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Women Writers of the Provincetown Players: A Collection of Short Works Judith E. Barlow, ed. Albany: SUNY P, 2009. 369 pp $75.00 cloth
Behind Women Writers of the Provincetown Players: A Collection of Short Works, edited by Judith E. Barlow, is a double ambition. The anthology intends, first, to redefine the many and varied contributions of women to the Provincetown Players; and second, to use the Players as a case-study to reexamine the roles of women in United States theatre beginning with the Little Theatre Movement. In both ambitions Barlow is tremendously successful. The anthology offers a selection of one-act plays from well-known writers like Susan Glaspell, Edna St. Vincent Mi Hay, and Djuna Barnes, as well as from unknown writers like Bosworth Crocker, Mary Carolyn Davies, and Alice L. Rostetter. For the unknown, the anthology makes available plays which are otherwise out-of-print or accessible only as manuscripts; for the familiar, inclusion in the anthology helps redefine them: no longerplays of individual accomplishment, they become "literary, cultural, and social documents that fuse theatrical originality with contemporary concerns" during this period of radical change in both women's rights and theatre history (12).
In the introduction, Barlow outlines the details of this confluence of women's and theatre history, discussing the political affiliations and activities of members of and contributors to the Players: Edna Kenton being a founding member of Heterodoxy, "an influential feminist discussion group"; Ida Rauh working for the Women's Trade Union League; and Mary...