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"If More Women Knew More Jokes...": The Comic Dramaturgy Of Sarah Ruhl And Sheila Callaghan, Jennifer Ann Goff

Wayne State University Dissertations

Conversations around women and comedy are few, and tend to swirl around the tired question of whether or not women are funny. Conclusions usually range from, "They're not" to a few token funny women whose exceptional wit proves the rule that, in fact, women are not funny. Or, if women are funny, they have a specific, feminine brand of humor that has an almost genetic set of differences from men's comedy. In this dissertation, rather than outlining an essentialized poetics of "women's comedy," I identify two prominent women writing comedy for the theatre today. Drawing on comic, dramatic and feminist …