Adventures for (Big) Girls: Seven Radio Plays

David E. Kemp is chair of the Drama Department at Queen’s University
and author of The Pleasures and Treasures of the United Kingdom.

Playwright Banuta Rubess confesses, in the foreword to this fascinating
collection of radio plays, that as a child she was swept into the world
of the 19th-century German adventure writer Karl May. Although May never
left his tiny village, his imagination stormed through Saharan deserts
and battled pirates in the Caribbean. Apart from playing a role in the
odd rescue from a burning building or a sinking ship, women did not
appear in May’s adventures. To imaginatively enter May’s world,
Banuta had to recast herself as a man. In this anthology, some of
Canada’s finest women playwrights take on their own heroes of choice
and write their own adventures. And what adventures they are—full of
rebellion, steamy sex, trick shooting, and buffalo hunting.

The heroes of these plays are as interesting and exciting as their
stories. Rubess contributes two plays, one about desert adventurer
Isabelle Eberhardt, who dressed as a man and roamed the North African
sands in search of adventure, and a reflective piece about Ulrike
Meinhof, the German terrorist who lent her name to the notorious
Baader-Meinhof gang. Mary Vingoe draws pathos and sensitivity from a
seemingly unlikely source—Anna Swan, a Halifax giant in P.T.
Barnum’s Gallery. Carol Bolt explores the life of Karen Ridd, a
Canadian peace worker in El Salvador, while Peggy Thompson provides new
insights into the story of Calamity Jane. Beverley Cooper introduces us
to Nellie Bly, a reporter with the New York World at a time when
journalism was completely taboo for a woman. Finally, Linda Griffiths
puts a new twist on the story of Wallis Simpson and the King who gave up
his throne for love.

This timely, enjoyable collection belongs in school libraries and on
the shelf of everyone who professes an interest in lively and
provocative theatre.