Beyond the Ingenue: Plays for Powerful Women

The ingenue has her time and place, but women’s stories extend beyond tales of young innocents. Check out these titles featuring strong women ranging in age, temperament and position.

4000 Miles by Amy Herzog (US/UK)
(Full-Length Play, Dramatic Comedy / 3w, 1m)
After suffering a major loss while he was on a cross-country bike trip, 21 year-old Leo seeks solace from his feisty 91 year-old grandmother Vera in her West Village apartment. Over the course of a single month, these unlikely roommates infuriate, bewilder, and ultimately reach each other. 4000 Miles looks at how two outsiders find their way in today’s world. Both the role of Vera and the younger role of Amanda, Leo’s girlfriend, offer strong opportunities for women actors.

5 Lesbians Eating a Quiche by Evan Linder and Andrew Hobgood (US/UK)
(Full-Length Play, Comedy / 5w)
It’s 1956 and The Susan B. Anthony Society for the Sisters of Gertrude Stein are having their annual quiche breakfast. As the assembled “widows” await the announcement of the society’s prize-winning quiche, the atomic bomb sirens sound! A tasty recipe of hysterical laughs, sexual innuendoes, unsuccessful repressions, and delicious discoveries. All 5 roles offer a range of personalities for an ensemble of women to bring to vivid, comedic life.

A Very Rich Woman by Ruth Gordon (US)
(Full-Length Play, Comedy / 8w, 7m)
Ruth Gordon played the part of a Boston widow with a rather common background, who together with her husband built an enviable fortune the hard way. Being a very spirited widow, she now decides to have a fine old time with her money, but she has two lacquered daughters, her own Regan and Goneril, who are covetous of the family fortune and resent the manner in which she is enjoying it.

Airness by Chelsea Marcantel (US)
(Full-Length Play, Comedy / 2w, 4m, 1 any gender)
When newcomer Nina enters her first air guitar competition, she thinks winning will be easy. An eclectic group of competitors with an intense love for the craft reveal there’s more to this art form than playing pretend. A shred-or-be-shredded comedy about the spirit of competition and community found through music. Both the role of Nina, new to the air guitar circuit, and the seasoned veteran Cannibal Queen are substantial roles for strong women. Also available in a High School Edition (US).

August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom by August Wilson (US/UK)
(Full-Length Play, Drama / 2w, 8m)
It’s 1927 in a rundown studio in Chicago where Ma Rainey is recording new sides of old favorites. More goes down in the session than music in this riveting portrayal of rage, racism, the self-hate and exploitation. The play boasts a starring role for the fiery and determined “Mother of Blues” herself.

Blithe Spirit by Noël Coward (US/UK)
(Full-Length Play, Comedy / 5w, 2m)
Fussy, cantankerous novelist Charles Condomine is re-married but haunted (literally) by the ghost of his late first wife, the clever and insistent Elvira who is called up by a visiting “happy medium,” one Madame Arcati. As the (worldly and un-) personalities clash, Charles’ current wife, Ruth, is accidentally killed, “passes over,” joins Elvira, and the two “blithe spirits” haunt the hapless Charles into perpetuity. All three women – Elvira, Ruth and Madame Arcati – are strong showings for women.

Breadcrumbs by Jennifer Haley (US/UK)
(Full-Length Play, Drama / 2w)
A reclusive fiction writer diagnosed with dementia must depend upon a troubled young caretaker to complete her autobiography. In a symbiotic battle of wills, they delve into the dark woods of the past, unearthing a tragedy that shatters their notions of language, loneliness, and essential self.

Chasing Manet by Tina Howe (US/UK)
(Full-Length Play, Comedy / 4w, 3m)
A rebellious painter from a distinguished family in Boston and an ebullient Jewish woman with a huge adoring family form an unlikely bond. Inside the confining walls of Mount Airy Nursing Home, the two plot an escape to Paris aboard the QE2. But can they possibly pull it off amidst the chaos of their surroundings? The tension and comedy grow as they struggle to take wing for the last time.

Desdemona, A Play About a Handkerchief by Paula Vogel (US)
(Full-Length Play, Dramatic Comedy / 3w)
As the wrongly accused and suffering wife of Shakespeare’s tragic Othello, Desdemona has long been viewed as the “victim of circumstance.” But as Pulitzer Prize-winner Paula Vogel demonstrates in her comic deconstruction of Shakespeare’s play – aligning tongue-in-cheek humor while raising serious questions as to the role of women through the ages – Desdemona was far from the quivering girl we’ve all come to know. All three women – Biance, Desdemona and Emilia – are beyond the ingenue in this reimagining.

Fabulation or, The Re-Education of Undine by Lynn Nottage (US)
(Full-Length Play, Dramatic Comedy / 4w, 4m)
In this social satire about an ambitious and haughty African American woman, Undine Barnes Calles, whose husband suddenly disappears after embezzling all of her money, Undine retreats to her childhood home in Brooklyn’s Walt Whitman projects, only to discover that she must cope with a crude new reality. As she faces the challenge of transforming her setbacks into small victories in a battle to reaffirm her right to be, this story becomes a comeuppance tale with a comic twist.

End of the Rainbow by Peter Quilter (US)
(Full-Length Play, Drama / 1w, 3m)
Want to explore a famous ingenue further? This savagely funny drama features a glorious collection of Judy Garland’s songs, infused with the glamour and the melancholy of stardom, as it depicts the final years in the life of the superstar entertainer.

every tongue confess by Marcus Gardley (US)
(Full-Length Play, Drama / 5w, 7m)
In Boligee, Alabama, the temperature is rising, hailstones are falling, ghosts are walking among the living, and someone is setting black churches on fire. As one church burns to the ground, the parishioners trapped inside tell tales spanning generations that may unravel the mystery of who is behind the arsons. This epic fantasia that probes the line between redemption and damnation by blending folklore, magic, and real American history.

Georgiana and Kitty: Christmas at Pemberley by Lauren Gunderson and Margot Melcon (US/UK)
(Full-Length Play, Comedy / 6w, 3m)
Georgiana Darcy is an accomplished pianist but wary of romance. Kitty Bennet is a bright-eyed optimist and a perfect best friend. After years of being overshadowed by their older ingenue siblings, these two younger sisters are ready for their own adventures in life and love, starting with the arrival of an admirer and secret correspondent. Meddlesome families and outmoded expectations won’t stop these determined friends from forging their own way in a holiday tale filled with music, ambition, sisterhood and forgiveness.

Grace & Glorie by Tom Ziegler (US)
(Full-Length Play, Comedy / 2w)
Estelle Parsons and Lucie Arnaz starred on Broadway in this charmer set in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Grace, a feisty 90-year-old cancer patient, has checked herself out of the hospital and returned to her beloved homestead cottage to die alone. Her volunteer hospice worker, Glorie, is a Harvard MBA recently transplanted to this rural backwater from New York. As she attempts to care for and comfort the cantankerous Grace, the sophisticated Glorie gains new perspectives on values and life’s highs and lows.

How to Transcend a Happy Marriage by Sarah Ruhl (US/UK)
(Full-Length Play, Comedy / 4w, 4m)
At a dinner party in New Jersey, two couples discuss polyamory as brought up by the introduction of a new temp, Pip, in Jane’s office. When they invite Pip and her two male partners, discussion turns to action and the exploration of unexplored desire turns animalistic, and then Jane’s daughter sees it all. How to Transcend a Happy Marriage blurs the lines of monogamy and asks how deeply friends, lovers, and strangers connect.

Hurricane Diane by Madeleine George (US/UK)
(Full-Length Play, Comedy / 5w)
Meet Diane, a permaculture gardener dripping with butch charm. She’s got supernatural abilities owing to her true identity – the Greek god Dionysus – and she’s returned to the modern world to gather mortal followers and restore the Earth to its natural state. Where better to begin than with four housewives in a suburban New Jersey cul-de-sac? A hilarious evisceration of the blind eye we all turn to climate change and the bacchanalian catharsis that awaits us, even in our own backyards.

Lettice and Lovage by Peter Shaffer (US/UK)
(Full-Length Play, Comedy / 3w, 3m)
Peter Shaffer’s riotous comedy earned Tony Awards in its original run for its leads, actors Maggie Smith and Margaret Tyzack. The characters in question? Lettice Duffet, a flamboyant tour guide who loves to embellish the history behind an English country house, and Lotte Schon, the house’s stoic, conventional steward.

Manahatta by Mary Kathryn Nagle (US/UK)
(Full-Length Play, Drama / 3w, 4m)
A gripping journey from the fur trade of the 1600s to the stock trade of today, this stunning play about self-discovery tells the story of Jane Snake, a brilliant young Native American woman with a Stanford MBA. Jane reconnects with her ancestral homeland, known as Manahatta, when she moves from her home with the Delaware Nation in Oklahoma to New York for a job at a major investment bank just before the financial crisis of 2008. Jane’s struggle to reconcile her new life with the expectations and traditions of the family she left behind is powerfully interwoven with the heartbreaking history of how the Lenape were forced from their land.

Marjorie Prime by Jordan Harrison (US/UK)
(Full-Length Play, Drama / 2w, 2m)
It’s the age of artificial intelligence, and 85-year-old Marjorie – a jumble of disparate, fading memories – has a handsome new companion who’s programmed to feed the story of her life back to her. What would we remember, and what would we forget, if given the chance? In this richly spare, wondrous new play, Jordan Harrison explores the mysteries of human identity and the limits – if any – of what technology can replace.

Mary Page Marlowe by Tracy Letts (US/UK)
(Full-Length Play, Drama / 11w, 6m, 1 girl)
Mary Page Marlowe leads an unremarkable life. As an accountant in Ohio with two children, few would expect her life to be inordinately intricate or moving. However, it is choices, both mundane and gripping, and where those choices have taken Mary Page Marlowe that make her life so intimate and surprisingly complicated.

Meg by Paula Vogel (US)
(Full-Length Play, Drama / 2w, 3m)
With the action of A Man for All Seasons as backdrop, this drama explores the forces imprisoning Margaret More, daughter of Sir Thomas More. “Meg,” uniquely isolated from her time and environment, finds being an intelligent, independent woman in such a male-dominated society to be a double-edged sword as she discovers her role in both her father’s legacy and her own place in history.

Misery by William Goldman and Stephen King (US)
(Full-Length Play, Drama / 1w, 2m)
This psychological thriller based on Stephen King’s novel Misery follows successful romance novelist Paul Sheldon, who is rescued from a car crash and wakes up captive in a secluded home owned by his self-identified “number one fan,” Annie Wilkes. When she discovers the author has killed off her favorite character, Annie blackmails Paul into writing a new draft as if his life depends on it – and it does.

Nan and the Lower Body by Jessica Dickey (US/UK)
(Full-Length Play, Dramatic Comedy / 2w, 2m)
When Pap smear inventor Dr. George Papanicolaou takes on a brilliant new assistant, Nan Day, he senses that she is hiding a secret. As Dr. Pap discovers the truth, he learns that he may hold the key to solving her greatest mystery. This frank and funny play explores the mysteries of the heart and provides a personal perspective on the revolutionary technology that has saved the lives of millions but caused moral dilemmas along the way.

Nana’s Naughty Knickers by Katherine DiSavino (US/UK)
(Full-Length Play, Comedy / 5w, 3m, 1 any gender)
Bridget and her grandmother are about to become roommates. However, what Bridget saw as a unique opportunity to stay with her favorite Nana in New York for the summer quickly turns into an experience she’ll never forget. It seems her sweet grandma is running an illegal boutique from her apartment, selling handmade naughty knickers to every senior citizen in the five-borough area! Will Bridget be able to handle all the excitement? Will her nana get arrested – or worse – evicted

Poor Clare by Chiara Atik (US)
(Full-Length Play, Dramatic Comedy / 5w, 1m, 1 any gender)
It’s 1211 in Assisi, Italy, and Clare’s got beauty, wealth, and a rich suitor who showers her with expensive presents. So why is she so drawn to this guy Francis who gave up all his possessions just because poor people are suffering? Everyone in town says he’s crazy. And yet… she starts seeing everything in her life differently. This hilarious, anachronistic telling of the real story of St. Clare considers the cost of doing good – and how little has changed for the haves and the have-nots in almost a millennium.

POTUS: or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive by Selina Fillinger (US/UK)
(Full-Length Play, Comedy / 7w)
One four-letter word is about to rock 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. When the President unwittingly spins a PR nightmare into a global crisis, the seven brilliant and beleaguered women he relies upon most risk life, liberty, and the pursuit of sanity to keep the commander-in-chief out of trouble.

Rest by Samuel D. Hunter (US/UK)
(Full-Length Play, Drama / 3w, 4m)
A retirement home in northern Idaho is being shut down, and only three residents and a bare-bones staff remain. When a record-breaking blizzard blows into town and an elderly resident Etta disappears into the storm, everyone is brought to face their own mortality. The staff – Faye and Ginny, thirties – as well as the role of Etta provide depth and complication for actors of multiple ages.

Rose and Walsh by Neil Simon (US/UK)
(Full-Length Play, Comedy / 2w, 2m)
At a beautiful beach house on the tip of Long Island, Rose, a celebrated but near penniless author, receives nightly visits from Walsh, the love of her life and a famous writer himself. Now Walsh must go away forever, but not before securing Rose’s financial future with an extraordinary proposal that promises to change everything.

Stage Kiss by Sarah Ruhl (US/UK)
(Full-Length Play, Comedy / 3w, 4m)
Art imitates Life. Life imitates Art. When two actors with a history are thrown together as romantic leads in a forgotten 1930s melodrama, they quickly lose touch with reality as the story onstage follows them offstage. Stage Kiss captures Sarah Ruhl’s singular voice. It is a charming tale about what happens when lovers share a stage kiss – or when actors share a real one.

Single Black Female by Lisa. B. Thompson (US/UK)
(Full-Length Play, Dramatic Comedy / 2w)
A two-woman show with rapid-fire comic vignettes that explore the lives of thirty-something African American middle-class women in urban America as they search for love, clothes, and dignity in a world that fails to recognize them amongst a parade of stereotypical images. SBF 1, an English literature professor, and SBF 2, a corporate lawyer, keep each other balanced as they face their fears of rejection, hopes for romance, and reminisce about black girlhood wounds.

Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks by Richard Alfieri (US/UK)
(Full-Length Play, Comedy / 1w, 1m)
Lily, an aging but formidable retiree, hires Michael, an acerbic dance instructor, to give her dance lessons in her condo in St. Petersburg Beach, Florida. Antagonism between a gay man and the wife of a Southern Baptist minister gives way to profound compatibility as they swing dance, tango, foxtrot, and cha-cha while sharing barbs and intimacies along with the dance steps until they both transcend fear and mortality while the sun sets on their last dance.

The Cemetery Club by Ivan Menchell (US/UK)
(Full-Length Play, Dramatic Comedy / 4w, 1m)
Three Jewish widows meet once a month for tea before going to visit their husbands’ graves. Ida is sweet tempered and ready to begin a new life; Lucille is a feisty embodiment of the girl who just wants to have fun; and Doris is priggish and judgmental, particularly when Sam the butcher enters the scene. He meets the widows while visiting his wife’s grave. Doris and Lucille squash the budding romance between Sam and Ida. They are guilt-stricken when this nearly breaks Ida’s heart.

The Children’s Hour by Lillian Hellman (US)
(Full-Length Play, Drama / 12w, 2m)
After a malicious student falsely accuses the two headmistresses of her 1930s New England boarding school of having a lesbian affair, scandal starts. As the young girl comes to understand the power she wields, she sticks by her story, which destroys the women’s careers, relationships and lives. The roles of the young girl and the two headmistresses offer complex realities for actors to embody.

The City of Conversation by Anthony Giardina (US/UK)
(Full-Length Play, Drama / 4w, 4m, 1 boy)
In 1979, Washington D.C. was a place where people actually talked to each other…where adversaries fought it out on the Senate floor and then smoothed it out over drinks and hors d’oeuvres. But it was all about to change. In this play spanning 30 years and six presidential administrations, Hester Ferris throws Georgetown dinner parties that can change the course of Washington’s politics. But when her beloved son suddenly turns up with an ambitious Reaganite girlfriend and a shocking new conservative world view, Hester must choose between preserving her family and defending the causes she’s spent her whole life fighting for.

The Heidi Chronicles by Wendy Wasserstein (US)
(Full-Length Play, Dramatic Comedy / 5w, 3m)
Wendy Wasserstein’s celebrated play follows Heidi Holland from high school in the 1960s to her career as a successful art historian more than 20 years later. With humor and heart, the play explores the changing role of women during this time, from Heidi’s ardent feminism in the 1970s to her eventual sense of betrayal in the 1980s. Wasserstein’s work on the whole centers strong women; explore more in the US or the UK.

The Little Foxes by Lillian Hellman (US)
(Full-Length Play, Drama / 4w, 6m)
A cotton mill, $75,000 and a family full of schemers and manipulators. Lillian Hellman’s acerbic play brings all the sins and plots of the prosperous, genteel-seeming Hubbard family into the light, and surmises that the bonds of family cannot overcome the lure of money.

The Matchmaker by Thornton Wilder (US/UK)
(Full-Length Play, Comedy / 7w, 9m)
When a wealthy merchant in nineteenth-century Yonkers, NY, decides to take a wife, he employs a matchmaker by the name of Mrs. Dolly Levi. This swift farce runs headlong into hilarious complications, and Dolly Gallagher-Levi, turn-of-the-century matchmaker and “woman who arranges things,” is a dynamic feast of a role.

The Odd Couple, Female Version by Neil Simon (US/UK)
(Full-Length Play, Comedy / 6w, 2m)
Unger and Madison are at it again! Florence Unger and Olive Madison, that is, in Neil Simon’s hilarious contemporary comic classic: the female version of The Odd Couple. This version hosts an evening of Trivia Pursuit instead of a poker party and replacing the Pidgeon sisters with the two Constanzuela brothers – but the hilarity remains the same.

The Roommate by Jen Silverman (US/UK)
(Full-Length Play, Dark Comedy / 2w)
Sharon, in her mid-fifties, is recently divorced and needs a roommate to share her Iowa home. Robyn, also in her mid-fifties, needs a place to hide and a chance to start over. But as Sharon begins to uncover Robyn’s secrets, they encourage her own deep-seated desire to transform her life completely. A dark comedy about what it takes to re-route your life – and what happens when the wheels come off.

The Waverly Gallery by Kenneth Lonergan (US/UK)
(Full-Length Play, Comedy / 2w, 3m)
Gladys, the elderly matriarch of the Green family, has run an art gallery in a small Greenwich Village hotel for many years. The management wants to replace her less-than-thriving gallery with a coffee shop. Always irascible but now increasingly erratic, Gladys is a cause of concern to her daughter, her son-in-law, and her grandson, from whose point of view this poignant memory play is told. A wacky and heartrending look at the effect of senility on a family.

The World of Extreme Happiness by Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig (US)
(Full-Length Play, Drama / 3w, 4m)
Sunny is determined to escape her life in rural China. Darkly comic and a lacerating look at modern urbanity and rurality in China, this play wonders how far we would go to escape the legacy of where we came from. The role of Sunny – a young migrant factory worker – is ambitious and critical, with a wealth of depth for an actor to explore.

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion (US)
(Full-Length Play, Drama / 1w)
In this dramatic adaptation of her award-winning, bestselling memoir (which The New York Times called “an indelible portrait of loss and grief…a haunting portrait of a four-decade-long marriage”), Joan Didion transforms the story of the sudden and unexpected loss of her husband and their only daughter into a stunning and powerful one-woman play.

’Til Death by Alexis Scheer (US/UK)
(Full-Length Play, Drama / 5w, 2m)
As a foreign war correspondent, Marina has put her life on the line to illuminate the darkest corners of humanity. Having just returned from a particularly bloody conflict, she flirts with staying home for good – alongside her cameraman turned lover. With her closest friends and family gathered on the eve of her lifetime achievement award ceremony, she decides to cap this glorious moment with an elopement. As Marina tries to take hold of her life, she’s forced to reckon with the grip that war has held on her.

Vladimir by Erika Sheffer (US/UK)
(Full-Length Play, Drama / 3w, 4m)
This haunting play unfolds in Moscow, where an independent journalist covering Putin’s first term struggles to maintain sanity and hope in increasingly hostile circumstances. She finds herself on the brink of an explosive story – but as danger mounts for her and her sources, she questions whether her bravery will make any difference at all. Vladimir is about standing up to immorality no matter the cost when you know your nation is headed for disaster.

Wives by Jaclyn Backhaus (US)
(Full-Length Play, Comedy / 3w, 1m)
In this kaleidoscopic, time-hopping, comic ensemble piece, Jaclyn Backhaus pushes past patriarchal cliché to reach an ecstatic breakthrough, untethering stories and history – and language itself – from the visions made by men. A play about women taking control of their narratives with the help of each other, their feelings and a giant fish.

For even more plays that go beyond the ingenue visit our website. In the US/North America, click here. In the UK/Europe, click here.