Auto/biography and identity

"This book shows how female performers - one of the first groups of professional women - used and still use autobiography and performance as both a means of expression and control of their private and public selves, the 'face and the mask'. In eleven essays it looks at how a range of women in the theatre - actors, managers, writers and live artists - have done this on the page and on the stage from the late eighteenth century to the present day, from Emma Robinson to Tilly Wedekind, and from Lena Ashwell to Tracy Emin, testing the boundaries between gender, theatre and auto-biographical form." "Auto/biography and Identity is a landmark in theatre history and performance analysis, in gender and cultural theory, and autobiographical studies. It will be of interest to the scholar, the student and the reader with a more general interest in the cultural history of theatre."--BOOK JACKET.