Book excerpt: Gather any group of actresses, from students to stars, and someone will inevitably ask, "Where are all the great roles for women?" The roles are right here, in this magnificently diverse collection of plays–full-lenghts, one-acts, and monologues--with mainly female casts, which represent the answer to any actress's prayer. The editors of the groundbreaking anthology Plays for Actresses have once again gathered an abundance of strong female roles in a selection of works by award-winning authors and cutting-edge newer voices, from Wendy Wasserstein and Christopher Durang to Claudia Shear, Eve Ensler, and Margaret Edson. The characters who populate these seven full-length plays, four ten-minute plays, and eleven monologues include a vivid cross-section of female experience: girl gang members, Southern debutantes, pilots, teachers, traffic reporters, and rebel teenagers. From a hilarious take on Medea to a taboo-breaking excerpt from The Vagina Monologues to a moving scene from the Pulitzer Prize-winning Wit, the plays in Leading Women are complex, funny, tragic, and always original--and a boon for talented actresses everywhere. From the Trade Paperback edition.