Expand the Canon celebrates classic plays by women & underrepresented genders
– and is a call to action to produce them.
Our plays span 1600-1990, 16 countries, 11 languages of origin, cast sizes ranging from 1 to 25+, many styles and topics… but all are excellent.
To access 52 plays, playwright bios, summaries, pitches, producing information, & more, make an account!
Discover the 2024 List
To find out the 16 titles, playwrights, and summaries of our list of short and one-act plays:
Explore the All 52 Titles
Get to know all our 50 writers from all 5 years of Expand the Canon lists:
Read & Produce The Plays
To download 36 scripts (originals and cuts), get easy licensing info, and support this work:
Partners for the 2023 Expand the Canon List plays
Partner Organizations
The Acting Company
American Players Theatre
American Shakespeare Center
Classic Stage Company
Classical Theatre of Harlem
Fiasco Theatre
The Folger Theatre
INTAR Theater
Irish Repertory Theatre
Island Shakespeare Festival
Ma-Yi Theatre Company
Midsommer Flight
Roundabout Theatre Company
Repertorio Español
The Sol Project
So if you’re looking for…
Lady Macbeth taking on Don Juan…
an Arrested Development from the 18th century…
the German Jane Austen…
a fun rom-com where your wingman is a flock of wingwomen…
a combo of the musical folklore of Hadestown and Oklahoma…
Twelfth Night’s love triangle as a love octagon…
Join to discover those titles (and more!)
Articles & Press:
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Because by re-casting the past, we can re-shape the future.
So long as the only stories revered as classics are by men, we will continue to prioritize the male lens and point of view culturally. Women’s perspectives will always secondary. By insisting that excellent works by a diverse group of women playwrights be regarded as classics, we can redefine theatre’s values. And by staging these stories in our communities, we can shift culture.
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The list is an annual guide that makes slotting classic plays by women and underrepresented genders into your season and syllabi easy. Both a celebration and a call to action, Expand the Canon demands space in the classical canon for more diverse women playwrights, many of whom were underproduced or utterly un-produced in their lifetimes. We call upon our national and international theater community to expand its definition of classical theater and include these brilliant writers and artists in their production seasons, publications, classrooms, and beyond.
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We have an ever-growing list 5000+ plays by women. We and our reading committee of industry professionals read a few hundred per year, scoring plays based on quality of language, relevance, strength of plot and characters, producibility – and, frankly, if the readers would be excited to celebrate this play as a classic. Our research has us in conversation with academics, literary managers, dramaturgs, and translators. We are intentional about having our lists strive for 50% Global Majority female playwrights; we hope that in the future, more of these titles will be known, translated, and available.
Want to hear more about why we started this effort? Listen now to This Is A Classic: The Expand the Canon Podcast!
Expand the Canon is sponsored, in part, by the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and made possible with funds from the Statewide Community Regrants Program, a regrant program of the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, both administered by Brooklyn Arts Council.