The Daughters
A gutsy comedic romp over 60 years, from the first secret meeting of the first lesbian social club in San Francisco to closing night of the last lesbian bar. As women loving women gather in defiance of convention (and the law), they drink, debate, politicize, flirt, drink more, dance hard, makeout, fall in love, break up—and though they are entirely unaware—make history and change the world. A play about the transformation of identity, gender, and sexuality across generations in the queer epi-center of the universe.
Director: Christine Young
Dramaturg: Maddie Gaw
Producer: Sandra Hess
Patricia Cotter – Resident Playwright
Patricia Cotter, originally from Massachusetts, is an Emmy Award-winning, Groundling Theater Alum and a Resident Playwright at The Playwrights Foundation class of 2019. Awards include American Academy of Arts Letters, Richard Rodgers Award, three-time Heideman Award Finalist and the Emmy Award.
Plays include Drinking on A Plane performed as part of Actors Theatre of Louisville’s The Tens in 2018, Rules of Comedy which was produced in 2015 Humana Festival Ten-Minute Plays and The Anthropology Section, previously performed as part of Actors Theatre of Louisville’s The Tens in 2015. Other plays include 1980 (Or Why I’m Voting For John Anderson) Chicago’s Jackalope Theatre 2017, The Surrogate, production Centenary Stage Company, NJ, 2017 and The Break Up Notebook (a GLAAD Award nominee).
Musicals (librettist/ adaptations) include Rocket Science: A Musical, received readings at Playwrights’ Horizons in New York (directed by Kathleen Marshall) and was produced at The Village Theatre, Seattle; The Break Up Notebook: A Musical (based on her play), at The Vineyard Theatre in New York and produced at Hudson Theatre, Los Angeles, and Mulan, Jr., based on the Disney film Mulan. She has written for Twentieth Century Fox Television, Disney Theatrical and Comedy Central.
Watch below an excerpt of the first reading of The Daughters, that took place last March, as part of our Rough Readings Program.
Set up: “How many lesbians does it take to screw in a lightbulb?”
Answer: “That’s not funny.”
“That’s it – the classic oldey timey lesbian joke. It’s funny (to me) and it’s not true. The only reason it’s funny is that lesbians have a large enough sense of humor to have a sense a humor about themselves.
The lives of Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon – the co-founders of The Daughters of Bilitis, the first secret lesbian, social and political society in the United States – inspired this play.
The play is not based on them, but rather the play is touched by them. Their love, bravery, humor, they created a place for women to gather to dance, to fall in love, to make out and to not get arrested or to feel like a freak.
I was inspired to write about the funny, smart, sharp, silly, pushy, scared, women I’ve met in my life. This is a play about how a movement started and how it’s changing to absorb, gay, bi, trans, gender queer, the-yet-to-be-defined.”
Set up: “How many lesbians does it take to change the world?”
Answer: “Two.”
– Patricia Cotter
