I adore Top Girls!! My awesome high school English teacher (whom I credit with my feminism) had us study it. It's such a rich play: one to read as well as watch, I think.

Don't forget about Jane Martin. Keely and Du is on my list of plays that changed my life.

I also love this production of Top Girls. I think it's totally winning and beautiful.

(Jane Martin is great, but widely suspected to be a man writing under a pseudonym.)

Some woman playwrights who've rocked/changed my world (this coming from a theatre girl) - Paula Vogel, Ellen McLaughlin, Sarah Ruhl, Kate Walat, Young Jean Lee. Sigh. Yay theatre.

Oh my god, I LOVE Top Girls and Caryl Churchill. She is amazing and writes all sorts of crazy-amazing stuff, like Drunk Enough to Say I Love You which is a love story take on the relationship between George Bush and Tony Blair right before the invasion of Iraq.
Another play about women that I love (although it's not written by a woman) is Chamber Music by Arthur Kopit. It includes an huge female ensemble cast of women who believe themselves to be famous women from history like Susan B Anthony and Amelia Earhart. It really rocks my world. We need more plays that feature strong females!!

I absolutely LOVE Paula Vogel - her play, DESDEMONA, is just brilliant. It's my favorite of all the pieces I've directed.

I'm also a fan of Julia Cho & Tanya Barfield - both are sharp, up-and-coming, WOC playwrights.

I really love Churchill's play Cloud Nine, which is kind of all about identity politics. I also love Paula Vogel, especially How I Learned to Drive. Clare Luce Boothe wrote some really groundbreaking plays, including a 1960s adaptation of A Doll's House called Slam the Door Softly that I directed in college.

Some of my other favorites female playwrights are: Nina Shengold, Casey Kurtti, Theresa Rebeck, Robin Swados, Corinne Jacker, Shirley Lauro, Megan Terry, Kathleen Tolan, Kristina Halvorson, Cindy Lou Johnson, Lynn Siefert, Natalia Ginzburg, and of course, Lisa Loomer. And, I'm a female playwright myself, albeit somewhat unknown. =)

There's actually a series of anthologies of plays by women that has some great choices. Deborah Zoe Laufer, Lisa Swoland and Lauren Haines are particularly talented.

This one might be pretty obvious, but Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues. That definitely reshaped (and is reshaping) my world.

I'm pretty sure her name is spelled "Ntozake Shange."

Wendy MacLeod's The Water Children is one of the best plays I've read in ages -- addressing abortion through the perspective of a pro-choice woman and her anti-choice love interest, lots of heartfelt and gorgeous dialogue throughout.

Also, Gina Gionfriddo's After Ashley, which deals with the issue of women's constant exploitation (even after they've died, in this case) and how their families and society deal with it.

How about Rebecca Gilman? Her play Boy Gets Girl is an absorbing but very disturbing rebuttal of romantic comedies like "There's Something About Mary" that portray stalking as something that's romantic or funny.

Sarah Kane

Sarah Kane

I read Suzan-Lori Parks' Venus recently - it's a really amazing look at objectification of women. I wrote about it on my book blog if anyone's interested! Unfortunately plays by and about women don't get produced that often. ):

Wendy Wasserstein. Everyone mentioned before. Restoration era playwright Aphra Behn. There is also the Women's Project, which is supportive of women dramatists.

I am also a playwright, though just starting out! Wish me luck! And Special K, my play is being produced off-off Broadway and is about women! So there is hope!

Yes Yes Yes!

I'm so excited to see the love for female playwrights. Of course you all have covered many of the greats by now. Although I have to reiterate how much fun I had working on a scene from Caryl Churchill's Cloud Nine. It was so weird to switch genders and teach eachother how to be a "man" or "woman."
I also have to throw out there that Suzan Lori-Parks is writing some of the most interesting plays about race and gender out there today.

Finally I just have to mention my enormous love of our local Dallas company the Echo Theatre Project, which is committed to producing plays written by women. They do amazing work and they introduced me to a play called "Dream of a Common Language" by Heather McDonald. Read it. Love it.

So thank you for the shout out to the wonderful women making sure women have a voice in the theatre!

Yes Yes Yes!

I'm so excited to see the love for female playwrights. Of course you all have covered many of the greats by now. Although I have to reiterate how much fun I had working on a scene from Caryl Churchill's Cloud Nine. It was so weird to switch genders and teach eachother how to be a "man" or "woman."
I also have to throw out there that Suzan Lori-Parks is writing some of the most interesting plays about race and gender out there today.

Finally I just have to mention my enormous love of our local Dallas company the Echo Theatre Project, which is committed to producing plays written by women. They do amazing work and they introduced me to a play called "Dream of a Common Language" by Heather McDonald. Read it. Love it.

So thank you for the shout out to the wonderful women making sure women have a voice in the theatre!

Yes Yes Yes!

I'm so excited to see the love for female playwrights. Of course you all have covered many of the greats by now. Although I have to reiterate how much fun I had working on a scene from Caryl Churchill's Cloud Nine. It was so weird to switch genders and teach eachother how to be a "man" or "woman."
I also have to throw out there that Suzan Lori-Parks is writing some of the most interesting plays about race and gender out there today.

Finally I just have to mention my enormous love of our local Dallas company the Echo Theatre Project, which is committed to producing plays written by women. They do amazing work and they introduced me to a play called "Dream of a Common Language" by Heather McDonald. Read it. Love it.

So thank you for the shout out to the wonderful women making sure women have a voice in the theatre!

let's not forget some of the women who paved the way like lillian hellman and lorraine hansberry. powerhouse playwrights.

suzan-lori parks is incredible. "the america play" should be required reading nationwide.

i saw sarah ruhl's "eurydice" and it changed my life. LOVE HER!

everyone reading this should read a play by sarah kane. any of her plays. SO AMAZING!!

and for those in the new york area, eve ensler is debuting a play at the powerhouse theatre in poughkeepsie (it's on vassar's campus) this summer. everyone should turn out! i'm working in the box office, so i'll certainly be there supporting my girl eve's new project.

Marsha Norman's "'night, Mother," anyone?

Favorite female playwrights of mine that I don't already see listed include Edit Villarreal, Ali Smith, and Karen Sunde. I haven't gotten to see the script for Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad, but I love her novels, so I'm looking forward to it.
And in the 'women who paved the way' category, Dorothy Sayers, better known as a mystery writer and theologist, has some smashing plays. I want to do her Love All, a love-triangle comedy in which the two female protagonists end up shunting the philandering male off to one side while they make plans to do a play together. It's very period and mannered-comedy, but the two leads begin entranced by him and letting their art slide and wind up very 'yes, dear, go play, we're busy working.'
I'm so glad you started this thread. Thank you! It's a great way to discover feminist authors.

Um, someone has to represent Megan Terry here. In nearly every text I've found about her, she is referred to as "the mother of feminist theatre". She broke all the rules of the Aristotelian writing structure, encouraging people to let the content shape the play. She wrote about gender issues and worked with cross-gender casting.

When she wrote Babes in the Bighouse she intended it to be very funny, but found that male audience members laughed only at the lines spoken by men. She interpreted this to mean that men were not being socialized to respond to women. So, she produced the play with an entirely male cast in 1974 and found that the men then responded to the lines.

If anyone reading this lives in Chicago, a small company here, Halcyon Theatre, is doing a festival of plays by early female playwrights this summer called The Alcyone Festival. It looks really intriguing. Info at www.halcyontheatre.org.

Gotta give a shout-out to Dawn Powell and Dorothy Parker. Neither wrote many plays, but Parker's "Ladies of the Corridor" and Powell's "Big Night" are both pretty good. Two local writers in Chicago that I also adore are Marisa Wegrzyn and Emily Schwartz. Marina Carr and Marie Jones are two Irish writers that I've also enjoyed, and Rona Munro and Liz Lochhead are two Scottish writers to look for -- the latter wrote a great piece called "Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off" that is rather Caryl Churchillian in its approach to the Mary/Elizabeth feud.