CONFERENCE ABSTRACT   “Nobody Sings About It”: In Defense of the Songs in Caryl Churchill’s Vinegar Tom by Robert L. Neblett, Washington University in St. Louis   This performance study examines the thematic relevance and theatrical potential of the seven songs interspersed throughout the text of Vinegar Tom, Caryl Churchill’s feminist “play about witches with no witches in it.” Most critics agree that much of the play’s feminist message is centralized in the songs; without them, the play is little more than a historical drama about the Essex witch trials of the seventeenth century. Nevertheless, few scholars or reviewers have given much credence to the songs as an integral part of the play in performance. Although critics do recognize the Brechtian techniques which the songs utilize, they dismiss the musical numbers as extraneous diversions from the plot rather than regarding them as “distanced” commentary on Vinegar Tom’s action. When I directed the play in January 1997 at Washington University in St. Louis, it was my intent to disprove these contentions and, in essence, make the songs “work.” In order to do so, I familiarized myself with Churchill’s own performance theories and the negative critiques which have become associated with the songs in production. While this paper is primarily a dramaturgical analysis of the songs in Vinegar Tom, I employ many examples from my findings as a director of the piece as a means of defending their intrinsic merit as a necessary component of the play’s overall dramatic worth, as well as indicating the revolutionary nature of Churchill’s early theatrical experiments.