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Theatres of Choice and the Case of ‘He's Having Her Baby’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2009

Lizbeth Goodman
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Abstract

By way of introduction to the interview which follows with Joan Lipkin, director and playwright of That Uppity Theatre in St Louis, Missouri, Lizbeth Goodman here provides a context for the discussion of what she calls ‘theatres of choice’ – plays, feminist or otherwise, which deal with the issue of reproductive rights, now being actively challenged in the United States and under threat elsewhere. She looks at the history of legislative change and reaction in the United States, and in particular at the Supreme Court decision in the ‘Webster case’, which represented a victory for the neo-conservative movement. Among theatrical responses to this were Lipkin's ‘pro-choice musical comedy’, He's Having Her Baby, in which gender role-reversal and comic stereotypes were employed in an attempt to reach audiences in St Louis – the city at the centre of the Webster controversy. Lizbeth Goodman, who lectures in literature for the Open University, has published a sequence of feminist theatre interviews in New Theatre Quarterly, and her ‘Feminst Theatre in Britain: a Survey and a Prospect’ appeared in NTQ33 (February 1993). She is the author of Contemporary Feminist Theatres (Routledge, 1993).

Type
Research Article
Information
New Theatre Quarterly , Volume 9 , Issue 36 , November 1993 , pp. 357 - 366
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

Notes and References

1. Lamb, Myrna, But What Have You Done for Me Lately? or Pure Polemic, in The Mod Donna and Skylon Z: Plays of Women's Liberation (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1971)Google Scholar.

2. The Women and Literature Seminar, St John's College, Cambridge, 18 October 1989.

3. From the transcript of the taped interview with Joan Lipkin of That Uppity Theatre Company, St Louis, Missouri, conducted in Calgary, 15 November 1991. An edited version of the interview appears in this issue of New Theatre Quarterly.

4. Spender, Dale and Hayman, Carole, eds., How the Vote Was Won and Other Suffragette Plays (London: Methuen, 1985), p. 7.Google Scholar

5. This play is discussed by Cousin, Geraldine in Churchill the Playwright (London: Methuen, 1989), p. 73.Google Scholar

6. Myrna Lamb, op. cit.

7. Sprague, Joey, ‘The Other Side of the Banner: toward a Feminization of Politics’, in Seeing Female: Social Roles and Personal Life, ed. Brehm, Sharon S. (Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1988), p. 159.Google Scholar

8. Siltanen, Janet and Stanworth, Michelle, ‘The Politics of Private Woman and Public Man’, in Siltanen, and Stanworth, , eds., Women and the Public Sphere (London: Hutchinson, 1984), p. 185–208.Google Scholar

9. Greenfield, Myrna, ‘Acting Pregnant’, in Spare Rib, No. 110 (09 1981), p. 6.Google Scholar

10. ‘Alternative Currents/Direct Currents’, a series of alternative theatre work organized by Joan Lipkin of That Uppity Theatre, including Sara Felder, Beyond Brooklyn; Tim Miller, My Queer Body; Eileen Myles, Eileen Myles for President (and Other Things): the Poet Candidate, After Rodney: Women Poets Respond to the Los Angeles Uprising; Michael Kearns, Intimacies; Lipkin, Joan, Small Domestic Acts. Her most recent play, Small Domestic Acts, premiered in December 1990Google Scholar: see my article, ‘Death and Dancing in the Live Arts’, Critical Quarterly, Summer 1993.

11. This paper was delivered at the ‘Breaking the Surface Festival/Conference’ in Calgary, 13–17 November 1991, and previously at the ATHE Conference in Seattle, 1990. A revised version is forthcoming in Feminist Theatres for Social Change, ed. Bennett, Susan, Davis, Tracy C., and Foreman, Kathleen (1994).Google Scholar

12. Phelan, Peggy discusses Operation Rescue as theatre in Unmarked (London: Routledge, 1993).CrossRefGoogle Scholar