"This study represents an important contribution to the field, tackling urgent questions about the difficulty of staging violence, and the possibilities of challenging rape culture." (Zoe Brigley Thompson, Visiting Assistant Professor, Ohio State University, USA) "This authoritative, theoretically deep and wide-ranging book demands that its audience ask the important question: What are the ethics and aesthetics of representing rape on stage? With an overview of historical representations of rape, and analysis of different critical perspectives on this history, Fitzpatrick directs her scrutiny to contemporary theatre - as well as culture more broadly - to consider this most politically charged and relevant problem. Situating the works under discussion in context, each of the chapters considers issues of silencing, the metaphorisation of rape and women's bodies, the influence of race and class on the narrativisation of rape, the erasure of women's experience and subjectivity, and, finally, acts of resistance and activism. This book is a major addition to feminist theatre criticism, and to discussions of performing gender. We are lucky to have such a volume appearing now, and most of all to have someone with Fitzpatrick's acuity writing about rape on the contemporary stage." (Emilie Pine, Associate Professor in Modern Drama, University College Dublin, Ireland).
Rape on the Contemporary Stage