About the Book:

She Persisted contains thirty ten-minute plays by some of the finest women playwrights, who happen to be over forty. The ten-minute play form has become a favourite of acting teachers. They are a useful source for script work that will lead to better listening habits. The plays are brief, focused, frequently start at a climatic moment in a story, and offer a variety of genre and styles for analysis. Your students won't get bogged down by excessive length, complex character analysis, and detail too hard to remember and keep track of.

Veteran editor Lawrence Harbison, a man who has spent his career championing new and established playwrights by bringing their work into print, has selected a rich and varied selection of ten-minute plays. The book was spearheaded by Honor Roll!, an advocacy group of women over forty.

"Honor Roll! is an advocacy and action group of women+ playwrights over forty – and our allies – whose goal is our inclusion in theater. The term "women+" refers to a spectrum of gender identification that includes women, non-binary identifiers, and trans. We are the generation excluded at the outset of our careers because of sexism, now overlooked because of ageism. We celebrate diversity in theater, and work to call attention to the negative impact of age discrimination alongside gender, race, ethnicity, faith, socioeconomic status, disability, and sexual orientation in the American Theatre and beyond."

"These women are in their forties and fifties and sixties, and they have been writing a long time, and they are at the height of their craft. These are tight, complex, nuanced pieces of writing, which no one has seen because for too long they weren't looking."

"These are important writers, and important plays." — Theresa Rebeck, from the introduction

She Persisted: Thirty Ten-Minute Plays by Women Over Forty includes:

• Arts and Sciences by Sheri Wilner: A fine arts and a plant sciences major are both drawn to the same tree on their college campus, though for extremely different reasons. At first dismissive of each other’s work, they both come to see their beloved tree – and each other – with a new perspective. (Cast: 2 any gender)

• At the Train Station in Munich by Cynthia L. Cooper: With Nazi soldiers all around, a Jewish-German underground worker summons an inner strength while awaiting a train that will take her to safety. (Cast: 2 female)

• The Bardo State by Susan Cinoman: A young man has to decide whether he'll go to his next life with the same set of parents who raised him. (Cast: 2 any gender; one character doubles)

• Blood Ties by Michael Angel Johnson: Edmonia Lewis (c.1845-1911 – first woman of African-American heritage to earn an international reputation as a visual artist) is in her studio in Boston (1863) where she is working on a bust of John Brown and trying to convince her patron, the white abolitionist Lydia Maria Child (1802-1880), that moving to Rome in order to focus on her art would not be deserting the abolitionist cause. (Cast: 2 female, one African-American, one Caucasian)

• Bruce by C. Denby Swanson: Gail wants a divorce. She thinks her husband has been unfaithful with a pig they keep on their farm – is she now turning into one of them? (Cast: 2 female, 1 male)

• Buried by Audrey Webb: When a teenaged girl tries to get her twin brother to accept the severity of her illness, he focuses on mending a sibling squabble with the admission of a long-hidden secret. (Cast: 1 female, 1 male)

• Dinner During Yemen by Karen Malpede: Catapults us into the dining room of two privileged career diplomats and their vast distance from the reality of US propagated war in Yemen. (Cast: 2 female)

• Everything is Fine by Lynn Rosen: Formerly titled Take One for the Team.

• Fissshhhh by Jennifer Maisel: A mother and daughter no longer communicate. (Cast: 3 female, 1 male)

• From Ashlee to Ashes and Dust to Dustin by Rita Anderson: Produced in the 14/48 Festival at The Vortex Theatre in Austin, Texas.

• Fucking Cupcakes by Judith Leora

• Get Mom by C.S. Hanson: Presented by Naked Angels at Theatre 80 in New York City.

• Getting in Touch with Your Dark Side by Laura Rohrman: Three women take their friend on a rescue trip to get her to stop obsessing about her ex-boyfriend. Things get a little bit crazy and funny when the two of the women drink a truth serum. (Cast: 3 or 4 female, plus one off stage voice)

• I Know by Jacquelyn Reingold: Lila and Daniel, together for decades, are theatre actors in their 70s. When he comes home after another failed audition, Lila is kicking him out. Surprise. Then another surprise. Then another. A short comedic drama about love: for each other, for the theatre, forever. (Cast: 1 female, 1 male)

• Inauguration by Jenny Lyn Bader: A romantic date in Washington DC unravels when politics arise in unexpected ways. (Cast: 2 female, 1 male)

• Is it Cold in Here? by Julie Weinberg: Two sisters come to visit their dying mother on Long Island and discover, much to their dismay, that she has already decided to spend their inheritance in a shocking and unconventional way. (Cast: 3 female)

• I Think I Would Remember If I Had Sex with Denzel Washington by Yvette Heyliger: Middle-aged twin sisters seek an autograph and some face-time with the heart throb of stage and screen to whom they gave an unforgettable night in their youth. (Cast: 2 female)

• A Late Summer by Liz Amberly: Two couples – one older, one younger – find that they have more in common than first meets the eye. (Cast: 2 female, 2 male)

• Lightning Bugs by Royal Shirée: A night in the country is the perfect place to be sixty years later. After sixty years from the homestead, an old couple revisits the place where they remember their firsts. (Cast: 2)

• Make No Mistake (A Fantasia) by Betty Shamieh is about women, power and culture. In parallel monologues to the audience, a Monica Lewinsky-like mistress to a president and the youngest wife of Osama Bin Laden take turns explaining their devotion to relationships that are ultimately unsustainable. (Cast: 2 female)

• Modern Romance by Bridgette A. Wimberly: Tanya has been lonely for a long time. Lately she has found something exciting to do with her afternoons.... but is he for real? (Cast: 2 female, 1 male)

• My Aim is True by Lucy Wang: Inspired by the courage and unsolved death of Native American civil rights activist Anna Mae Aquash whose body was found Feb 24, 1976. The play is a fictional account of her last interrogation by the FBI in Pierre, South Dakota. (Cast: 2 characters)

• On the Cross Bronx by Victoria Z. Daly: In a cop car stuck in traffic on the side of the highway, Kate, in labor, refuses to give birth until she can get to the hospital. Officer Joe's job is on the line if she doesn't safely deliver. And time is running out. (Cast: 1 female, 1 male)

• Peace Plaza by Christine Toy Johnson: A woman whose family lived through the Japanese internment camps wonders about the cost of civil disobedience as she waits for her daughter on the day Martin Luther King, Jr. is shot. (Cast: 3 female to play 40s and 18-20, Asian American)

• Privilege by Susan Kim: Two couples have had different experiences of life, based on either luck or hard work. The question is: how hard is it to come up with $500? A dark comedy about two couples who may not be as politically forward as they might have thought. (Cast: 2 female, 2 male)

• Tennessee Waltz by A.D. Williams

• The Woodpile by J Thalia Cunningham

• Tinder … Sucka by Inda Craig-Galván: A woman and man fall in love, thanks to a Tinder match. Little do they know they just happen to be lifelong rival crime lords. "The Shop Around the Corner" meets 1970s blaxploitation. Because. (Cast: 1 female African-American, 1 female any ethnicity, 1 male African-American, 1 male any ethnicity)

• Waylay Makeover by Donna Latham: On-air personalities Dominique and Abner waylay unsuspecting Beth for a forced makeover. (Cast 3 female)

• You Haven't Changed a Bit by Donna Hoke focuses on the two remaining classmates at a 70th high school reunion. Lottie has never been to a high school reunion; Len has been to them all. Their 70th is a first for them both. He has orchestrated the gathering to share his lifelong feelings for his peer, who slowly realizes that they are the only two left. (Cast: 1 female, 1 male)

About the Editor:

Lawrence Harbison was in charge of new play acquisitions for Samuel French for over thirty years, where his work on behalf of playwrights resulted in the first publication of such subsequent luminaries as Jane Martin, Don Nigro,Tina Howe, Theresa Rebeck, José Rivera, William Mastrosimone, and Ken Ludwig, among many others. He has served as literary manager or literary consultant for several New York theatres, and has also served many times over the years as a judge and commentator for various national play contests and lectures regularly at colleges and universities.