Introduction

Abstract

Although students of contemporary American theatre are well served by Ruby Cohn’s New American Dramatists: 1960–1980, Helene Keyssar’s Feminist Theatre and Theodore Shank’s classic American Alternative Theatre, I and others feel it is already time for another examination of the directions drama and alternative forms of theatre have been taking in recent years. There is enough justification for a book in the increasing importance of Richard Nelson, Emily Mann, Christopher Durang, August Wilson, Stephen Sondheim, David Henry Hwang, Laurie Anderson, Wendy Wasserstein, Tina Howe, the directing of Peter Sellars, the success of women playwrights on Broadway, new forms of feminist theatre and discussions of post-modernism, post-structuralism and multiculturalism, along with the emergence of the new performance artists, site-specific works, dance drama and the new vaudeville. This collection of essays looks at American theatre after the cultural revolution of the 1960s, after the achievements of Sam Shepard, early Robert Wilson and early Mamet. What are the significant developments in American drama since the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s?