Queer Mythologies

This book on Gems has a thesis or a ‘backbone’ which elicits the title Queer Mythologies. Pam Gems has written over 25 plays, and has not had adequate detailed analysis of her plays to date. She is a popular playwright produced often at the West End and has a widespread appeal by being on the pulse of cultural iconology. Gems writes strong central characters for both male and female actors, and often writes almost cinematically, with time shifts in a non-linear narrativization. Her characters are metaphors for contemporary women and men and she often herstoricizes, thus righting the balance of dramatic history by creating parts for women in British drama. Her dramaturgy brings to the mainstream theatre the identities and subcultures of class, race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality making her plays queer mythologies.

Foreword 
 
Acknowledgements 
 
Introduction 
 
1. Beginnings
Betty’s Wonderful ChristmasAfter BirthdayMy WarrenThe Treat
Ladybird, LadybirdUp in Sweden 
2. White women’s mythologies
The Historical women
Identity Politics: Queen Christina
The Binary Machine and the Liberation of Woman:
Arthur and Guinevere
Theatre as polemic: La Pasionaria
Icons and Whores
The Tragedy of Camille
The Legend of Edith Piaf
Woman as Controlling Subject: Blue Angel
Aspects of Woman: Dusa, Fish, Stas and Vi The Split Gestus of Woman: Loving Women 
 
3. Masculinities in crisis: Of straight and gay men
The Dialectics of Desire: Aunt Mary
Freudian Counter-discourse: Franz into April
Masculinity in Crisis: Stanley
Masculinity as Myth: Garibaldi 
 
4. Creating a space for the racialized Other
Being and Non-Being: Ebba
A Discourse of Gender, Power and the Other: Go West
Young Woman and Deborah’s Daughter 
 
Conclusion
 
Bibliography
 
Appendix