Women are at the center of American theatre and have the potential to shape the cultural imagination of theatre-goers as a complex new era unfolds. Sarah Ruhl, one of the twenty-first century's most honored playwrights, is read in concert with her contemporaries whose writing also wrestles with the vexing issues facing Americans in the new century.

Leslie Atkins Durham is Associate Professor of Theatre Arts at Boise State University, USA. Her previous books are Staging Gertrude Stein: Absence, Culture, and the Landscape of the American Alternative Theatre and Theatre Lives: An Introduction to Theatre (co-authored with Sally Shedd).

Introduction: The Context for Ruhl and her Contemporaries 1. Educating Sarah Ruhl 2. Emotional Journeys 3. Caring Labor 4. Theatrical Devotion 5. Mobile Lines 6. Natural Forces Epilogue: 'The Curtain Goes Up'