100 Greatest American Plays

Theatre in America has had a rich history-from the first performance of the Lewis Hallam Troupe in September 1752 to the lively shows of modern Broadway. Over the past few centuries, significant works by American playwrights have been produced, including Abie's Irish Rose, Long Day's Journey into Night, A Streetcar Named Desire, Death of a Salesman, A Raisin in the Sun, Fences, and Angels in America.
In 100 Greatest American Plays, Thomas S. Hischak provides an engaging discussion of the best stage productions to come out of the United States. Each play is discussed in the context of its original presentation as well as its legacy. Arranged alphabetically, the entries for these plays include:
plot detailsproduction historybiography of the playwrightliterary aspects of the dramacritical reaction to the playmajor awardsthe play's influencecast lists of notable stage and film versions
The plays have been selected not for their popularity but for their importance to American theatre and include works by Edward Albee, Harvey Fierstein, Lorraine Hansberry, Lillian Hellman, Tony Kushner, David Mamet, Arthur Miller, Eugene O'Neill, Sam Shepard, Neil Simon, Gore Vidal, Wendy Wasserstein, Thornton Wilder, Tennessee Williams, and August Wilson. This informative volume also includes complete lists of Pulitzer Prize winners for Drama, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for American Plays, and the Tony Award for Best Play. Providing critical information about the most important works produced since the eighteenth century, 100 Greatest American Plays will appeal to anyone interested in the cultural history of theatre.

Thomas S. Hischak is an internationally recognized writer and teacher in the performing arts and the author of thirty-eight published plays that are performed in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, and Australia. He is emeritus professor of theatre at the State University of New York College at Cortland, a Fulbright scholar, and the author of twenty-six nonfiction books about theatre, film, and popular music, including The Rodgers and Hammerstein Encyclopedia (2007), The Oxford Companion to the American Musical (2008), and Musicals in Film: A Guide to the Genre (2016). Hischak is also the author of The Encyclopedia of Film Composers (2015) and Theatre as Human Action: An Introduction to Theatre Arts, Second Edition (2016), both published by Rowman & Littlefield.