Michelene Wandor’s Understanding Undersṭudies emerges from second-wave feminist theatre criticism at a moment when British stage culture was being re-examined through the lens of gender, labour, and representation. 

The book combines close reading with political analysis, moving between playwrights, performance contexts, and broader debates around women’s work in the arts.

It is part of the 1980s push to reposition women within theatre history, and today it reads as a sharp record of that cultural shift.