ABSTRACT
In this volume we argue that maternity – both public and private, physically embodied and enacted – must be considered performative and that the maternal body, as a result, functions as a potent space for cultural conflict, a site of imagination and contest. Texts and performances by male playwrights creating scripts for playhouses, boy actors performing women’s parts on stage, men and women writing for publication, and women penning diaries and prayers in their closets, work in dialogue to reveal the culture’s intricacies, complexities and anxieties about maternity.
