MELISSA SIHRA is a Lecturer in Drama Studies at Queen's University Belfast, UK. She is a dramaturg and has worked at the Abbey Theatre and on productions of Irish plays in the USA.

'What makes this book a stimulating and enlightening read is how thoroughly many of the individual authors combine the goals of both uncovering and interrogating plays by and images of women, and placing these in their cultural contexts for the purposes of the book's sustained critique of patriarchal structures... [an] important volume.' - Karen Fricker, Contemporary Theatre Review '... the book addresses a longstanding critical blind spot, includes a helpful appendix of Irish women playwrights dating from 1663, and points the way forward to a number of fruitful areas for future research.' - Theatre Research International 'This volume undoubtedly fulfils its declared intent of widening the debate concerning the representation of women on the Irish stage... Its most striking achievement is the exposure of little-known work by female playwrights and the appended directory is an inspired move which provides an invaluable resource.' - Margaret Maxwell, Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies

• Foreword; M.Carr Preface; J.Reinelt Introduction: Figures at the Window; M.Sihra Interchapter I; C.Leeney Woman as Fantasy Object in Lady Gregory's Historical Tragedies; P.Murphy Writing Women for a Modern Ireland: Geraldine Cummins and Susanne Day; V.O'Donoghue Greene The Spaces Outside: Images of Women in Plays by Eva Gore-Booth and Dorothy Macardle; C.Leeney Taking Their Own Road: The Female Protagonist in Three Irish Plays by Women': L.Fitzpatrick Interchapter II; M.Sihra From Matron to Matrix: Gender and (Dis)embodiment in Beckett's Theatre; A.McMullan Beyond the Pale: Neglected Northern Irish Women Playwrights, Alice Milligan, Helen Wadell and Patricia O'Connor; M.Phelan Meta-physicality: Women Characters in the Plays of Frank McGuinness; E.Jordan Dead Women Walking: The Female Body as a Site for War in Stewart Parker's Northern Star ; R.O'Riordan Interchapter III; M.Sihra Women in Rooms: Landscapes of the Missing in Anne Devlin's Ourselves Alone ; E.Cerquoni Liminal Spaces in Éilís Ní Dhuibhne's Dún na mBan Trí Thine ( The Fort of the Fairy Women is on Fire ); A.Roche Sick, Dying, Dead, Dispersed: The Evanescence of Patriarchy in Contemporary Irish Women's Theatre; B.Singleton Marina Carr's Landscapes of Play and Possibility; M.Sihra Afterword: The Act and the Word; O.Fouéré Appendix: List of Irish Women Playwrights and their Key Works Index

MELISSA SIHRA is a Lecturer in Drama Studies at Queen's University Belfast, UK. She is a dramaturg and has worked at the Abbey Theatre and on productions of Irish plays in the USA.

'What makes this book a stimulating and enlightening read is how thoroughly many of the individual authors combine the goals of both uncovering and interrogating plays by and images of women, and placing these in their cultural contexts for the purposes of the book's sustained critique of patriarchal structures... [an] important volume.' - Karen Fricker, Contemporary Theatre Review '... the book addresses a longstanding critical blind spot, includes a helpful appendix of Irish women playwrights dating from 1663, and points the way forward to a number of fruitful areas for future research.' - Theatre Research International 'This volume undoubtedly fulfils its declared intent of widening the debate concerning the representation of women on the Irish stage... Its most striking achievement is the exposure of little-known work by female playwrights and the appended directory is an inspired move which provides an invaluable resource.' - Margaret Maxwell, Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies

• Foreword; M.Carr Preface; J.Reinelt Introduction: Figures at the Window; M.Sihra Interchapter I; C.Leeney Woman as Fantasy Object in Lady Gregory's Historical Tragedies; P.Murphy Writing Women for a Modern Ireland: Geraldine Cummins and Susanne Day; V.O'Donoghue Greene The Spaces Outside: Images of Women in Plays by Eva Gore-Booth and Dorothy Macardle; C.Leeney Taking Their Own Road: The Female Protagonist in Three Irish Plays by Women': L.Fitzpatrick Interchapter II; M.Sihra From Matron to Matrix: Gender and (Dis)embodiment in Beckett's Theatre; A.McMullan Beyond the Pale: Neglected Northern Irish Women Playwrights, Alice Milligan, Helen Wadell and Patricia O'Connor; M.Phelan Meta-physicality: Women Characters in the Plays of Frank McGuinness; E.Jordan Dead Women Walking: The Female Body as a Site for War in Stewart Parker's Northern Star ; R.O'Riordan Interchapter III; M.Sihra Women in Rooms: Landscapes of the Missing in Anne Devlin's Ourselves Alone ; E.Cerquoni Liminal Spaces in Éilís Ní Dhuibhne's Dún na mBan Trí Thine ( The Fort of the Fairy Women is on Fire ); A.Roche Sick, Dying, Dead, Dispersed: The Evanescence of Patriarchy in Contemporary Irish Women's Theatre; B.Singleton Marina Carr's Landscapes of Play and Possibility; M.Sihra Afterword: The Act and the Word; O.Fouéré Appendix: List of Irish Women Playwrights and their Key Works Index