Nation, Community, Self: Female Voices in Scottish Theatre from the Seventies to the Present

by Gioia Angeletti (Editor)

From the late 1960s until the present day, a significant number of women playwrights have emerged in Scottish theatre who have made a pioneering contribution to dramatic innovation and experimentation. Despite the critical reassessment of some of these authors in the last twenty years, their invaluable achievement in playwriting, within and outside Scotland, still deserves more thorough investigations and fuller acknowledgement. This work explores what is still uncharted territory by examining a selection of representative texts by Ann Marie di Mambro, Marcella Evaristi, Sue Glover, Jackie Kay, Liz Lochhead, Sharman Macdonald, and Joan Ure. The three macro-thematic areas of the book – the rewriting of the Shakespearean canon; the representation of female communities and minorities; and the conflicts between the self and society – find significant and paradigmatic expression in their dramas. All seven writers examined in this book have explored new theatrical methods, introduced aesthetic innovations and opened new perspectives to engage with the complexities of national, community and individual identities. This study will surely contribute to wider recognition of their achievement, so that their work can never again be described as “uncharted territory”.

Table of Contents

Scottish Women Dramatists from the 1970 A Reassessment

PART Writing Back to the National Bard
1. Joan Ure's Shakespearean Trilogy.
2. Re-Experiencing The Tempest for a Young The Magic Island by Liz Lochhead.
3. After Sharman MacDonald’s Sequel to Romeo and Juliet.

PART (Trans)national Communities
1. Expatriate Italians : Tally’s Blood by Ann Marie di Mambro.
2. Empowering the Female Bondagers by Sue Glover.
3. Voicing the Female The Lamplighter by Jackie Kay.

PART Self and Society
1. Imaginary and Real Female I See Myself as This Young Girl and Take Your Old Rib Back by Joan Ure.
2. Torn Selves, Conflicting Commedia by Marcella Evaristi.
3. The Anxiety of Medea by Liz Lochead.

258 pages, Paperback

First published October 25, 2018

About the author

Gioia Angeletti is Associate Professor of English Literature at the University of Parma, Italy. She has published a wide range of essays on nineteenth-century Scottish theatre and poetry, and Anglophone literature of migration and trans-culturality.

Her major authored and edited volumes include: as author, Eccentric Scotland: Three Victorian Poets. James Thomson ('B.V.'), John Davidson and James Young Geddes (2004), Lord Byron and Discourses of Otherness: Scotland, Italy and Femininity (2012) and Nation, Community, Self: Female Voices in Scottish Theatre from the Late Sixties to the Present (2018); as editor, Emancipation, Liberation and Freedom: Romantic Drama and Theatre in Britain, 1760 - 1830 (2010), East/West Encounters in Romantic Literature and Culture, an issue of the journal La questione Romantica co-edited with Lilla Maria Crisafulli (2019), and Travel, Migration, Exile, an issue of the journal La questione Romantica co-edited with Michael Bradshaw (2023).

Angeletti is Honorary Fellow of the Association for Scottish Literature. She was awarded an Honourable Mention in the Jack Medal for the 2024 award season by the International Association for the Study of Scottish Literature (IASSL) for the article 'Scottish Literature of Migration and Transculturality: Subversive Reticence and Gender Negotiations in Lay Anne Barnard's Cape Writings'.