Dramatic Arts, Mothers in

Until recently, mother characters have almost exclusively been the creation of male playwrights and actors in the dramatic arts. Many societal factors, both practical and moral, have kept mothers from public expression through performance. The types of mother roles that have traditionally been presented have often been very limited, two dimensional, and generally fall into certain categories that are repeated over and again. Once actual mothers and women began creating mother characters for the stage, these characters emerged as more complex and became central, rather than merely supporting, roles in the dramas. Still, mere inclusion for mothers in the theater has not been viewed as sufficient by theater practitioners and scholars, who instead, advocate for the creation of an entirely new theatrical model better suited to the experience and preferences of mothers and women. By examining the lives of prominent mothers in the theater, evolutions in the theater in regards to mothers, both positive and negative, can begin to be understood.

Outstanding mothers as portrayed in Western theater include Euripedes's Medea, who in the Greek Classical tragedy, Medea, kills her own children to avenge her husband's betrayal. There is also William Shakespeare's Gertrude, who in the Elizabethan tragedy, Hamlet, marries her brother-in-law nearly before the leftovers had been eaten from her husband's funeral. Another is Henrik Ibsen's Nora, who in the modern realistic play, A Doll's House, abandons her role as mother to find herself as a woman. Yet another is August Wilson's Bernice in the American drama, The Piano Lesson, who comes to terms with her African heritage through the spirits roused by the playing of her family's piano.

One common feature of all of these mothers is that they have been imagined and written by male playwrights. Indeed, it could be said that the dramatic works of men still tend to dominate our collective sense of theatrical history. In addition, actual female performers have only been performing the roles of mother characters (or any others) on the stage for the last few centuries, a relatively short time given the span of theatrical history. Not only is this true for the Western tradition, but also worldwide, where male performers have dominated the stages of India, Japan, and China; in African theatrical masked performances; Native American theater; Aztec performance; and beyond. Clearly, the dramatic representation has not been thought of as the domain for women, let alone mothers.