Bryony Lavery

Standard Name: Lavery, Bryony
Birth Name: Bryony Lavery
In a career spanning nearly forty years of the twentieth and early twenty-first century, the highly prolific BL has seen over sixty of her plays and other entertainments staged, mostly in London. She has also written translations, adaptations, and essays. Much of her impressive output remains unpublished. She was one of the driving forces in the feminist and socialist theatre groups of the 1970s (no other playwright had so long and fruitful a relationship with Monstrous Regiment ), and she remained a committed experimenter and iconoclast, often defying stage convention and any hint of naturalism. Her plots often tend toward the hilariously improbable, and her endings toward happiness and reconciliation. More recently, her handling of social problems and personal tragedies has become bleaker and starker. These darker plays have brought her greater success than her former light-hearted ones.

Connections

Connections Sort ascending Author name Excerpt
Textual Production Winsome Pinnock
The National Theatre (Cottesloe) put on an arresting play for young people by WP entitled Can You Keep a Secret?, part of the New Connections season of plays for the young.
Launched a couple...
Performance of text Caryl Churchill
CC 's collaboration with Monstrous Regiment continued through the summer of 1977, when she participated in their cabaret Floorshow, along with Michelene Wandor and Bryony Lavery .
Churchill, Caryl. Plays: One. Methuen.
xii
Performance of text Michelene Wandor
The feminist theatre group Monstrous Regiment performed Floorshow, a cabaret about women and work by MW , Caryl Churchill , and Bryony Lavery .
Michelene Wandor. http://www.mwandor.co.uk/.
Intertextuality and Influence Frances Hodgson Burnett
Israel Zangwill , hearing this book read aloud as work-in-progress, called it the book of [her] life . . . so virile that it is amazing.
Gerzina, Gretchen. Frances Hodgson Burnett. Chatto and Windus.
180
As in her best-known works (some of those...
Intertextuality and Influence Angela Carter
With this book, said AC , she relaxed into folklore.
Carter, Angela. “Notes from the Front Line”. On Gender and Writing, edited by Michelene Wandor, Pandora Press, pp. 69-77.
71
It won the Cheltenham Festival Literary Prize the year it was published.
Contemporary Authors. Gale Research.
61
Halio, Jay L., editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 14. Gale Research.
14: 212
It was adapted by Bryony Lavery for theatrical performance...

Timeline

17 April 1695: Sor (Sister) Juana Inez de la Cruz, nun and...

Writing climate item

17 April 1695

Sor (Sister) Juana Inez de la Cruz , nun and writer, the greatest poet the American continent produced in the seventeenth century,
“The Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Project”. Dartmouth College: Department of Spanish and Portuguese.
died in her convent in Mexico City.

28 September 1926: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos (a...

Building item

28 September 1926

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos (a play based on her novel-memoir of earlier the same year) opened on Broadway. It was a smash hit, as were a movie in 1928, a musical in 1949...

About October 1973: The Women's Theatre Group (still in being...

Women writers item

About October 1973

The Women's Theatre Group (still in being as the Sphinx Theatre Company ) was founded in London as a feminist and socialist theatre group; its twin organization the Women's Theatre Company proved short-lived.

Early 1975: Gay Sweatshop Theatre Company was founded...

Building item

Early 1975

Gay Sweatshop Theatre Company was founded as a result of plans by a London co-operative community arts resource centre, Inter-Action , for a season of gay plays to follow their successful women's season.

14 August 1975: The Monstrous Regiment Theatre Company was...

Women writers item

14 August 1975

The Monstrous Regiment Theatre Company was founded in London by female and male performers, many of whom had already worked with the Women's Street Theatre Company or the Women's Theatre Company .

Texts

Lavery, Bryony. A Wedding Story. Faber and Faber, 2000.
Lavery, Bryony. Frozen. Faber and Faber, 2002.
Lavery, Bryony. “More Light”. New Connections, edited by Nick Drake, Faber and Faber, 1997.
Lavery, Bryony. More Light. Faber and Faber, 2001.
Lavery, Bryony. Plays, 1. Methuen Drama, 1998.
Lavery, Bryony, and Mary Webb. Precious Bane. Oberon Books, 2003.
Lavery, Bryony. Tallulah Bankhead. Absolute Press, 1999.
Lavery, Bryony. “The Wild Bunch”. The Wild Bunch, and Other Plays, edited by Don Shiach, Nelson, 1990.
Lavery, Bryony. “Witchcraze”. Herstory, edited by Gabriele Griffin et al., Sheffield Academic Press, 1991.
Lavery, Bryony. “Writing with Actors”. The Women Writers’s Handbook, edited by Cheryl Robson et al., Aurora Metro Publications, 1990, pp. 48-50.