Reading plays

Indeed ...

Apologies, I should have been clearer - my last two paragraphs were not directed at you - was just riding a pet hobby horse!

Not sure I'm going to have much truck with a prize for "all writers who identify as women"

Thank you @PerditaProvokesEnmity. Yes I have read Shelagh Delaney Taste of Honey think probably while the show was going on at the theatre championing new writing that I worked at for many years. I had not the date at my fingertips.

As you see from my previous post, I did not only study English writers but modern European writers as well.

tobee here's a link to the Susan Smith Blackburn prize for women playwrights. Awful website - but it should go straight to the 2010s page, so you may recognise some of the finalists' names.

Paines Plough announced a new prize at the end of last year for "all writers who identify as women" ...

Did you not read/see Shelagh Delaney's A Taste of Honey during your degree? It was first performed in 1958. Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun was produced the year after. They spring to mind first for the period you studied - though surely some of the Bloomsbury set wrote plays? I'd have to look on the shelves for those between the 70s and Sarah Kane. But it's true that until really recently women just weren't getting the support or exposure of their male peers.

Any theatre website should have some resource for learning about their current and past writers.

And it really is worthwhile (if one is interested) to look outside England for playwrights. They're all over the world - and not generally waiting for permission from the English theatre establishment to speak their truth.

Mind it was in the dark ages of the 1990s.

Interestingly, I read novels almost exclusively by women.

At degree level I studied Modern British Drama and Modern European Drama. Drama from 1870 to 1960 I can't think of a single female dramatist. Certainly not on my curriculum. And I went to a very right on polytechnic!

Would be great if everyone responding could suggest at least one female playwright, and one person who is not a canonical "Western" male writer ...

Aphra Behn? JK Rowling? I suppose many people will be like me and only studied male writers in English at school. Now I read mainly women.

Top Girls - Caryl Churchill. Studied it at school, then finally saw it at the National Theatre last year. Brilliant.

Timberlake Wertenbaker is a woman!

Would be great if everyone responding could suggest at least one female playwright, and one person who is not a canonical "Western" male writer ...

Have a look at Sizwe Banzi is Dead by Athol Fugard too!

Ariel Dorfmann's Death and the Maiden.
Simon Armitage's The Last Days of Troy.
Please, please, please read Owen Sheers' play Pink Mist. Or download him reading it aloud. It's amazing: poetic and devastating.

Another vote for J B Priestley, An Inspector Calls is a gripping read.

Bertolt Brecht is rich with political themes, you could start with Mother Courage, and don't forget The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui.

Peter Shaffer's The Royal Hunt of the Sun has a lot to say that's relevant today about how we relate to other cultures.

Can't go wrong with Ibsen and Chekhov -abundant in social/political themes and Shaw too; especially Mrs Warren's Profession and Major Barbara.

Bit later 20th Century Joe Orton.

Bit less well known Oscar Wilde play An Ideal Husband, and Terence Rattigan's Cause Celebre - both social commentary themed plays

A while ago now The Royal Court put on George Farquhar's The Recruiting Officer and Timberlake Wertenbaker's Our Country's Good which are linked despite the gap between when they were written

Also enjoyable is This House by James Graham about the Labour government of 1970s.

Amy's View, Arcadia, The Importance Of Being Earnest, most of JB Priestley's plays (e.g. Time and the Conways).

OP I'd been meaning to come back, mainly to coax you away from the usual suspects - and because I realised I hadn't mentioned, amongst others, Wole Soyinka.

Wonderfully, in an hour from now Radio 3's Free Thinking programme will be discussing his play Death and the King's Horseman - a rather wonderful thing. May be worth listening, if you can, or iplay later.

For the political/social issue theme, the Arnold Wesker trilogy - Chicken Soup and Barley; Roots; and I'm Talking About Jerusalem are plays I've only ever read, not seen, and I really enjoyed them.

I was coming on to say exactly this.

I'm actually quite keen on some of the classics (Chekhov, Molière, Shakespeare with a MASSIVE bias towards Chekhov. Is also agree anything Tennessee Williams, I was really impressed Night of the Iguana which I hadn’t come across before. I got a lot of joy reading The Importance of Being Earnest.

There's a film of The Crucible with Daniel Day Lewis in, Miller was involved in the film so I think it's quite faithful to the play. I also seem to remember a version of Death of a Salesman, possibly with John Malkovich in? knocking around YouTube?

They might be interesting to watch once you've read the plays.

Arthur Miller's plays are great to read, as are Tennessee Williams'.

I love the Greek tragedies, and then ones that play with that tradition eg Sophocles' Antigone paired with Jean Anouilh's Antigone, or Euripides' Hippolytus and Racine's Phaedra.

Stoppard is good to read, esp. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead and Arcadia.

George Bernard Shaw's St Joan is v moving to read, and so is Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons.

Most of these suggestions are v old and some are really products of their time - reading A Man For All Seasons is interesting if you've read Wolf Hall, for example.

I'm actually quite keen on some of the classics (Chekhov, Molière, Shakespeare). I've loved Christopher Hampton plays in the past.

Studying Arthur Miller at school totally ruined him for me - even though I went on to watch numerous plays of his in adulthood, I still can't bring myself to like them!