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Lucy Kerbel's 100 Great Plays for Women is an
inspiring guide to a hundred plays that put female
performers centre stage, dispelling the myth that 'there
aren't any good plays for women'. With a foreword by
Kate Mosse.
Women buy the majority of theatre
tickets, make up half the acting profession and are
often the largest cohort of any youth theatre or drama
club. And yet they have traditionally been
underrepresented on stage. 100 Great Plays for Women
seeks to address this gap by celebrating plays that put
female performers centre stage.
Lucy Kerbel's
myth-busting book features compact and insightful
introductions to 100 plays, each of which has an
entirely or predominantly female cast, with the female
characters taking an equal or decisive role in driving
the on-stage action. 10 plays for solo female performers
feature in this selection. The result is a personal but
wide-ranging reappraisal of the theatrical canon, a
snapshot of the very best writing from ancient times
right up to the present day that has female protagonists
at its heart.
A fascinating mixture of familiar
and less well-known works dealing with a broad range of
themes, it is an essential resource for all directors
and producers looking for plays to stage, writers
seeking inspiration and actors trying to track down a
new audition piece. It is also an exciting provocation
that will have readers, both male and female,
championing their own personal favourites.
The
book is the culmination of a project by Tonic Theatre
and the National Theatre Studio. Tonic Theatre was
founded by Lucy Kerbel in 2011 to support the theatre
industry in achieving greater gender equality in its
workforces and repertoires; it partners with leading
theatre companies around the UK on a range of projects,
schemes and creative works. The National Theatre Studio
provides support and resources for both emerging and
established theatre-makers of outstanding talent, and
contributes to the National's ongoing search for and
training of new artists.
'A gem of a book... Lucy
Kerbel has done hard-working directors and artistic
directors, of spaces large and small, a great service '
Kate Mosse, from her foreword
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