Top Contemporary American Playwrights
Noteworthy and Award-Winning Playwrights 20th and 21st Century
Oct 18, 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.
Read also, Great Contemporary American Playwrights
Tony KushnerTony Kushner (born 1956) grew up in Lake Charles, Louisiana after his family inherited a lumber business. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Medieval Studies from Columbia University and completed his postgraduate work at New York University. Kushner founded a theater group in the early 1980's when he began producing and writing plays. His style often departs from typical realism, containing numerous short episodes in his storytelling with heightened dialogue and compacted actions.
As seen in his most popular piece, Angels in America, Kushner is also not afraid of spectacle and extraordinary moments that enhance the meaning and story. Kushner has many noteable works as a playwright, essayist, and author.
Representative Works
- The Age of Assassins (1982)
- A Bright Room Called Day (1985)
- Angels in America, A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, Part 1 Millennium Approaches (1991) Drama Desk Award Outstanding New Play, Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Tony Award for Best Play
- Angels in America, Part 2 Perestroika (1992) Drama Desk Award Outstanding Play, Tony Award for Best Play
- Reverse Transcription: Six Playwrights Bury a Seventh, A Ten-Minute Play That's Nearly Twenty Minutes Long (1996)
- Caroline or Change (2002) Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Musical
- The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures (2009)
David Mamet
David Mamet (born 1947) is an American author, screenwriter, essayist, playwright, and film director. His works are known for their exploration into themes such as masculinity and sexual harassment, and include clever, yet sometimes vulgar, dialogue. David Krasner, in his book A Companion to Twentieth-century American Drama, wrote that "Mamet's style of writing dialogue, marked by a cynical, street-smart edge, precisely crafted for effect, is so distinctive that it came to be called 'Mamet speak.'" His characters' speech is often interrupted by one another and the audience is left with unfinished sentences. It is this unique dialogue style that makes Mamet stand out among other playwrights.
Representative Works
- American Buffalo (1975) New York Critics' Circle Award, Obie Award
- A Life in the Theater (1977)
- Revenge of the Space Pandas, or Binky Rudich and the Two-Speed Clock (1978)
- Glengarry Glen Ross (1984) Pulitzer Prize for Drama
- Speed-The-Plow (1988)
- Oleanna (1992)
- Faustus (2004)
- November (2007)
John Patrick Shanley
John Patrick Shanley (born 1950) grew up as the youngest of five children in an Irish-Catholic family. Shanley began by writing poetry at a very young age. After completing his Vietnam War service in the Marine Corp, Shanley graduated as valedictorian from New York University with a degree in Educational Theater in 1977. By the 1980's he had written a half-dozen plays, but did not receive high acclaim early in his playwriting career. Later his work would be celebrated for its intense dialogue and his characters' search for identity and love. His most well-known and popular work is Doubt, A Parable, and was adapted into a film starring Meryl Streep in 2008.
Representative Work
- Welcome to the Moon (1982)
- Danny and the Deep Blue Sea (1983)
- Moonstruck (1987 film) Academy Award for Best Screenplay
- Italian American Reconciliation (1988)
- What is This Everything? (1992)
- Psychopathia Sexualis (1998)
- Dirty Story (2003)
- Doubt, A Parable (2004) Pulitzer Prize for Drama
- Sailor's Song (2004) Drama Desk Award for Outstanding New Play
*For more information about some of today's best American playwrights check out Contemporary American Playwrights by Christopher Bigsby, American Playwrights Since 1945 edited by Philip C. Kolin, or A Companion to Twentieth-century American Drama by David Krasner.
 |
 |
 |
