A drama genre in american literature in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries

August Wilson, original name Frederick August Kittel, (born April 27, 1945, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.—died October 2, 2005, Seattle, Washington), American playwright, author of a cycle of plays, each set in a different decade of the 20th century, about Black American life. He won Pulitzer Prizes for two of them: Fences and The Piano Lesson.

Wilson grew up in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, a lively poor neighbourhood that became the setting for most of his plays. Together with five siblings, he was raised by his mother, Daisy Wilson, after his father, Frederick August Kittel, left her and their children. Daisy Wilson later remarried, and in 1958 the family moved to a suburb of Pittsburgh.

The complexity of Wilson’s experience of race while growing up would be expressed in his plays. His mother was Black, his father white, and his stepfather, David Bedford, Black. The Hill District was mostly Black, and the suburb, Hazelwood, was predominately white. Wilson and his family were the target of racial threats in Hazelwood, and he quit school at age 15 after being accused of having plagiarized a paper. He turned to self-education, reading intensively in a public library and returning to the Hill District to learn from residents there. He changed his last name from Kittel to Wilson, and in the late 1960s he embraced the Black Arts movement. In 1968 he became the cofounder and director of Black Horizons Theatre in Pittsburgh. He also published poetry in such journals as Black World (1971) and Black Lines (1972).

In 1978 Wilson moved to St. Paul, Minnesota, and in the early 1980s he wrote several plays, including Jitney, which was first produced in 1982. Focused on cab drivers in the 1970s, it underwent subsequent revisions as part of his historical cycle; it was published in 2000. His first major play, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, opened on Broadway in 1984 and was a critical and financial success. Set in Chicago in 1927, the play centres on a verbally abusive blues singer, her fellow Black musicians, and their white manager; it was later made into a movie (2020). Fences, first produced in 1985 and published in 1986, is about a conflict between a father and his son in the 1950s; it received a Tony Award for best play, and a film adaptation was released in 2016.

Wilson’s chronicle of the Black American experience continued with Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, first produced in 1986, a play about the lives of residents of a boardinghouse in 1911, and The Piano Lesson, first produced in 1987, which is set in the 1930s and explores a family’s ambivalence about selling an heirloom; it was adapted for television in 1995. The action of Two Trains Running, first produced in 1990, takes place in a coffeehouse in the 1960s. Seven Guitars, first produced in 1995 as the seventh play of the cycle, is set among a group of friends who reunite in 1948 following the death of a local blues guitarist.

Subsequent plays in the series are King Hedley II, first produced in 1999, an account of an ex-con’s efforts to rebuild his life in the 1980s, and Gem of the Ocean, first produced in 2003, which takes place in 1904 and centres on Aunt Ester, a 287-year-old spiritual healer mentioned in previous plays, and a man who seeks her help. Wilson completed the cycle with Radio Golf, first produced in 2005. Set in the 1990s, the play concerns the fate of Aunt Ester’s house, which is slated to be torn down by real-estate developers. Music, particularly jazz and blues, is a recurrent theme in Wilson’s works, and its cadence is echoed in the lyrical, vernacular nature of his dialogue.

Wilson received numerous honours during his career, including seven New York Drama Critics’ Circle Awards for best play. He also held Guggenheim and Rockefeller fellowships. Shortly after his death, the Virginia Theater on Broadway was renamed in his honour. The August Wilson Center for African American Culture opened in Pittsburgh in 2009.

 ‘Modern American Drama’ is a title used to define some of America’s most influential dramatic work throughout the 20th Century. The sweeping economical, political, social and cultural changes that occurred in America began this era of writing and influenced authors such as Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee and Eugene O’Neill, to write some of the most influential plays that are still widely known today. One could suggest that it is not just because they are written by and about Americans, or that they comment on its social changes but it is also the idea that all these dramas have distinct ‘features’ such as language, themes, style, characters and structure of similarity to each other, that allow them to be placed under the title ‘Modern American Drama’. It is these ‘features’ that heighten each author’s critical comments on American Society at the time of writing. ‘Modern American Drama’ could be seen as literary work that comments on the authors view of the ever changing country and ‘American Dream’ using particular trends of ‘features’.

            Out of many the two most influential writers of the cannon are widely known as Eugene O’Neill, Edward Albee, Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller. Just through focusing in-depth on the texts of these writers one may begin to establish what Modern American Drama is, the foundations it started on and the ways in which it flowered. Their works such as Miller’s ‘A View from the bridge’ and ‘death of a salesman,’ Williams’ ‘Streetcar…’ and ‘Glass menagerie’, and O’Neill’s “Long Days Journey into Night’ and Albee’s ‘Zoo Story’, display many of the common features that can be classed as ‘trends’ of American Drama.  Their plays also present through these ‘features’ many of the social and cultural changes of America, which one could suggest may have been the aim of this period, as many critics claim “the American theatre has always been a sensitive gauge of social pressures and public issues.”1

            American drama can foremost be known for its ‘experimentalism’ in dramatic forms. American Drama would not be known as it is now for its different styles, characters and sets, without this shifting, setting it apart from the last decades of the 19th century American theatre; which had been largely given over to melodramas with naturalistic acting styles. However early Modern American Playwrights drew their influences from European constructs, such as those of Chekov; intent on representing life within drama in a more realistic style. Known as Modern Realism, it represented everyday reality in a style that would seem familiar to the audiences that came to see these new plays. This style was carried throughout the Cannon, and particularly became more popular during increasing social and cultural changes such as the escalation of immigration and poverty, women’s rights, the Depression, Crisis in religion, the ‘machinal’ development of America and the continual strive towards the ‘American Dream’. Realism had an influence on the American stage in this period, but mainly in terms of elaborately realistic sets.

            This can be seen within the works of Arthur Miller, particularly in ‘A View from a Bridge’. The play’s set shows all the realistic styles of a realist drama, “A workers flat, clean, sparse, homely”2 with naturalistic props like a rocking chair, tables, and windows. A more naturalistic set allows for less distraction from the action and the audience is able to follow the story and become involved rather than distanced, like the other form of experimentalism of the period, ‘expressionist drama’. You are able to experience the story as it is, a tragedy, rather than being told to stop and analyse as expressionist drama tends to do. The dramatic language of realism was meant to be close to everyday speech. In ‘A View from the Bridge’ Miller uses the everyday language of the Italian dock workers, as seen in Eddie who uses a naturalistic Brooklyn slang, "quicker" for "more quickly", "stole" for "stolen" and so on. His speech is simple but colourful, as he tells Catherine she is "walkin' wavy". This allows the audience again to familiarize themselves to a society like their own. For the social issues that Miller and other playwrights commented on within the period, such as family relationships, the American dream, a realist approach is best suited.

            As realism took a hold on American Drama expressionism became another major part of the ‘experimentalism’ happening during this movement. “Expressionism on the American stage represents a critical phase in the development of American dramatic modernism.”3 Expressionism was a style in which many playwrights such as Susan Treadwell, and Edward Albee used, to portray the changing society of which they wrote, and of the oppressions and troubles this new emerging society created, allowing the audience to look at it critically; even Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller used aspects of the form, and, “In doing so, they not only innovated a new dramatic form, but re- defined playwriting from a theatrical craft to a literary art form, heralding the birth of American dramatic modernism.”4

            Miller's stage directions for his earlier play ‘Death of a Salesman’ describe an expressionist set - a 'shell-like' and transparent family home with no walls. When the action is set in the present, the characters behave as though they are in rooms with walls; when the action is set in the past, they walk through the empty space into another space on the stage, giving the impression that the events on stage are like a "dream." Whereas ‘A View From A Bridge’ had been essentially realist in its structure and language, ‘Salesman’ avoids the naturalism that had gripped the American stage up to that point instead adopting the expressionist use of stage set as a symbol for the dream-like nature of Willy's life and everyday American life in general.

 

            Eugene O’Neills, ‘The Emperor Jones’ is another expressionist play. ‘The Emperor Jones’ has very expressionist settings; it begins and ends with realistic scenes in the present, but its six principal scenes are played out in the emperor’s wild, distorted mind, as his trip takes him back into the past. Here the technical devices of expressionism—lighting, setting, sound—are used to project the Emperor's visions, to reveal his state of mind. As in one scene O’Neill achieves the same effect as in ‘Long Days journey into night’. He used a well known expressionist technique, of lighting and weather showing the emotions or minds of the characters. He used the weather to show Mary’s mind, as the fog becomes thicker, her drug using became more violent and as a consequence so does her haziness. This is used within the ‘Emperor Jones’ too through the use of lighting, going from the blazing sunlight of the first scene, where the hero's mind is clear, to the moonlight "merged into a veil of bluish mist" in the seventh scene, where fear undermines his sanity. Techniques such as this were used throughout the play.

            Expressionist technique was also approached in Williams’s ‘The Glass Menagerie’ because of his increased frustration towards “the exhausted theatre of realistic conventions.”5 (Tennessee Williams) He was determined to find a new way of expressing the content of his plays, and expressionism did it well. His use of symbols in the play; such as ‘Blue roses,’ are examples of his use of expressionism and they allow for deeper characterization. "Blue Roses," is a symbol of Laura’s odd beauty and her isolation, as blue roses exist nowhere in the real world. The Fire Escape is also another expressionist symbol representing an escape from the ‘fires of frustration and dysfunction’ that rage in the Wingfield household. Laura slips on the fire escape in Scene Four, highlighting her helplessness to escape from her situation. Tom, on the other hand, frequently steps out onto the landing to smoke, anticipating his eventual getaway.

            However it seems Williams’s work can also be compared to the theory and practice of Brechtian theatre; also known as “Epic Theatre”. This is another modern aspect of American Drama. One of Brecht’s main theories was that the theatre's main concern was to educate, that "It is the noblest function that we have found for 'theatre.'”6(Bertolt Brecht) From this he created ‘Epic Theatre’ the theory that a play should not allow its audience to emotionally identify with the action, but should allow them to self-reflect and make their own critique of the actions the play puts forth. He ultimately wanted his audiences to use this critical perspective to identify social ills at work in the world and be moved to go forth from the theatre and effect change. Techniques to achieve this included the direct address by actors to the audience, which can be seen in Tom at the beginning who narrates, this can also be seen of Alfieri in ‘A view from the bridge’.     Exaggerated, unnatural stage lighting, and the use of song, and explanatory placards6 also were used. In ‘The Glass menagerie’ placards were used in the form of ‘Legend on screen’, used to symbolise each scene’s action, and certain aspects of characters. Williams also uses gauze screens to create the haziness of a memory, and to distance the audience from the action and the use of music such as ‘The glass menagerie’ remind the audience that this is a play, it is not reality, it is only representing reality through the illusion of a play.  

            This theory, in terms of the outcome – that the audience should want to make changes after watching the drama - could be used to explain the aims of Modern American Drama. The social ills that are represented in all of the plays published in this cannon, are ills of which most playwrights wanted to change. For example the Illusion of the American Dream, which only ever creates misery, and the discrimination of women, mainly presented in ‘Machinal’ and ‘Trifles’, which could be seen to have contributed to the social movement of women’s rights.Through the use of Brechtian Techniques one could suggest that Williams wanted to promote change, particularily in his main theme of Illusion versus reality – the american dream.  

 

            This theme is present within many if not all (in small amounts) works in the Cannon of American Drama. ‘Reality versus Illusion’, it could be suggested, is an almost direct outcome from each characters constant struggle to achieve the ‘American dream’. This theme or as one may argue ‘themes’ can be seen in both of Williams’s and Miller’s Dramas, and also Eugene O’Neill’s ‘Long days journey into night’ and Edward Albee’s ‘Who’s afraid of Virginia Wolf’ among many others.

            On the basis of J. T. Adams in the ‘Epic of America’, (1931) the American Dream is expressed as “the dream of a land in which life should be better, richer, and fuller for every man with opportunities for each according to his abilities and achievement.”7 Through America’s financial and social difficulties during the 20th century, this concept was the dream or ‘Illusion’ for most. Within American Drama this dream is used almost as a warning to its audience suggesting that striving for it may get you nothing but heartache and depression. As David Mamet once stated, the American Dream “was basically about raping and pillage….we are finally reaching a point where there is nothing left to exploit…the dream has nowhere to go so it has to turn on itself.”8 This destruction of the American Dream is seen within much of the plays written in the cannon.

            In Miller’s ‘Death of a salesman’ the character of Willy is at the bottom of the totem pole in a capitalistic world, he has and makes nothing. Willy built his life around dreams. However, to live by his ideals it means building or telling many lies, and these illusions replace reality in Willy's mind, “The man who makes an appearance in the business world, the man who creates personal interest, is the man who gets ahead. Be liked and you will never want.”9 Here the illusion is represented through the life of Willy – trying to live the American dream but he doesn’t succeed so he begins to believe his own lies and through him so does his son Happy, “I'm gonna show you and everybody else that Willy Loman did not die in vain. He had a good dream.” 9 Therefore illusion wins over reality for Willy.

            However through the character Biff, Willy’s son, Miller represents reality. It is Biff who finally breaks this reality to himself, his family and the audience. After discovering his father’s affair, Biff “realized what a ridiculous lie my whole life has been,” 9 and begins to perceive his father as a fake. He awakens the audience and the characters to the destruction of believing in illusions, through his eyes. Of how the American dream, how illusion, cannot be achieved without sorrow. In a way the death of Willy Loman, could symbol the death of this dream, this illusion. Finally reality takes control, with the family and the audience seeing how Willy was not as ‘liked’ as he made out to be.

            In Williams’s ‘The Glass Menagerie’ the theme of illusion versus reality is presented through symbols and characters. Illusion is referred to very early on in the play with Tom’s speech, "But I am the opposite of a stage musician.  He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth.  I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion" His reference to illusion is not used as to describe any of the plays specific events, but rather to subtly give weight to the plays ideas.  Although the play itself is an illusion of reality, Tom says that there is truth behind the illusion.  Through Tom, Williams is allowing the audience to know that what is about to happen and almost why – to show the effects of this illusion. We use this information Tom gives, as a sort of flashlight as we enter the play.  We shine it around; looking for the truth Tom speaks of.

            Of the three Wingfields, reality has the weakest grasp on Laura. She "lives in a world of her own - a world of little glass ornaments,"  her glass menagerie, represent the imaginative world to which she devotes herself; A world that is colourful and enticing but based on fragile illusions. As the character Jim points out, unicorns are “extinct in the modern world”  and are “sort of lonesome” as a result of being different. Laura too is unusual and lonely and the fate of the unicorn could symbolise Laura’s fate in Scene Seven. When Jim dances with and then kisses Laura, the unicorn’s horn breaks off, and it becomes “Just like all the other horses” . Jim’s advances make her seem more ‘normal’ but this is thrust violently onto Laura and within herself, she shatters, “Glass breaks so easily” . When Laura gives Jim the unicorn as a “Souvenir” it shows that without its horn, the unicorn is more appropriate for him than for her, and the broken figurine represents all that he has taken from her and destroyed in her. Here Williams uses the character of Laura to show the world of illusions that Americans held themselves in, and that at some point these illusions and dreams must stop; the outside world – reality – shatters them.

            Yet Williams doesn’t stop with the family’s illusions, he also generalizes to his audience by showing the outside world is just as susceptible to illusion as the Wingfields. The young people at the Paradise Dance Hall waltz under the short-lived illusion created by a glass ball—another version of Laura’s glass animals. Tom tells Jim that “People go to the movies instead of moving,”  finding fulfilment in illusion rather than real life. Even Jim, who represents the “world of reality,” is banking his future on television and radio both of which are means for the creation of illusions and the persuasion of others that these illusions are true. Williams uses The Glass Menagerie to identify to the audience the conquest of reality by illusion was a huge and growing aspect of the human condition in its time.

            Edward Albee continues this ‘trend’ of illusion versus reality within “Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf” Both couples in this play create illusions for their husbands and wives. Over the course of the play, both masks of reality and illusion are torn off, exposing Martha, George, Nick, and Honey to themselves and to each other.  Through George in particular, Albee questions the reason for this desire for success, and demonstrates how the desire can destroy one's self-esteem and individuality.

            Most characters within Modern American Drama that have been given the ambition of the dream by their author have ended in some sort of tragedy or downfall; suggesting that the American dream is an ‘illusion’. In his 1998 book ‘Three uses of the Knife’ Mamet supports this by stating, “Our (America’s) world position is not tenuous, but our mental balance is…we are determined to squander all…to defend ourselves against feelings of our own worthlessness, our own powerlessness.” Each character (this can also be applied to the American society of the time) denies reality and instead accepts the illusion of success as it is better than accepting the harsh reality in which they live - a representation of society’s vain attempts to find hope in hopelessness. By denying this Illusion and instead resulting in the characters harsh acceptance of reality each author could be suggesting the false hope that America gives to its people; how reality is better lived than dreamt of. The Playwright’s production is the acceptance of reality, through the story of illusion, “It is in the drama that the critique of the “Dream” has its roots.”

            Another aspect of American Modern Drama that is seen throughout the Cannon, is each authors inclusion of autobiographical content, that could be linked to illusion versus reality. One such play is Eugene O’Neill’s ‘Long Days Journey into Night,’ which resembles O'Neill's life in many aspects particularly in character roles; indeed, some of the parallels between this play and O'Neill's life are striking. The character of Edmund could be seen as a depiction of O’Neill himself who, like the character, suffered from consumption. Like Tyrone, O'Neill's father was an Irish Catholic, an alcoholic, and a Broadway actor. Like Mary, O'Neill's mother was a morphine addict, and she became so around the time O'Neill was born. O'Neill's older brother did not take life seriously, choosing to live a life of alcohol, and the reckless life of Broadway which in the play is like Jamie. Finally, O'Neill had an older brother named Edmund who died in infancy; in the play, Edmund has an older brother named Eugene who died in infancy.

            This autobiographical content is also noticeable in Tennessee Williams’s works. He incorporates numerous aspects of his life in his plays; ‘The Glass Menagerie’ and ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’. He once said, "My work is emotionally autobiographical. It has no relationship to the actual events of my life, but it reflects the emotional currents of my life.” The characters in the plays are suggestive in representing Williams' family. Laura in ‘The Glass Menagerie’ could be a representation of Rose, Williams' sister; she was the inspiration for the play, "I guess Menagerie grew out of the intense emotions I felt seeing my sister's mind begin to go." Rose developed schizophrenia and was institutionalized and as a parallel Laura retreated to a fantasy world due to being a 'cripple'. Blanche Du Bois also relates to Rose in that after Blanche is raped she begins to go insane. In each circumstance a defenseless, vulnerable woman becomes an outcast of society. This isolation is linked not only to Rose, but to Williams also. Tom, from The Glass Menagerie, parallels Williams's life the most. Tom wishes to run away from his past, thus Williams illustrates his desire to escape from his past; he dreams of his escape from his family and his past and eventually acts on this aspiration.

                It is unclear as to why each author chose to include autobiographical aspects of their lives however one could suggest it was to intensify the hardships of the times in which they were living and writing. By using autobiographical elements in their plays, the audience sympathise, as they realize it is not only them that have to break the illusion of reality, the playwrights also have to experience this. By writing of their troubles in life, each playwright faces up to their own reality, as well as breaking this acknowledgement to their audience.  One could also suggest the play has a unique appeal to the individual audience member by including typical family troubles, such as breakdown of communication, illusions and dreams, and the destruction of reality; nearly every family can see itself reflected in at least some parts of the play.

 Modern American Drama cannot be defined in a matter of a few words. It is not a dictionary term that has a specific definition. It could be described as a period in which America’s writers began to flourish in their work, producing new and ‘modern’ dramatic pieces. However once exploring this period one would see that it is a compilation of experimentalism in such forms as expressionism and realism, themes such as Reality versus Illusion, Language that reflects the society of which they were writing of, and an exploration of social and cultural changes.  One can state also, that the aim of Modern American Drama was to “speak to a world in which the individual had been increasingly cut loose from the traditional "anchors" of religion, socio/political alignments, family relationships, and a defined self-image.” Modern American Drama was a Cannon of extremely emotional and compelling work which paved the way for generations to come. It is a crucial part of literary study into a world that was beginning to change and its collection of drama’s help us to establish this.