Victorian women were exhilarated by the authoritative voice and the professional opportunity the theater offered them. In this book Kerry Powell chronicles the development of women's participation in the theater as playwrights, actresses and managers and explores the making of the Victorian actress, gender discourse and playwriting of the period, and the contributions these made to developments in the following century.

This Companion is designed for readers interested in the creation, production and interpretation of Victorian and Edwardian theater. An introduction surveying the historical period of the theater is followed by an essay contextualizing it within the culture as a whole. Succeeding chapters examine performance and production, (including music, actors, stagecraft and audience), plays and playwriting and issues of class and gender. Types of performances (such as comedy, farce, melodrama) and the economics of the theater are also analyzed.

This Companion is designed for readers interested in the creation, production and interpretation of Victorian and Edwardian theater. An introduction surveying the historical period of the theater is followed by an essay contextualizing it within the culture as a whole. Succeeding chapters examine performance and production, (including music, actors, stagecraft and audience), plays and playwriting and issues of class and gender. Types of performances (such as comedy, farce, melodrama) and the economics of the theater are also analyzed.

Victorian women were exhilarated by the authoritative voice and the professional opportunity the theater offered them. In this book Kerry Powell chronicles the development of women's participation in the theater as playwrights, actresses and managers and explores the making of the Victorian actress, gender discourse and playwriting of the period, and the contributions these made to developments in the following century.

Kerry Powell examines Wilde's plays in relation to popular theatre of the 1890s, both in England and on the Continent. Along with revealing insights into the sexual and moral politics of the era, Powell provides an indispensable basis for understanding Wilde's achievement as a playwright. At his best, Wilde reconstitutes the dramatic fashions of the era, and partly as a result his plays have prevailed over the works, many now forgotten, that they simultaneously imitate and undermine. Through his analysis, Powell looks at the plays of, among others, Arthur Shirley, Lady Violet Greville, Sydney...

'I love acting - it is so much more real than life, ' Oscar Wilde famously wrote. Acting Wilde demonstrates that Wilde's plays, fiction, and critical theory are organised by the idea that all so-called 'reality' is a mode of performance, and that the 'meanings' of life are really the scripted elements of a dramatic spectacle. Wilde's real issue was whether one could become the author of his own script, the creator of the character and role he inhabits. It was a question he struggled to answer from the beginning of his career to the end, whether in his position as the pre-eminent dramatist in...

Concise and illuminating articles explore Oscar Wilde's life and work in the context of the turbulent landscape of his time.