This groundbreaking book shows how female performers - one of the first groups of professional women - used and still use autobiography and performance as both a means of expression and control of their private and public selves, the 'face and the mask'. It looks at how a range of women in the theatre - actors, managers, writers and live artists - have done this on the page and on the stage from the late eighteenth-century to the present day, testing the boundaries between gender, theatre and autobiographical form. This paperback edition facilitates connections - between texts and performances, past and present practitioners, professional and private selves, individuals and communities, all of which have in some way renegotiated identity through autobiography and the creative act. 'Auto/biography and identity' is a landmark in theatre history and performance analysis, in gender and cultural theory, and autobiographical studies. -- .