ABSTRACT

This chapter aims at placing Wesker's cycle of one-woman plays in a tradition of one-person sketches and plays. Joyce Grenfell, a distant cousin of Draper's and a great admirer of the older woman, produced a number of one-woman shows featuring what can be best defined as monologue sketches. The American Ruth Draper took her one-woman shows on frequent tours to Britain and the rest of Europe. Like Wesker later, Draper divided many of her plays into sections, with a different protagonist in each play. Beatrice Herford is considered the pioneer of a new genre the one-woman play. Differently from the sketches previously described, she developed a single female protagonist. Finally, an important step in the development of one-woman plays was taken when a woman first took center stage with Frances Maria Kelly's Dramatic Recollections and Studies of Character. Subsequently, women like Herford, Draper, and Grenfell continued and developed the one-woman form.