This volume addresses the work of women playwrights throughout the history of the American theatre, from the early pioneers to contemporary feminists. Women playwrights and their work are viewed through a number of lenses: cultural and historical, critical and theoretical, aesthetic and ideological. The essays cover writers like Rachel Crothers, Susan Glaspell, Lillian Hellman, Sophie Treadwell, Lorraine Hansberry, Alice Childress, Megan Terry, Ntozake Shange, Adrienne Kennedy, Wendy Wasserstein, Marsha Norman, Beth Henley, and Maria Irene Fornes.