Book Riot's 50 Must-Read Plays By Women
Top 10 Book Riot's 50 Must-Read Plays By Women
: Top Girls, 'night, Mother, A Raisin in the Sun, Circle Mirror Transformation, Enron, For colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf, Machinal, Ruined, Stop Kiss, The Flick
| Author | Caryl Churchill |
| ISBN | 0413554805 |
Now this is one dinner party I would have loved to participate in, shame it was a women's only affair. I guess playing the waiter would come a close second, just so I could overhear the conversation on offer between six charming ladies, five of which return from history.
There is the host of course,...
| Author | Marsha Norman |
| ISBN | 0822208210 |
'night, Mother is a taut and fluid drama that addresses different emotions and special relations. By one of America's most talented playwrights, this play won the Dramatists Guild's prestigious Hull-Warriner Award, four Tony nominations, the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, and the Pulitzer Prize...
| Author | Lorraine Hansberry |
| ISBN | 0375508333 |
"Never before, in the entire history of the American theater, has so much of the truth of black people's lives been seen on the stage," observed James Baldwin shortly before A Raisin in the Sun opened on Broadway in 1959.
Indeed Lorraine Hansberry's award-winning drama about the hopes and aspirations...
| Author | Annie Baker |
| ISBN | 0822224453 |
I read this play, "Circle Mirror Transformation" by Annie Baker today, and I loved it!
The action of the play takes place during a six week acting class held at a community center. The characters consist of a teacher and her four students: a teenage girl, a former actress brushing up on her craft,...
One of the most infamous scandals in financial history becomes a theatrical epic. At once a case study and an allegory, the play charts the notorious rise and fall of Enron and its founding partners Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, who became reviled figures from the financial scandal of the century, with...
For colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf
| Author | Ntozake Shange |
| ISBN | 0684843269 |
A revolutionary, award-winning play by a lauded playwright and poet about the experiences of women of color.
From its inception in California in 1974 to its highly acclaimed critical success at Joseph Papp's Public Theater and on Broadway, the Obie Award-winning for colored girls who have...
| Author | Sophie Treadwell |
| ISBN | 1854592114 |
Sophie Treadwell was a campaigning journalist in America between the wars. Among her assignments was the sensational murder involving Ruth Snyder, who with her lover, Judd Gray, had murdered her husband and gone to the electric chair. Out of this came MACHINAL, a powerful expressionist drama about...
Winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Drama
“A powerhouse drama. . . . Lynn Nottage’s beautiful, hideous and unpretentiously important play [is] a shattering, intimate journey into faraway news reports.”—Linda Winer, Newsday
“An intense and gripping new drama . . ....
| Author | Diana Son |
| ISBN | 0879517379 |
Ben Brantley of the New York Times summed up the critical reaction to Diana Son's play Stop Kiss when he stated that it "generated the warmest advance word of mouth of any downtown production this season" and heralded it as a Barefoot in the Park for a new generation. Son's story is deceptively simple:...
| Author | Annie Baker |
| ISBN | 1559364580 |
In a rundown movie theater in central Massachusetts, three underpaid employees sweep up popcorn in the empty aisles and tend to one of the last thirty-five-millimeter projectors in the state. With keen insight and a ceaseless attention to detail, The Flick pays tribute to the power of movies and paints...
| Author | Wendy Wasserstein |
| ISBN | 0822205106 |
Comprised of a series of interrelated scenes, the play traces the coming of age of Heidi Holland, a successful art historian, as she tries to find her bearings in a rapidly changing world. Gradually distancing herself from her friends, she watches them move from the idealism and political radicalism...
| Author | Katori Hall |
| ISBN | 1408147033 |
Winner of the Olivier Award and set to open on Broadway in September 2011, The Mountaintop is set at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis in 1968, on the night before Martin Luther King is assassinated and on the day he delivered a speech in which he foretold his own fate, “I may not get there with...
| Author | Lillian Hellman |
| ISBN | 0822211637 |
I wasn't really thrilled with this play and I think it's flatness on paper can only be fixed by really good acting. I had heard this was inspired by Chekhov and initially it definitely echoes Three Sisters - with the sisters talking about a trip to Europe that never happens. But the play is spoiled by extremely...
| Author | Quiara Alegría Hudes |
| ISBN | 1559364386 |
The 2012 recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Somewhere in Philadelphia, Elliot has returned from Iraq and is struggling to find his place in the world. Somewhere in a chat room, recovering addicts forge an unbreakable bond of support and love. The boundaries of family and community...
