Postwar drama

Tennessee Williams (1911-1983), a native of Mississippi, was one of the most complex individuals on the American literary scene of the mid-20^th century. Elements of the Southern literary tradition can clearly be seen in his work. The first of these elements is his complicated feelings about time and the past. The past is usually looked upon with sadness, guilt or fear. Like many Southern writers, he describes his society as a kind of “hell” of brutality and race hatred. His work focused on disturbed emotions and unresolved sexuality within families – most of them southern. He was known for incantatory repetitions, a poetic southern diction, weird Gothic settings, and Freudian exploration of sexual desire. Beginning with “The Glass Menagerie” (1945), T. Williams expressed his southern heritage in poetic yet sensational plays, usually about a sensitive woman trapped in an insensitive environment. Other famous works include “A Streetcar Named Desire”, “Orpheus Descending”, “Suddenly Last Summer”, “Summer and Smoke”, “Sweet Bird of Youth”, “Tattoo Rose”.

The world of Tennessee Williams is ruled by irrational forces. He seems to see life as a game which cannot be won. The world of Arthur Miller (1915-2005) is quite rational. He believes that things happen for a reason. Unlike Williams, he believes that “life has meaning”. The theme of his plays “The Crucible” (1953) and “View from the Bridge” (1955), is that social evil is caused by individuals who do not take responsibility for the world they live in. He portrays the common man pressured by society; his greatest play, “Death of a Salesman” (1947), turns a second-rate traveling salesman, Willy Loman, who judges his own value as a human being by his own financial success, into a quasi-tragic hero. All Miller’s plays show a deep faith. They show that moral truth can be found in the human world.

William Motter Inge (1913-1973) was an American playwright and novelist, whose works typically feature solitary protagonists encumbered with strained sexual relations. Inge’s psychological dramas, such as “Picnic” (1952), explored the secret sorrows in the lives of an ordinary small town.

Dark drama

In the theater, dramatists competed against movies and television by featuring the kind of strong language, illogical events and satirical subject matter that didn’t often appear in commercial film and TV. The big discovery of 1958 (after some period of crisis in the American theater) was “The Zoo Story” by Edward Albee (b. 1928). Many of Albee’s plays seem to be influenced by the European “Theatre of the Absurd” movement of the fifties and sixties. The basic philosophy of this movement was that traditional realism only shows life as it “seems to be”; and that in fact, life is meaningless (absurd). Art should reflect the meaninglessness (absurdity) of life. Albee used absurdist techniques in his plays such as “The Sandbox” (1960) and “The American Dream” (1961). In his dark comedy “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” (1962), the author made a savagely realistic study of marriage using a barrage of witty dialogue to keep audiences disoriented.

Many American playwrights, though they were not necessarily absurdist writers, used nonrealistic theatrical techniques. Arthur L. Kopit, in plays such as “Indians”, wrote funny, energetic satires. Sam Shepard’s strong dramas – “Buried Child” and “True West” – used outrageous jokes and boisterous physical action on stage to make audiences aware that they were watching live actors, not filmed figures. David Rabe (“Hurlyburly”), David Mamet (“Glengarry Glen Ross’) and Lanford Wilson (“The Fifth of July”) began with realistic groups of characters in typical situations, which then exploded with confrontations, physical violence and rich, rapidly flowing dialogue.