Please recommend powerful plays featuring strong mature women.

June 30, 2017 10:35 AM

I've been given the opportunity to basically name the play I want to be in. I'm 50 (and I look my age, whatever that means) and the director has asked whether I have any preferences. It's been ages since I've read any contemporary scripts. I can't do sexy or flirty particularly well (in real life or on stage). What would you recommend? Any genre is fine and it can be either a one-act or full play.
posted by h00py to Media & Arts (27 answers total)

Doubt?
posted by General Malaise at 10:40 AM on June 30, 2017 [6 favorites]

Check out God of Carnage. It has two strong women, and 50 might work.
It's a play for adults and you'll either love it or hate it.
posted by SLC Mom at 10:42 AM on June 30, 2017 [2 favorites]

Depending on your definition of a strong woman, 'night, Mother is definitely powerful.
posted by Pangloss at 10:55 AM on June 30, 2017 [2 favorites]

You could be Hannah Jarvis in Tom Stoppard's Arcadia.
posted by BlahLaLa at 11:01 AM on June 30, 2017 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: 'Strong women' as in properly drawn characters, as opposed to props for other characters to play off, is mostly what I mean. The woman can be pathetic, as long as she is real!
posted by h00py at 11:02 AM on June 30, 2017

Amanda Wingfield from The Glass Menagerie?
posted by infinitewindow at 11:05 AM on June 30, 2017 [1 favorite]

Sisters Rosensweig by Wendy Wasserstein?
posted by meijusa at 11:08 AM on June 30, 2017

Seconding Wendy Wasserstein and Doubt. You also might look up Lettice and Lovage, by Peter Shaffer.
posted by gideonfrog at 11:10 AM on June 30, 2017

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

go for the tour de force, knock their socks off
posted by sammyo at 11:11 AM on June 30, 2017 [7 favorites]

Perhaps Wit?
posted by vunder at 11:18 AM on June 30, 2017 [3 favorites]

Night Watch
posted by teabag at 11:31 AM on June 30, 2017

Steel Magnolias.
posted by JanetLand at 12:00 PM on June 30, 2017

Macbeth?
posted by Faint of Butt at 12:02 PM on June 30, 2017

Gideon's Knot by Johnna Adams
The How and the Why by Sarah Treem
Bull in a China Shop by Brynna Turner
August: Osage County by Tracy Letts
The Seagull by Chekhov
posted by minervous at 12:11 PM on June 30, 2017

Note that one of the tags is "contemporary."

But since other people aren't observing that, I'll say Euripides's Medea.
posted by XMLicious at 12:15 PM on June 30, 2017

Auntie Mame, stage play version
Streetcar, just because
posted by SemiSalt at 12:17 PM on June 30, 2017

Three Tall Women, Edward Albee?
posted by Miss T.Horn at 12:22 PM on June 30, 2017

I've heard good things about Rapture, Blister, Burn by Gina Gionfriddo.
posted by firei at 12:38 PM on June 30, 2017 [1 favorite]

Caryl Churchill's Top Girls has a wealth of female characters:

The setting is a dinner party in a London restaurant thrown by Marlene, the newly promoted managing director of the Top Girls employment agency. Her guests are famous women from history and myth, including Pope Joan, the Victorian traveller Isabella Bird, the 13th-century Japanese courtesan turned Buddhist nun Lady Nijo, Dull Gret from Brueghel's painting depicting a woman in armour running through hell and routing devils, and Patient Griselda, whose story is told in The Canterbury Tales.

posted by Lexica at 1:33 PM on June 30, 2017 [2 favorites]

The Goat by Albee. Wonderful lead character in Stevie and some great men's roles too.
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 3:14 PM on June 30, 2017

This Wide Night by Chloe Moss. It's a two-woman play; one of the women is in her fifties and has just been released from prison.

If comedy is an ok genre for you, Boston Marriage by David Mamet might be interesting. It's a three-woman play with lots of scheming and wordplay.
posted by creepygirl at 3:20 PM on June 30, 2017 [1 favorite]

Can you sing? If so, Piaf by Pam Gems might work.
posted by FencingGal at 3:58 PM on June 30, 2017

A Permanent Image has a great part as well as a challenging and impressive design component. I've designed the show before and I went to high school with the playwright but he's very good. Here's a review of a Los Angeles production.
posted by Uncle at 9:05 PM on June 30, 2017

"The Madwoman of Chaillot."
posted by Mr. Fig at 7:26 PM on July 1, 2017

Response by poster: Thanks for all your recommendations. I'd like to find some contemporary roles as the director is interested in doing plays that are new and challenging. I'll be following the links and hopefully I'll be able to find something that suits. Please feel free to add anything else that comes to mind!
posted by h00py at 6:25 AM on July 2, 2017

Just thought of one more. Barbecue by Robert O'Hara (first produced in 2015) has a couple of roles for mature women. If you are white or African-American, they might work for you. (This is a play in which the race of the characters matters greatly--see very spoiler-ish review in the New Yorker here.) They are not lead roles, but there are a lot of great lines/moments for everyone in the cast. I went to a production of it last month in Seattle, and was really impressed with it.
posted by creepygirl at 9:55 AM on July 2, 2017

I recently saw a production of Annie Baker's "John" (starring Georgia Engel, lucky me!), and the character of the innkeeper is one I would want to play if I did that sort of thing.
posted by missmobtown at 4:16 PM on July 3, 2017