(Photo of theatre designer and activist Edith Craig) by Shannon Cron Much like today, the theatre scene throughout the 1900’s had politically passionate women at their helm. One of the […]

Fourteenth-century author Xia Tingzhi gives biographies of 117 female actors in his Qinglou ji qianzhu (“Green Bower Collection”). Many of these women “portrayed male military figures, demonstrating their artistic mastery […]

“No one pays attention to anything but the plays, nor do you hear anything among the people but the words: ‘I am of Flaminia’s party’ and ‘I am of Vincenza’s,’ […]

It’s well known that professional theatre troupes in Renaissance England included male actors only, so that the roles of, for instance, Juliet, Rosalind, Lady Macbeth, and Cleopatra were first played […]

The English writer Aphra Behn (1640-1689) penned seventeen plays, four novels, and a number of poems and short stories. Of her plays, The Rover and The Emperor of the Moon […]

As reported in “The glass curtain,” a San Diego Union-Tribune article by Anne Marie Welsh, theatre historian Melinda C. Finberg determined that “in 1779 London, nearly half the new plays […]

Minnie Maddern Fiske (1865-1932) began her stage career at the age of three, appearing in Richard III as the Duke of York in a production by her grandmother’s theatre troupe, […]

According to the 2010 U.S. Census, 50.8% of the country’s population is female. A report by the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film showed that 43% […]

In 2015, the Dramatists Guild and The Lilly Awards published The Count, a study of works produced in the United States over three theatre seasons from 2011 to 2014. They […]

Hrotsvitha (c. 935 – c. 1002), whose name means “strong voice” or “mighty shout,” wrote eight narrative poems, six plays, and two historical pieces, all in Latin. She was a […]