A Search for a Postmodern Theater

Thirty-three leading American and British playwrights, from Robert Anderson to Paul Zindel, discuss their views on their own work and contemporary drama, and offer projections about theater for the 21st century. Proceeding from the premise that recent drama in various ways is a reaction to the modernism of Theater of the Absurd, the interviewer, John DiGaetani, terms the diverse responses postmodernism. This concept, while not universally accepted by the playwrights interviewed, becomes a point of departure for lively dialogue, providing insights into the particular playwrights and on contemporary theater in general.

Included among the interviewees are farcists, such as Alan Ayckbourn, Tina Howe, and Michael Frayn; playwrights of ethnic and black theater, such as Amlin Gray, Ed Bullins, and August Wilson; embodiments of Chekhovian theater, such as Simon Gray and A. R. Gurney; Maximalists like David Henry Hwang; feminists like Marsha Norman and Timberlake Wertenbaker; exponents of gay theater like Mart Crowley and William Hoffman; social critics like David Storey and Israel Horovitz; and traditionalists like Horton Foote, Romulus Linney, and Robert Anderson. Despite these broadly applied labels, clearly the output of these playwrights cannot be neatly pigeonholed even individually--let alone collectively--to describe any prevailing mode. Therefore, interviewer DiGaetani has chosen to stay with the appellation postmodernism, a widely accepted critical term in the arts used to signify a reaction to what is now an old-fashioned modernism.

Introduction
Robert Anderson
Alan Ayckbourn
Eric Bentley
Ed Bullins
Mart Crowley
Jules Feiffer
Horton Foote
Michael Frayn
Larry Gelbart
Amlin Gray
Simon Gray
John Guare
A. R. Gurney
Christopher Hampton
William Hoffman
Israel Horovitz
Tina Howe
David Henry Hwang
Albert Innaurato
David Ives
Barrie Keeffe
Romulus Linney
Craig Lucas
Terrence McNally
Adrian Mitchell
Richard Nelson
Marsha Norman
Eric Overmyer
David Storey
Timberlake Wertenbaker
August Wilson
Lanford Wilson
Paul Zindel
Bibliography
Index