Michelene Wandor

Standard Name: Wandor, Michelene
Birth Name: Michelene Dinah Samuels
Self-constructed Name: Michelene Wandor
Married Name: Michelene Victor
MW is a prolific twentieth-century and contemporary writer of stage plays, radio drama, short stories, poetry, reviews, theatre criticism, and a co-authored novel. A passionate feminist, she became an energetic force in alternative theatre in Britain in the 1970s, involving herself in radical theatre groups in various capacities, including that of playwright. Since then she has been a frequent radio writer, often adapting novels, especially by women, for radio. Apart from her high profile in radio drama and broadcasting, and the warm reception of her recent poetry publications, her editorial work has made a lasting contributio: the first anthology of the British women's liberation movement, The Body Politic, 1972, as well as volumes of women's plays.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
Michelene Wandor. http://www.mwandor.co.uk/.
She has recently pursued interests in music, in the working out of Jewish identity, and in recasting work in different forms.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Anthologization Fay Weldon
FW 's non-fiction has appeared in many journals and magazines, including Allure, Cosmopolitan, and the New York Times.
Barreca, Regina, editor. “Introduction”. Fay Weldon’s Wicked Fictions, University Press of New England, 1994, pp. 1-8.
3
For Michelene Wandor 's On Gender and Writing, 1983, she provided a...
Anthologization Angela Carter
AC contributed Notes from the Front Line to Michelene Wandor 's On Gender and Writing, 1983. It took her seven drafts.
Carter, Angela. “Notes from the Front Line”. On Gender and Writing, edited by Michelene Wandor, Pandora Press, 1983, pp. 69-77.
69
Anthologization Michèle Roberts
MR contributed a short piece to Michelene Wandor 's On Gender and Writing, 1983, entitling it Questions and Answers. She said she didn't at first want this assignment, feeling that she'd said what...
Anthologization Sara Maitland
The same year, 1983, SM contributed to Michelene Wandor 's On Gender and Writing a slightly fey fairy-tale or allegory called A Feminist Writer's Progress, featuring herself as a little girl who sets out...
Anthologization Louise Page
This was also performed in July the same year at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, and was adapted for broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 23 November 1978 (after some thought of...
Anthologization Pam Gems
The play was revived under the new title at London's Hampstead Theatre in December of the same year.
Lloyd Evans, Gareth, and Barbara Lloyd-Evans, editors. Plays in Review, 1956-1980: British Drama and the Critics. Methuen, 1985.
221
Demastes, William W., editor. British Playwrights, 1956-1995. Greenwood Press, 1996.
160
It was published on its own in 1977, then reprinted in Methuen 's first...
Family and Intimate relationships Aemilia Lanyer
AL 's father, Baptista Bassano , a Venetian musician who may have been of Jewish descent, had been working at the English court for nearly thirty years when she was born. He fell into poverty...
Friends, Associates Michèle Roberts
MR 's memoir, Paper Houses, features a huge roster of close friends warmly evoked, some of them long-term commitments and others belonging to some particular period of her life. They include many women who...
Friends, Associates Zoë Fairbairns
ZF formed a feminist collective with fellow writers and socialists Sara Maitland , Valerie Miner , Michèle Roberts , and Michelene Wandor .
Fairbairns, Zoë et al., editors. Tales I Tell My Mother. Journeyman, 1978.
1-3
Literary responses Pam Gems
Although the play seemed to be well received during the previews, it received a bad press on opening night.
Gems, Pam. “Putting on the Style”. Plays by Women: Volume Three, edited by Michelene Wandor and Michelene Wandor, Methuen, 1984, pp. 47-8.
47
In his review for Plays and Players, Charles Spencer described it as an intense...
Literary responses Claire Luckham
English-speaking critics are divided on the play's politics. Margaret Llewellyn-Jones thought it ideologically somewhat questionable in the way that it combines Brechtian distancing techniques with encouragement for the audience to cheer during the wrestling matches,...
Literary responses Caryl Churchill
Michelene Wandor called this play bleak, ambiguous, murky in its implications as well as its imagery and its action,redolent with imagery of death, disintegrating flesh and destruction.
Wandor, Michelene. Understudies. Methuen, 1981.
66
Amelia Howe Kritzer has described its...
Literary responses Grace Nichols
GN 's publishers quote glowing opinions about her work. Gwendolyn Brooks has praised her rich music, an easy lyricism . . . also grit, and earthy honesty, a willingness to be vulnerable and clean,Jeanette Winterson
Literary responses Caryl Churchill
CC has been recognised in Britain and the US with several major awards for play writing. As early as 1961, she won the Richard Hillary Memorial Prize at Oxford University . New York productions of...
Literary responses Sarah Daniels
Feminist playwright and critic Michelene Wandor has asserted that the play's form—the action couched in dramatic realism interrupted by monologues and polemical speeches—has a detrimental effect on its feminist message. She feels that the momentary...

Timeline

1290: King Edward I expelled all remaining Jews...

Building item

1290

King Edward I expelled all remaining Jews from England. According to Michelene Wandor 's The Music of the Prophets, they were to be gone by All Saints' Day, November the first.
Collins Dictionary of British History. Collins, 2002.
252
Wandor, Michelene. The Music of the Prophets. Arc Publications, 2006.
16

16 January 1664: The Indian Queen, the first heroic tragedy...

Writing climate item

16 January 1664

The Indian Queen, the first heroic tragedy on the English stage, by John Dryden and Sir Robert Howard , opened in London.
Dryden, John. “Biographical Table”. Dryden: Poetry, Prose and Plays, edited by Douglas Grant, Rupert Hart-Davis, 1952.
15

August 1972: Red Rag: A Magazine of Women's Liberation,...

Building item

August 1972

Red Rag: A Magazine of Women's Liberation, produced by a Marxist collective of the Women's Liberation Movement, began quarterly publication in London.
Doughan, David, and Denise Sanchez. Feminist Periodicals, 1855-1984. Harvester Press, 1987.
80
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.

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.
de Angelis, April. “Riddle of the Sphinx”. Guardian Unlimited, 10 Sept. 2005.
Hanna, Gillian, editor. Monstrous Regiment. Four Plays and a Collective Celebration. Nick Hern Books, 1991.
xx
“The Amiable Courtship of Miz Venus and Wild Bill - 197”. Sphinx Theatre Company Archive: Productions. 1970s.

19 August 1977: The comedy Once a Catholic by Mary O'Malley...

Women writers item

19 August 1977

The comedy Once a Catholic by Mary O'Malley opened at the Royal Court Theatre ; it transferred to the West End later this year and won a string of awards.
Wandor, Michelene. Understudies. Methuen, 1981.
68-9

Texts

Wandor, Michelene. “‘Will the Hebrew turn Christian?’: Jewishness, Identity and Cultural Appropriation”. Figures of Heresy, edited by Andrew Dix and Jonathan Taylor, Sussex Academic Press, 2006, pp. 243-60.
Maitland, Sara. “A Feminist Writer’s Progress”. On Gender and Writing, edited by Michelene Wandor, Pandora Press, 1983, pp. 17-23.
Drabble, Margaret. “A Woman Writer”. On Gender and Writing, edited by Michelene Wandor, Pandora Press, 1983, pp. 156-9.
Gems, Pam. “Afterword to ’Dusa, Fish, Stas and Vi’”. Plays by Women: Volume One, edited by Michelene Wandor, Methuen, 1982, pp. 71-3.
Maitland, Sara, and Michelene Wandor. Arky Types. Methuen, 1987.
Figes, Eva. “Art and Reason”. On Gender and Writing, edited by Michelene Wandor, Pandora Press, 1983, pp. 152-5.
Gems, Pam. “Aunt Mary”. Plays by Women: Volume Three, edited by Michelene Wandor, Methuen, 1984, pp. 13-46.
Wandor, Michelene. “Care and Control”. Strike While the Iron is Hot, edited by Michelene Wandor, Journeyman Press, 1980.
Wandor, Michelene. Carry On, Understudies. Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986.
Wandor, Michelene, and Michèle Roberts, editors. Cutlasses & Earrings. Playbooks, 1977.
Wandor, Michelene. Email to Orlando.
Wandor, Michelene. False Relations. Five Leaves, 2004.
Wandor, Michelene. Five Plays. Journeyman, 1984.
Wandor, Michelene. Gardens of Eden. Journeyman, 1984.
Wandor, Michelene. Guests in the Body. Virago, 1986.
Gems, Pam. “Imagination and Gender”. On Gender and Writing, edited by Michelene Wandor, Pandora Press, 1983, pp. 148-51.
Wandor, Michelene, editor. “Introduction”. Plays by Women: Volume One, Methuen, 1982, pp. 7-14.
Wandor, Michelene. “Introduction TO BE DELETED”. Plays by Women: Volume Three, edited by Michelene Wandor and Michelene Wandor, Methuen, 1984, p. vii - x.
Wandor, Michelene. Look Back in Gender. Methuen, 1987.
Weldon, Fay. “Me and My Shadows”. On Gender and Writing, edited by Michelene Wandor, Pandora Press, 1983, pp. 160-5.
Fairbairns, Zoë et al., editors. More Tales I Tell My Mother. Journeyman, 1987.
Wandor, Michelene. Musica Transalpina. Arc Publications, 2006.
Wandor, Michelene. Natural Chemistry. Arc Publications, 2013.
Carter, Angela. “Notes from the Front Line”. On Gender and Writing, edited by Michelene Wandor, Pandora Press, 1983, pp. 69-77.
Wandor, Michelene, editor. On Gender and Writing. Pandora Press, 1983.