Conclusion

Historiographic metadrama is a key dramatic form used in the oeuvres of Lauren Gunderson and Jaclyn Backhaus, allowing both playwrights to address a plurality of feminist concerns and issues arising in the twenty-first-century world and the historical narratives and memories shaping our contemporary understanding. Gunderson&s;s plays, Emilie: La Marquise du Châtelet Defends Her Life Tonight ( 2010 ) and The Revolutionists ( 2018a ), and Backhaus&s; plays, Men on Boats ( 2017 ) and Wives (2022) , each use metadramatic conceits, such as role playing within a role, transgressive casting, self-reference, ritual within a play and the play within a play, to tear apart white supremacist, cisheteronormative, patriarchal constructions of gender, community, control and oppression.