ABOUT THE WEBSITE
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Welcome to our website! We are a collection of third year students researching and discussing ‘The Discursive Representation of Women And Their Responses And Strategies of Resistance’. We wanted to delve deeper into the misogynistic double narrative that surrounds Women in Theatre and explore how these strategies of resistance have been necessary in allowing theatre to develop into what it has become within today’s society.
These women were often characterised as “difficult”. We are concerned with the progressive methods, and reactions to resistance these women had to show in order to progress in their personal career. Thinking about the limiting narratives surrounding different resistant women in theatre it was also important for us to consider these women’s resistance within their different contexts and historical periods. Vicky Featherstone, for example, resists the narratives surrounding in a vastly different way than Mary Robinson does.
Most importantly, we are investigating how even though the methods of resistance and reactions to resistance change, all of the women we are researching use their resistance to benefit their career. Therefore, these women were able to leave a cultural impact by leading successful careers. This feeds into the progression of resistance we are concerned with.
What we hope to show through our research:
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What sort of work did women do in theatre, and which work are we focusing on?
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We are looking at women who have been recorded to be resistant in theatre history. This includes actors, managers, and directors - we are not so much focusing on one specific area of work, but more on how women were resistant through their work.
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How was this work recorded and regarded?​
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This work / resistance was recorded in: Media, newspapers, portraits and pictures, journal articles, letters, and autobiographies.
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Often our research comes from reviewers, artists, and critics who are highly regarded within the theatre world, and more often than not are men. They often represented women within limiting misogynistic narratives. In this representation of women we sometimes found a double narrative at play when looking at how their work was recorded in their biographies or in autobiographical sources. Our aim is to show how our women case studies countered this double narrative of perception.
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The way resistance was regarded changes throughout the time periods we are looking into. In the earlier period women’s resistance was often regarded as problematic, and unorthodox. However, in visual resistance women often found a way around this narrative. The women we researched who worked in later periods often found a way to use their resistance to make themselves notable. In women more recently, critics' responses to women who resisted their gender roles were sometimes positive. This shows a slight development in how these defiant women fit within the context of their times and growing acceptance of these women.
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What ultimately becomes evident in the way these women’s work and resistance to representation was recorded is how their resistance to representation fed into making their careers both economically viable and successful. In resisting any negative narratives of themselves, and creating an ideology of themselves through their work and other assorted mediums connected to the theatre, they made themselves a success​​.
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How does this representation relate to historical and theatrical context?
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The limiting representations made of the women in theatre we are researching are in themselves historical context; it shows us contemporary attitudes towards women, for example, the actress as a whore narrative. Moreover, in our research we show how throughout theatre history opportunities for women expanded as more and more women fought back against patriarchal systems of control. Throughout our arguments we have kept in mind context - although the resistance of the women in the 16/1700’s can seem like drops in the ocean today, we have to be mindful that they were operating in a time when even being involved in the industry was an achievement in itself.
The representation of all these women and their resistance (whether this be through non-traditional roles, satirist plays, questioning gender norms, and resisting the actress as whore narrative) were perceived differently throughout history. Our research implies a shift towards how difficult women could slowly become more accepted in society - even if there is some way to go even today!
How will it look going forward?
We hope to present the interesting multifaceted ways the “difficult” women working in theatre resisted the limiting narratives used to suppress them, and show exactly how this resistance to oppression has helped women going forward. For example actresses like Mrs Patrick Campbell and directors such as Vicky Featherstone were able to act more freely due to the resistance of their predecessors.
The work we are doing will hopefully show how much things have changed in the last 350 years - but may also highlight why this sort of action is still needed going forward. With the damning report that 2012 was the year with the most women in theatre ever - and this has since been on the decline since - is yet further proof that this issue is far from resolved. We may have moved on from the days of women in theatre being considered ‘prostitutes’ or ‘difficult’ but that doesn’t mean that limiting narratives aren’t still used against women. The fight for equal representation must continue, and going forward it will be those of us doing this research today who must continue to resist the oppression still rife within theatre - and the wider world.