to attain either an instant
understanding of plays or an instant sense of how to describe
them for others, the natural tendency of commentary is to
reject such work as being incoherent or incomprehensible.
52 In The Sunday Times John Peter wrote that ‘Nagy uses the elements
of drama – characters (sort of), motivation (vaguely), and the dynam-
ics of plotting (arbitrarily)’, reproduced in Theatre Record, 26 Febru-
ary – 11 March 1995,pp.269–70,p.270.
53 Nightingale, The Times, reproduced in Theatre Record, 26 Febru-
ary – 11 March 1995,p.268.
54 Steven Pimlott, interview with David Benedict, Features, Indepen-
dent, 7 January 1998,p.14. With Pimlott, Nagy had found the
kind of successful director–writer partnership of, for example, Caryl
Churchill and Max Stafford-Clark, a success perhaps in part due to
Pimlott’s background in opera and musicals finding affinity with
Nagy’s own music training.
203
Notes to pages 118–25
55 Michael Billington also wrote that while The Strip is ‘bewildering
and hallucinatory’ it also ‘has a built-in structure’ (Guardian review,
reproduced in Theatre Record, 26 February – 11 March 1995,p.266).
56 In his review for the Independent, Paul Taylor suggested an affinity
between Otto Mink and the Duke in Shakespeare’s Measure for Mea-
sure, Theatre Record, 26 February – 11 March 1995, pp.268–9,p.269.
57 See Nagy’s commentary on this in Rage and Reason,pp.26–7.
58 Nagy describes Ava as her ‘commentary on modern womanhood
gone berserk’ (Rage and Reason,p.24).
59 For more on this point, see Nagy’s commentary in State of Play,
p.125.
60 Nagy with Mel Kenyon, Guardian, 4 December 1995,p.7.
61 Never Land played in the Court’s studio venue, temporarily housed
in The Ambassadors, West Street (during the period of the Royal
Court refurbishment). Never Land was originally commissioned by
Hampstead Theatre, but the production fell through when Nagy re-
fused to make changes to her script. While the Court had also turned
Never Land down, it finally got taken on as a co-production with
Helen McCory’s company, The Foundry.
62 See Never Land (London: Methuen, 1998), pp.52–6.Muchofthe
comedy in Fawlty Towers centred on the way hotelier Basil Fawlty
(played by John Cleese) mistreated his Spanish waiter Manuel. The
episode acted out is the one in which the hotel has German guests
and creates the occasion for anti-German humour, specifically about
the Second World War.
63 Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967) starred Spencer Tracy and
Katherine Hepburn as the father and mother who have to come to
terms with the daughter’s (Katharine Houghton) decision to marry a
black doctor (Sidney Poitier).
7 feminist connections to a multicultural
‘scene’
1 Winsome Pinnock in David Edgar, ed., State of Play: Playwrights on
Playwriting (London: Faber and Faber, 1999), p.58.
2 The Methuen Plays by Women series began under Michelene
Wandor’s editorship in 1982. The first volume of Black Plays was
204
Notes to pages 125–7
published in 1987, followed by two further volumes in 1989 and
1995. Jacqueline Rudet, for example, had Money to Live published
in Volume Five of the Plays by Women series and Basin was pub-
lished in the first volume of Black Plays.
3 Patricia Hilaire, Paulette Randall and Bernardine Evaristo founded
Theatre of Black Women in 1982. Playwright Jacqueline Rudet
set up Iamni-Faith in 1982. Later in 1990, Denise Wong also
founded Women’s Troop as a ‘sister’ company to Black Mime
Theatre.
4 The Birmingham-based group, Women and Theatre, also sought
to move toward a multi-racial composition in the late 1980s. For
further details of both groups and their multi-racial aims, see
Elaine Aston Introduction to Feminism and Theatre (London: Rout-
ledge, 1995), Chapter 6, ‘Black Women, Shaping Feminist Theatre’,
pp.78–91.
5 Beatrix Campbell, Goliath: Britain’s Dangerous Places (London:
Methuen, 1993).
6 Ibid., p.107.
7 Ibid., p.109.
8 Caryl Churchill, Cloud Nine,inPlays One (London: Methuen, 1985),
p.251.
9 Spivak, ‘Criticism, Feminism and the Institution’, 1984 interview
with Elizabeth Grosz, published in Sarah Harasym, ed., The Post-
Colonial Critic: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues (London: Rout-
ledge, 1990), pp.1–16,p.9.
10 Heidi Safia Mirza, ed., Black British Feminism: A Reader (London:
Routledge, 1997), p.9.
11 Pratibha Parmar, ‘Other Kinds of Dreams’, Feminist Review, 31,
Spring 1989,pp.55–65,p.57.
12 M. Jacqui Alexander and Chandra Talpade Mohanty, eds., Feminist
Genealogies, Colonial Legacies, Democratic Futures (London: Rout-
ledge, 1997), p.xix.
13 Although Spivak notes that ‘essentialising’ and ‘universalising’ have
their strategic uses. See ‘Criticism, Feminism and the Institution’,
p.11.
14 Alexander and Mohanty, eds., Feminist Genealogies, p.xxxi.
205
Notes to pages 128–31
15 ‘Breaking Down the Door’ is the title of Winsome Pinnock’s essay in
Vera Gottlieb and Colin Chambers, eds., Theatre in a Cool Climate
(Oxford: Amber Lane Press, 1999), pp.27–38.
16 Winsome Pinnock, ‘Breaking Down the Door’, p.33 and p.29.For
more views on this subject see comments from Michael Billington’s
interviewees (who include Nicolas Kent, Tricycle Theatre), in ‘White
Out’, Guardian, 18 October 2000.
17 Explained in Heidi Stephenson and Natasha Langridge, eds., Rage
and Reason: Women Playwrights on Playwriting (London: Methuen,
1997), McLeod interview, pp.98–104; Gupta interview, pp.115–21.
18 Stephenson and Langridge, eds., Rage and Reason,p.116.
19 Ibid., pp.103–4.
20 Pinnock’s Leave Taking is published in Kate Harwood, ed., First
Run: New Plays by New Writers (London : Nick Hern Books, 1989),
pp.139–89.
21 Jenny McLeod, Raising Fires (London: Bush Theatre, 1994). Raising
Fires is reminiscent of Miller’s The Crucible, but, like Churchill’s
Vinegar Tom, removes martyred masculinity as the dramatic focus
to concentrate more fully on witchcraft as a site of social, gender,
and in McLeod’s case, racial, prejudice.
22 Bonnie Greer, Munda Negra, in Yvonne Brewster, ed., Black Plays 3
(London: Methuen, 1995), pp.41–99.
23 Edgar, ed., State of Play,p.58.
24 Kadija George, ed., Six Plays by Black and Asian Women Writers
(London: Aurora Metro Press, 1993). The volume also contains a
series of essays treating aspects of theatre and playwriting by black
and Asian women.
25 Jenny McLeod, Island Life,inMonstrous Regiment, compiled by
Gillian Hanna (London: Nick Hern Books, 1991), pp.147–212,p.155.
26 See Judith Johnson, ‘Afterword: Uganda’, in Pamela Edwardes,
ed., Frontline Intelligence 3: New Plays for the Nineties (London:
Methuen, 1995), p.133.
27 Winsome Pinnock, Talking in Tongues is published in Yvonne
Brewster, ed., Black Plays 3 (London: Methuen, 1995), pp.171–227.
28 Edgar, ed., State of Play,p.58.
206
Notes to pages 131–8
29 Winsome Pinnock, interview, in Heidi Stephenson and Natasha
Langridge, eds., Rage and Reason: Women Playwrights on Playwrit-
ing (London: Methuen, 1997), p.49.
30 Meenakshi Ponnuswami, ‘Small Island People: Black British Women
Playwrights’, in Elaine Aston and Janelle Reinelt, eds., The Cam-
bridge Companion to Modern British Women Playwrights (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp.217–34,p.224.
31 Ibid., p.224.
32 See also Bonnie Greer’s Munda Negra for engagement with this
trauma in the representation of Greer’s art critic Anna Eastman.
33 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble (London: Routledge, 1990).
34 In her later study, Bodies that Matter (London: Routledge, 1993), But-
ler brings race more fully into the frame, arguing the need for white
feminism to ‘contest’ the idea ‘that sexual difference is more primary
or more fundamental than other kinds of difference, including racial
difference’ (p.181).
35 Stephenson and Langridge, eds., Rage and Reason,p.52.
36 Edgar, ed., State of Play,p.59.
37 See Winsome Pinnock, Mules (London: Faber and Faber, 1996), p.52.
38 Stephenson and Langridge, eds., Rage and Reason,p.52.
39 Alexander and Mohanty, eds., Feminist Genealogies, p.xii.
40 ‘Breaking Down the Door’, p.36.
41 Reviews collected in Theatre Record, 22 April–5 May 1996,p.323.
42 Temba, formed in 1972, lasted twenty years, but lost its funding in
1992.
43 Both of these plays have also been broadcast on Radio 4 and both won
CRE Race in the Media Awards for Drama. Women of the Dust had
an Indian tour in 1993. Also for radio, Bhuchar, along with Shaheen
Khan has written a series for BBC Radio 4, Girlies (following the
lives of four Asian women).
44 Ruth Carter, Women of the Dust (London: Nick Hern Books, 1999),
p.17.
45 For further discussion of the complexity of racial identities that
belies an idea of ‘the British character’ as homogenous, see Mary
Karen Dahl, ‘Postcolonial British Theatre’, in J. Ellen Gainor, ed.,
207
Notes to pages 138–44
Imperialism and Theatre: Essays on World Theatre, Drama and Per-
formance (London: Routledge, 1995), pp.38–55,p.46.
46 Jatinder Verma, ‘Cultural Transformations’ in Theodore Shank, ed.,
Contemporary British Theatre (Basingstoke: Macmillan), pp.55–61,
p.58.
47 Black British Feminism,pp.262–3.
48 Kiranjit Ahluwalia, quoted in Pragna Patel, ‘Third Wave Feminism
and Black Women’s Activism’, in Heidi Safia Mirza, ed., Black
British Feminism,pp.255–68,p.262. In support of Ahluwalia’s claim
for the hidden suffering of Asian women in Britain, Patel gives statis-
tics for suicide rates of Asian women in Britain between the ages of
16 and 35 as being three times the national average (Black British
Feminism,p.263).
49 Tanika Gupta, interview, in Rage and Reason,p.117. Gupta has since
had residences at and work staged by the Soho Theatre Company and
the Royal National Theatre. See chapter 9 for details.
50 The Khans have one more child: their eldest, Nazir, not seen in the
play, but frequently spoken about on account of how he has already
left home after violently quarrelling with George over the possibility
of an arranged marriage.
51 Ayub Khan-Din, East is East (London: Nick Hern Books, 1997), p.45.
52 The first British Asian soap, Family Pride, was broadcast on Channel
4 in 1991.In1996, BBC Radio 4 launched an Asian sketch show,
Goodness Gracious Me, that transferred to television where it has
proved highly popular and successful.
53 Ella’s working-class identity is foregrounded in the production
through the interpretation of the role by Linda Bassett. Bassett is
closely identified with socially orientated roles on account of her sev-
eral performances in plays by, among others, Churchill and Werten-
baker.
54 The Story of M is published with images and text in SuAndi, ed., 4
For More (Manchester: ArtBlacklive Publication, 2002).
55 Influenced by Ntozake Shange, Kay’s work, notably Chiaroscuro
(1986) always has tended towards the experimental, more recently
evidenced in her creation of a poetry text for a music-theatre
production Twice Through the Heart (1997). For a description of
208