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
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
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.
xii
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...
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.
66
Amelia Howe Kritzer has described its...
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
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...
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 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 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, pp. 47-8.
47
In his review for Plays and Players, Charles Spencer described it as an intense...
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.
1-3
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...
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...

Timeline

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Texts

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.