You are expected to behave... Use the right words Act appropriately Don't break the rules Just behave. This play is not well behaved. Alice Birch examines the language, behaviour and forces that shape women in the 21st century and asks what's stopping us from doing something truly radical to change them. Winner of the George Devine Award for Most Promising New Playwright 2014.
Through a series of arresting vignettes and a collection of nameless characters, Alice Birch examines the language, behaviour and forces that shape women in the 21st century. The play asks what's stopping us from doing something truly radical to change them? Written in response to the provocation that well-behaved women seldom make history, the play is an assault on the language that has fueled violence against women throughout history. Problematic language frequently attached to women is interrogated, from lazy sexist clichés to the conventions around a marriage proposal. Through doing so, the play rails against the conventions of work, sex, motherhood, aging and love. Revolt. She said. Revolt again was first performed at the 2014 Midsummer Mischief Festival in Stratford-upon-Avon. It transferred to the Royal Court Upstairs and was more recently produced at New York's Soho Rep. It is published here in a Student Edition alongside commentary and notes by Marissia Fragkou, who locates the play in our contemporary political and cultural context (including second- and third-wave feminism, and the #MeToo movement).
Through a series of arresting vignettes and a collection of nameless characters, Alice Birch examines the language, behaviour and forces that shape women in the 21st century. The play asks what's stopping us from doing something truly radical to change them? Written in response to the provocation that well-behaved women seldom make history, the play is an assault on the language that has fueled violence against women throughout history. Problematic language frequently attached to women is interrogated, from lazy sexist clichés to the conventions around a marriage proposal. Through doing so, the play rails against the conventions of work, sex, motherhood, aging and love. Revolt. She said. Revolt again was first performed at the 2014 Midsummer Mischief Festival in Stratford-upon-Avon. It transferred to the Royal Court Upstairs and was more recently produced at New York's Soho Rep. It is published here in a Student Edition alongside commentary and notes by Marissia Fragkou, who locates the play in our contemporary political and cultural context (including second- and third-wave feminism, and the #MeToo movement).
"Alice Birch's new play is scored like a piece of music ... It is an extraordinary echoing text, full of pain and strange beauty. The three stories play out simultaneously on stage, the dialogue from one scene overlapping with the other two in a manner that borders on the choral ... Birch has provided a text that explores these ideas in a formally invigorating way." The Stage Three generations of women. For each, the chaos of what has come before brings with it a painful legacy. A powerful, unflinching look at a family afflicted with severe depression and mental illness. Presented as a triptych of plays performed side by side, this groundbreaking play reverberates with audiences and readers. Published for the first time in Methuen Drama's Modern Classics series, this edition features a brand new introduction by Ava Davies.
PIG / SISSY: ‘Are you finding this harder to hear, is this more difficult on your stomachs because we are women.’ This is about pornography. This is an interview. This is an intervention. This is an interrogation. We’re recording now.We want to pull its plug out. We want to stop its heartbeat. We want to blow its brains out and begin again. We know exactly what we’re doing. We’re not stupid. An unsettling, powerful new piece of theatre tackling pornography and violence against women.
Julia Kristeva extends the definition of revolt beyond politics per se. May '68 in France expressed a fundamental version of freedom: not freedom to succeed, but freedom to revolt. Political revolutions ultimately betray revolt because they cease to question themselves. Revolt, as I understand it—psychic revolt, analytic revolt, artistic revolt—refers to a permanent state of questioning, of transformations, an endless probing of appearances. In this book, Julia Kristeva extends the definition of revolt beyond politics per se. Kristeva sees revolt as a state of permanent questioning and transformation, of change that characterizes psychic life and, in the best cases, art. For her, revolt is not simply about rejection and destruction—it is a necessary process of renewal and regeneration.
How insurgencies—enabled by digital devices and a vast information sphere—have mobilized millions of ordinary people around the world. In the words of economist and scholar Arnold Kling, Martin Gurri saw it coming. Technology has categorically reversed the information balance of power between the public and the elites who manage the great hierarchical institutions of the industrial age: government, political parties, the media. The Revolt of the Public tells the story of how insurgencies, enabled by digital devices and a vast information sphere, have mobilized millions of ordinary people around the world. Originally published in 2014, The Revolt of the Public is now available in an updated edition, which includes an extensive analysis of Donald Trump’s improbable rise to the presidency and the electoral triumphs of Brexit. The book concludes with a speculative look forward, pondering whether the current elite class can bring about a reformation of the democratic process and whether new organizing principles, adapted to a digital world, can arise out of the present political turbulence.
Juniper is looking for love, Robert is trying to avoid it, Ollie doesn't know what it is and Meg has resigned herself to never having it. As these four people move through a July day in London, they orbit each other, unaware that they are hurtling towards one moment that could devastate them all. Many Moons opened at groundbreaking Theatre 503 in summer 2011.
It was the 1960s -- a time of economic boom and social strife. Young women poured into the workplace, but the "Help Wanted" ads were segregated by gender and the "Mad Men" office culture was rife with sexual stereotyping and discrimination. Lynn Povich was one of the lucky ones, landing a job at Newsweek, renowned for its cutting-edge coverage of civil rights and the "Swinging Sixties." Nora Ephron, Jane Bryant Quinn, Ellen Goodman, and Susan Brownmiller all started there as well. It was a top-notch job -- for a girl -- at an exciting place. But it was a dead end. Women researchers sometimes became reporters, rarely writers, and never editors. Any aspiring female journalist was told, "If you want to be a writer, go somewhere else." On March 16, 1970, the day Newsweek published a cover story on the fledgling feminist movement entitled "Women in Revolt," forty-six Newsweek women charged the magazine with discrimination in hiring and promotion. It was the first female class action lawsuit--the first by women journalists -- and it inspired other women in the media to quickly follow suit. Lynn Povich was one of the ringleaders. In The Good Girls Revolt, she evocatively tells the story of this dramatic turning point through the lives of several participants. With warmth, humor, and perspective, she shows how personal experiences and cultural shifts led a group of well-mannered, largely apolitical women, raised in the 1940s and 1950s, to challenge their bosses -- and what happened after they did. For many, filing the suit was a radicalizing act that empowered them to "find themselves" and fight back. Others lost their way amid opportunities, pressures, discouragements, and hostilities they weren't prepared to navigate. The Good Girls Revolt also explores why changes in the law didn't solve everything. Through the lives of young female journalists at Newsweek today, Lynn Povich shows what has -- and hasn't -- changed in the workplace.
