ABSTRACT
Australian poet and playwright Dorothy Hewett (1923–2002) has long been considered a trailblazing intervention into the male-dominated world of Australian theatre. She is known for her highly theatrical style, her sexual and subversive female characters, and her use of her own feminine and feminist ideology as material for her work. This essay introduces an excerpt from Hewett's short essay “Why Does Sally Bow?,” originally published with other introductory material as a preface to the revised 1977 edition of Hewett's play, The Chapel Perilous. This material combines elements of Hewett's autobiography and dramatic criticism, which variously offer insights into her life and her support of an Australian theatre that is both culturally specific and highly imaginative. The excerpt included here details Hewett's struggle to find an appropriate ending for The Chapel Perilous and the significance of autobiographical distance, theatrical form, and feminist ideology in that process. The essay highlights Hewett's contribution to reclaiming the maligned term “autobiographical” for a formally innovative feminist theatre of big ideas while also considering the ways in which Hewett's work and legacy as a feminist playwright are highly controversial and are negatively contextualized by her own life.
