This anthology explores how theatre and performance use home as the prism through which we reconcile shifts in national, cultural, and personal identity. Whether examining parlor dramas and kitchen sink realism, site-specific theatre, travelling tent shows, domestic labor, border performances, fences, or front yards, these essays demonstrate how dreams of home are enmeshed with notions of neighborhood, community, politics, and memory. Recognizing the family home as a symbolic space that extends far beyond its walls, the nine contributors to this collection study diverse English-language performances from the US, Ireland, and Canada. These scholars of theatre history, dramaturgy, performance, cultural studies, feminist and gender studies, and critical race studies also consider the value of home at a time increasingly defined by crises of homelessness - a moment when major cities face affordable housing shortages, when debates about homeland and citizenship have dominated international elections, and when conflicts and natural disasters have displaced millions. Global struggles over immigration, sanctuary, refugee status and migrant labor make the stakes of home and homelessness ever more urgent and visible, as this timely collection reveals.

Barking Abbey (founded c. 666) is hugely significant for those studying the literary production by and patronage of medieval women. It had one of the largest libraries of any English nunnery, and a history of women's education from the Anglo-Saxon period to the Dissolution; it was also the home of women writers of Latin and Anglo-Norman works, as well as of many Middle English manuscript books.BR> The essays in this volume map its literary history, offering a wide-ranging examination of its liturgical, historio-hagiographical, devotional, doctrinal, and administrative texts, with a particular focus on the important hagiographies produced there during the twelfth century. It thus makes a major contribution to the literary and cultural history of medieval England and a rich resource for the teaching of women's texts. Professor Jennifer N. Brown teaches at Marymount Manhattan College; Professor Donna Alfano Bussell teaches at University of Illinois-Springfield. Contributors: Diane Auslander, Alexandra Barratt, Emma Berat, Jennifer N. Brown, Donna A. Bussell, Thelma Fenster, Stephanie Hollis, Thomas O'Donnell, Delbert Russell, Jill Stevenson, Kay Slocum, Lisa Weston, Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, Anne B. Yardley

A child transported to a strange building in an unknown town knows that money has changed hands with his parents. What is his response? A woman, made redundant as a result of a colleagues scheming, at last hits upon her own simple revenge. A child in a Home refuses to speak to staff about a recent worry. He believes that he will 'sort things out' but how will he live with the consequences? Another story reflects on how little we often know about our own family members. A father worries about the course his son's life has taken. Should the young man have made different decisions? Is he heading for catastrophe? In national competitions 'Windfall' won a first prize and 'Philip' a second prize.