About
the Book:
In Plays by American
Women: 1900-1930 editor and scholar Judith E. Barlow
has assembled a unique collection of five fine plays by successful
women playwrights, including the first woman playwright to win a
Pulitzer Prize:
A Man's World. Or is it? Rachel Crothers wrote this
wonderfully provocative and entertaining play about aspiring
Greenwich Village artists in 1910. Frank, our leading lady, is
emerging as a novelist of renown while raising a small son on her
own. She's determined to live life on her own terms, refusing to
allow men to impose societal expectations on her personal choices.
But what is the price she must pay for her independence? It may be 'a
man's world,' but not for long! A Man's World continues to
capture the challenge for the disenfranchised – whether by gender,
orientation, faith, race, or temperament – forced to sacrifice
either herself or her hope of acceptance, even by those she loves.
(Premiered in 1910 at Collier's Comedy Theatre on Broadway; Cast: 4
women, 5 men)
Trifles is a one-act drama by Susan Glaspell. On
the surface, this short play is a slice-of-life story about a murder
investigation in the rural United States. However, it is also a story
about the relationships between men and women, husbands and wives,
and the often-overlooked "trifles" which can say so much
about a person's life. A
groundbreaking feminist play, Trifles is
a masterful blend of murder mystery and social commentary,
thoughtfully examining traditional gender roles in early 20th century
American life and illuminating how these ideas are still hauntingly
relevant today. (Premiered
in 1916 at the Wharf Theatre in Provincetown, Massachusetts; Cast: 2
women, 3 men)
Plumes is a one-act, folk drama by Georgia Douglas
Johnson, originally
published under the pen name
John Temple.
Charity's daughter Emeline is seriously ill. A pompous doctor advises
her that a $50 operation could save Emeline's life, but that's a
devastating amount for her poor family, and besides, Charity doesn't
trust the man. She faces the heartbreaking decision of choosing
between an expensive cure that might not succeed – or the decent
funeral denied her other children, complete with, in her words,
"everythin' gran – plumes!" (Produced
in 1927 at Chicago's Cube Theatre: Cast: 2 women, 1 man, 1 female
off-stage voice)
Machinal is a full-length drama by Sophie Treadwell.
For the young woman, a stenographer
in the industrial, male-dominated world of the 1920s, life is nothing
like she hoped it would be. Restless and unfulfilled in a passionless
marriage and unwanted motherhood, she finds her only joy in the form
of an illicit love affair. But when reality sets in and she must
return to her routine existence, she'll go to any lengths to regain
her freedom. Considered a masterpiece of early 20th-century American
theatre, the play weaves harrowing courtroom drama and an
expressionistic style to chart the journey of a woman driven to
murder. (Premiered
in 1928 at the Belmont Theatre on Broadway; Cast:
Miss Lulu Bett is a comedy of manners adapted for the stage
by Zona Gale, from her novel of the same name. Miss Lulu
Bett centers on the beautifully drawn title character, a shy,
overworked spinster who spends her life caring for her sister's
demanding family. When her brother-in-law's brother Ninian comes to
visit and asks her to marry him, it seems her life is about to
change. A secret is revealed and Lulu must return home. But once she
returns she makes a choice that changes her life forever. (Premiered
in 1920 at the Belmont Theatre on Broadway and won the Pulitzer for
Drama in 1921; Cast: 5 women, 4 men)
About the Playwright:
Rachel Crothers
(1878-1958) was an American
playwright and theatre
director whose works reflected the position of women in American
society more accurately than those of any other dramatist of her
time. For
three decades, she maintained the extraordinary average of one
Broadway play a year, the majority of them popular and critical
successes. Her accomplishment was made the more remarkable by the
fact that she cast, produced, and directed nearly all her plays
herself.
Susan Keating Glaspell
(1876-1948) was a Pulitzer prize-winning playwright, actress,
journalist, novelist. She is also known for her role in establishing
the Provincetown Players, the first modern American theater company
that also introduced the plays of Eugene O'Neill.
She has been heralded as America's first important 20th century
female playwright.
Georgia Douglas Johnson
(1880-1966) was an African-American poet, one of the earliest
African-American female playwrights, and an important participant in
the Harlem Renaissance. She was a prolific writer of many poems and
more than 28 plays, but few
were ever published or produced because of her gender and race, and
most have been lost.
Sophie Treadwell
(1885-1970) was a prolific and successful playwright and a
campaigning journalist in America between the wars. But Machinal
is the one work for which she is known today. Its plot was pulled
from headlines when she was assigned to cover the trial of Ruth
Snyder, a Long Island housewife who with her lover, Judd Gray,
murdered her husband and died in the electric chair at Sing Sing.
Zona Gale (1874-1938) was
an American novelist, short story writer, and playwright. She was
only the third dramatist to win the Pulitzer, and the first woman to
do so. She was active in progressive causes and in the interest of
women's suffrage – and a full-time successful writer whose work is
now, unjustly, almost unknown outside her native state of
Wisconsin. She wrote a
volume of poetry, eleven novels, and seven plays. Miss Lulu
Bett, adapted from her novel of
the same name, was a 1920 Broadway hit, and won
the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1921.
Judith E. Barlow is Professor
Emeritus of English and Women's Studies at the University at
Albany-SUNY. She is the editor of Plays By American Women
1900-1930 and Women Writers of the Provincetown Players,
as well as numerous essays on American Drama. The prestigious Judith
Barlow Prize is a student award given annually for an original
one-act play that has been inspired by the work of a historic woman
playwright.