by Sheri Phillabaum
[From Feminist Collections: A Quarterly of Women's Studies Resources,
v.23, no.4 (Summer 2002).]
Websites with information on women playwrights tend to fall into either of two main categories: support resources for writers or basic information about the work of particular individuals. My search revealed no indepth, fulltext critical literary analyses of playwrights and their works, but the Web does offer some excellent bibliographies of print sources, an opportunity to find basic information about the major female voices in theater today, and, for the aspiring playwright, some networking and production opportunities. The following reviewed sites are grouped under three general headings: theaters, general information and support, and individual playwrights.
Women's Project and Productions (WPP)
URL: http://www.womensproject.org/
Developed/maintained by: Syntechs NY (hosted by HostPro)
Last updated: Unknown
Reviewed: May 16, 2002; revisited: August 30, 2002
A New York Off-Broadway theater "dedicated to putting women playwrights center stage since 1978," WPP is a development venue for women playwrights, including board member and well-known Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Wendy Wasserstein, who offers a glowing endorsement of the theater, its mission, and its artistic director, Julia Stiles. Other recognizable names involved in this theater include Maria Irene Fornes and Joyce Carol Oates.
WPP is not for neophyte artists. This is a support entity primarily concerned with already-well-established playwrights; the women whose work it produces usually have at least a master's degree in playwriting and several productions to their credit before working with WPP. For qualified women, the project provides several venues for development of new works:
The Playwrights Lab "provides a forum for early and mid-career women playwrights to develop their work." Selected playwrights join for a period of three years, during which time they meet periodically to read and respond to each others' writing and take part in other developmental opportunities. Application information for Playwrights Lab is provided.
The "First Look" Reading Series provides a venue for rehearsed staged readings of fifteen to twenty selected scripts each year. Performed by professional actors and directors, these readings allow both beginning and established playwrights to develop their scripts in a "professional but informal environment" in front of an audience. For selected scripts, the Women's Project will undertake a work-in-progress performance to prepare a piece for possible main-stage production.
The WPP website is kept up-to-date and includes information about current and past productions, as well as information about submitting scripts and applying for internship opportunities. Visitors to the site may also order any of several anthologies of plays by WPP participants. The site is thorough and generally easy to navigate, although many of the links require plug-ins or Acrobat Reader, and some simply don't work at all.
New Georges
URL: http://www.newgeorges.org/
Maintained by: Unknown
Last updated: Unknown
Reviewed: May 17, 2002; revisited: August 30, 2002
New Georges is "a non-profit theater company that produces and develops imaginative new works by women & supports the creative efforts of emerging women theater artists." Physically located in New York City, it was founded in the early 1990s by a group of women actors concerned about a lack of solid women's roles in contemporary theater. In contrast to Women's Project and Productions, New Georges is interested in developing work by new artists whose work strikes a chord with the New Georges staff.
The website provides basic information about the organization, its mission, and its current projects and is kept up-to-date. For female playwrights who wish to have their work considered for development and production, there is also submission information. (On the site's "Frequently Asked Questions" page, the company clarifies what it means by "production": "Generally speaking, we're not a venue or presenting organization, we are a play development and producing organization…. [W]e don't have our own theater…so we're not really in the business of presenting 'finished' shows…. If you're interested in developing a piece, that's another story.")
International Centre for Women Playwrights Inc.
URL: http://www.cadvision.com/sdempsey/icwphmpg.htm
[New URL: http://www.internationalwomenplaywrights.org/,
per email from Margaret McSeveney, May 10, 2003.]
Developed/maintained by: Sandra Dempsey
Last updated: Unknown
Reviewed: May 16, 2002; revisited: August 16, 2002
This Portland, Oregon-based center, which aims to "support women playwrights around the world," is a membership organization that welcomes not only playwrights but all who support the Centre=s goals. Its website seems to serve primarily as a publicity venue for member artists, who can donate scripts and other production materials to the Centre=s archive at Ohio State University, have their own web pages linked to this one, and list their credentials, their plays (with synopses), and any upcoming productions on the site. There is an online membership form.
Some of the information on the site, particularly about conferences and "news," is quite outdated, and a number of the links seem to be broken. The production information for members' plays is kept up- to-date, however, so anyone interested in seeing staged productions of the work of developing women writers for the theater can find an extensive list of such offerings, mostly in the United States and Canada.
For pedagogical purposes, developing playwrights might be interested in clicking on "Cocktail Napkin Plays,"where they'll find several Portland playwrights' creative responses to a heuristic writing exercise.
Native American Women Playwrights Archive (NAWPA)
URL: http://staff.lib.muohio.edu/nawpa/
Maintained by: Unknown
Last updated: April 20, 2000
Reviewed: May 16, 2002; revisited: August 30, 2002
NAWPA is a "collection of original materials by Native women playwrights of the Americas" that seeks "to identify playwrights, collect and preserve their work, try to make it widely known, and encourage performances and continued creativity." Works in the archive are listed on the website and can be viewed or read in Miami (Ohio) University's library--they are not published on the website, although in some cases there are synopses or reviews available online.
On NAWPA's website, a "Directory of Native American Women Playwrights" gives information (with email addresses and Web links if available, as well as lists of works) about seventeen playwrights who have at least one play housed in the archive; almost fifty others whose works are not at Miami are listed--some with links--under "Additional Names."
The site also includes the transcript of a roundtable discussion among Native American women playwrights that occurred just before a 1999 conference entitled "Celebrating Native Women Playwrights" at Miami University. Participants discussed various topics including their backgrounds, literary and social philosophies, and writing techniques. The transcript could provide valuable insight to someone studying the contemporary writing of women of color.
There are also links from the home page to other sites--not necessarily women-focused--dealing with Native American literature.
Women of Color, Women of Words
URL: http://www.scils.rutgers.edu/~cybers/home.html
Maintained by: Angela E. Weaver, Fine and Performing Arts Reference Liaison
Librarian at George Mason University
Last updated: 2002
Reviewed: May 16, 2002; revisited: August 16, 2002
By far the best, most comprehensive, and meticulously maintained Web resource covered in this review, this is "dedicated to African American women who have gifted, shaken up, and disturbed the theatre world with their powerful words." Suite101.com's Playwright's Page has named this one of the five best websites devoted to playwrights.
Under "Writers" (click the "W" on the simulated keyboard to the right of the screen) is an alphabetical list of nineteen African American women playwrights, including Rita Dove, Whoopi Goldberg, Lorraine Hansberry, and Ntozake Shange. You can click on any name to access biographical information and links to that writer's plays; research centers that offer information about the playwright; critical and biographical resources; and other sites of interest. Extensive information about these women's plays, including publication histories, synopses, and even some full texts of plays, is available. The site also includes a bibliography of critical resources, including dissertations, but nothing fulltext online. Suzan-Lori Parks's page on this site features a link to a "Women's E-news" interview with Parks, who in April of this year won the Pulitzer Prize for her play Topdog/Underdog (now on Broadway at the Ambassador Theater). Parks is the first African American woman to win the prize for drama.
There is a listing of theater companies that perform African American and multicultural theater, such as California's African American Shakespeare Company and North Carolina's National Black theater Festival; and, for playwrights and theater professionals, the site owner maintains a current list of submission calls and job openings.
Finally, the site offers access to an e-group, a "forum for the exchange of ideas among African American female playwrights" that is also open to other female African American theater professionals.
Women in Theatre
URL: http://www.geocities.com/Broadway/Alley/5379/
Maintained by: Unknown
Last updated: Unknown
Reviewed: May 17, 2002; revisited: August 16, 2002
This site appears to offer some excellent, if not indepth or entirely up-to-date, information about women playwrights and other theater professionals, both historical ("women who made a difference...when theatre was an all male profession"--including Susanna Centlivre and Susan Glaspell) and contemporary ("women of our day (and our not so distant past) who 'push the envelope'"--including Caryl Churchhill, Irene Fornes, Emily Mann, Megan Terry, Beth Henley, and Adrienne Kennedy). There are also lists of women's theater groups (including four considered to be the pioneers), a bibliography of resources on theater in general, and links to other websites on women and theater.
Separate pages about individual playwrights/professionals offer brief biographies; quotations from critics, interviewers, and biographers; playlists; and bibliographies of print resources about the women. For most of these pages, however, no author or compiler is named--one can only assume that these essays were written by the creator of the website (who also is not named, although an email address is given); and many of the links from these pages to other sites do not work. There is also no indication of when this website was last updated.
Suzan-Lori Parks
URL: http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/litlinks/drama/parks.htm
Maintained by: Unknown
Last updated: Unknown
Reviewed: May 17, 2002; revisited: August 16, 2002
The best starting place for information about Suzan-Lori Parks, the first African American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, this page is from Bedford/St. Martins Press's "Lit Links." It includes a short biography, a link to Parks's page on the "Women of Color, Women of Words" site, and a 1999 Village Voice story about the writer. (Another link, to a 1997 article in the Philadelphia City Paper, is defunct.)
Paula Vogel
URL: http://www.brown.edu/Administration/George_Street_Journal/vol22/22GSJ27a.html
Maintained by: Brown University
Last updated: April 24, 1998
Reviewed: May 17, 2002
Paula Vogel won the Pulitzer Prize for her play How I Learned to Drive. This article by Linda P. Mahdesian for Brown University's George Street Journal tells about Vogel's past career and future plans.
Eve Ensler
URL: http://www.vaginamonologues.com/
Maintained by: Unknown
Last updated: August 16, 2002
Reviewed: May 17, 2002; revisited: August 21, 2002
This is basically an advertising site for Ensler's Vagina Monologues, a popular play currently running in New York and featuring a rotating cast of nearly a hundred actors, mostly popular television and movie performers. Despite its commercial purpose, the site boasts a very thorough set of links, including one to www.vday.org, the site for Ensler's closely related (and not commercial) "V-Day" movement, described as "an organized response against violence toward women" and "a fierce, wild, unstoppable movement and community." The "Press" link leads to several reviews of and commentaries on Ensler and her work; especially interesting is an article from the Boston Globe entitled "The Men Who Dared are Pleased," which discusses some men's reactions to a performance of the play.
A review of websites relevant to contemporary female playwrights reveals that for the works of these writers, print sources are likely to be the most valuable source of indepth critical examination. Nevertheless, a search of the Web provides an overview of the field, its current authors, venues, and resources, thus constituting an excellent starting point for the beginner with an interest in this topic, whether from the perspective of the artist, the playgoer, or the student of literature.
[Dr. Sheri Phillabaum is an award-winning playwright and a professor of English at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi.]
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Mounted November 20, 2002.