The Panza Monologues is an original solo performance piece based on women's stories about their panzas--tu sabes--that roll of belly we all try to hide. Written, compiled, and collected by Virginia Grise and Irma Mayorga and fashioned into a tour-de-force solo performance, The Panza Monologues features the words of Chicanas speaking with humor and candor. Their stories boldly place the panza front and center as a symbol that reveals the lurking truths about women's thoughts, lives, loves, abuses, and living conditions.

This second edition of The Panza Monologues presents the performance script in its entirety, as well as a rich supporting cast of dramaturgical and pedagogical materials. These include a narrative history of the play's development by the playwrights; critical materials that enhance and expand upon the script's themes and ideas (a short introduction to San Antonio, where the play was developed; playwright autogeographies; and a manifesto on women of color making theater); and a selection of pedagogical and creative ideas, including guidelines and advice for staging a production of the play and for teaching it in the classroom, community-making activities (screenings, hosting "Panza Parties," community/group discussions), and creative writing activities connected to the play.

This translation of Shakespeare’s overlooked play will captivate contemporary readers. Virginia Grise takes on one of Shakespeare’s lesser-known plays in her translation of All’s Well That Ends Well. It is a play that has challenged actors, directors, and audiences for four-hundred years, and in this edition, Grise updates Shakespeare’s language for modern ears. This translation was written as part of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Play On! project, which commissioned new translations of thirty-nine Shakespeare plays. These translations present the work of "The Bard" in language accessible to modern audiences while never losing the beauty of Shakespeare’s verse. These volumes make these works available for the first time in print—a new First Folio for a new era.  

An absurdist comedy and fifteenth winner of the Yale Drama Prize, exploring family, religion, identity, desire, and beauty in Korean American culture   In a fantastical fairy-tale world, two Korean American sisters are deemed too fat to fit in their family grave. Will the sisters’ close bond survive under the pressure of their community and fretful parents, who will spare no effort to make them tinier?   Jar of Fat, the fifteenth winner of the Yale Drama Prize, is a phantasmagorical, absurdist Korean American tale about the allure and danger entangled within the quest for beauty and thinness. Both laugh-out-loud funny and deeply troubling, Seayoung Yim’s play burns through the accumulated rage that anti-fat bias produces to reclaim what it steals from us every day: grace, space, possibility, and breath.

MESTIZA POWER! by Concepci-n Le-n Mora. Translated from the Spanish by Virginia Grise. Through the hustle and bustle of the market this play enters the daily lives of the mestizas, indigenous women from the landscapes of MZrida, Mexico. From a run-away maid, to a mestiza who wears Ray Bans, to a widow with el don, the power to heal, these women are unafraid of life s harsh realities. As they reveal their stories, rites and myths, Mestiza Power shows us women empowered by their roots and a spirit of independence. This play was translated by Virginia Grise with a commission from the Lark s Mexico/United States Playwright Exchange program. This print edition of the translation is a collaboration between the Lark and NoPassport theatre alliance and press.