Queer Mythologies: The Original Stageplays of Pam Gems [ペーパーバック]

Book Description:

Angela Carter once said 'I'm in the demythologizing business'. The same can be said of Pam Gems. This book vividly describes the radical impact Gems' work has had upon British mainstream theatre and the innovative approaches that have made such an impression upon the dramatic landscape. The author describes Gems' striking ability to perceive the tremors of social change before they emerge, thus creating a pervasive sense of progression within her work. Gems' cannily unravels the obscure yet widely accepted mythologies surrounding notions of gender and sexuality through a radical style of stagecraft. Her vision locates itself firmly within feminist discourse and, in creating strong female parts, redresses the balance of female representation in dramatic history. In particular, the book highlights the writer's powerful influence upon normative theatrical forms and the psychology of male-dominated theatre. Drawing upon feminist, postcolonial and queer theory, the book offers a perceptive and accessible analysis of Gems' dramaturgy. Despite her highly prolific career, there has been a gaping absence of detailed critical analysis of her work until now. 'Queer Mythologies' is the first comprehensive and explicit study of one of the most significant figures in British mainstream theatre.

Synopsis:

This book on Gems has a thesis or a 'backbone' which elicits the title 'Queer Mythologies'. Pam Gems has written over 25 plays, and has not had adequate detailed analysis of her plays to date. She is a popular playwright produced often at the West End and has a widespread appeal by being on the pulse of cultural iconology. Gems writes strong central characters for both male and female actors, and often writes almost cinematically, with time shifts in a non-linear narrativization. Her characters are metaphors for contemporary women and men and she often 'herstoricizes', thus righting the balance of dramatic history by creating parts for women in British drama. Her dramaturgy brings to the mainstream theatre the identities and subcultures of class, race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality making her plays queer mythologies.

From the Inside Flap

Queer Mythologies

The Original Stageplays of Pam Gems

By Dimple Godiwala

This book vividly describes the radical impact Gems' work has had upon British mainstream theatre and the innovative approaches that have facilitated such an impression upon the dramatic landscape. Drawing upon feminist, postcolonial and queer theory, the book offers a perceptive and accessible analysis of Gems' dramaturgy. Despite her highly prolific career, there has been a gaping absence of detailed critical analysis of her work until now. 'Queer

Mythologies'is the first comprehensive and explicit study of one of the most significant figures in British mainstream theatre.

About the Author

Dimple Godiwala was educated at the Universities of Bombay and Oxford. She is the author of 'Breaking the Bounds: British Feminist Dramatists Writing in the Mainstream since c. 1980' (Peter Lang), and has written in the field of cultural, feminist, dramatic and postcolonial theory. Her critical anthology 'Alternatives Within the Mainstream: British Black and Asian Theatres' is published by Cambridge Scholars Press (2006). She is currently compiling 'Alternatives Within the Mainstream II: Postwar Queer British Theatres'

Excerpted from Queer Mythologies: The Original Stageplays of Pam Gems by Dimple Godiwala. Copyright  2005. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Foreword by Professor Tim Prentki

Queer Mythologies

Dr Dimple Godiwala has expertly undertaken the first comprehensive appraisal of the theatrical oeuvre of Pam Gems at a moment when her profound influence on the development of English drama is in danger of being seriously underestimated through critical neglect. Besides offering vital insights to the individual plays, Dr Godiwala has succeeded in linking them to a coherent internal development within the life and work of Pam Gems. She is assisted in this task by access to Ms Gems and her son for a plethora of unique insights into the contexts in which much of the work was created. Most importantly, she never loses sight of a particular play as a performance text and so is able to capture the theatrical essence in ways that transcend any literary achievement. This capacity is especially important in any analysis of Pam Gems' achievement since it is predicated upon a fierce desire to work against the grain of the theatrical establishment. Godiwala captures this anti-establishment motif that runs through the plays through her own development of a definition of queer theory which is used ingeniously and effectively to forge connections and to demonstrate the gradual unfolding of Gems' preoccupation with the outsider and the misrepresented. Yet at the heart of this strategy of defiance lurks a paradoxical desire to be let into the lime-light which many of the protagonists exhibit. This desire is implicitly linked to Gems' own situation: at once a scathing critic of the mainstream, yet simultaneously penetrating it to effect irrevocable changes to it. Central characters like Queen Christina and Edith Piaf who make their worlds on their own terms are nevertheless depicted as being at the mercy or rather the agency of those by whose permission they are allowed to appear in their starring roles. Though hungry for performance, they still cling tenaciously to an identity which defies the expectations of their audiences, even as Gems in her handling of their characters lures the audience towards a love/hate relationship to them. Godiwala reveals with clarity and penetrating insight, the ways in which this paradox is indicative of the attitudes that Pam Gems herself experienced in relation to the English theatrical establishment; at times enjoying the spotlight of the main stage and critical acclaim but more often suffering the consequences of a refusal to compromise her artistic vision.

This volume marks a significant contribution to the rehabilitation of Pam Gems' reputation and Dr Godiwala reveals herself as a major critical voice on the contemporary literary and theatrical scene. This monograph is an absolute necessity for any students of Gems' work and an important extension of applied critical theory in performance. Prof Tim Prentki, University of Winchester