Featuring original essays by leading scholars in the field, this book explores the immense legacy of women playwrights in Irish theatre since the beginning of theTwentieth century. Chapters consider the intersecting contexts of gender, sexuality and the body in order to investigate the broader cultural, political and historical implications of representing 'woman' on the stage. In addition, a number of essays engage with representations of women by a selection of male playwrights in order to re-evaluate familiar contexts and traditions in Irish drama. Features a Foreword by Marina Carr and a useful appendix of Irish women playwrights and their works.

Foreword; M.Carr Preface; J.Reinelt Introduction: Figures at the Window; M.Sihra Interchapter I; C.Leeney Woman as Fantasy Object in Lady Gregory's Historical Tragedies; P.Murphy Writing Women for a Modern Ireland: Geraldine Cummins and Susanne Day; V.O'Donoghue Greene The Spaces Outside: Images of Women in Plays by Eva Gore-Booth and Dorothy Macardle; C.Leeney Taking Their Own Road: The Female Protagonist in Three Irish Plays by Women': L.Fitzpatrick Interchapter II; M.Sihra From Matron to Matrix: Gender and (Dis)embodiment in Beckett's Theatre; A.McMullan Beyond the Pale: Neglected Northern Irish Women Playwrights, Alice Milligan, Helen Wadell and Patricia O'Connor; M.Phelan Meta-physicality: Women Characters in the Plays of Frank McGuinness; E.Jordan Dead Women Walking: The Female Body as a Site for War in Stewart Parker's Northern Star ; R.O'Riordan Interchapter III; M.Sihra Women in Rooms: Landscapes of the Missing in Anne Devlin's Ourselves Alone ; E.Cerquoni Liminal Spaces in Éilís Ní Dhuibhne's Dún na mBan Trí Thine ( The Fort of the Fairy Women is on Fire ); A.Roche Sick, Dying, Dead, Dispersed: The Evanescence of Patriarchy in Contemporary Irish Women's Theatre; B.Singleton Marina Carr's Landscapes of Play and Possibility; M.Sihra Afterword: The Act and the Word; O.Fouéré Appendix: List of Irish Women Playwrights and their Key Works Index