Acknowledgments p. 9 Introduction p. 11 The Happy Revolution: Colonial Women and the Eighteenth-Century Theater p. 29 "The New Path": Nineteenth-Century American Women Playwrights p. 38 Rachel Crothers: Broadway Feminist p. 55 Rebellion and Rejection: The Plays of p. 66 "Meeting the Outside Face to Face": Susan Glaspell, Djuna Barnes, and O'Neill's The p. 77 Emperor Jones Zoe Akins and the Age of Excess: Broadway Melodrama in the 1920s p. 86 Marriage, Madness, and Murder in Sophie Treadwell's Machinal p. 97 Gertrude Stein: Exile, Feminism, Avant-Garde in the American Theater p. 111 The Fox's Cubs: Lillian Hellman, , and p. 130 Loneliness and Longing in Selected Plays of Carson McCullers and Tennessee Williams p. 143

Lorraine Hansberry and the Great Black Way p. 151 Megan Terry's Transformational Drama: Keep Tightly Closed in a Cool Dry Place and the p. 161 Possibilities of Self No Place But the Funnyhouse: The Struggle for Identity in Three Adrienne Kennedy Playsp. 172

Whose Name, Whose Protection: Reading Alice Childress's Wedding Band p. 184 "The Poetry of a Moment": Politics and the Open Form in the Drama of Ntozake Shange p. 198

Comic Textures and Female Communities 1937 and 1977: Clare Boothe and Wendy p. 207 Wesserstein Gender Perspective and Violence in the Plays of Maria Irene Fornes and p. 218

The Ghosts of Chekhov's Three Sisters Haunt 's Crimes of the Heart p. 229 Disturbing Women: Wendy Kesselman's My Sister in This House p. 246 The Demeter Myth and Doubling in 's 'night, Mother p. 254 The Silver Lining in the Mushroom Cloud: Meredith Monk's Opera/Music Theater p. 264 Canonizing Lesbians? p. 275 Notes on the Contributors p. 293 Index p. 298 Table of Contents provided by Blackwell's Book Services and R.R. Bowker. Used with permission.