Chapter 16: Drama

20TH-CENTURY AMERICAN DRAMA American drama imitated English and European theater until well into the 20th century. Often, plays from England or translated from European languages dominated theater seasons. An inadequate copyright law that failed to protect and promote American dramatists worked against genuinely original drama. So did the "star system," in which actors and actresses, rather than the actual plays, were given most acclaim. Americans flocked to see European actors who toured theaters in the United States. In addition, imported drama, like imported wine, enjoyed higher status than indigenous productions.

During the 19th century, melodramas with exemplary democratic figures and clear contrasts between good and evil had been popular. Plays about social problems such as slavery also drew large audiences; sometimes these plays were adaptations of novels like Uncle Tom's Cabin. Not until the 20th century would serious plays attempt aesthetic innovation. Popular culture showed vital developments, however, especially in vaudeville (popular variety theater involving skits, clowning, music, and the like). Minstrel shows, based on African-American music and folkways -- performed by white characters using "blackface" makeup -- also developed original forms and expressions.

An Outline History Of American Drama

Colonial Theater and Drama A. Drama in the Colonies 1. The First American Play 2. Early American Plays on Stage: a. Ye Bare and Ye Cubb by William Darby, 1665; b. Other Plays written and performed 3. First Play printed in America: Androborus by Robert Hunter, 1714 B. Actors and Acting Companies in the Colonies 1. Problems of the Actors in America 2. Early Theaters and Acting Companies: Walter Murray and Thomas Kean

3. A Company of Comedians from London: Lewis Hallam

4. The American Company: David Douglass

An Outline History Of American Drama

C. Drama in the Colonies 1. First Play written by an American and performed in America by Professional Actors - The Prince of Parthia (1759?) by Thomas Godfrey 2. Other Early Native Drama 3. College Drama in the Colonies 4. First Play to treat a native subject - Ponteach or The Savages of America by Robert Rogers (1766) Drama During the Revolution and the Post Revolutionary Period to 1800 A. Plays Reflecting Patriot Views during the Revolution B.Plays Reflecting Loyalist Views during the Revolution

C. Nonpartisan Drama
D. The Beginnings of American Comedy: Royall Tyler's The Contrast, 1787 (first comedy) E. The Father of American Drama: William Dunlap

F. Post-Revolutionary Drama: Varied Directions

An Outline History Of American Drama

Theater During the Revolution and the Post Revolutionary Period to 1800 A. Theater during the Revolution B. Theater from the Revolution to 1800 Drama of a New Nation, 1800-1865 A. Plays from the Town Crier: Nationalism on Stage B. Poetic Drama: The Serious Dramatist at Work C. Native American Character Types: Jonathan, Sambo, and Metamora

D. A Mirror of the Times

E. Yankee Originality: American's Contribution to World Theater F. Theater before the Civil War

An Outline History Of American Drama

American Drama from the Civil War to World War I A. The Rise of Realism in American Drama B. The Beginnings of Social Drama: Comment, Comedy, and Melodrama C. The Age of Melodrama D. The Popular Farce E. Poetic Drama F. A New Seriousness G. Beginnings in Dramatic Criticism H. A Developing Theater Modern American Drama Drama lags behind other genres because of its demands of collaboration between the playwright and the producer, a largely conservative audience, and the requirements of a theatre, actors, set design, and a director. By the end of the WWI, the hold of greedy businessmen, who peddled inferior plays for profit, came to an end. This was signaled by the strike by Actors' Equity in 1917, which shut all New York theaters.

Literary Aesthetics and Styles

Realism Stage realism is the use of ordinary people, in ordinary settings, using commonplace dialect. The stage props represent a camera photograph. Realistic plays show aspects of real people playing out conflicts and intrigues which reflect the ordinary experiences of American middle class life. Recognizable heroes and villains were replaced with ordinary characters showing ordinary strengths and weaknesses. The replacement of gas light by electricity helped in the creation of realistic ambience. Naturalism A commonly interchangeable term with realism, naturalism assumes that humans are controlled by their environment, fate, psychology, chance or coincidence; realistic characters are in control of their destinies. Naturalistic situations are generally pessimistic and deterministic. Trapped and controlled, human behavior is instinctual and animalistic; there is heroism in a human's desire to survive against insurmountable odds.

Expressionism In expressionistic plays, the playwright's subjective sense of reality finds expression. The characters and the milieu may be realistic, but their presentation on stage is controlled by the writer's personal biases and inclinations. No longer a camera photograph, the stage could be highly elaborate or bare; the accompanying lighting, costumes, music, and scenery could be similarly nonrealistic. More like a dream, expressionistic writing has no recognizable plot, conflicts, and character developments. However, the threads are still audience friendly; expressionism is not absurdism or an exercise in obscurity.

Eugene O'Neill (1888-1953)

"I was born in a hotel and, damn it, I'll die in a hotel." - EO'N Considered the foremost United States playwright, O'N was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1936, only the second American (after Sinclair Lewis) to earn the coveted recognition. He introduced psychological realism in his plays; his constant experimentation with stage craft and acting gave American plays a new vitality and originality. Produced all around the world, his plays continue to attract new generations of readers. Eugene O'Neill is the great figure of American theater. His numerous plays combine enormous technical originality with freshness of vision and emotional depth. O'Neill's earliest dramas concern the working class and poor; later works explore subjective realms, such as obsessions and sex, and underscore his reading in Freud and his anguished attempt to come to terms with his dead mother, father, and brother. His play Desire Under the Elms (1924) recreates the passions hidden within one family; The Great God Brown (1926) uncovers the unconsciousness of a wealthy businessman; and Strange Interlude (1928), a winner of the Pulitzer Prize, traces the tangled loves of one woman. These powerful plays reveal different personalities reverting to primitive emotions or confusion under intense stress.

Eugene O'Neill (1888-1953)

O'Neill continued to explore the Freudian pressures of love and dominance within families in a trilogy of plays collectively entitled Mourning Becomes Electra (1931), based on the classical Oedipus trilogy by Sophocles. His later plays include the acknowledged masterpieces The Iceman Cometh (1946), a stark work on the theme of death, and Long Day's Journey Into Night (1956) - - a powerful, extended autobiography in dramatic form focusing on his own family and their physical and psychological deterioration, as witnessed in the course of one night. This work was part of a cycle of plays O'Neill was working on at the time of his death. O'Neill redefined the theater by abandoning traditional divisions into acts and scenes (Strange Interlude has nine acts, and Mourning Becomes Electra takes nine hours to perform); using masks such as those found in Asian and ancient Greek theater; introducing Shakespearean monologues and Greek choruses; and producing special effects through lighting and sound. He is generally acknowledged to have been America's foremost dramatist. In 1936 he received the Nobel Prize for Literature -- the first American playwright to be so honored.

Beyond the Horizon

Ruth has sufferedand for your own sake and hersremember, Andyonly through sacrifice the secret beyond there The sun! Remember! CHARACTERS JAMES MAYO, a farmer KATE MAYO, his wife CAPTAIN DICK SCOTT, of the bark "Sunda," her brother ANDREW MAYO and ROBERT MAYO, sons of James Mayo RUTH ATKINS, MRS. ATKINS, her widowed mother MARY, BEN, a farm hand DOCTOR FAWCETT. Eugene ONeill

Beyond the Horizon

BEYOND THE HORIZON was first produced by John D. Williams at a special matinee performance at the Morosco Theater, New York City, February 2, 1920. THE two sons of the Mayo family, although totally unlike, are bound together by a strong brotherly affection. To Robert, the frail youth fond of books and dreaming, "the far places of the world beckon alluringly." Andrew finds the flowering of all his hopes in the homely tasks of the farm. Both young men love Ruth Atkins, the pretty daughter of a neighboring widow. At the opening of the play Robert is on the eve of departure for a world voyage on his uncle's ship. Only one regret mars his anticipation . . . that he might not have had Ruth's affection. Then unexpectedly he learns that he is the girl's choice, and promptly, albeit somewhat regretfully, gives up his plans for sailing. Andrew enters the room as Robert is telling his parents and uncle of his changed intentions. The older brother promptly announces the resolve to sail in Robert's place. The subsequent death of his father throws on Robert a responsibility for which he is totally unfitted, and the family gradually sinks into deep poverty. In a fit of anger and thwarted ambition, Ruth confesses one day to Robert that four months after her marriage she knew her mistake; that Andrew was the one she really loves.

Beyond the Horizon

Shortly thereafter the prosperous Andrew returns on a visit and, lest the shadow of Ruth should lie between them, tells his brother that he has entirely recovered from any affection he had earlier imagined for Ruth. When he repeats this conversation to Ruth, he cannot understand her hysterical reaction: "You told him that? You actually told him that? With the death of their sickly child, Mary, Robert loses his last interest in life. His own death from the tuberculosis that has so long threatened is very near. Ruth pockets her pride and wires Andrew, but it is too late. Andrew arrives just before Robert's death, and Ruth confesses that long ago she had told Robert that she loved Andrew. Andrew, with his affection for his dying brother uppermost in his consciousness, is horrified. He exacts from the girl the promise that she will tell Robert before he dies that she really loved him all the time. When she enters the bedroom she finds that Robert has already passed "beyond the horizon" to the fulfillment of his longings. All Andrew can say as he shakes Ruth roughly is: "He's gone and you never told him! You never told him!"

THE HAIRY APE

The drama in eight scenes by Eugene ONeill, produced in 1922 and published the following year. It is considered one of the prime achievements of Expressionism on stage. Yank Smith, a brutish stoker on a transatlantic liner, bullies and despises everyone around him, considering himself superior. He is devastated when a millionaire's daughter is repulsed by his simian ways, and he vows to get even with her. Ashore in New York City, Yank schemes to destroy the factory owned by the woman's father, but his plans fail. Yank wanders into a zoo. There, feeling alienated from humanity, he releases an ape, and the ape kills him. CHARACTERS Robert Smith, Yank Paddy Long Mildred Douglas Her Aunt Second Engineer A Guard A Secretary of an Organization Stokers, Ladies, Gentlemen, etc...

Tennessee Williams (1911-83)

Playwright, poet, and fiction writer, Tennessee Williams left a powerful mark on American theatre. At their best, his twentyfive full-length plays combined lyrical intensity, haunting loneliness, and hypnotic violence. He is widely considered the greatest Southern playwright and one of the greatest playwrights in the history of American drama. Born Thomas Lanier Williams on March 26, 1911, he suffered through a difficult and troubling childhood. His father, Cornelius Williams, was a shoe salesman and an emotionally absent parent. He became increasingly abusive as the Williams children grew older. His mother, Edwina, was the daughter of Southern Episcopal minister and had lived the adolescence and young womanhood of a spoiled Southern belle. Williams was sickly as a child, and his mother was a loving but smothering woman. In 1918 the family moved from Mississippi to St. Louis, and the change from a small provincial town to a big city was very difficult for Williams mother. Williams had an older sister named Rose and a younger brother named Walter. Rose was emotionally and mentally unstable, and her illnesses had a great influence on Thomass life and work.

Tennessee Williams (1911-83)

In 1929, Williams enrolled in the University of Missouri. After two years he dropped out of school, compelled to do so by his father, and took a job in the warehouse of the same shoe company for which his father worked. He was an employee there for ten months, despising the job but working at the warehouse throughout the day and writing late into the night. The strain was too much, and Williams had a nervous breakdown. He recovered at the home of his grandparents, and during these years he continued to write. Amateur productions of his early plays were put on in Memphis and St. Louis. During this time, Roses mental health continued to deteriorate. During a fight between Cornelius and Edwina, Cornelius made a move towards Rose that he claimed was meant to calm her. Rose thought his overtures were sexual and suffered a terrible breakdown. Her parents had her lobotomized shortly afterward.

Williams went back to school and graduated from the University of Iowa in 1938. He then moved to New Orleans, where he changed his name to Tennessee. Having struggled with his sexuality all through his youth, he now fully entered gay life, with a new name, a new home, and promising talent. That same year, he won a prize for American Blues, a collection of one-act plays. In 1940, Battle of Angels (later rewritten as Orpheus Descending), his first full-length and professionally produced play, failed miserably. Tennessee Williams continued to struggle.

Tennessee Williams (1911-83)

1944-1945 brought a great turning point in his life and career: The Glass Menagerie was produced in Chicago to great success, and shortly afterward was a smash hit on Broadway. While success freed Williams financially, it also made it difficult for him to write. He went to Mexico to work on a play originally titled The Poker Night. This play eventually became one of his masterpieces, A Streetcar Named Desire. It won Williams a Pulitzer Prize in 1947, which enabled him to travel and buy a home in Key West, a new base to which Williams could escape for both relaxation and writing. Around this time, Williams met Frank Merlo. The two fell in love, and the young man became Williams romantic partner until Merlos untimely death in 1961. He was a steadying influence on Williams, who suffered from depression and lived in fear that he, like his sister Rose, would go insane. These years were some of Williams most productive. His plays were a great success in the United States and abroad, and he was able to write works that were wellreceived by critics and popular with audiences: The Rose Tattoo (1950), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), Night of the Iguana (1961), among many others. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof won Williams his second Pulitzer Prize. He gave American theatergoers unforgettable characters, an incredible vision of life in the South, and a series of powerful portraits of the human condition.

Tennessee Williams (1911-83)

He was deeply interested in something he called "poetic realism," the use of everyday objects, which, seen repeatedly and in the right contexts, become imbued with symbolic meaning. His plays, for their time, also seemed preoccupied with the extremes of human brutality and sexual behavior: madness, rape, incest, nymphomania, as well as violent and fantastic deaths. Williams himself often commented on the violence in his own work, which to him seemed part of the human condition; he was conscious, also, of the violence in his plays being expressed in a particularly American setting. As with the work of Edward Albee, critics who attacked the "excesses" of Williams work often were making thinly veiled attacked on his sexuality. Homosexuality was not discussed openly at that time, but in Williams plays the themes of desire and isolation show, among other things, the influence of having grown up gay in a homophobic world. The sixties brought hard times for Tennessee Williams. He had become dependent on drugs, and the problem only grew worse after the death of Frank Merlo in 1961. Merlos death from lung cancer sent Williams into a deep depression that lasted ten years. Williams was also insecure about his work, which was sometimes of inconsistent quality, and he was violently jealous of younger playwrights.

About The Glass Menagerie

The Glass Menagerie was written in 1944, based on reworked material from one of Williams' short stories, "Portrait of a Girl in Glass," and his screenplay, The Gentleman Caller. In the weeks leading up to opening night (December 26, 1944 in Chicago), Williams had deep doubts about the productionthe theater did not expect the play to last more than a few nights, and the producers prepared a closing notice in response to the weak initial ticket sales. But two critics loved the show, and returned almost nightly to monitor the production. Meanwhile, they gave the play enthusiastic reviews and continued to praise it daily in their respective papers. By mid-January, tickets to the show were some of the hottest items in Chicago, nearly impossible to obtain. Later in 1945, the play opened in New York with similar success. On opening night in New York, the cast received an unbelievable twenty-five curtain calls.
Tennessee Williams did not express strong admiration for any early American playwrights; his greatest dramatic influence was the brilliant Russian playwright Anton Chekhov. Chekhov, with his elegant juxtaposition of the humorous and the tragic, his lonely characters, and his dark sensibilities, was a powerful inspiration for Tennessee Williams' work although Williams' plays are undeniably American in setting and character.

Like Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams wanted to challenge some of the conventions of naturalistic theatre. Summer and Smoke (1948), Camino Real (1953), and The Glass Menagerie (1944), among others, provided some of the early testing ground for Williams' innovations. The Glass Menagerie uses music, screen projections, and lighting effects to create the haunting and dream-like atmosphere appropriate for a "memory play." Like Eugene O'Neill's Emperor Jones and Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, Williams' play explores ways of using the stage to depict the interior life and memories of a character. Tom, as narrator, moves in and out of the action of the play. There are not realistic rules for the convention: we also see events that Tom did not directly witness. The screen projections seem heavy-handed, but at the time their use would have seemed to be a cutting-edge innovation. The projections use film-like effects and the power of photography (art forms that are much younger than drama) in a theatrical setting. In The Glass Menagerie, Williams' skillful use of the narrator and his creation of a dream-like, illusory atmosphere help to create a powerful representation of family, memory, and loss.

A Streetcar Named Desire

A Streetcar Named Desire was written by Tennessee Williams in his mid-thirties and first staged in New York on December 3 1947. Just as his first play, The Glass Menagerie, produced only two years earlier, Streetcar was a huge success and stabilized Williams?position among the most respected and influencing playwrights in modern theater. It was also his first production to be turned into a movie and because of the highly emotional plot and the superb actors it became a blockbuster on the "big screen".Williams takes the audience to New Orleans where the relationship of Blanche DuBois, her sister Stella and brother-in-law Stanley is being illuminated. The following look on the similarities and differences between the play and the film version will give an indepth view on the essential points, although it is by no means an overall interpretation.

About A Streetcar Named Desire

The play takes place right after World War II, in New Orleans.

The Kowalski apartment is in a poor but charming neighborhood in the French Quarter. Stella, twenty-five years old and pregnant, lives with her blue collar husband Stanley Kowalski. It is summertime, and the heat is oppressive. Blanche Dubois, Stella's older sister, arrives unexpectedly, carrying all that she owns. Blanch and Stella have a warm reunion, but Blanch has some bad news: Belle Reve, the family mansion, has been lost. Blanche stayed behind to care for their dying family while Stella left to make a new life for herself, and Blanche is resentful. Blanche meets Stanley for the first time, and immediately she feels uncomfortable. We learn that Blanche was once married, when she was very young, but the boy died.
The situation grows more and more tense. Stanley initially distrusts Blanche, thinking that she's swindled them; the idea is ludicrous, and eventually Stanley realizes that Blanche is hardly the swindling type. But the animosity between the two never stops. Blanche takes long baths, criticizes the squalor of the apartment, and irritates Stanley.

Stanley's roughness bothers Blanche; he makes no effort to be gentle with her. One night, the night when Stanley hosts a poker game, he gets too drunk and beats Stella. The women go up to their upstairs neighbors' apartment, but soon Stella returns to Stanley, the two coupling with an animal-like need. Blanche is shocked by these events. That night, she also meets Mitch, and there is an immediate mutual attraction between the two. The next day, Stanley overhears Blanche saying terrible things about him. From that time on, he devotes himself fully to her destruction. Blanche has a shady past in Laurel. In her loneliness, during the last days of Belle Reve and after the mansion was lost, she turned to strangers for comfort. Her numerous amorous encounters destroyed her reputation in Laurel, leading to her loss of her job as a high school English teacher and her near-expulsion from town. Tensions build in the apartment throughout the summer. Blanche and Stanley look on each other as mortal enemies, and Blanche turns increasingly to alcohol for comfort. Stanley bides his time. Stanley looks into Blanche's past, and he passes the information on to Mitch.

Although previously it seemed that Blanche might marry Mitch, after he learns the truth he loses all interest. In autumn, on Blanche's birthday, Mitch stands her up. Stanley presents Blanche with her gift: bus tickets back to Laurel. Blanche is overcome by sickness; she cannot return to Laurel, and Stanley knows it. As Blanche is ill in the bathroom, Stella fights with Stanley over the cruelty of his act. Mid-fight, she tells him to take her to the hospital: the baby is coming. That night, Blanche packs and drinks. Mitch arrives. He confronts her with the stories of her past, and she tells him, in lurid detail, the truth about her escapades in Laurel. He approaches her, making advances, wanting what she has denied him all summer. She asks him to marry her, and when he doesn't, she kicks him out of the apartment. Hours later, Stanley comes home. Stella is still in labor, and will be until morning, so Stanley's getting some sleep. Stanley mercilessly destroys Blanche's illusions, one by one, and then rapes her. Weeks later, another poker game is being held at the Kowalski apartment. Blanche has suffered a mental breakdown. She has told Stella what Stanley did, but Stella has convinced herself that it can't be true. A doctor and nurse come and take Blanche away to the asylum. Stella weeps, and Stanley comforts her. The other men continue their poker game as if nothing has happened.

Arthur Miller (1915-)

Arthur Miller is one of the leading American playwrights of the twentieth century and a celebrity of nearly equal notoriety. He was born in October of 1915 in New York City, the son of a ladieswear manufacturer who was ruined during the economic collapse of the 1930s. As a young man during the Great Depression, Miller was shaped by the poverty that surrounded him, which demonstrated to him the insecurity of modern existence.
Miller's first public success was Focus (1945), a novel about anti-Semitism, but it was with All My Sons two years later that Miller emerged as an important playwright. All My Sons is a drama about a manufacturer of faulty war materials that strongly shows the influence of Henrik Ibsen. It was with Death of a Salesman in 1949 that Miller secured his reputation as one of the nation's foremost playwrights. Death of a Salesman mixes the tradition of social realism that informs most of Miller's work with a more experimental structure that includes fluid leaps in time as the protagonist, Willy Loman, drifts into memories of his sons as teenagers. Loman stands as an American archetype, a victim of his own delusions of grandeur and obsession with success that haunts him in his failure. Miller won a Tony Award for Death of a Salesman as well as a Pulitzer Prize. The play has been frequently revived in film, television and stage versions that have included such diverse actors as Dustin Hoffman, George C. Scott and, most recently, Brian Dennehy as Willy Loman.

Arthur Miller (1915-)

Miller followed Death of a Salesman with his most politically significant work, The Crucible (1953), a tale of the Salem witch trials that contains obvious analogies to the McCarthy anti-Communist hearings of Miller's contemporary society. Three years later, in 1956, Miller found himself part of these hearings when he was called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Miller refused to name people he allegedly saw at a Communist writers' meeting a decade before and was convicted of contempt. However, he appealed this verdict and later won. That same year Miller married actress Marilyn Monroe. The two divorced in 1961, the year of her death. That year Monroe appeared in her last film, The Misfits, which is based on an original screenplay by Miller. After divorcing Monroe, Miller wed Ingeborg Morath, to whom he is still married. The two have a son and a daughter.

Miller also wrote the plays A Memory of Two Mondays and the short A View from the Bridge, which were both staged in 1955. His other works include After the Fall (1964), a thinly veiled account of his marriage to Monroe, as well as The Price (1967), The Archbishop's Ceiling (1977) and The American Clock (1980). His most recent works include the plays The Ride Down Mt. Morgan (1991), The Last Yankee (1993) and Broken Glass (1993), which won the Olivier Award for Best Play.

About the Play

Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman stems from both Arthur Miller's personal experiences and the theatrical traditions in which the playwright was schooled. The play recalls the traditions of Yiddish theater that focus on family as the crucial element, reducing most aspects of the play to a family level. This is particularly evident in the family structure within the play, concerning two sons estranged from their father. This has parallels to another one of Miller's major works, All My Sons, which premiered two years before Death of a Salesman. Although the play premiered in 1949, Miller began writing Death of a Salesman at the age of seventeen when he was working for his father's company. In its short story form, it concerned an aging salesman who cannot sell anything, is berated by company bosses and must borrow subway change from the young narrator. The end of the manuscript contains a postscript that the salesman on which the story is based had thrown himself under a subway train. Arthur Miller reworked the play in 1947 upon a meeting with his uncle, Manny Newman, a salesman who was a competitor at all times, even with his sons, Buddy and Abby. Miller described the Newman household as one in which one could not lose hope, and based the Loman household and structure on his uncle and cousins.

In the play, Miller was intent to create a play with continuous action that could nevertheless span different time periods. The major innovation of the play was the fluid continuity between segments of the play in which flashbacks' did not occur as separate from the normal action but rather as integral to the action of the play. The play thus moves from the present day to fifteen years before, and from Brooklyn to Boston without any interruptions in the action. Death of a Salesman premiered on Broadway in 1949, starring Lee J. Cobb as Willy Loman and directed by Elia Kazan (who would later inform on Arthur Miller in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee). The play was a resounding success, winning the Pulitzer Prize, as well as the Tony Award for Best Play. The New Yorker called the play a mixture of "compassion, imagination, and hard technical competence not often found in our theater." Since then, the play has been revived numerous times on Broadway and reinterpreted in stage and television versions. As an archetypal character representing the failed American dream, Willy Loman has been interpreted by diverse actors such as Fredric March (the 1951 film version), Dustin Hoffman (the 1984 Broadway revival and television movie), and on Broadway George C. Scott and, in a Tony Awardwinning revival, Brian Dennehy.