Female Playwrights

Hi friends,
I am wondering if there is professional femal playwrites.

I know only Susan Glaspell (1876-1948) and her play Trifles
If you know others please tell wether it is possible to read their works online or not .


Thanks in advance! : :banana:

Lucille Fletcher maybe? She wrote Sorry, Wrong Number in 1948. But she was more of a screenplay writer.

I also found Milcha Sanchez-Scott who wrote Dog Lady and The Cuban Swimmer both in 1984.

It funny, I've never thought about that before. I found these looking through some of my shelf books. Are there really that few female playwrites?

Here are a few that I found from doing a google search, I don't know if you can read any of these online, though.


Alice Childress

Florence (play) 1949

Wedding Band: A Love/Hate Story in Black and White (play) 1966

Wine in the Wilderness (play) 1969


Roslyn Drexler

The Line of Least Existence and Other Plays (plays) 1967




Maria Irene Fornes

The Widow (play) 1961

Fefu and Her Friends (play) 1977

The Conduct of Life (play) 1985

Rebecca Gilman

The Land of Little Horses (play) 1992

The Glory of Living (play) 2001


Beth Henley

Crimes of the Heart (play) 1979

The Debutante Ball (play) 1985

Adrienne Kennedy

Funnyhouse of a Negro (play) 1962

A Movie Star Has to Star in Black and White (play) 1976


Rochelle Owens

Futz (play) 1965

Chucky's Hunch (play) 1981

Ntozake Shange

for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf: A Choreopoem (play) 1975

Boogie Woogie Landscapes (play) 1979


Megan Terry

Calm Down Mother: A Transformation Play for Three Women (play) 1965

Viet Rock: A Folk War Movie (musical) 1966

Approaching Simone (play) 1970

Duh! just thought of this one. Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun

hey ,thats cant be real!!!!
i have a research approaching the same topic
plz help us (me an ranoo)
i also wants any aspect of modern drama if u know a book that helps or a site
thank you nice ppl :nod:

Lillian Hellman (1905-1984) raised a few eyebrows with both her writing and her political views.

The Little Foxes is one of her plays that comes to mind. It dealt with the shiftiness of a wealthy southern family. And The Children's Hour (written sometime in the 1930's, I think), with its theme of a lesbian relationship between teachers (based on a true incident at a boarding school in Scotland), must have been controversial for the times.

The long-time lover of Dashiell Hammett (The Maltese Falcon, The Thin Man), she was blacklisted along with him during the McCarthy era. The financial catastrophe it caused her was nearly her undoing.

She was a fiercely independent woman -- and one of the first to break into the male-dominated field of playwrighting.

Wendy Wasserstein

Caryl Churchill - 'Top Girls'. Read it recently as part of my OU Course.

I don't know what to say ,you are lifesavers.
thanks :banana: shea ,Riesa, miss tenderness,l avendar1 ,byquisy and Zippy
I wont say no for more :D[/B]

live saviors lol
thank u ranoo ,my sister's name resembels yours ;hers is Rana but we call her ranoo

welcome any time miss tenderness your sister must be cute just like me ;) kidding :D

she is cute just like u and me lol

Not keen on female playwrights, personally.

Female writers generally started from the novelist tradition, and generally all took that shape. The theatre as a means of entertainment was already on a downspike as female writers began to be taken more seriously. By now, there are few playwrites generally seen and put on (contemporary ones) and fewer that actually make it to having their scripts published as reading material, and even fewer that which earn classic status, or are known by some-sort of mainstream. I know in England more than half the plays put on that are by women are by Agatha Cristie, and that the female playwritership is around 15% of the overall, while in terms of publishing it comes to around 7% of the scripts that get published to be read by the mainstream. Either way, theatre seems to be one of the hardest forms of writing for modern writers, simply because of the pull of television and movies as a replacement for theatrical productions.

Generally women write novels, that is to say, novel reading and writing, since around 1800 or so, has been contributed heavily by women, and read heavily by women. Poetry seems to be a predominantly male genre, as does the personal essay, and the theatre. Recent trends seem to be changing however, but if you look at the readership, women read more than men, and also "chick lit" or romance novels et al. are the most commonly read books.

To bring out something I am fond of doing:
http://img294.imageshack.us/img294/8628/greuzeeaig3.jpg
http://img294.imageshack.us/img294/515/opiemoraltz3.jpg
http://img183.imageshack.us/img183/9...romanceig2.jpg
http://img113.imageshack.us/img113/8...tzlalisop6.jpg
http://img293.imageshack.us/img293/1...chermmeyt3.jpg
http://img180.imageshack.us/img180/6...greadereu6.jpg

The Image of the female novel reader has be prevalent in English, and Western society in general for a while now. From the 1760s or so on, it has been considered fashionable for women to be knowledgeable about all the new writers and novelists in society, and to have read many novels, and be able to discuss the content at length. Out of this evolved women's fiction, in the sense that first women took to translating, as that was a lowpaying, and neglected job by the male readership (many of which were taught additional languages which allowed them the advantage of not needing translation) and started to write their own novels. At this time the novel as a form was seen as a "woman's genre" and men, who were thought more cultured, would take to other forms, such as poetry. Since the genre of novel had become so female fixated, it was only natural that woman began to try to compose their own works, for other women, as a means of earning a little more money, to expand their family's income, or in the event of not having a husband, or being a widow, to support one's self. The theatre doesn't have a history of female writers because of this history with the novel. It is only a few women writers who seek other genres, since the bulk of their readership, and hence, their money, is located within novels.

The novel reading trend which started before has actually slowed down the development of other genres of women's fiction, by making it too difficult to make money writing in those modes, and also too difficult to be read. In addition, there are very few precedents of female writers working in other genres, that the tradition doesn't lend enough foreground, and each female writer is forced to sod bust the genre.

Mrs. Aphra Behn was, what -- 18th century? So that's pretty early.

Don't forget Clare Boothe Luce! Also Anna Deveare Smith has to be considered a playwright, although I think she only writes her own one-woman shows.

And Mae West wrote some plays...

Jean Kerr wrote Mary, Mary...

Agatha Christie wrote The Mousetrap, which ran longer in London than any other play (I think).

Beth Henley, Crimes of the Heart and other terrific plays.