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Bronson Howard ( 1842-1908)
The first important realist in American Drama.
He studied two areas of American society which are
business and marriage in some of his dramas such as The
Bankers Daughter (1878), Young Mrs.Winthrop (1882)and The Henrietta (1887)
Howard made the audiences at the time think
uncomfortable thoughts about those two things.
His dramatic techniques were still the old-fashioned
techniques of melodrama.
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Some of Howards Works :
The Banker's Daughter(1878)
OldLove Letters (1878)
Young Mrs. Winthrop (1882) One of our Girls (1885)
The Henrietta (1887; revived in 1913 as TheNew Henrietta)
Shenandoah (1889)
Aristocracy(1892)
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WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
He was born on March 1st, 1987 inOhio.
He was a realist novelist who alsoactive in modernize Americantheatre.
He was more successful as a critic
and an organizer. He was dead in aged 83, May 11th,1920 in Manhattan.
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He wrote at least thirty-six plays, but one was
really successful, A Counterfeit Presentment
(1887).
He established the First Independent Theatre
in Bo.ston together with Hamlin Garland in1892
Its purpose: to encourage truth and progress
in American Dramatic Art. It was a model for Little Theatre movement.
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Little Theatre movement began around 1912
as a revolt against the big theatres, such asBroadway whose main interest was makingmoney.
Between 1912 and 1929, theere were over athousand Little Theatre across the country.
The most famous theatres were in theWashington Square Players, NY, and in the
Provincetown Players, Massachusetts These two theatres had a big part for
introducing Eugene ONeill to the world.
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Eugene ONeill
He developed American drama into a form of literature.
He brought a wide range of new themes and styles to the
stages.
Each play is an exploration of the human condition.
He was very serious that he only wrote one very good
comedy Ah, Wilderness! (1933)
His actor father introduced him to the theatre.
Seeing so many artificial romantic in theatre of the olddays made he felt contempt for the theatre.
As a result, he turned away from his family and became a
heavy-drinking sailor for a number of years.
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This taught him much about the ugly underside of
the society where cheap hotels and sailors bars lies.
When he began writing plays, these experiences
were his first material.
They also so much helpful to change the old
characters of melodrama into realistic characters.
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ONeills Works
His works were excellent from the beginning.
BoundEast for Cardiff (1916) described a sailor dying onboard the ship S.S. Glencairn.
The mood of the plays is dark and heavy.
The theme of each play goes beyond the surfaces of life tostudy the forces behind life
Fate was one of this forces.
In Anna Christie (1920) and many other plays, fate is
symbolized by that ole devil, sea Psychology is also one of these forces.
He often used the new psychology of Freud to deepen hisdramas.
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The form of each of ONeills plays is based upon the special
dramatic needs of that play.
As one critics noted, he never echoes
In Strange Interlude (1928), the plays most important
action happens inside the minds of the main characters.
ONeills took the stream-of-conciousness technique from
the novel and dramatized it. Desire Under the Elms (1924) is a completely realistic drama
set in nineteenth-century England.
Its theme is sexual desire and the desire of land.
Though the structure of this tragedy story is like a bible story,he gave a Freudian meaning.
He also used themes and techniques from Greek tragedy in
The Great GodBrown (1926) and Mourning Becomes Electra
(1931)
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In his last years, the plays became increasingly
autobiographical.
A Moon for the Misbegotten (1952) explores the
spiritual problems of the American family (probably
his own).
Long Days Journey into Night(1956) was a triumph
of realistic drama and ONeills finest play.
It is about human responsibility and love-hate
within a family.
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Elmer Rice (1892-1967)
He was born Elmer Reizenstein on Sept. 28, 1892,
in New York City.
His best plays are works of social criticism.
His plays reveal a concern with individualconcern.
Some of his famous works:
Adding Machine (1923)
an expressionistic drama, shows its hero as a victim of
the machine age
StreetScene (1929)
a realistic play that shows the failure of social idealism
http://www.answers.com/topic/elmer-rice
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Clifford Odets (1906-1963)
He was born in Philadelphia, on 18thJuly, 1906.
He wrote plays reflecting the social
concerns of the American Left in the1930s.
His plays, Awake andSing! (1935) hasbeen called the play about the
Depression era
However, his work is viewed as tooideological today.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAodets.htm
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Tennessee Williams
born on March 26, 1911 inColumbus, Mississippi.
Got his first taste of literary famewhen he took 3rd place in anational essay contest in 1927.
Decided to became a playwright
inspired by Henrik Ibsens Ghostsin 1929 when he was studying atUniversity of Missouri.
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The Glass Menagerie (1944) was
considered his best play ever. Theplay reflected his own familial
relationships. It won the New York
Drama Critics' Circle Award for best
play of the season.
Elia Kazan, who directed most of
Tennessees great plays, said
Everything in his life is in his plays,and everything in his plays is in his
life.
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He got his first Pulitzer Prize in 1948 for A
Streetcar NamedDesire, and reached a larger
world-wide audience in 1950 and 1951
when The Glass Menagerie and AStreetcar
NamedDesire were made into major motion
pictures. There were other plays which also made into
major motion pictures such as Cat on a Hot
Tin Roof(for which he earned a secondPulitzer Prize in 1955), Orpheus Descending,
and Night of the Iguana.
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Arthur Miller (1915-2005) Arthur Miller is a playwright who combined in
his works social awareness with deep insights
into personal weaknesses of his characters.
His plays continued the realistic tradition that
began in the United States in the period
between the two world wars. His plays often depict how families are
destroyed by false values.
In Millers plays, the past has a direct influence
on the present often in his plays, characters
learn to take responsibilities of their past
action.
His plays are strongly influenced by Henrik
Ibsen they often set up a dramaticb situation
in order to prove intellectual point.
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Arthur Millers WorksDEATH OF A SALESMAN (1949) brought Miller
international fame and a Pulitzer Prize. It becomeone of the major achievements of modern
American theatre. It relates the tragic story of a
salesman named Willy Loman, whose past and
present are mingled in expressionistic scenes.
Loman is not the great success that he claims to
be to his family and friends. The postwareconomic boom has shaken up his life. He is
eventually fired and he begins to hallucinate
about significant events from his past. Linda, his
wife, believes in the American Dream, but she
also keeps her feet on the ground. Deciding that
he is worth more dead than alive, Willy killshimself in his car hoping that the insurance
money will support his family and his son Biff
could get a new start in his life. Critics have
disagreed whether his suicide is an act of
cowardice or a last sacrifice on the altar of the
American Dream.
Taken fromhttp://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/amiller.htm ,
written by Petri Liukkonen
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ALL MY SONS (1947) is Millers first
Broadway play. The main character
learns that the consequence of
actions are as real as the action
themselves.
THE CRUCIBLE (1953) is set in seventeenth-
century New England, during the witch trial.
The theme of this play is that social evil is
caused by individuals who do not take
responsibility for the world they live in.
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Edward Albee
He was born in Washington D.C, March 12 1928
Many of Albees plays seem to be influenced
by the European Theatre of the Absurdmovement of the fifties and sixties. The basic
philosophy of this movement was that
traditional realism only shows life as it seemsto be; and in fact, life is meaningless or absurd
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One of his plays, The Zoo Story in 1958; which was absurdist explained
about the failure of conversation and communicating between two
characters, Peter and Jerry. They cant understand each other. Jerry gives
Peter a knife and makes Peter kill him. With this self-sacrifice and his talk
of love, Jerry becomes a Christ figure. Actually, the plays message isnt
absurd at all. What Albees saying is that people can and must break out of
their aloneness.
Even though Albee often uses the method of the Absurdist, hes really a
social critic and satirist. On his play, Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in
1962; tells about a married couple who lives in an imaginary life. The
characters, George and Martha have a marriage upon a fantasy, a false
dream. Since they couldnt have any children, they invented an imaginary
son. When George kills the son, he ruins their fantasy world.
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Albees later work, Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung in 1968, he says:
I am becomingless andless certain about the resiliency of civilization.
Maybe I am becoming more andmore depressedby the fact that people desire
to life as dictatorships tell them too.
The character is Mao. He does nothing but quote himself from his famous little
red book. Another character does nothing but quote lines of sentimental poetry.
Each character is caught in his little own world.
But in his recent plays, he seems to doubt about reliability of language itself;
We communicate andfail to communicate bylanguage. My characters tendto
be far more articulate than a lot of others people characters. That's on of the
problems, I suppose.
Therefore, we can say that Albee seems to doubt that art can explain life
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Jack Gelber
He was born in Chicago on April12th 1932
He was a famous playwright thatwas known for his drama the
connection (1959) Not only as a playwright, he was
also a professor in BrooklynCollege, University of New York.
In 1999, he received the Edward
Albee last frontier Playwrightaward in recognition of his lifetimeof achievements in theatre.
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The Connection (1959) The Apple
Square in the Eye (1965)
The Cuban Thing (1968)
Sleep (1972)
BarbaryShore (1973), adaptation of NormanMailer's 1951 novel of the same name
Farmyard(1975), adaptation of Franz XaverKroetz's play Stallerhof(1971)
Jack Gelber's New Play: Rehearsal (1976)
Starters (1980) Big Shot(1988)
Magic Valley(1990)
Rio Preserved (1998) and Chambers (1998)
Dylan's Line (2000), first produced in 2003
List of His plays
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The connection became Theatre's
first great success. It won the Obie
Award of the Village Voice for BestNew Play, Best Production, and Best
Actor (Warren Finnertin the role of
Leach) of the 1959-1960 season.
Gelber also received the Vernon
Rice Award(now known as the
Drama Desk Award
At the end of his life, he became an
adjunct professor at the Actor
Studio Drama School at the Newschool University
He was died on may 9th 2003
because of blood cancer