This book celebrates the iconoclastic power of seven American women playwrights who pushed their work outside the box of conventional drama.To support student use, each play is accompanied by a short introduction. This provides the biographical background of the playwright as well as discussing the dramatic style of her writing, the extent to which her work is informed by and against the major playwrights of the period and how the specific work illustrates the overarching themes which her body of work addresses. Also covered are the historical and cultural context in which the play was presented, the feminist political context of the playwright and the performance practice of productions of the play.This anthology celebrates the iconoclastic power of seven American women playwrights who pushed their work outside the box of conventional drama. The plays and playwrights featured are: Susan Yankowitz's Gun; Ntozake Shange's Spell #7; Beth Henley's The Jacksonian; Paula Vogel's The Baltimore Waltz; Suzan-Lori Parks's In the Blood; and Lynn Nottage's Intimate Apparel. The volume celebrates fifty years of playwrights who have been continuously working in, and shaping, contemporary American theater.


Aimée K. Michel is Associate Professor of Theater at Bard College at Simon’s Rock, USA. She was the Artistic Director of the New Orleans Shakespeare Festival for over 10 years where she produced new American plays. Before this, she was Artistic Director of the Drama League’s Directors Project in New York City where she created the New Directors/New Works program. As a freelance director, she has directed in theaters all over the country. She was a recipient of both the Drama League’s Directors Project Fellowship and the Boris Segal Directing Fellowship at Williamstown Theater Festival.Wesley Brown is Professor Emeritus at Rutgers University and teaches literature and creative writing at Bard College at Simon’s Rock, USA. He co-edited the multicultural anthologies, ’Imagining America’ (fiction), ’Visions of America’ (non-fiction), edited the Teachers & Writers Guide to Frederick Douglass and wrote the narration for a segment of the PBS documentary, W.E.B. DuBois: A Biography in four Voices. In addition, he is the author of four produced plays, Boogie Woogie and Booker T, Life During Wartime, A Prophet Among Them, and Dark Meaton a Funny Mind; three novels, Tragic Magic, Darktown Strutters, PushComes to SHOVE and a short story collection, Dance of the Infidels.