This is a book-length study of the collaboration between Tennessee Williams and Elia Kazan. Their intense creative relationship, fuelled by a deep personal affinity that endured until Williams's death, lasted from 1947 until 1960. The production of A Streetcar Named Desire established Williams as America's greatest playwright and Kazan as its most important director; together they created some of the most influential theatrical events of the post-war era. In this book Brenda Murphy analyses this artistic partnership and the plays and theatrical techniques the artists developed collaboratively...

Congressional Theatre is the first book to identify and examine the significant body of plays, films, and teleplays that responded to the actions of the House Committee on Un-American Activities during the "show business hearings" it held between 1947 and 1960. Among the writers discussed are Arthur Miller, Bertolt Brecht, Lillian Hellman, Maxwell Anderson, Elia Kazan, Barrie Stavis, Herman Wouk, Eric Bentley, Saul Levitt, Budd Schulberg, Carl Foreman, Abraham Polonsky, and Walter Bernstein.

The importance of Native American realism is traced through a study of the evolution of dramatic theory from the early 1890s through World War I and the uniquely American innovations in realistic drama between world wars.

A Streetcar Named Desire quickly became an international sensation when it premiered on Broadway in 1947. This work features essays on Tennessee Williams' famous play. It examines the play in light of post-war American culture and censorship and compares Williams' treatment of tragedy with Arthur Miller's in his play, Death of a Salesman.

When it premiered, Death of a Salesman received immediate critical praise and popular attention. Miller set out to change the face of American Drama and succeeded. The play won the Pulitzer Prize, and the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award. This volume brings together some of the best essays written on Miller's most accomplished play.

The Provincetown Players was a major cultural institution in Greenwich Village from 1916 to 1922, when American Modernism was conceived and developed. This study considers the group's vital role, and its wider significance in twentieth century American culture. Describing the varied and often contentious response to modernity among the Players, Brenda Murphy reveals the central contribution of the group of poets around Alfred Kreymborg's Others magazine, including William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, Mina Loy and Djuna Barnes, and such modernist artists as Marguerite and William Zorach,...

Introductory essays include a brief biography on Williams and a quartet of original essays provide valuable context for understanding his achievements. One essay examines the plays within the context of twentieth century culture while another traces the playwright's expressionistic values from his early student play "Me, Vashya" up through Camino Real and appraises A Streetcar Named Desire as Williams's best realization of this aesthetic. Another offers a meditation on the theme of mendacity within Williams's last great success, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, as well as within the play's production...

Among the twentieth century's greatest playwrights, Arthur Miller is recognized today as a formative influence on modern American drama. The essays in this set provide valuable context for studying his works. Essay topics include a discussion of the family dynamics of the father-son plays All My Sons and Death of a Salesman, the flawless architecture of Miller's plays, and a thorough account of Miller's early reviews as well as later critical writings.

While Guinness is a global product, it still contains references to Ireland and it occupies a particular place in imaginings of Irishness. Brewing Identities is unique in that, while it focuses on the (re)production of a specific kind of ethno-national identity Irishness it is simultaneously transnational in scope, as the author maps the trails of products, people and symbolic constructs through a globalised world. In pubs from Dublin to London to New York, the reader is taken on a multi-sited ethnography, where stories unfold through observation, interview, and conversation with...