Sexual and Gender-Based Violence on Female Bodies: Ecofeminism in Lucy Kirkwood’s Maryland (2021) and Ellie Kendrick’s and RashDash’s Hole (2018)

Abstract

This chapter puts Lucy Kirkwood’s Maryland (2021) and Ellie Kendrick’s and RashDash’s Hole (2018) together to keep calling attention to violence against women’s bodies and other forms of control or constraints and to focus on increasing alliances and communities of care. Firmly rooted in our intersectional and gender-diverse present, the chapter uses ecology and feminism to consider the plays as ecofeminist and explore the concept of gyn/ecology in particular, developed in Mary Daly’s book, Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism (1978). The present chapter looks at how these plays came about, what they meant to Kirkwood and Kendrick as well as how women’s bodies are written and staged in both plays (and beyond) and with what potential implications. Using ecofeminism methodologically, it veers away from focusing on an anthropocentrist representation of ecology and instead coins the term gyn/ecological theatre to describe the ecofeminist features of the analysed plays.