Understanding Marsha Norman

"If you don't know Marsha Norman and her work, Lisa Tyler's well-researched and readable Understanding Marsha Norman is the perfect introduction. If you do know Norman and her work, Tyler offers production histories, critical depth, insight, and provocative opportunities for further research. It's an essential work for literary and drama scholars, theatre practitioners, and students. Tyler is clear-eyed, too, noting Norman's failures as well as successes."—Ann C. Hall, University of Louisville

"Lisa Tyler's The Work of Marsha Norman is an in depth examination of one playwright's legitimizing of the female character as the driving force in drama. Tyler provides a thorough analysis of Norman's process and development of her plays, and the female characters in particular, which aids the reader's understanding of Norman's scripts as a body of work, as well as the historical, and societal, importance of Norman's plays."—Cathryn G Ellis, Northern Arizona University