Editor's Note

by Jim O'Quinn

Imagine our surprise when calculations were completed for the always-much-anticipated Top 10 list of most-produced plays of the coming season: For the first time since TCG began tallying such a list (which means, in all likelihood, for the first time ever), a hefty majority of the most popular plays slated for professional production in the U.S.—five out of the top six—are written by women.

Even taking into account American Theatre's standing caveat of dispensing with those perennial top dogs Shakespeare and Dickens, that's a notable development. So in short order we decided to celebrate the new preponderance of plays by women with feature profiles of three American playwrights we'd been itching to write about anyway—Lynn Nottage and Theresa Rebeck, whose plays Intimate Apparel and Bad Dates appear as numbers 1 and 6 on the list, and Sarah Ruhl, an up-and-comer who almost made the list by virtue of multiple productions of The Clean House (American Theatre, Nov. '04). To accompany the trio of articles, we brought Nottage, Rebeck and Ruhl together at Katvan Studio in New York City for a golden-hued group cover portrait.

And speaking of color photography: We're no longer reserving it for extra-special occasions. Next month marks the debut of a redesigned American Theatre, one hallmark of which will be the regular use of color imagery in much of the magazine's interior. It's an improvement we've been eager to make for many years—the theatre is, after all, a fundamentally visual art that uses color as an essential tool—and thanks to improvements in print technology, color reproduction has become more practical as well as affordable.

There'll be many other changes as well in the redesigned AT—a bold, simplified logo; revisions in the order and headings of the magazine's departments; new features, such as the visually oriented Production Notebook, in which great theatre photographs are explicated by the creative teams of selected productions; and a renewed editorial focus on artists' voices, the exploration of key issues and controversies, and the showcasing of the richness and diversity of theatre nationally and beyond.

Not to worry: All American Theatre's most popular elements—its five complete playscripts each year; essential field news like job changes and awards; in-depth interviews with artists you need to know; provocative commentary and opinion columns; and special issues like the one you're holding right now—will continue to appear. In a bright new package.