Twentieth Century Theatre: 1945 to 1990
The Drama

Plays...
         Edward Albee. A Delicate Balance
         Samuel Beckett. Waiting for Godot
         David Mamet. Gelngarry Glen Ross
         Arthur Miller. Death of a Salesman
         Sam Shepard. Buried Child
         Neil Simon. Lost In Yonkers
         Tennesse Williams. Street Car Named Desire

1. What is Tennessee Williams' (1911-1983) most important work?

A Streetcar Named Desire (1947). The tragic story of Blanche DuBois, who lives in a squalid New Orleans tenement with her sister Stella and brother-in-law Stanley Kowalski. See the play synopsis on page A-8 of the Appendix. The original production was directed by Elia Kazan (1909-2003) and designed by Jo Mielziner (1901-1976). Two years later the same team would stage Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman.

        How long did it run?

1 year, 8 months: 742 performances.

2. Who starred in the original Broadway production? What parts did they play?

Jessica Tandy (Blanche DuBois), Marlon Brando (Stanley Kowalski), and Kim Hunter (Stella Kowalski). This production was Brando's first major role. It was also his last Broadway production. The first of his 41 films, The Men, was released in 1950.

3. What was Williams' first major success?

The Glass Menagerie (1945).

4. For which two dramas did he receive a Pulitzer prize?

A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) and Cat On A Hot Tin Roof (1954).

5. Which of his plays is autobiographical?

The Glass Menagerie tells the story of Tom Winfield, a stock boy at a St. Louis shoe factory, who yearns to leave home and begin a career as a poet.

Williams averaged a new dramatic work every two years. He has been credited with 25 full length plays, over 40 one act scripts, a dozen screen plays, and an opera libretto. Link to Tennessee William's writing credits on the Internet Broadway DataBase.

6. What was Arthur Miller's first major theatrical success?

Arthur Miller's (1915-2005 ) first success was All My Sons (1947) -- the story of Joe Keller, who knowingly sent defective cylinder heads to the US Army Air Corps during World War II. Twenty combat fliers (perhaps including one of his two sons) were killed because of his actions.

7. What is his masterpiece?

Death of a Salesman (1949) is considered one of America's most significant dramas. The original production was directed by Elia Kazan and designed by Jo Mielziner. See the play synopsis on page A-9 of the Appendix.

       Who is its major character?

Willy Loman is the sixty-three year old traveling salesman who believes that back-slapping and perseverance are the keys to success in business and life. Lee J. Cobb created the role in the original New York production.

8. How long did it run in New York?

Nearly 2 years: 855 performances. Salesman has had three Broadway revivals which starred George C. Scott (1975), Dustin Hoffman (1984) and Brian Dennehy (1999) as Willy Loman. The Dennehy revival also won the 1999 Tony Award for Best Revival.

9. For which play did he win a Pulitzer prize?

Death of a Salesman. Salesman also won the 1949 Tony Award for Best Play.

In 1988 Miller commented: "I couldn’t have predicted that a work like Death of a Salesman would take on the proportions it has. Originally, it was a literal play about a literal salesman, but it has become a bit of a myth, not only here but in many other parts of the world." In 1983, Miller directed a Chinese production of Death of a Salesman at the Beijing Peoples’ Art Theatre. "Those who saw the Beijing production may not have identified with Loman’s career," Miller wrote, "but they shared his desire, which was to excel, to win out over anonymity and meaninglessness, to love and be loved, and above all, perhaps, to count."

10. Which Miller drama was written as a comment on the hearings held by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in the mid fifties?

The Crucible (1953). Miller compares the committee's hunt for communists in the entertainment industry with the Salem witchcraft trials of the 17th century.

11. Who were the "Hollywood Ten?"

One film director and nine screen writers who, in 1947, refused to "name names" before HUAC.

        Why were they held in contempt of congress?

They pleaded the first amendment (freedom of speech), not the fifth, were held in contempt of Congress, and spent a year in a federal prison.

After a second set of hearings in the early 50's, the committee developed a list of 324 employees of the entertainment industry who were, are had been, members of the communist party. All were blacklisted. A number of these screen writers continued to produce under pseudonyms, or their work simply went uncredited. Michael Wilson and Carl Foreman, the two uncredited blacklisted screen writers who adapted Pierre Boulle's The Bridge on the River Kwai, into the 1957 Oscar winning Best Picture did not receiver their Oscars for Best Adapted Screenplay untill 1984 wen the film was restored and their names were added to the list of credits. For more information link to The HUAC and Censorship Changes and Blacklist: A different view of the 1947 HUAC hearings.

12. What was the purpose of Red Channels?

On June 22, 1950, Red Channels published by Counterattack: The Newsletter of Facts To Combat Communism printed a list of 151 writers, directors and performers who had been members of "subversive" organisations before World War Two. This was the blacklist. Link to Red Channels: The Blacklist for images of the pages on Arthur Miller and Orson Welles.

Both Elia Kazan, who directed the New York productions of All My Sons and Death of a Salesman, and Arthur Miller were called before HUAC. Kazan named names; Miller did not. For more information on the Miller and Kazan controversy, link to "Kazan and Miller" by Richard Bernstein at the University of Pennsylvania.

Woody Allan's 1976 film, The Front, draws its inspiration from those blacklisted writers who could not write under their own name and were forced to use a "front."

When writer-director Eli Kazan, who had named names, won the Oscar for Life Time Achievement in 1999, approximately half of the audience refused to rise and give him a standing ovation. The fifty year old wounds which had split Hollywood have not yet healed.

13. Which of Miller's plays is autobiographical?

After the Fall (1964) is the story of a successful middle aged man, married to a famous movie star (Marilyn Monroe), who refused to "name names" before a government committee.

Between 1944 and 2000 there have been Broadway productions of 14 original works by Miller. There have also been a number of Broadway revivals of several of his major plays. Link to Athur Miller's writing credits on the Internet Broadway DataBase.

14. Who is, today, America's most successful playwright?

Neil Simon (1927- ) has written, on average, one play (or musical) per season since 1961. Most of his plays have been filmed and are available on video tape. Link to Neil Simon's writing credits on the Internet Broadway DataBase.

15. Where did he receive his dramatic training?

Writing for Sid Caesar's ( Your Show of Shows, 1950-1954) and Phil Silver's ( Sergeant Bilko, 1955-1959) television shows. In addition to Neil Simon, Mel Brooks ( Young Frankenstein), Woody Allen ( Annie Hall), Carl Reiner (creator of the Dick Van Dyke Show) and Larry Gelbart ( Tootsie) also got their start writing comedy for Sid Caesar (1922- ). His 90-minute Your Show of Shows is one of the most heralded works from television's Golden Age. In addition to being one of Neilson's "top ten" rated shows, it twice won the Emmy for Best Variety Program, in 1952 and again in 1953.

16. What was his first Broadway production?

Come Blow Your Horn (1961). The story of Buddy Baker who longs to leave his father's wax fruit business and become a writer.

17. Which of his works are autobiographical?

Come Blow Your Horn (1961), his life as a two hour sitcom. Chapter Two (1977), deals with his remarriage after his first wife's death. Brighten Beach Memoirs (1983), Beloxi Blues (1985), and Broadway Bound (1987). These three plays deal with Eugene Jerome's (as played by Mathew Broderick) discovery of girls, his life at Army Boot Camp during World War II, and his early attempt to write for television.

18. In which American city were eight of his first nine plays set?

New York City. Eight of Simon's first nine plays, starting with Come Blow Your Horn in 1961 and ending with The Sunshine Boys in 1972, are set in New York City with New York characters. He breaks the mold in 1973 with The Good Doctor, a collection of twelve short plays based on short stories by Anton Chekhov, the Russian doctor turned writer.

        Which comedy was the exception?

The Star-Spangled Girl (1966)

        Where was it located?

San Francisco

        Was it a success?

No. The show ran for 261 performances (a little over seven months) at the Plymouth Theatre and has not had a Broadway revival. Simon has comented that the reason the show was not a success was because he was writing about a place and a people with whom he was not familiar. He returns to a New York setting with Plaza Suite (1968), a play which ran for over 2 1/2 years.

19. Why has he written the book for only four musicals?

Because all the book writer does is lay the ground work for the songs. In a Broadway musical the high points are created by the composer and lyric writer.

20. For which play did he win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama?

Lost In Yonkers (1991), a gentle drama about "finding one's way through the tangled webs of familial relationships."

21. In what theatrical environment was Sam Shepard's plays first presented?

Shepard (1943- ) got his beginning in the small experimental off-off-Broadway theatres in the 1960s.

22. What title was awarded the Pulitzer Prize?

Buried Child (1979), Shepard's deep probe into the disintegration of the American Dream ran for only 72 performances. Only three of his scripts have had Broadway productions.

23. In what other theatrical area has he earned professional recognition?

Acting. He has appeared in over twenty films including The Right Stuff (1983), Fool for Love (1985) which he also wrote, Steel Magnolias (1989), Pelican Brief (1993) and Black Hawk Down (2001)

24. In which American city were David Mamet's plays first produced?

Chicago. David Mamet (1947- ) was born in Chicago, calls it his home, and has used this town as the setting for most of his plays.

25. Which of his works was the first to attract immediate attention?

Sexual Perversity in Chicago (1974). The play, which never played on Broadway, reveals a couple of months in the lives of four young people: Bernie, Joan, Danny and Deborah. This early script was, for its time (pre-Aids), a cutting edge insanity about the sexual experiments of the the 70s. According to Denver acting coach, Bill Smith, "The writing is brilliant, [but] the subject matter and point of view is despicable." A film version of Mamet's play, retitled About Last Night... was released in 1986.

26. Which of his plays has won the Pulitzer Prize?

Gelngarry Glen Ross (1984), a "comic drama" about the cutthroat competition between real estate agents in the same agency.

Mamet is probably better known today as a film and TV writer than as a playwright. Like Shephard, much of his dramatic writing has opened in the regional theatre. Five of these productions have moved to Broadway.

27. What is the primary concept of the absurdist theatre?

There are no fixed standards of conduct, no verifiable moral codes. Each person must choose his own set of values and live by his choice. To live by the conventions of others is the response of a robot, not the act of a human.

Most, probably all, absurdist plays are unconventional. The stage directions for Samuel Beckett's (1906-1989) Breath (1969) occupy a single page and take longer to read than to perform (35 seconds). A stage strewn with debris becomes visible in a light that starts faint, becomes less faint, then fades to black. Simultaneously the audience hears a faint cry, what Beckett calls an "instant of recorded vagitus," then the sound of a human breath, followed by another faint cry, the lights fade and the curtain falls.

28. Who are its two major playwrights? Where did they write? When?

Eugene Ionesco (1912-1994) and Samuel Beckett. Ionesco was from Romania and Beckett was from Ireland, but both lived and wrote in Paris during the 1950's.

29. What is the masterpiece of absurdism?

Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot (1952). See the play synopsis on page A-10 of the Appendix.

The objective, or spine, of Beckett's masterpiece is the plays title. Unlike the 19th century well-made play in which the hero had a strong objective ( For example: To find true love) and, in the course of three acts, overcomes all obstacles to achieve it, the absurdist play often demonstrates the futility of conventional pursuit. As the characters deal with each moment-to-moment, the play unfolds almost as a parody of the conventional three-act structure with it's beginning, middle and end.
Copyright © 2000 by Il Professore

30. Who was the major American absurdist playwright? Does he still write in this style?

Edward Albee (1928- ). He no longer writes absurdist dramas. His early plays "The Zoo Story" (1959) and "The American Dream" (1960) were short one act comedies patterned after Ionesco. His first major work, "The Zoo Story," was rejected by every major American theatre company. It was not until after it had a successful, and critically acclaimed, German production that an American company was willing to present it.

        What was his first major non-absurdist play?

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1962). is set on the campus of a small, New England university. The two major characters, George and Martha, care deeply about each other, but their marriage has turned into a nasty battle between two disenchanted and cynical enemies. The 1966 film was directed by Mike Nichols and starred Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.

        How many Pulitzer Prizes has he won?

Three -- A Delicate Balance (1967), Seascape (1975), and Three Tall Women (1994).