" The Playwright's Muse is straightforward in structure, moving from playwright to playwright and coupling an intellectual essay on each with an interview. It is one of those books that one might assume to be primarily of interest to playwrights; but, on the contrary, Herrington's classy collection is a perfect bedside read for those who simply love the theater--and love learning how the lives of its artists affect its creation." -- Ben Winters, TheaterMania.com
1. Introduction 2. Not Having It All: Wendy Wasserstein's Uncommon Women 3. Interview with Wendy Wasserstein 4. Birth, Baptism and Redemption: August Wilson and the Blues 5. Interview with August Wilson 6. Broadway Boundaries: Neil Simon and Popular Culture 7. Interview with Neil Simon 8. Lessons from our First Frontier 9. Interview with Robert Schenkkan 10. Kushner's Arcades; The borders are full of holes 11. Interview with Tony Kushner 12.A's Last Memory: Contextualizing Albee's Three Tall Women 13. Interview with Edward Albee 14. All's Grace: The Work of Horton Foote 15. Interview with Horton Foote 16. Jonathan Larson rocks Broadway 17. Conversations with Jonathan Larson 18. Paula Vogel's Sites of Resistance 19. Interview with Paula Vogel 20. Margaret Edson: Playwright in Spite of Herself 21. Donald Margulies: From Boy(chick) to Man(sh) Selected Bibliography Contributors
Joan Herrington is Director of Women's Theatre and Associate Professor of Theatre at Western Michigan University. She is author of I Ain't Sorry For Nothin' IDone: August Wilson's Process of Playwriting.
