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.
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, pp. 1-8.
3
For Michelene Wandor 's On Gender and Writing, 1983, she provided a...
Textual Production Mary Stott
An essay that MS contributed to Michelene Wandor 's On Gender and Writing, 1983, provides a trenchant summary of a depressing history.
Stott, Mary. “Women in Newspapers”. On Gender and Writing, edited by Michelene Wandor, Pandora Press, pp. 126-32.
126
Performance of text Githa Sowerby
In the 1980s and 1990s, Rutherford and Son enjoyed several revivals by feminist theatre groups and directors, including productions by Mrs Worthington's Daughters in June 1980 (abridged by Michelene Wandor ); Southern Lights at the...
Textual Production Penelope Shuttle
Shuttle and Redgrove contributed jointly to Michelene Wandor 's On Gender and Writing, 1983. Their contribution takes the form, unique in the volume, of a dialogue with Wandor in which the couple speak in unison.
Textual Production Michèle Roberts
After working on several other collective anthologies, MR joined forces with Judith Kazantzis and Michelene Wandor in another poetry volume, Touch Papers.
Blackwell’s Online Bookshop. http://Bookshop.Blackwell.co.uk.
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.
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...
Textual Production Michèle Roberts
MR 's work with Spare Rib won her an invitation to join the writing-editing collective of Zoë Fairbairns , Sara Maitland , Valerie Miner , and Michelene Wandor (who were already published authors), working on...
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...
Textual Production Michèle Roberts
MR was writing poetry seriously from the period of working on her first novel.
Roberts, Michèle. Paper Houses. Virago.
141
In the era of collectives she helped to produce the feminist verse anthologies Cutlasses & Earrings, 1977 (with Michelene Wandor
Material Conditions of Writing Louise Page
It was when she contacted the Arts Lab about some royalties for this play that they commissioned her for what became Tissue.
Page, Louise. “Tissue”. Plays by Women: Volume One, edited by Michelene Wandor and Michelene Wandor, Methuen, pp. 75-103.
100
Michelene Wandor names LP as one of the women playwrights who...
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...
Literary responses Louise Page
Michelene Wandor , this play's first editor, noted its fluid, urgent pace and its darting, daring time-chopping structure.
Wandor, Michelene, editor. “Introduction”. Plays by Women: Volume One, Methuen, pp. 7-14.
13
Elaine Turner in Contemporary Dramatists remarked how LP had used her painful topic to explore the...
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
Textual Production Sara Maitland
Zoë Fairbairns , Sara Maitland , Valerie Miner , Michèle Roberts and Michelene Wandor together edited a collection looking back more than a decade: More Tales I Tell My Mother.
Whitaker’s Books in Print. J. Whitaker and Sons.
(1988)
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.
Textual Production Sara Maitland
SM and Michelene Wandor collaborated on an absurdist epistolary novel entitled Arky Types.
Duguid, Lindsay. “Cinderella’s Walkman”. Times Literary Supplement, No. 4412, p. 1158.
1158
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Women writers item

19 August 1977

The comedyOnce 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.

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. 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.
Wandor, Michelene. Once a Feminist. Virago, 1990.