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Just as the word “feminist� defies a single definition, so “feminist theatre� is somewhat ambiguous in its identification. There are, however, some common traits. Feminist plays and playwrights are centered around women and women’s agency, as independent from men. These plays often use nontraditional and nonlinear storytelling and production techniques as a way to challenge the status quo and patriarchal systems that oppression women and marginalized communities--for this reason, many feminist plays also deal with class, privilege, race, and economics.

Key Dates, Events, & Genres

• 1677 - Aphra Behn’s The Rover premiers
• 1792 - Mary Wollstencraft publishes A Vindication of the Rights of Women
• 1916 - Susan Glaspell’s Trifles premieres
• 1929 - Virginia Woolf publishes her essay “A Room of One’s Own,â€� which argues for women to have a literal and metaphoric space to write
• 1963 - Betty Friedan publishes The Feminine Mystique, credited as the beginning of second-wave feminism
• 1978 - First Susan Smith Blackburn Prize
• 1990s - Emergence of the Bechdel-Wallace test, a measure of the representation of women in fiction, film, and theatre