Women Playwrights: The Best Plays of 2002

Out of the hundreds of plays I read or saw in the past year, the plays in this book are the best ones by women I found. In my view, they represent the vibrancy and scope of the sort of writing women playwrights are producing in this country. Here you will find plays whose styles vary wildly. Some are set in the present, illuminating our world in comic or tragic ways. Some are set in the past, asking us to journey to yesteryear, to compare our world with that of the Italian Renaissance or of a Shaker community pre-Civil War. If there is one thing that all these plays have in common, it is that all are very compelling stories. In some circles, plays that tell a story, in a more or less linear way, are considered hopelessly passé. If you are one of those readers whose main interest is style rather than substance, metaphor rather than simile, these plays might not be weird enough for you. If, however, you value a good story, dramatically well told, you'll find one after another in this volume