The Bell Curve:

The 12th season of the Newport Beach Public Library’s Distinguished Speakers Lecture Series ended with a bang — certainly not with a whimper — last weekend.

A dynamo named Irshad Manji lived up to the title of her documentary for the Public Broadcasting System called “Faith Without Fear” in which she took on “the packagers of Islam” with a kind of joyous fervor that would have seemed reckless had she not backed up her words with a multitude of facts.

“I’m not here to be popular,” she told us, “just useful. I have more Muslims hating me than hated George Bush, but each of us has to stand up to our own. When I discovered that I would end up being indoctrinated instead of educated had I been stuck in religious schools, I chose to study Islam at a public library. We’re in trouble. We need to stretch our thinking. We have a right to ask our questions out loud.”

Manji was the capstone of a weekend in Newport-Mesa devoted to my cultural immersion in strong women in which Manji was preceded by an elderly Jewish mother with a secret weighing on her, a free-wheeling French intellectual of the 17th century Enlightenment matching wits with Voltaire, and a recent high school graduate struggling with some basic decisions regarding sex.

This pastiche added up to a weekend of verbal red meat that held its own for attention against the perfidy of Manny Ramirez and the temporary collapse of the Los Angeles Lakers.

The dowager in distress was the work of playwright Richard Greenberg, the eighth time he has used South Coast Repertory as a launching pad for one of his plays.

The last time I saw his work, it dealt with a gay major league baseball player coming out in his team’s locker room and included a half-dozen players taking showers onstage — which gives you an idea of his versatility.

Both the play and the marquise who dueled with Voltaire were named “Emilie,” and its production at South Coast Repertory was a world premiere from up-and-coming young playwright Lauren Gundeson.

Whether the dialogue was lifted from Voltaire or the playwright’s creativity — or both — it draws blood that merits a look from Broadway.