This book examines contemporary plays premiered between 2000 and 2022, where the action is set pre-1919. The span of just over two decades is deliberate: it's enough to provide breadth and also narrow enough that the wider cultural landscape is still recognisable in discussions.
Author Rebecca Benzie explores broader gender politics through a variety of plays – and not just those that explicitly represent feminist moments in history. She does this by focusing on – and celebrating – history plays written by female playwrights (or co-written by female playwrights), which is positive, because it was a genre that for decades seemed the preserve of the white male.
The first chapter considers the centenary of the of the First World War in 2014 and the new writing that emerged in response. The book then moves to ‘The Victorian woman’: here Benzie identifies normative aesthetic conventions for representation and their subversion, such as Rona Munro's depiction of the Victorian working class in Scuttlers, a work about the youth gangs of 19th-century Manchester.
Throughout the book, Benzie investigates re-occurring tropes and their politics in the light of current debates. She looks at cultural context and its impact on historical narratives and truths. There are also very interesting recurring discussions on heteronormative romantic plots within the works that might overlook the complexity of, for example, the historical suffrage movement. While interrogating the gender politics of work within the framework of contemporary feminism, Benzie also, inevitably and necessarily, includes discussion of the pivotal #MeToo movement.
Benzie's wrangling with concepts of ‘truth’ and ‘authenticity’ and questions of legitimacy – how the writer records facts while giving themselves the space for creative exploration – are interesting, reminding me of these concepts with regards to Verbatim Theatre. Her conclusions were also familiar: that the playwright should have a freedom to reject problematic notions of authenticity and historical accuracy in order to offer dynamic texts that reimagine the past, and furthermore offer interesting contributions to feminist debate.