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Bronson Howard ( 1842-1908)

The first important realist in American Drama.

He studied two areas of American society which are

business and marriage in some of his dramas such as The

Bankers Daughter (1878), Young Mrs.Winthrop (1882)and The Henrietta (1887)

Howard made the audiences at the time think

uncomfortable thoughts about those two things.

His dramatic techniques were still the old-fashioned

techniques of melodrama.

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Some of Howards Works :

The Banker's Daughter(1878)

OldLove Letters (1878)

Young Mrs. Winthrop (1882) One of our Girls (1885)

The Henrietta (1887; revived in 1913 as TheNew Henrietta)

Shenandoah (1889)

Aristocracy(1892)

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WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS

He was born on March 1st, 1987 inOhio.

He was a realist novelist who alsoactive in modernize Americantheatre.

He was more successful as a critic

and an organizer. He was dead in aged 83, May 11th,1920 in Manhattan.

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He wrote at least thirty-six plays, but one was

really successful, A Counterfeit Presentment

(1887).

He established the First Independent Theatre

in Bo.ston together with Hamlin Garland in1892

Its purpose: to encourage truth and progress

in American Dramatic Art. It was a model for Little Theatre movement.

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Little Theatre movement began around 1912

as a revolt against the big theatres, such asBroadway whose main interest was makingmoney.

Between 1912 and 1929, theere were over athousand Little Theatre across the country.

The most famous theatres were in theWashington Square Players, NY, and in the

Provincetown Players, Massachusetts These two theatres had a big part for

introducing Eugene ONeill to the world.

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Eugene ONeill

He developed American drama into a form of literature.

He brought a wide range of new themes and styles to the

stages.

Each play is an exploration of the human condition.

He was very serious that he only wrote one very good

comedy Ah, Wilderness! (1933)

His actor father introduced him to the theatre.

Seeing so many artificial romantic in theatre of the olddays made he felt contempt for the theatre.

As a result, he turned away from his family and became a

heavy-drinking sailor for a number of years.

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This taught him much about the ugly underside of

the society where cheap hotels and sailors bars lies.

When he began writing plays, these experiences

were his first material.

They also so much helpful to change the old

characters of melodrama into realistic characters.

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ONeills Works

His works were excellent from the beginning.

BoundEast for Cardiff (1916) described a sailor dying onboard the ship S.S. Glencairn.

The mood of the plays is dark and heavy.

The theme of each play goes beyond the surfaces of life tostudy the forces behind life

Fate was one of this forces.

In Anna Christie (1920) and many other plays, fate is

symbolized by that ole devil, sea Psychology is also one of these forces.

He often used the new psychology of Freud to deepen hisdramas.

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The form of each of ONeills plays is based upon the special

dramatic needs of that play.

As one critics noted, he never echoes

In Strange Interlude (1928), the plays most important

action happens inside the minds of the main characters.

ONeills took the stream-of-conciousness technique from

the novel and dramatized it. Desire Under the Elms (1924) is a completely realistic drama

set in nineteenth-century England.

Its theme is sexual desire and the desire of land.

Though the structure of this tragedy story is like a bible story,he gave a Freudian meaning.

He also used themes and techniques from Greek tragedy in

The Great GodBrown (1926) and Mourning Becomes Electra

(1931)

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In his last years, the plays became increasingly

autobiographical.

A Moon for the Misbegotten (1952) explores the

spiritual problems of the American family (probably

his own).

Long Days Journey into Night(1956) was a triumph

of realistic drama and ONeills finest play.

It is about human responsibility and love-hate

within a family.

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Elmer Rice (1892-1967)

He was born Elmer Reizenstein on Sept. 28, 1892,

in New York City.

His best plays are works of social criticism.

His plays reveal a concern with individualconcern.

Some of his famous works:

Adding Machine (1923)

an expressionistic drama, shows its hero as a victim of

the machine age

StreetScene (1929)

a realistic play that shows the failure of social idealism

http://www.answers.com/topic/elmer-rice

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Clifford Odets (1906-1963)

He was born in Philadelphia, on 18thJuly, 1906.

He wrote plays reflecting the social

concerns of the American Left in the1930s.

His plays, Awake andSing! (1935) hasbeen called the play about the

Depression era

However, his work is viewed as tooideological today.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAodets.htm

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Tennessee Williams

born on March 26, 1911 inColumbus, Mississippi.

Got his first taste of literary famewhen he took 3rd place in anational essay contest in 1927.

Decided to became a playwright

inspired by Henrik Ibsens Ghostsin 1929 when he was studying atUniversity of Missouri.

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The Glass Menagerie (1944) was

considered his best play ever. Theplay reflected his own familial

relationships. It won the New York

Drama Critics' Circle Award for best

play of the season.

Elia Kazan, who directed most of

Tennessees great plays, said

Everything in his life is in his plays,and everything in his plays is in his

life.

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He got his first Pulitzer Prize in 1948 for A

Streetcar NamedDesire, and reached a larger

world-wide audience in 1950 and 1951

when The Glass Menagerie and AStreetcar

NamedDesire were made into major motion

pictures. There were other plays which also made into

major motion pictures such as Cat on a Hot

Tin Roof(for which he earned a secondPulitzer Prize in 1955), Orpheus Descending,

and Night of the Iguana.

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Arthur Miller (1915-2005) Arthur Miller is a playwright who combined in

his works social awareness with deep insights

into personal weaknesses of his characters.

His plays continued the realistic tradition that

began in the United States in the period

between the two world wars. His plays often depict how families are

destroyed by false values.

In Millers plays, the past has a direct influence

on the present often in his plays, characters

learn to take responsibilities of their past

action.

His plays are strongly influenced by Henrik

Ibsen they often set up a dramaticb situation

in order to prove intellectual point.

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Arthur Millers WorksDEATH OF A SALESMAN (1949) brought Miller

international fame and a Pulitzer Prize. It becomeone of the major achievements of modern

American theatre. It relates the tragic story of a

salesman named Willy Loman, whose past and

present are mingled in expressionistic scenes.

Loman is not the great success that he claims to

be to his family and friends. The postwareconomic boom has shaken up his life. He is

eventually fired and he begins to hallucinate

about significant events from his past. Linda, his

wife, believes in the American Dream, but she

also keeps her feet on the ground. Deciding that

he is worth more dead than alive, Willy killshimself in his car hoping that the insurance

money will support his family and his son Biff

could get a new start in his life. Critics have

disagreed whether his suicide is an act of

cowardice or a last sacrifice on the altar of the

American Dream.

Taken fromhttp://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/amiller.htm ,

written by Petri Liukkonen

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ALL MY SONS (1947) is Millers first

Broadway play. The main character

learns that the consequence of

actions are as real as the action

themselves.

THE CRUCIBLE (1953) is set in seventeenth-

century New England, during the witch trial.

The theme of this play is that social evil is

caused by individuals who do not take

responsibility for the world they live in.

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Edward Albee

He was born in Washington D.C, March 12 1928

Many of Albees plays seem to be influenced

by the European Theatre of the Absurdmovement of the fifties and sixties. The basic

philosophy of this movement was that

traditional realism only shows life as it seemsto be; and in fact, life is meaningless or absurd

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One of his plays, The Zoo Story in 1958; which was absurdist explained

about the failure of conversation and communicating between two

characters, Peter and Jerry. They cant understand each other. Jerry gives

Peter a knife and makes Peter kill him. With this self-sacrifice and his talk

of love, Jerry becomes a Christ figure. Actually, the plays message isnt

absurd at all. What Albees saying is that people can and must break out of

their aloneness.

Even though Albee often uses the method of the Absurdist, hes really a

social critic and satirist. On his play, Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in

1962; tells about a married couple who lives in an imaginary life. The

characters, George and Martha have a marriage upon a fantasy, a false

dream. Since they couldnt have any children, they invented an imaginary

son. When George kills the son, he ruins their fantasy world.

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Albees later work, Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung in 1968, he says:

I am becomingless andless certain about the resiliency of civilization.

Maybe I am becoming more andmore depressedby the fact that people desire

to life as dictatorships tell them too.

The character is Mao. He does nothing but quote himself from his famous little

red book. Another character does nothing but quote lines of sentimental poetry.

Each character is caught in his little own world.

But in his recent plays, he seems to doubt about reliability of language itself;

We communicate andfail to communicate bylanguage. My characters tendto

be far more articulate than a lot of others people characters. That's on of the

problems, I suppose.

Therefore, we can say that Albee seems to doubt that art can explain life

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Jack Gelber

He was born in Chicago on April12th 1932

He was a famous playwright thatwas known for his drama the

connection (1959) Not only as a playwright, he was

also a professor in BrooklynCollege, University of New York.

In 1999, he received the Edward

Albee last frontier Playwrightaward in recognition of his lifetimeof achievements in theatre.

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The Connection (1959) The Apple

Square in the Eye (1965)

The Cuban Thing (1968)

Sleep (1972)

BarbaryShore (1973), adaptation of NormanMailer's 1951 novel of the same name

Farmyard(1975), adaptation of Franz XaverKroetz's play Stallerhof(1971)

Jack Gelber's New Play: Rehearsal (1976)

Starters (1980) Big Shot(1988)

Magic Valley(1990)

Rio Preserved (1998) and Chambers (1998)

Dylan's Line (2000), first produced in 2003

List of His plays

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The connection became Theatre's

first great success. It won the Obie

Award of the Village Voice for BestNew Play, Best Production, and Best

Actor (Warren Finnertin the role of

Leach) of the 1959-1960 season.

Gelber also received the Vernon

Rice Award(now known as the

Drama Desk Award

At the end of his life, he became an

adjunct professor at the Actor

Studio Drama School at the Newschool University

He was died on may 9th 2003

because of blood cancer