From Suffragette to Diversity of Voices in Feminist Drama: Pam Gems’s Dusa, Fish, Stas and Vi

Abstract

Feminist drama, as a suitable genre for the discussion of debates over different views within the feminist movement itself, developed in parallel with women’s movement. It is possible to find the examples of first-wave drama in England in the plays on women written for the groups of suffragette theatre such as the Actress’s Franchise League supported by the suffragette movement that was mainly an effort of women to gain the right to vote. These plays were written and performed to raise awareness. After the development of suffragette drama, the abolition of censorship in Britain by the Act of Parliament in 1968 may be regarded as a landmark and as the second step in terms of the development of feminist drama in England because it gave the feminist playwrights of the time the opportunity to deal with subjects that were formerly regarded as taboo. Hence, as opposed to the first-wave; that is, suffragette drama, the second-wave post-war feminist drama was characterised by representing women’s issues in a larger scale. Almost all woman playwrights with different attitudes were able to reflect their concerns over women’s problems on stage and most of them received consistent support from smaller, alternative theatres, and women’s companies. The purpose of this study is therefore to explore and exemplify the multiplicity or diversity of voices in post-war British feminist drama through a detailed analysis of Pam Gems’s Dusa, Fish, Stas and Vi (1976).

Keywords

• Feminist Drama
• Liberal Feminism
• Socialist Feminism
• Radical Feminism
• Suffragette Theatre
• Pam Gems
• Dusa
• Fish
• Stas and Vi