GLIDERS
by Rita Anderson
In the summer of 1969, three generations of seemingly ordinary women begin to uncover secrets about themselves even as the extraordinary events of the Apollo 11 mission unfold overhead. With space flight on their minds, five women struggle to break free of the expectations and obstacles that confront them on earth. It will take every ounce of courage they have to bust through the atmosphere that contains them. GLIDERS is a magical exploration of what it feels like to be lost in space in a changing world as the cast “glides” into and out of reality–and the present. “(S)he who does not know history is condemned to repeat it.”
- Cast Size: 1M 5W
- Running Time: 90+ minutes
- Royalty Rate: $75 Per performance
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About the Playwright
Rita Anderson is a neurodivergent playwright from the LGBTQIA community. She has an MFA Creative Writing and an MA Playwriting, and she served as Dramatists Guild Regional Representative and as Faculty for Interlochen. Rita went on scholarship to The O’Neill, and Frantic is the Carousel won a National Partners of American Theatre nomination. Rita won the Ken Ludwig Playwriting Award, the top national prize from The Kennedy Center for “Best Body of Work,” she won the 2024 B. Iden Payne Award for Outstanding Original Script, and she is a 2024 Louise Wigglesworth Excellence in Playwriting Award Finalist (Top 4). Rita has had over 100 productions—with plays in Paris, London, NYC, L.A., Dubai, Canada, and Australia. Her publications include the Smith & Kraus anthologies: Best New Ten-Minute Plays, Best Men’s Monologues, and Best Women’s Monologues (2019, 2020, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026). Early Liberty, Final Conversations, The 27 Club, Threes, Woman Hollering Creek, and Saint Somebody are “Best Selling Plays,” and Rita is published in She Persisted: Thirty New Ten-Minute Plays by Women 40+. (Introduction, Theresa Rebeck.) Rita was Playwright in Residence at Lakeview Performing Arts Center, and she has developed work with PlayPenn, Axial Theatre, The 24-Hour Plays Project, Madison New Works Laboratory, Green Mountain Playwright Retreat, Soul Rep Theatre Company, Woven Theatre & The Loom New Works Festival, Creede Repertory Theatre, JumpStart Theatre, The PlayGround Experiment, The Barrow Group, Pegasus Theatre, Texas State University, Missouri State University, James Madison University, Illinois College, Reading Theater Project, Mildred’s Umbrella: Museum of Dysfunction, Different Stages Theatre, Our Lady of the Lake University, Siena Heights University, and Mélange Theatre Company. Rita was a pilot playwright with Hyde Park Theatre Writers’ Group, but the highlight of her emerging career so far was sitting on a playwriting panel with Christopher Durang—and sharing a playbill with Caridad Svich. Rita is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee for The Entropy of Rocketman, and Watched Pots (A Lovesong to Motherhood), and she is a member of HONOR ROLL!, an advocacy group for women playwrights 50+ whose goal is our equal representation in theatre.
Review Gliders.