Informative and economically written, this book is a useful tool for theatre and literary practitioners.

"American Theater"

This guide to the state of research on forty major American playwrights and the history of their productions is among the first of its kind. It is actually many books: a bibliography, a stage history, an assessment of scholarly works about each playwright, and an invaluable guide to the types of research studies--biographical, bibliographical and critical--that remain to be done on each playwright. The essays were written by leading experts in American drama and...

Fifteen distinguished scholars contribute original essays that analyze A Streetcar Named Desire, one of the most significant plays in modern theatre, from various critical or cultural stances, methods, or modalities. Represented as individual points of view or touched upon in the analysis are the theories of Lacan and Foucault and the tenets of Marxism; the approaches of Feminism, Reader Response Criticism, Deconstructionism, Chaos and Anti-Chaos Theory, Translation Theory, Formalism, Mythology, Perception Theory, and Gender Theory; and the perceptions of Popular Culture, Film...

The plays of Tennessee Williams are some of the greatest triumphs of the American theatre. If Williams is not the most important American playwright, he surely is one of the two or three most celebrated, rivaled only by Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller. In a career that spanned almost five decades, he created an extensive canon of more than 70 plays. His contributions to the American theatre are inestimable and revolutionary. "The Glass Menagerie" (1945) introduced poetic realism to the American stage; "A Streetcar Named Desire" (1947) explored sexual and psychological issues that had...

Albee's numerous roles and achievements are reflected in the lively interviews in this collection. These reveal the many sides and responses of one...