Contemporary American Playwrights
Noteworthy and Award-Winning Playwrights 20th and 21st Century
Sep 27, 2009
Live theater now competes with television and films for audiences, and is no longer the lone means for expressing ideas and entertaining. For this reason, contemporary playwrights do not often attain the cultural importance they once claimed in the past. However, there are still playwrights of recent history who use their talents and works to inspire the human race. Here is a fraction of the noteworthy and award-winning playwrights that have challenged audiences to dream, think, and feel over the recent decades.
George Abbott (1887-1995) began his theater career as an actor in 1913 in a Broadway appearance in The Misleading Lady. Abbott was acting in numerous plays on the New York stage when he began to write, his first successful playwriting project being The Fall Guy in 1925. From here, his playwriting, producing, and directing career thrived, spanning over seven decades and earning him a variety of awards and recognition. His main contributions were to musical theater and librettos, working with numerous iconic theater directors such as Jerome Robbins and Bob Fosse. In 1976, he received honorary doctorates from both the Universities of Miami and Rochester. He received the Kennedy Center Lifetime Achievement Award in 1982 and was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.
Representative Works include:
- The Boys from Syracuse (1938)
- Pal Joey (1940)
- Wonderful Town (1953)
- The Pajama Game (1954) Writers Guild of America Award for Best Written American Musical
- Damn Yankees (1955)
- Fiorello! (1960) Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama
- A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962)
Edward Albee ( born1928) integrated absurdist elements into American theater. He was first inspired to write poetry and fiction, but found his true calling writing for the theater. At the age of 30, he completed his first successful play, The Zoo Story. Albee enjoyed bringing topics of conflicts into the public spotlight as well. For example, his short drama, The Death of Bessie Smith, dramatizes the racial conflict of the time in a realistic manner. Over the years his plays took on many forms and styles, from straightforward adaptations of novels to unconventional experimental works. His presentation of difficult subject matter and sometimes off-the-wall approach to tell a story earned Albee a number of achievements, including three Pulitzer Prizes, the National Medal of Arts, and a Tony for Lifetime Achievement.
Representative Works:
- Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1961) Tony Award Best Play
- A Delicate Balance (1967) Pulitzer Prize for Drama
- Seascape (1974) Pulitzer Prize for Drama
- Three Tall Women (1990) Pulitzer Prize for Drama
- The Goat or Who is Sylvia? (2002) Drama Desk Award Outstanding Play/Tony Award Best Play
Christopher Durang (born1949) tends to lean toward dark comedy and social satire with his works. Durang received a Bachelor of Arts from Yale College and a Master of Fine Arts in Playwriting from Yale School of Drama. His first professional production, The Idiots Karamazov, starred Meryl Streep, who was still a student at the time. His first success was Sister Mary and he continued to target themes of church, family, and conservatism in the works that followed. He is now a member of the Dramatists Guild Council and shares leadership of the playwriting program at Julliard.
Representative Works:
- Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You (1979) Obie Award
- The Actor's Nightmare (1981)
- Beyond Therapy (1981)
- Baby with the Bathwater (1983)
- Betty's Summer Vacation (1999) Obie Award
*For more information about some of today's best American playwrights check out Contemporary American Playwrights by Christopher Bigsby or American Playwrights Since 1945 edited by Philip C. Kolin.
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