1st Edition
Women and Age on the UK Stage Performing Aged Femininities
Introduction: Performing aged femininities
PART I Aged femininities on stage
1 Stage, film and TV representations of aged femininities
2 Fallen, falling, clinging, and crawling: The everyday age-effects of four canonical dramas on the UK stage (2009–2018)
3 The age performances of Peggy Shaw: Intersection and interoception
4 Promiscuous, circuitous and self care in the work of three veteran female performers
5 Politicising time: Inter-temporality and the aged female body-archive in avant-garde dance-theatre
PART II Interviews with four aged women performers
Part II Introduction
6 Interview with Liz Aggiss
7 Interview with Lois Weaver
8 Interview with Fisun Burgess
9 Interview with Bobby Baker
Conclusions
Biography
Bridie Moore is a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Leeds, UK. A theatre maker, teacher and facilitator, she completed her AHRC-funded PhD at the University of Sheffield in 2018.
‘This is a book vital in all senses – redressing a critical lack in scholarship, speaking to the most timely debates in theatre, performance and age studies, and sparkling with its author’s eloquence, acuity and insight.
It wears its expertise lightly but uses it incisively, drawing on decades of theatre scholarship and practice, direct contact with influential artists, and immersion in age studies – as well as Moore’s own reflexive role as a theatre maker and spectator – to bring depth and richness to its investigation of age and femininity on stage, while remaining thoroughly readable and engaging.’
Professor Elizabeth Barry, University of Warwick, Professor of Modern Literature and President of the Samuel Beckett Society
‘This exciting and engaging exploration of “veteran” female performers is an invaluable contribution to the field of theatre, performance and age. Combining political commitment and scholarly rigour, the book brings together analysis of live performance with interviews with notable veteran female artists, who offer compelling and sometimes challenging insights into what it means to grow old as a live performer. Stimulating and astute, this is a vital and significant text for ageing studies.’
Dr Sarah Falcus, University of Cumbria, Member of Academic Advisory Board of European Network in Aging Studies and Co-Director of Dementia and Cultural Narrative Network.
