Unrivalled in its coverage of recent work and writers, The Methuen Drama Guide to Contemporary American Playwrights surveys and analyses the breadth, vitality and development of theatrical work to emerge from America over the last fifty years. This authoritative guide leads you through the work of 25 major contemporary American playwrights, discussing more than 140 plays in detail. Written by a team of 25 eminent international scholars, each chapter provides: * a biographical introduction to the playwright's work; * a survey and concise analysis of the writer's most important plays; * a discussion of their style, dramaturgical concerns and critical reception; * a bibliography of published plays and a select list of critical works. Among the many Tony, Obie and Pulitzer prize-winning playwrights included are Sam Shepard, Tony Kushner, Suzan-Lori Parks, August Wilson, Paula Vogel and Neil LaBute. The abundance of work analysed enables fresh, illuminating conclusions to be drawn about the development of contemporary American playwriting.

This is a collection of thirteen original essays from a team of leading Williams scholars. This wide-ranging volume covers Williams' works, from the early apprenticeship years through to his last play before his death in 1983. In addition to essays on the major plays, the contributors also consider selected minor plays, short stories, poems, and biographical concerns. The Cambridge Companion to Tennessee Williams also features a bibliographic essay surveying the major critical statements on Williams.

This is a collection of thirteen original essays from a team of leading Williams scholars. This wide-ranging volume covers Williams' works, from the early apprenticeship years through to his last play before his death in 1983. In addition to essays on the major plays, the contributors also consider selected minor plays, short stories, poems, and biographical concerns. The Cambridge Companion to Tennessee Williams also features a bibliographic essay surveying the major critical statements on Williams.

Understanding Contemporary American Literature was planned as a series of guides or companions for students as well as good nonacademic readers. The word understanding in the series titles was deliberately chosen. Many willing readers lack an adequate understanding of how contemporary literature works: that is, what the author is attempting to express and the means by which it is conveyed. These volumes provide instruction in how to read certain contemporary writers--identifying and explicating their material, themes, use of language, point of view, structures, symbolism, and responses to experience.

Arthur Miller clearly enjoys militantly civil conversation. Perhaps the most remarkable feature of Miller in interview is his willingness to answer question after question with grace and substance, with a sense of social commitment and metaphysical curiosity.

These interviews complement the plays and his more formal and well-known theater essays, revealing his dramatic and aesthetic theories, his concern with language and structure, his awareness of the inner reality of his characters and how these concerns broaden to highlight universal social and metaphysical issues. Miller in conversation provides a unique insight into both the dramatic works and the man behind those works.

Through forty years of the best of Miller interviews, similar concerns surface, but with one crucial difference: the actor/audience barrier is minimized, and the listener is left with the delightful prospect of engaging Miller, not through Willy Loman or Kate Keller, or through critics "interpreting" the plays, but through the very person who reinvented so much of contemporary drama.