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American Women Playwrights (July 2022): Conclusion

By Martha Schmoyer LoMonaco

Conclusion

As this essay goes to press, American women playwrights are finally getting produced. On Broadway, Paula Vogel’s Pulitzer Prize winning How I Learned To Drive is enjoying its first Broadway run, and a brand-new playwright, 28-year-old Selina Fillinger, brought POTUS: Or, Behind Every Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive, directly to Broadway without an out-of-town tryout. Off-Broadway, Shaina Taub wrote the book, music, and lyrics for Suffs, which is at the Public Theater, and she also stars in this all- woman production; Iranian American playwright Sanaz Toossi has had two plays, English and Wish You Were Here, produced at the Atlantic and Playwright’s Horizons theaters respectively. Regionally, Inda Craig-Galván’s Black Super Hero Magic Mama at A.R.T. in Cambridge, Massachusetts; Sanctuary City by Martyna Majok at Berkeley Rep in California; and Tyla Abercrumbie’s Relentless at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago are just three of many examples. And in London’s West End Theresa Rebeck’s new play, Mad House, is about to premiere in June. These new plays, by BIPOC and white women alike, are sure to generate significant scholarship and anthologies devoted exclusively to 21st century American women playwrights. With any luck, this bibliography will need to be significantly updated very soon.

Works Cited