Trailblazing Texas Gov. Ann Richards said: “I did not want my tombstone to read, ‘She kept a really good house.’”

Pioneering Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said: “Whatever you choose to do … leave tracks.”

Two 2022 plays about two powerful women performed by two powerful women were more than mere retrospective looks back at two of the most important women of the past century.

They made you want to go out and do something meaningful with your life while you can.

A. Lee Massaro and Martha Harmon Pardee, two of the area’s most accomplished (but also regrettably most intermittent) stage actors, took on larger-than-life roles this year, and both delivered singular performances that put purpose back into theatergoing.

Massaro, an acclaimed director whose rare appearances as an actor are like wishes fulfilled, embodied late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in Jonathan Shapiro’s play “Sisters in Law,” which Theater Or Producer Diane Gilboa remounted this month at the University of Denver’s Newman Center on its way to a possible off-Broadway production in New York. It’s the true story of the unusual friendship that developed between the ideologically opposed Sandra Day O’Connor and RBG, the first two female Supreme Court justices.

And I do mean “embodied.” In addition to mastering Ginsburg’s spirit, convictions and Brooklyn mannerisms, Massaro, herself a native New Yorker, sacrificed her own body to progressively contort and diminish into Ginsburg’s tiny 5-foot-1 shell.

Come to think of it, just as you could literally witness Massaro getting smaller in her role, Pardee seemed to grow larger in hers. The veteran actor channeled Richards, the last woman (and Democrat) to run the state of Texas, in Cherry Creek Theatre’s production of “Ann” – a play that took on greater urgency as in May when the news leaked that the Supreme Court had decided to end a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion.

Theatergoing at its best makes your blood pump faster when your body is at rest, and theatergoing doesn’t feel much more palpable than watching Harmon Pardee command the stage as the whip-smart, sharped-tongued Richards, who, in the course of the play (written by film and TV star Holland Taylor), delivers a blistering statement to a journalist about the importance of Roe v. Wade:

“I think it is really important, not only that we talk about a woman’s right to choose – but what about this current attitude toward children who are already on this Earth?” Harmon Pardee says as Richards. “They say, ‘There’s no money to help the children you already have, but we’re gonna force you to have some more you can’t afford.’”

Especially given that this real-life scene was set … back in 1993.

“Ann Richards was frustrated and angry about abortion rights and reproductive choice all the way back then – and here we are 30 years later going backward,” Harmon Pardee said in a later interview.

Massaro (directed by Amy Feinberg) and Harmon Pardee (directed by Susie Snodgrass) both received deserved nominations for Colorado Theatre Guild Henry Awards for their performances. (Massaro won.) But whenever these two pros make their way back to a local stage … everybody wins.

Note: The True West Awards, now in their 22nd year, began as the Denver Post Ovation Awards in 2001. Denver Gazette Senior Arts Journalist John Moore celebrates the Colorado theater community by revisiting 30 of the best stories from the past year without categories or nominations.