Acting Women: Images of Women in Theatre (Women in Society: a Feminist List)

A study based on the question as to whether there is a boundary between playacting and the "self". The author asks if society and culture conditions women to internalize a means for survival which centers on auditioning, dressing up and wearing costume. It focuses on the revelation that beyond the literary analysis of texts it is performance which offers a key to understanding the social construction of gender as well as the ambigious position of women in the theatre. The author gives a historical analysis of the changing position of women in the theatre from English Renaissance and classical Greek comedy when men played women's roles to women playing men's roles both on the stage in theatrical costume and off the stage in social disguise. In this discourse she discloses an imbalance where women seek freedom through male dress and men achieve aesthetic creativity through acting women.