Reading plays

[Lightyearspast]

In my pre-Covid life I used to go to the theatre once or twice a month and, if I enjoyed the play, I'd buy the script to read afterwards. I've never (well, not since school) read a play that I haven't seen performed first, but I miss going to the theatre and am thinking of reading a few now. My favourite plays tend to have serious political/social issue themes, my least favourite are romantic comedies. Can anyone recommend some that I might enjoy and that don't need to be seen on stage first?

As this has turned into a project to educate myself about theatre in general, can anyone recommend any books about plays? I'm thinking of something about how plays work rather than about the history of drama.

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

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.

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!

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

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.

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.

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

Indeed ...

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