Plays
We hope you’ll spend some time with the descriptions below and see where your interest takes you. Each play stands on its own, and an event can take shape around one piece or any combination of several, whether you are gathering a few people at home or planning something for a theatre, school, or community space. Casting information is included to help you choose the work that feels right for your community and the conversation you hope to begin.
The fall events are only the beginning for this collection. Afterward, Theatre Communications Group (TCG) will publish the complete anthology as a book, giving the plays an ongoing life with readers, artists, educators, and communities across the country. More information about the published anthology will be available soon.
THE PLAYS
(alphabetical by title)
AGGRESSIVELY SOOTHING WHALE SOUNDS
by Sarah Mantell
Casting: 1 Any
I don’t want to write about my family. The last version of this play had whales. Do we still have the cue for the whales?
AND WHERE HAS IT GONE THAT THICK AND HEAVY HISTORY BOOK WE CARRIED THROUGH THE HALLS OF LEARNING, SKINNIED NOW, PAGES AND PAGES YEARS AND YEARS ERASED. WASN’T IT BEAUTIFUL?
by Susan Miller
Casting: 2W
Two people try to find their way, with humor, through chaos to connection in the heightened moments after a City Council meeting has imploded.
ATTESTATION
by Lynn Nottage
Casting: 1W, 1 Any
Short description coming soon.
ANOTHER FOUR YEARS
by Stella Feehily
Casting: 1W
Even family gatherings become increasingly fraught as the impact of Donald Trump’s second presidency reaches beyond the Atlantic.
BECAUSE WHO KNOWS?
by Deb Margolin
Casting: 1W
Sitting in a circle with others in recovery, a high school history teacher struggles with the ways in which history’s recurring narrative of war and cruelty has been reflected in her own life.
THE BETSY ROSS BOOK OF THE DEAD
by Paula Cizmar
Casting: 2W, 1 Any
Betsy Ross and her AI Assistant are busy preparing democracy for its descent into the Underworld when a 21st-century human pops into the portal to undermine their project and change the course of history.
CHURN
by Justice Hehir
Casting: 2W
Two very reluctant historical re-enactors prepare for a butter-churning exhibit in a living history village. A teensy play about testimony, ringworm, and adolescence.
THE COLLAPSE OF THE HIVE
by Migdalia Cruz
Casting: 2W, 1M
A woman follows the sound of the bees in her head to an urban apiary on the edge of Washington, DC, to research how the hive keeps its monarchy alive. Wouldn’t they all rather be free?
COMMON GROUND
by Lauren M. Gunderson
Casting: 1W, 1M, 1 Voice
Vicious online trolls collide and unite in this absurdist reckoning with self, society, and theatre’s place as our common empathetic ground.
THE DAY IS DEAD
by Zinnie Harris
Casting: 1W
A woman wonders what happened to truth.
DEMO GIRL (..INTERROGATES HISTORY WHILST WITNESSING THE PUSSY GRAB)
by Rebecca Lenkiewicz
Casting: 2W
Demo Girl and her new friend Esther try to be funny but are challenged by Trump’s America and the idea of history repeating itself.
THE DISMANTLING
by Ellen McLaughlin
Casting: 1W
The sister speaks to us as her brother sleeps upstairs. Now that their parents are dead, she describes what it’s like to be sharing the beloved but disintegrating family house with the sibling she thought she knew as he becomes someone she can’t recognize.
THE EDGE OF DEMOCRACY
by Rona Munro
Casting: 2W
On election day in 1929, women in mainland Britain were finally, after decades of struggle, granted the right to vote. Two sisters in a Scottish mining community are preparing to head out to the ballot box, but only one of them wants to go.
GRWM: 4th of July Edition
by Jenny Schwartz
Casting: Ensemble of W
Anonymous girls make “Get Ready With Me” videos in which they express their excitement for their favorite day of the year. GRWM: 4th of July Edition combines original writing with language from publicly posted videos and comments.
huntin / issa social thing
by a.k. payne
Casting: 1W, 1 Any
election night on the highest bridge of a post-industrial city. one considering death before their day of birth. another gathering thoughts on parasocialism and loneliness. a friendship in the wake of rivers?
LAST CALL
by Ife Olujobi
Casting: 2W
Sakina gets a draft notice and decides to reconcile with her ex before leaving the country.
LITTLE HOUSES
by Lucy Caldwell
On a Belfast day in 1989, on the wagon trail on the Persian carpet in the attic, Louisa’s got just minutes left to live. As three young sisters play at life and death and second chances, the grown-ups downstairs are desperately trying to find escape routes out West too.
MAEVE
by Else Went
Casting: 2W, 1M
Julesy has just made the long flight home to meet her newborn niece. When she arrives, there is no trace of a baby.
MAYA
by Dael Orlandersmith
Casting: 1W
Description coming soon.
MEGAman
by Hannah Doran
Casting: 1M
A far-right radical and children’s party clown is tipped over the edge at a birthday party. Set in England in 2026, the play asks what we are willing to lose in standing up for what we believe is right and looks at how American right-wing ideology and symbols have seeped into British culture.
NIGHTLIGHT
by Kimber Lee
Casting: 1W, 1M, Ensemble
Two teenagers fight to find light in a dark place.
OSTRICHES
by Elizabeth Kuti
Casting: 1W, 2M
Principal Braghart has a plan to ensure the football team wins the State Championship, but Coach Robinson is wondering if it’s a good idea. Meanwhile, a ghost from the past has something to say about ostriches.
THE PARDON
by Jane Anderson
Casting: 1W, 1M
Looking for an ally and a dose of unconditional love, a young ICE agent visits his grandma.
PECKING ORDER
by Elizabeth Diggs
Casting: 2W
PECKING ORDER is a comedy for two actors, both female and both free-range hens, one young and one old. They plan to escape when they learn that their happy freedom is over and they will be confined to the factory.
REASONABLE SUSPICION
by Lisa Loomer
Casting: 1W, 1M
A Latine writer is detained at the airport as she attempts to return to the US from Mexico. Could the country have changed that much in the week she was away?
SEARCHING FOR ELSIE PARRISH
by Heidi Schreck
Casting: 1W
It’s a story about, to quote Rebecca Solnit, “never fucking surrendering.”
SHARDS
by Judith Thompson
Casting: 1W, 1NB
Shards excavates the challenges and dangerous complexities of allyship.
THINGS I WORRY ABOUT.
by Bridget Carpenter
A speaker gives a talk.
TOMORROW WILL BE SUNDAY
by Heather Raffo
Casting: 1M
An Iraqi CPA questions what an investment in democracy really means. When the costs are deadly, do you stay, do you run, or is profit the only way to survive?
TsEjtsEjka’bats
by Haruna Lee
Casting: 1 Any
As an immigrant mother plans to sell her house and move back to Japan after three decades of living on a suburban island near Seattle, her child muses on her turbulent childhood in that house and dredges up an old Indigenous lore. Legend has it that you should never stay on the island overnight because it’s already home to a demon.
AN UPLIFTING HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION SPEECH
by Sarah Ruhl
Casting: 1W
A woman is invited to speak at her Catholic high school in Texas not long after Roe v. Wade is overturned.
WAY BACK NOW
by Beth Henley
Casting: 4W, 2M
The play takes place at the Capital City Club in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1963. Willie, a prominent member of the club, is celebrating his 52nd birthday with his mother and daughters. They have been seated in an adjacent dining room because women are not allowed in the club’s main dining hall. The lunch does not go as they all hoped.
WHAT WOULD I SAY
by Leslie Ayvazian
Casting: 1W
A mother. Children. Escape. To where? A monologue.
YOU ARE IT
by Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti
Casting: 1W, 1M
What happens when a supermarket security guard mistakes an ordinary woman for the world’s first trillionaire?
BRING THE PLAYS TO YOUR COMMUNITY
Participation can be as simple as gathering a few people to read one play or as expansive as a full public program. The plays are available free of charge for non-ticketed events presented as part of Women+ on the Edge of Democracy.
Plays are currently only available to organizations and groups interested in participating. Plays will be available to the public in the published anthology this fall.