Best female playwright? — Page 2

i always thought jane martin was the nom de guerre of jon jory or someone else at actors theater of louisville.

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If we are including women who have only written one play I will submit Carson McCullers. I don't really think that someone who has only one play under their belt should really be considered in this topic, however.

Oh, and Garland is right about Jane Martin. Not really a person, but a committee.

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In terms of female playwrights with real bodies of work:

-- Churchill has dozens of plays to her credit (many award winning

-- Hellman has a sizeable body of work, but none of it really holds up at this point

-- I've personally seen about 8 plays from Vogel -- certainly enough to deem her worthy of consideration. "How I Learned to Drive" is brilliant. "Long Christmas Ride Home" was first rate (though the direction and bunkaru puppetry and percussion from the wonderful Vineyard production made it hard to separate how much good stuff was text and how much was everything else). The recent Signature productions of "Baltimore Waltz," "The Oldest Profession," and "Hot N' Throbbing" underlined several major flaws in the writing of each and all three came off as didactic and more than a little dated. "Mineola Twins" was a fun experiment that didn't totally work. I find "Desdemona" an interesting, but minor work.

-- Wasserstein has what? About 8 full length plays? Not a fan, but others are. I wouldn't call her a major talent, but a competent mainstream writer who has come up with a couple of audience-pleasers over the years. Good for her.

-- Rebecca Gilman is now up to her 6th or 7th work I believe (I've seen the 4 that have played New York). Her work is consistently challenging, thought-provoking and politically relevant. Her writing can lack subtlety and true poetry at times, but that may be by design -- she seems to want to create theatre without artifice that directly connects with an audience. I wouldn't call her a great playwright yet, but she's created a formidable body of work so far -- give her another few years.

Anyone else have more than 5 full length plays that have been produced on a major stage in New York?

Other than Churchill, I wouldn't put any of them on a list of the ten finest playwrights of the past century (or even the past 25 years).

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Updated On: 9/8/05 at 03:56 PM

Well, most of the major not-for profits seem to make an effort to find, support and produce plays by female playwrights (especially the Public, Playwrights and MTC) pretty much every season, so it's not always just about money.

The question is why so few of those plays go onto Brooadway or another commercial venue. Answering my own question, I suppose since there are fewer female playwrights to begin with, then there would naturally be fewer hits by female playwrights as well. I still go back to WHY there are relatively so few successful female playwrights compared to male ones.

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A friend of mine also starred in an early work of Gilman's (which she doesn't include on her resume) off-off-Broadway in the mid 90s called "The Adventures of Bobby and Vaughn." I don't remember much about it (it involved a pair of 20-somethings who spent a lot of time hanging out on a couch watching tv).

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I think that because screen and stage tradition uses the "male gaze", the females get left out to dry more often than not.

Another relic of patriarchy, is my theory.

EDIT: for more info. on the male gaze:
http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/gaze/gaze09.html

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Updated On: 9/8/05 at 04:37 PM

Garland Grrrl is correct - it is generally known than "Jane Martin" is really Jon Jory.

Right! Females dominate so many areas of publishing and literature....except theatre and film

JK Rowling is the most successful novelist of all time, Emily Dickinson is arguably America's greatest poet, and women like Gloria Steinhem and Helen Gurley Brown in the magazine world...

Guess they're just not writing plays or films...

Broadway for playwrights is just a question of money.

A lot of money.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Sarah Kane yet.

Caryl Churchill. Absolutely.

But I'm also going to add Lorraine Hansberry. I was Ruth in 'Raisin in the Sun.' I go to an all white, very relgious school too. It was neat.

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Study the works the Mint theatre has presented, Yipper.

You may be surprised and less sure.

Lillian Hellman.

I saw a production of "The Children's Hour" that was devastating. I'm still not over it. Love "The Little Foxes" and "Another Part of the Forest." Saw them back-to-back in one evening.

But if you want to throw in another one-hit wonder, how about Mary Chase for "Harvey?"

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