Contemporary Drama. Eleven Plays. American - English - European

This collection compiles eleven foundational theatrical works from mid-century American, English, and European playwrights. Edited by Ernest Bradlee Watson, the volume includes George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, and Lillian Hellman’s The Autumn Garden. The scripts investigate human motives through diverse structures, ranging from Christopher Fry’s poetic verse in The Lady's Not for Burning to the psychological realism of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman and Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie. These selections illustrate the shift toward internal monologues, symbolic staging, and the critique of middle-class social morality that defined drama in the decades surrounding World War II.

Theater students and practitioners read this anthology to compare stylistic developments across international borders. The text provides a direct look at how European existentialism, represented by Jean Anouilh and Jean Giraudoux, interacted with the lyrical realism of William Saroyan and Noel Coward. Readers finish the volume with a clear understanding of the linguistic techniques and structural innovations that moved the stage away from classic melodrama. By studying these scripts, the reader gains a technical grasp of how 20th-century playwrights manipulated dialogue and scenery to reflect a changing social landscape.