About the Play:

If We are Women has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Female Monologues.

If We are Women is a full-length drama by Joanna McClelland Glass. Jessica, a divorced novelist, is grieving the death of a lover, when her mother and ex-mother-in-law arrive to offer comfort and support. Jessica might need that assistance even more than she knows, since her teenage daughter fails to come home after a school dance. If We Are Women concerns the wisdom of women and the attempt to pass it from one generation to the next.

If We are Women is about three generations of women: two grandmothers, a daughter, and a granddaughter who gather under tragic circumstances. Jessica MacMillan Cohen, a divorced Canadian novelist living in Connecticut, is mourning the recent death of her live-in lover. "If only I had a college degree." Her mother Ruth MacMillan has flown, for the first time, from the Canadian prairie. Her inability to read and write causes her great pain. "If only I had gotten my eighth grade diploma." Her mother-in-law Rachel Cohen has driven up from Pennsylvania. She is an agnostic Jewish intellectual with a Master's degree. "If only I had gone to Oxford." Her love-hungry daughter Polly is eighteen and is slated to go to Yale in the autumn. After staying out all night with a young man, she arrives on the scene to announce a reversal of plans. The three older women discuss their pasts and presents poetically, poignantly and humorously as they attempt to pass down the wisdom of their years. Weighing the choices each have made as women, as daughters, as mothers, their recollections of guilt and regret are punctuated by wry observations on sex, history, ideas and their relationships with the men in their lives. Where Ruth is naive, Rachel is wise, but the two come to realize in the face of a family conflict, they have more in common than they may have realized. When the granddaughter disregards all that she hears, Ruth observes that "every time a kid is born, we start from zero." If We are Women looks back through three generations of mothers and daughters, tracing the hopes and disappointments, the loves and losses, and the bonds and distances.

If We are Women premiered in 1993 at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, and in 1994 played across Canada in a co-production of The Canadian Stage Company at The Vancouver Playhouse, the Centaur Theatre in Montreal, Theatre Calgary, and the Citadel Theatre in Edmonton. It was a finalist for the 1994 Governor General's Literary Award for Drama (Canadian equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize). The British premiere was in 1995 at Greenwich Theatre in south-east London.

Cast: 4 female

What people say:

"…This play is tenderly affecting. There are enough funny lines to keep tears safely at bay for two hours." — Financial Times (London)

"If We are Women is an oasis of insight and honesty." — Vancouver Sun

"In If We are Women, Joanna Glass delivers enough humour, compassion and hope to touch everyone who sees it." — Globe and Mail

"Elegant and eloquent theatre." — Toronto Star

"If We are Women is a thoughtful, melancholic debate. The play refuses to be politically correct or trendy." — International Herald-Tribune

About the Playwright:

Joanna McClelland Glass is a Tony-nominated Canadian playwright. Born in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, she studied theatre in high school and developed her abilities in community theatre. Shortly after moving to Calgary to work for a radio station, she won a scholarship to study acting at the Pasadena Playhouse. She then moved to New York, where she began to write. Her plays have been produced on Broadway, off-Broadway, and in many North American regional theatres, as well as in England, Ireland, Australia, and Germany.