ABSTRACT
This case study takes three plays to examine some of the different theoretical positions and performance styles which feminist theatre may take to ‘persuade’ the spectator of its message. Through critical practice the study returns to a number of the feminist concerns that were raised in Part One of this study. The three plays selected share the focus of ‘bodily harm’: in their different ways they illustrate how the female body is a site/sight of male violence in systems of representation. The analysis of Steaming returns to the problematics of dramatizing a feminist dynamic in a classic realist form; Heresies provides an illustration of representing a community of women defined as ‘Other’ than men; and Master-pieces is examined as a theatrical text which combines a radical-feminist politics with a materialist practice. It must be stressed that the readings offered in the case studies, here as elsewhere, are not designed to be definitive. Rather, they complement the surveying of feminist concepts and methodologies in Part One; they provide examples of reading feminist theatre texts through different theoretical positions, without seeking to propose such readings as singular or absolute.
