The theatre and drama of the 1920s reflect a synergy of art, glitter, and glitz--a decade of great mainstream playwrights and a flourishing popular and commercial theatre, but it was also a decade in which discontented artists and a variety of people on the margins of American society could find a means of expressing their views.

Gewitz and Kolb assemble 20 essays that reflect recent scholarship and research, focusing on generally unknown or ignored aspects of the decade: John Howard Lawson's polemics, especially in his most important play, Processional, his proclivity...