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
Literary responses Pam Gems
This play brought PG 's work to the attention of critics and playgoers alike. While reviews were generally quite positive, some had difficulty accepting the play's feminist perspective. For instance, Ted Whitehead in The Spectator...
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...
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, 1982, pp. 75-103.
100
Michelene Wandor names LP as one of the women playwrights who...
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...
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, 1985.
xii
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 Bryony Lavery
BL collaborated with Caryl Churchill and Michelene Wandor in a cabaret entitled Floorshow, written for Monstrous Regiment .
Churchill, Caryl. Plays: One. Methuen, 1985.
xii
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.
Textual Production Sara Maitland
Zoë Fairbairns , Sara Maitland , Valerie Miner , Michèle Roberts and Michelene Wandor together edited a volume of feminist fiction entitled Tales I Tell My Mother.
Whitaker’s Books in Print. J. Whitaker and Sons, 1988–2003.
(1988)
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. 18 July 2011, http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.
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...
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, 1988–2003.
(1988)
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. 18 July 2011, 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, 23 Oct. 1987, p. 1158.
1158
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. 18 July 2011, http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.
Textual Production Michèle Roberts
MR was writing poetry seriously from the period of working on her first novel.
Roberts, Michèle. Paper Houses. Virago, 2007.
141
In the era of collectives she helped to produce the feminist verse anthologies Cutlasses & Earrings, 1977 (with Michelene Wandor
Textual Production Margaret Drabble
In a brief essay written in 1973 and reprinted a decade later by Michelene Wandor in On Gender and Writing, MD said that she had already thought so much about being a woman writer...
Textual Production Zoë Fairbairns
The first project of the feminist collective formed by ZF with Sara Maitland , Valerie Miner , Michele Roberts , and Michelene Wandor was to write and publish Tales I Tell My Mother.
Whitaker’s Books in Print. J. Whitaker and Sons, 1988–2003.
(1988)
Fairbairns, Zoë et al., editors. Tales I Tell My Mother. Journeyman, 1978.
1-3

Timeline

No timeline events available.

Texts

Wandor, Michelene. Once a Feminist. Virago, 1990.
Wandor, Michelene, editor. Plays by Women: Volume One. Methuen, 1982.
Wandor, Michelene, editor. Plays by Women: Volume Three. Methuen, 1984.
Wandor, Michelene. Post-War British Drama: Looking Back in Gender. Routledge, 2001.
Gems, Pam. “Putting on the Style”. Plays by Women: Volume Three, edited by Michelene Wandor and Michelene Wandor, Methuen, 1984, pp. 47-8.
Roberts, Michèle. “Questions and Answers”. On Gender and Writing, edited by Michelene Wandor, Pandora Press, 1983, pp. 62-8.
Wandor, Michelene, editor. Strike While the Iron is Hot. Journeyman Press, 1980.
Fairbairns, Zoë et al., editors. Tales I Tell My Mother. Journeyman, 1978.
Wandor, Michelene. The Author is Not Dead, Merely Somewhere Else. Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
Wandor, Michelene. The Body Politic. Stage 1, 1972.
Shuttle, Penelope. “The Dialogue of Gender”. On Gender and Writing, edited by Michelene Wandor, Pandora Press, 1983, pp. 141-7.
Kazantzis, Judith. “The Errant Unicorn”. On Gender and Writing, edited by Michelene Wandor, Pandora Press, 1983, pp. 24-30.
Wandor, Michelene. The Music of the Prophets. Arc Publications, 2006.
Wandor, Michelene, and Mike Alfreds. The Wandering Jew. Methuen, 1987.
Page, Louise. “Tissue”. Plays by Women: Volume One, edited by Michelene Wandor and Michelene Wandor, Methuen, 1982, pp. 75-103.
Wandor, Michelene. “To Die Among Friends”. Sink Songs, edited by Dinah Brooke and Michelene Wandor, published by the authors, 1975.
Kazantzis, Judith et al. Touch Papers. Allison and Busby, 1982.
Luckham, Claire. “Trafford Tanzi”. Plays by Women: Volume Two, edited by Michelene Wandor, Methuen, 1983, pp. 77-97.
Wandor, Michelene. Understudies. Methuen, 1981.
Wandor, Michelene. Upbeat. Journeyman Press, 1982.
Stott, Mary. “Women in Newspapers”. On Gender and Writing, edited by Michelene Wandor, Pandora Press, 1983, pp. 126-32.
Wandor, Michelene. “Women playwrights and the challenge of feminism in the 1970s”. Cambridge Companion to Modern British Women Playwrights, edited by Elaine Aston and Janelle Reinelt, Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 53-68.