The Women of Provincetown, 1915–1922. By Cheryl Black. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2002; xvi + 224 pp. $29.95 cloth.

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Anyone who has encountered the Provincetown Players, the art theatre that launched Susan Glaspell and Eugene O'Neill, knows what an amazingly vibrant and creative community it was, a progressive smart set teaming with ideas for a new American drama. In The Women of Provincetown, Cheryl Black gives us the most richly detailed work on the Provincetown to date, drawing on an impressive range of primary sources. For this reason alone, the book is essential reading for theatre historians and other scholars working on the emergence of American drama. A playwright, actor, director, and dramaturge herself, Black has enough experience to explore the range of roles needed to make theatre, providing a context for the predominantly literary studies of Provincetown plays.