©2009 Ryan C. Tittle
For young people who are entering into the world of the theatre of today, there should be great trepidation. The Broadway of Eugene O'Neill (America's patron saint of tragedy) and George S. Kaufman (likewise, of comedy) has been gone for longer than we remember; Off-Broadway with its "seasons" basically has little chance of an open-ended run of anything; even the regional theatres (which were supposed to save us) are part of a cookie-cutter industry whether they realize it or not. My, I better be quiet before I ruin my chances of ever being performed anywhere.
Still, there are two major things for playwrights to worry about: having to supplement the playwright's income with money from Hollywood or the wretched slew of musicals based on movies because there's no money in it and being a part of an art form which technically no longer has systemic cultural relevancy. This means (among other things) that any play one might write is lucky—no, blessed—to be recognized even in the small world of the theatre. America's history is short and (unlike France, Germany, England, etc.) most of its time and energy, artistically, has been put into television and the film industry. I'm not making any judgments, just stating fact. After all, how could the art form of Sophocles compete with the latest superhero flick?
And yet, there is much to be admired when you think of how many folks are inspiring young people in performing arts high schools and colleges across this nation. This means that the theatre is more like a training ground for actors to go off to Hollywood, but still theatre is alive, even if it's on a respirator.
This list has been developed to augment the reading lists of many of you who may be interested in the plays of America that have great cultural relevance without being great successes in their time. Also, most people who teach the drama of America most usually start with Eugene O'Neill. This is important as O'Neill really did found our drama in the way that the Three Great Tragedians of Greece did and Shakespeare for that other important English-speaking nation across the Atlantic. But, in no way, did American theatre start in the 1920's. There were interesting playwrights before him and certainly after O'Neill. Some of those after have also not gotten their fair shake.
Here you will find plays by the great authors (O'Neill, Williams, Lanford Wilson) and you will see names that may only be familiar to you if you've spent a long time in community theatres across the nation. Even still, there are probably more playwrights you will have never heard of. The theatre of America is truly unique in that we have produced more interesting playwrights in our short time than most countries have in centuries. That does not mean they are all masters—some, like Romulus Linney and Eric Overmyer—are simply well-honed technicians who write very good plays of, perhaps, less reach.
Find these plays—they are in libraries, in anthologies, waiting to sing again.
Pocahontas, or The Settlers of Virginia (1830) by George Washington Parke Curtis
I can hear you groaning already. Yes, it sounds like the sort of thing you see enacted outdoors at some historical village. And, yes, it is an example of the brief time in the American theatre where we were obsessed with "Indian" dramas. But, the story of Pocahontas is continually interesting for a reason. It is really a story of culture clash (and America is generally such a story—and will continue to be so). Our variations on the truth (and our understanding that the truth may never be told anyway) have given us license to make Smith and the Native daughter of Powhatan a sort of skewed Romeo and Juliet for our nation. We are still engrossed with it—as Terence Malick's recent masterwork The New World proves.
Barbara Frietchie, the Frederick Girl (1899) by Clyde Fitch
Rachel (1920) by Angelina Weld Grimke
The Great God Brown (1926) by Eugene O'Neill
Biography (1932) by S. N. Behrman
Merrily We Roll Along (1934) by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart
The Kaufman and Hart comedies of early Broadway are still around. Even with their great cast sizes, they exist in community theatres most strongly. But, there are plenty you've probably never read or seen—and they happen to be the most interesting, by the way. Merrily We Roll Along was not a hit—it was an interesting failure that engaged an entire generation of Broadwayfiles. Stephen Sondheim and Harold Prince adapted it for an interesting musical that also failed. You may have heard of it from that. But, the original is beautiful and represents a style of American comic writing that has been completely lost. It is not just the quips and the slamming doors, but the ironic touches (and surprising moments of tragedy) that make this play worth a higher place in our canon than it has.
My Heart's in the Highlands (1939) by William Saroyan
Watch on the Rhine (1940) by Lillian Hellman
The Patriots (1943) by Sidney Kingsley
One thing we are most certainly missing in America is a plethora of plays about our history. Not just the plays that take historically interesting events and periods and create interesting fictional derivations (The Crucible), but also the plays that use historical events in modern contexts that shed light on the history of our past and our future. Take a look at Sidney Kingsley's The Patriots; for those of you who run theatres and have great costume designers, sign up and do the thing. It's brilliant. It is likely you will be moved to tears by Kingsley's look at Jefferson and the founding of America—composed during World War II. Largely forgotten now, Kingsley was a writer who took social situations and used the theatre to reflect and not preach. Many writers of political matters could take more than a serious glimpse at the methods he used.
Second Threshold (1951) by Philip Barry
The Flowering Peach (1954) by Clifford Odets
The Toilet (1961) by Amiri Baraka
The Red Devil Battery Sign (1975) by Tennessee Williams
Tennessee Williams' career was plagued by his outlandish celebrity, societal sexual repression, a deeply dysfunctional family, and an inability to rise back to the talent and instinct of his early works. His later works cannot even really be considered by scholars who wish to keep Williams as one of the top playwrights this country has produced. But, in a few cases, he was able to keep enough of his imagination glued together for works that were surprisingly fluid. Orpheus Descending and Small Craft Warnings are examples of later plays that showed great, poetic, Gothic power. The Red Devil Battery Sign, however, has the distinction of being Tenn's greatest failure. But, if you really pay attention to the work—something the editors of the Library of America were unable to do in their two-volume Collected Plays—it is an interesting vision of the future and of the Gothic imagination. It premiered in Vienna and was produced in London (the city that has recognized many of our plays that have failed here) and was not produced in New York until the late nineties—more out of pity than admiration. While it is no Streetcar, there is much to be admired here.
And the Soul Shall Dance (1977) by Wakako Yamauchi
Circus Valentine (1979) by Marsha Norman
Marsha Norman's Pulitzer Prize-winner 'night Mother has held a major shadow over Norman's career—one that must make her appreciative and angry at the same time. In one aspect, it is an example of style and structural intelligence that most contemporary Americans don't even attempt. In another way, she has not written anything else like it. Aside from a couple of exceptions—Getting Out and her exquisite musical adaptation of The Secret Garden—her career is interesting without being of the ilk to place her with Hellman and Wasserstein as our greatest female playwrights. Circus Valentine, a major failure at the Actors Theatre of Louisville, is more interesting than it is a failure. In Norman's own words, it holds the poetry from her that no one has ever wanted to hear. This admirable story of a circus family is worth producing by a major company.
Sand Mountain (1986) by Romulus Linney
Columbus and the Discovery of Japan (1992) by Richard Nelson
Richard Nelson's career is prolific, but having spent most of his career in England has made him an interesting afterthought of America's dramatic talent. A few of his plays—New England, Madame Melville—are quite wonderful. Many of the others are stark, depressing, and mind-numbingly political. But, Columbus and the Discovery of Japan goes back farther in our history than Pocahontas and shows a dramatic imagination in full blossom. Some of the moments must be difficult to stage except in abstract ways, but it is an impressive text—worth serious consideration in this country.
The Heliotrope Bouquet by Scott Joplin and Louis Chauvin (1993) by Eric Overmyer
The America Play (1994) by Suzan-Lori Parks
Book of Days (2000) by Lanford Wilson
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