Glossary

Ozone

• a colorless unstable toxic gas with a pungent odor and powerful oxidizing properties, formed from oxygen by electrical discharges or ultraviolet light, short for ozone layer

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Co-ed

• short for co-educational, meaning an institution that educates both men and women

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Bourgeois 

• a member of the middle class. a person whose political, economic, and social opinions are believed to be determined mainly by concern for property values and conventional respectability

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Patriarchal

• relating to or characteristic of a system of society or government controlled by men

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Summer Solstice

• an annual astronomical phenomenon that brings the longest day of the year and the first day of summer in the Northern Hemisphere

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Useless Bay

• A bay in the state of Washington that is part of Puget Sound; according to Wikipedia it gained its name because of inclement weather, although the play claims it was named because it is too shallow for any ship to pass through

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Salish (Indians)

• A tribe of Native Americans federally recognized as the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Reservation; the tribe was originally located in the areas of Montana, parts of Idaho, Canada, and Wyoming

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Sacagawea

• a Lemhi Shoshone woman who was a part of the Lewis and Clark Expedition in exploring the Louisiana Territory

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Entropy

• lack of order or predictability; gradual decline into disorder

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Thermodynamics

• the branch of physical science that deals with the relations between heat and other forms of energy

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Gorgons

• Monsters in Greek mythology that were portrayed as having snakes for hair, and eyes that could turn someone to stone; Medusa is the most famous; in the play, Gorgons refers to a colony of all-female radical feminists

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Ti-Grace Atkinson

• an American radical feminist author and philosopher

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Minotour

• A monster in Greek mythology with the head of a bull and the body of a man; famously stuck in a labyrinth

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Labyrinth 

• a complicated irregular network of passages or paths in which it is difficult to find one's way

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Parthenogenic (Parthenogenetic?)

• A mispronunciation of parthenogenetic, a natural form of asexual reproduction in which growth and development of embryos occur without fertilization by sperm.

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Artemis

• the Greek goddess of hunting, wild nature, and chastity; she is regarded as a patron of girls and women