This book surveys the history of Asian American theatre from 1965 to 2005.

"In the early 1960s two leaders of the New York performance group Living Theatre were asked to define its purpose. In this survey of contemporary American drama, Matthew C. Roudane argues that the response of these two pioneers in experimental theater - Julian Beck and Judith Malina - goes a long way toward explaining the purpose of all of the rich and varied dramas to appear on the stage since 1960: "To increase conscious awareness, to stress the sacredness of life, to break down the walls."" "African-American playwrights (Lorraine Hansberry, Alice Childress, James Baldwin, Amiri Baraka), women playwrights (Marsha Norman, Wendy Wasserstein, Beth Henley), gay playwrights (Harvey Fierstein, Tony Kushner), and others have over the past three and a half decades entreated audiences to acknowledge the persistence of racism, sexism, homophobia, and a host of other societal ills. Other playwrights have asked audiences to confront their own mortality (Edward Albee), their compromised morality (David Mamet), their unfulfilled American Dream (Arthur Miller, Sam Shepard, and countless others)." "Whatever the particularities of these playwrights' personal identities, politics, of dramatic style, they share a willingness to confront uncomfortable truths about the human condition in America since 1960. Ironically, it is in their very rebellion against any number of things American that they identify themselves and their literature as such." "Roudane takes no scattershot approach to his subject. Favoring clusters of themes and the broad sweep of movements to linear chronology, he develops a carefully aimed analysis of the work of about two dozen of the hundreds of playwrights whose dramas have, since 1960, been performed in every venue, from regional and university theaters to Off-Off-Broadway to Off-Broadway to Broadway."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

"The 1940s and 1950s indisputably compose the classic period of American drama, witnessing the first productions of The Iceman Cometh and Long Day's Journey Into Night, of Death of a Salesman and The Crucible, of The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Thomas P. Adler tells the story of these remarkable years largely through its dominant voices: Eugene O'Neill, Lillian Hellman, Arthur Miller, William Inge, Lorraine Hansberry, Edward Albee, and Tennessee Williams. One chapter - in Williams's case two - is devoted to each, and through careful analysis of the work of one playwright after another the persistent themes of the period emerge."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Table of contents

This volume explores the history of American drama from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. It describes origins of early republican drama and its evolution during the pre-war and post-war periods. It traces the emergence of different types of American drama including protest plays, reform drama, political drama, experimental drama, urban plays, feminist drama and realist plays. This volume also analyzes the works of some of the most notable American playwrights including Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams, and Arthur Miller and those written by women dramatists.

This text outlines the major trends in American drama from its beginnings in the 17th century to the 1990s. Following the cultural history of the nation, the study provides an evaluation of the drama set against movements in the American theatre and its developing dramatic criticism.