short essay on modern drama

Modern (20th Century) Drama in English Literature: Characteristics & Features

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Table of Contents

What is Modern Drama

The drama which had suffered a steep decline during the Victorian Age was revived with great force at the beginning of the 20 th century and the course of six decades has witnessed many trends and currents in the 20th-century drama.

The drama of the Modernist Movement in England was much less innovative in technique than it was its poetry and novel .

History of Modern Drama

English Drama during the Modernist Period (1845-1945) A.D. falls into three categories:

Modern Drama Characteristics

Realism is the most significant and outstanding quality of Modern English Drama. The dramatists of the earlier years of the 20th century were interested in naturalism and it was their endeavor (try) to deal with real problems of life in a realistic technique to their plays.

It was Henrik Ibsen, the Norwegian dramatist who popularised realism in Modern Drama. He dealt with the problems of real life in a realistic manner of his play. His example was followed by Robertson Arthur Jones, Galsworthy and G. B. Shaw in their plays.

The modern drama has developed the Problem Play and there are many Modern Dramatists who have written a number of problem plays in our times. They dealt with the problems of marriage, justice, law, administration, and strife between capital and labor in their dramas.

They used theatre as a means for bringing about reforms in the conditions of society prevailing in their days. Henrik Ibsen’s play A Doll’s House is a good example of a problem play .

Play of Ideas

Modern Drama is essentially a drama of ideas rather than action. The stage is used by dramatists to give expression to certain ideas which they want to spread in society.

Modern Drama dealing with the problems of life has become far more intelligent than ever it was in the history of drama before the present age.

Romanticism

Poetic plays.

T.S. Eliot was the main dramatist who gave importance to poetic plays and was the realistic prose drama of the modern drama. Stephen Phillips, John Drink Water, Yeats, etc were from those who wrote poetic plays.

History and Biographical Plays

Irish movement.

A new trend in the Modern English Drama was introduced by the Irish dramatists who brought about the Celtic Revival in the literature.

In the hands of the Irish dramatists like Yeats, J.M. Synge, T.C. Murrey etc. drama ceased to be realistic in character and became an expression of the hopes and aspirations of the Irish people from remote ways to their own times.

Comedy of Manners

The drama after the second has not exhibited a love for comedy and the social conditions of the period after the war is not very favorable for the development of the artificial comedy of the Restoration Age .

Impressionism

In the impressionistic plays of W.B. Yeats, the main effort is in the direction of recreating the experience of the artist and his impressions about reality rather than in presenting reality as it is.

The impressionistic drama of the modern age seeks to suggest the impressions on the artist rather than making an explicit statement about the objective characteristics of things or objects.

Expressionism

Further reading.

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Modern American Drama Movements, Styles and Impact on Society

Table of Contents

Modern American drama refers to the evolution of theatrical works produced in the United States from the late 19th century to the present day. This period witnessed a transformation of dramatic styles, themes, and techniques, reflecting the changing cultural, social, and political landscape of America.

Early Influences and Beginnings:

Modern American drama can be traced back to the late 19th century when it began to take shape and differentiate itself from the European theatrical traditions. Several key factors influenced its development:

• Realism: The late 19th century saw the rise of dramatic realism in American theater, influenced by European playwrights like Henrik Ibsen. Realism aimed to portray everyday life, ordinary people, and social issues with a focus on naturalistic dialogue and settings. One of the early American realists was William Dean Howells.
• Economic and Social Change: The post-Civil War period brought significant changes to American society, including industrialization and urbanization. These transformations provided playwrights with new material for exploring contemporary issues.
• Experimental Theater: Early 20th-century experimental theaters, like the Provincetown Players, the Washington Square Players, and the Little Theater Movement, provided a platform for innovative and unconventional drama. These theaters allowed emerging playwrights to experiment with new forms and themes.
• The Harlem Renaissance: In the 1920s, the Harlem Renaissance brought African American voices to the forefront of American drama. Playwrights like Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and August Wilson contributed to a rich and diverse body of work.

Prominent Playwrights and Their Contributions:

Modern American drama has been shaped by a diverse group of playwrights, each making unique contributions to the development of the art form. Some of the most notable playwrights and their works include:

• Arthur Miller (1915-2005): Miller is renowned for his exploration of social and political issues in plays like “Death of a Salesman” and “The Crucible.” He was a master of psychological drama and often used his work to critique American society.
• Tennessee Williams (1911-1983): Williams is celebrated for his deeply personal and emotionally charged plays, including “A Streetcar Named Desire” and “The Glass Menagerie.” His works often delved into the complexities of human relationships and personal struggles.
• Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965): Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun” was a groundbreaking work that examined race, class, and generational conflicts in America. It was one of the first plays to depict the aspirations and challenges of an African American family.
• Sam Shepard (1943-2017): Shepard’s works, such as “True West” and “Buried Child,” often explored themes of family dysfunction, identity, and the American Dream. He experimented with form and language, contributing to the development of modern American theater.
• Tony Kushner: Kushner is known for his epic two-part play “Angels in America,” which addresses the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and its impact on the LGBTQ community. His work is characterized by its political and social relevance.
• August Wilson (1945-2005): Wilson’s ten-play cycle, often referred to as The Pittsburgh Cycle, chronicled the African American experience in each decade of the 20th century. His work, including “Fences” and “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” is celebrated for its exploration of race, culture, and history.

Also Read- Fireside Poets Background ,Works and Impacts What is Dark Romanticism Theme ,Works and Impact Explain American Romanticism with examples

Significant Movements and Styles:

Modern American drama has witnessed various movements and stylistic shifts, each reflecting the changing times and artistic innovation. Some of the significant movements include:

• Expressionism: In the early 20th century, American drama was influenced by European expressionism, characterized by distorted perspectives, symbolic imagery, and a focus on the inner lives of characters. Eugene O’Neill’s “The Hairy Ape” is an example of this style.
• Theater of the Absurd: Drawing from European playwrights like Samuel Beckett and Eugène Ionesco, American dramatists like Edward Albee (“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”) explored the futility of existence, breakdowns in communication, and the absurdity of human behavior.
• Political and Social Theater: The 1960s and 1970s saw an influx of political and socially engaged theater. Playwrights like David Mamet and Larry Kramer addressed issues such as political corruption, the AIDS crisis, and social justice.
• Postmodern Theater: Postmodernism brought a deconstruction of traditional narrative forms and a playfulness with conventions. Playwrights like Christopher Durang and Caryl Churchill experimented with meta-theatrical techniques and non-linear narratives.

Impact on American Culture and Society:

Modern American drama has played a significant role in reflecting and shaping American culture and society. It has:

• Addressed Social Issues: Many playwrights have used their work to tackle pressing social and political concerns, from civil rights and feminism to LGBTQ rights and economic inequality.
• Changed Perceptions: Plays like “A Raisin in the Sun” and “Angels in America” have contributed to changing perceptions and increasing empathy for marginalized communities.
• Explored Identity: American drama has explored questions of identity, from personal identity in family dramas to collective identity in works like August Wilson’s plays.
• Challenged Conventions: Modern American drama has pushed the boundaries of what theater can be, challenging conventional forms, narratives, and themes.
• Provided a Platform for Marginalized Voices: The works of playwrights from diverse backgrounds, such as Lorraine Hansberry, August Wilson, and Tony Kushner, have given voice to marginalized communities and their struggles.

From the late 19th century to the present, American drama has been a dynamic and ever-evolving art form that has influenced and mirrored the country’s political, social, and cultural milieu. As a result of the influence of numerous movements, styles, and playwrights who investigated a broad variety of subjects and plots, it became recognized as a unique genre. Prominent individuals such as Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Lorraine Hansberry, Sam Shepard, Tony Kushner, and August Wilson have made a lasting impact on the theatrical industry by taking on important social issues, questioning norms, and giving voiceless people a forum.

Modern American drama has continuously adapted to changing times and continues to do so, exploring new themes and forms and pushing the boundaries of what theater can be. It remains an important and dynamic force in American culture, offering audiences thought-provoking and emotionally resonant experiences.

What is modern American drama?

Modern American drama refers to the evolution of theatrical works produced in the United States from the late 19th century to the present day. It reflects the changing cultural, social, and political landscape of America and encompasses a wide range of styles, themes, and movements.

Who are some notable playwrights of modern American drama?

Prominent playwrights in modern American drama include Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Lorraine Hansberry, Sam Shepard, Tony Kushner, and August Wilson, among others. Each has made significant contributions to the development of the art form.

What are some key movements and styles in modern American drama?

Modern American drama has seen various movements and stylistic shifts, including realism, expressionism, the theater of the absurd, political and social theater, and postmodern theater. These movements have introduced new forms, themes, and techniques to the theatrical landscape.

How has modern American drama impacted American culture and society?

Modern American drama has played a significant role in addressing social and political issues, changing perceptions, exploring questions of identity, challenging conventions, and providing a platform for marginalized voices. It has had a profound impact on American culture and society by reflecting and shaping its ever-evolving landscape.

Is modern American drama still relevant today?

Yes, modern American drama remains highly relevant today. Contemporary playwrights continue to explore new themes, experiment with forms, and address pressing issues, ensuring that American theater remains a vital and dynamic art form. It continues to captivate and challenge audiences worldwide.

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Bridge Essay: Modern Drama

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Modern drama.

Moving from drawing-room comedy to absurdism, from political protest to the theater of science, we will sample a wide range of the fascinating drama that has been composed during the past century. Many of these plays are now acknowledged “classics” of modern drama; the rest are prize-winning contemporary plays that have broken new ground. We will study them both as distinguished writing and as scripts for performance. During the first century of film, television, and computers, it seems that writers for the theater have been especially attuned to the relationships between past and present and to the changing role of their medium. Paying particular attention to the importance of nationalism, group categorization, and science in shaping modern life, much of their drama suggests that current events are inseparable from a larger cultural history. Several of these plays have been reconceived for the big or small screen. Within this multimedia and socio-historical context, we will consider what drama in particular has to offer now and in the future: this subject is therefore cross-listed by Literature and Comparative Media Studies, and can help satisfy the theater history requirement for the Theater Arts major.

This is also a HASS Communication-Intensive Course, in which we will work on improving your skills, awareness, and confidence as a writer and speaker. Knowing without sharing is insufficient. A variety of writing opportunities (including revision of the first essay), class reports, and performance work will aid us in realizing these goals.

Course Meeting Times

Lectures: 2 sessions / week 1.5 hours / session

The Film Office usually can provide copies of the films we screen, and you will want to avail yourself of this resource should you decide to write on a particular screen version. If you will not be able to attend a scheduled evening screening, however, please let me know well in advance, so that we can use the office staff’s time appropriately.

Requirements

You should come to class ready and eager to discuss the assigned play. That means having read it (at least once), thought about it, and taken sufficient care of yourself to be alert in mind and body.

Each person will take a leadership role in teaching one play. This will involve generating a list of questions and possibly other helpful handouts or presentation materials; initiating the discussion; and being prepared to provide some context and answer informational questions from your colleagues. You may think of creative, exciting ways to convey key insights and aspects of the play: you may want to consult with me in advance. I will guarantee you 20-30 minutes of the class time, after which I may lead the class in directions not yet addressed (if that seems helpful). Each person will also read an “outside play” from the appended list, and give a short oral presentation to the class based on that reading and accompanying research (15 minutes maximum): in addition to allowing each one of you to become the class expert on one play, this will familiarize the group with more modern drama than we could (reasonably) manage to read collectively. I ask that you turn in to me your written materials (report outline, discussion questions, supporting materials, bibliography) after your oral presentations. Everyone will write two short (5-7 pp.) essays, the first focusing on close scene analysis, the second on the topic most compelling to you. Revision of one of the two assignments above is required; revision of both, optional. Turn in your original drafts along with revisions . [Original grade and revision grade will be averaged to replace the original grade.]

In addition, you will choose between two options: (A) write two more short (5-7 pp.) essays, most likely drawing upon the material in each of your two oral presentations, or (B) write one longer (10-12 pp.) essay, which might well draw on that research as well, in a focused, comparative format. If you intend to count this class as a seminar for purposes of the Literature concentration, minor, or major, I will ask that you choose option (B). If you would like to write an essay eligible for the Kelly Writing Prize, I suggest you aim for 15 pages instead of 10-12. I am receptive to multimedia essays, or other topic ideas you may have for your later writing assignments.

Approximate Valuation for Grading Purposes

I reserve the right to alter this weighting somewhat in exceptional circumstances; often this works to your advantage.

This is a twelve-unit subject, which assumes that you will allot nine hours/week outside the classroom for reading, writing, rehearsing, and thinking deep thoughts about twentieth-century drama.

Please Note: Written work must be submitted by the due date. Except in cases of personal emergency, late work will not receive written response and will receive a lower grade. Unless you receive an individual extension for special reasons or petition to receive a grade of Incomplete in the course, no work can be accepted after the end of the semester.

I hope that the following statement is unnecessary: conscious plagiarism of any sort is completely unacceptable . Discussion of ideas and communal learning is a primary goal of this subject; stealing others’ ideas or words, (as distinct from citing or adapting them openly and honestly) undermines this goal. Please consult my stylesheet ( PDF ) and talk with me if you have any doubts whatsoever about proper citation of sources or about standards of intellectual honesty. Any act of plagiarism will be grounds for failure of this subject . The following is the Literature Section’s official policy statement:

Plagiarism-use of another’s intellectual work without acknowledgement-is a serious offense. It is the policy of the Literature Faculty that students who plagiarize will receive an F in the subject, and that the instructor will forward the case to the Committee on Discipline. Full acknowledgement for all information obtained from sources outside the classroom must be clearly stated in all written work submitted. All ideas, arguments, and direct phrasings taken from someone else’s work must be identified and properly footnoted. Quotations from other sources must be clearly marked as distinct from the student’s own work. For further guidance on the proper forms of attribution consult the style guides available in the Writing and Communication Center in Stata and the MIT Web Site on Plagiarism .

In addition to welcoming your participation in class, I encourage you to discuss your ideas and your writing with me during office hours, or at other times convenient for us both. I hope to meet with each of you individually during the first half of the semester.

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• Nov 27, 2022

Modern Drama 101: Modernism and Theatre

As a philosophical and art form, modernism arose as a result of upheavals in Western society during the late 19th- and 20th centuries. In the face of a rapidly changing, urbanised culture, artists strove to self-consciously break away from traditional forms of art and express themselves freely. From a theatrical perspective, modernism oversaw a theatrical shift that challenged the established representations of Romanticism, melodrama, and well-structured plays. Influenced by the findings of prominent psychologists, artists began to prioritise the inner workings of their characters and how to best represent them on the stage. This struggle for realism came to dominate British and American theatre in the 20th century and would foreground dramaturgy’s fidelity to real life. By mid-century, the violent disruption of society, brought about by the world wars, propelled a counter art movement that rejected realism and focused primarily on symbolism and existentialism. Although opposing in many ways, these two art movements both fall under the category of modernism and would simultaneously search for innovative artistic forms to exteriorise a changed world view.

Modern Drama 101 will be divided into seven chapters:

Modern Drama 101: Realism and Naturalism in Miss Julie

Modern Drama 101: Bernard Shaw and Satire

Modern Drama 101: Existentialism and the Absurd

Modern Drama 101: Mid-Century British Theatre

Modern Drama 101: American Theatre and Tennessee Williams

By the late 19th century, the modernist spirit was established as one of technical revolution, continuously searching for innovative techniques able to capture the ever-changing world. This spirit of experimentation in all forms of expression mirrored the newfound displacement and dissonance experienced as a result of a changing social landscape. Modernist writers began to defy the well-structured, formulaic composition of the preceding century.

Changing socio-economic conditions, from overcrowding in cities to the spread of communication, disrupted the social and personal circumstances of people’s lives and blurred the boundaries between private and public realms. Previous traditional moral authorities became inadequate to make sense of people’s subconscious and exterior worlds. David Krasner in his novel A History of Modern Drama , attributes this shifting ideology to the democratic egalitarianism popularised by the 1789 French Revolution, as well as the technological advancements of the 19th century Industrial revolution. They brought about a departure from both the Enlightenment’s Rationalism and Classical Formalism and ultimately "signified a turn from deities and moral certainty and towards self-conscious individualism and ambiguity in judgment, values, and interpersonal relations" (Krasner, 2011, p.3).

In terms of drama, this would manifest itself in a distancing from the declamatory speech of Classical drama in favour of nuanced inter-personal exchanges in a struggle for self-realization. Krasner Modern drama strove to explore the general public’s feelings of alienation and "feeling[s] of waiting for something inscrutable" (Krasner, 2011, p.1). Krasner assigns this sense of growing public alienation to the uncertainty fostered by the changing social environment, as people found themselves "jostling for social positions in flatter planes and more porous and uncertain relationships" (Krasner, 2011, p.7). People became simultaneously empowered by their autonomy, whilst also limited by their inadequacies. Modern drama attempted to capture the essence of this conflict, and classical hierarchies of theatrical subject matter—concerning the high tragic, the inoffensive domestic, and the low-brow comedy—were rejected in favour of a deeper social and aesthetic hybrid. Theatre followed modernism’s ethos that "the truest art surfaces from the margins" and stories began to focus on people who did not abide by the ethical status quo (Krasner, 2011, p.8).

The transition to modern drama from earlier traditional forms of theatre found its biggest advocate in Émile Zola, a French novelist and playwright. Zola argued, most explicitly in his 1880 essay Naturalism in The Theatre , that contemporary theatre failed to reflect the scientific and intellectual developments that had been made in the last century, nor did it address the fundamental problems that had come about as a result of urbanisation. In his chapter ‘Ibsen and the Theatre’ from The Cambridge Companion to Ibsen, Simon Williams refers to Zola’s 1880 essay as a "critical assault upon the theatre", whereby Zola accused French and, by association, European drama of being "mechanical, superficial, lacking in authentic characters, and perpetuating the outworn cliches of Romanticism" (Williams, 1994, p.165). Zola pushed for theatre that explored previously unforeseen topics and subject matters by eliminating the constraints of antiquated dramatic conventions.

The type of dramatic realism proposed by Zola, had the aim of duplicating the epistemology of scientific experiments by presenting characters that had explicit socio-psychological motives for their behaviour. Plays were to become accurate depictions of characters’ lives and should move away from the Romantic elements of the past. William B. Worthen in his novel Modern Drama and the Rhetoric of Theatre claims that this scientific influence would establish the "ideological neutrality" of plays and would enable the ‘construction of the spectator as a disinterested, “objective” observer" (Worthen, 1992, p.16). Worthen further explains that by ascribing "scientific transparency" to a play, it ultimately ascribes a similar scientific objectivity to the audience (Worthen, 1992, p.16). By claiming a realistic presentation on stage through the pictorial scene setting, modern drama is able to produce an objective audience who will subsequently treat the subject matter in an unbiased manner; "the aim of realism is to produce an audience, to legitimate its private acts of interpretation as objective" (Worthen, 1992, p.17).

Theatre would serve to become a forum to discuss the formative forces of modern life, amongst others class conflict and gender stereotypes, and this development was greatly advanced by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. Ibsen’s introduction to Britain with his 1889 production of A Doll’s House at the Royal Theatre was received well by audiences and met with strong condemnation from critics. A Doll’s House endorsed key features of modern drama—inward processes and a rebuke of social obligations. Ibsen’s protagonist Nora disregards her familial obligations and prepares to leave behind her husband and three children for the reason that she is not up to the task of being a mother and wife. Nora abandons convention in favour of self-fulfilment, challenging the ideals of matrimony and motherhood. Krasner argues that "Ibsen’s protagonist defines the key feature of modern interiority. Social rules and obligations become mere external hand-me-down artifacts no longer applicable to the modern world" (Krasner, 2011, p.11). Ibsen utilises the theatre as a medium for social discourse and his critics believed that his play undermined the most sacred of Victorian institutions—that of marriage.

The contention behind Ibsen’s play was the fact that he was primarily concerned with revealing the interior motives of his characters and not with ideal models of behaviour. His radical approach to character also had an effect on the play’s production and performance. Actors spoke to each other interpersonally and no longer in a declamatorily classical style of direct address to the audience. The character and setting—and most importantly, the interaction between the two—took on a greater importance. Characters were no longer "a medium of theatrical exchange between actor and audience" as they had been, but instead became one part of a "dramatic ecology" that audiences can only observe (Worthen, 1992, p.18).

Ibsen’s plays were ultimately the antithesis of the formulaic conventions that had come to ground contemporary theatre. Williams explains in "Ibsen and the Theatre" that Ibsen’s recurring critiques give us the greatest insight into identifying the changes he implemented into his plays. His plays were often dismissed on the grounds that they "focused primarily on degrading aspects of human conduct" (Williams, 1994, p.167). They challenged the conventional rationale behind drama; "they confuted what was then conceived to be the fundamental purpose of art, namely to create only what is ideal and beautiful" (Williams, 1994, p.167).

Ibsen’s plays were conversely praised by audiences for their denial of theatricality and their ability to create an authentic illusion of everyday life. Through the varying receptions to Ibsen’s work, Williams asserts that "the conventions of an earlier generation were beginning to lose their credibility" (Williams, 1994, p.169). Ibsen was admired for his departure from the theatrical conventions that had come to define 19th century theatre and would influence many later modern playwrights.

Ibsen would come to be recognised as a playwright who had ushered authenticity back into the realm of theatre as he utilised the medium’s potential as a means to explore the changing social qualities of modern life. His works implemented and would inspire later works involving familiar contemporary indicators of modern drama, such as middle-class settings and protagonists and assessment of psychological motives and external pressures. Ibsen was pivotal in the advancement towards modern drama and had "a vitalizing effect on a stagnant repertoire’ as he stimulated new modes of both acting and staging" (Williams, 1994, p.165).

Bibliographical References

Innes, C. and Marker, F.J. (1998). Modernism in European Drama: Ibsen, Strindberg, Pirandello, Beckett: Essays from Modern Drama. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Krasner, D. (2011). A History of Modern Drama, Volume 1. New York: John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Mc Farlane, J. (Ed.). (1994). The Cambridge Companion to Ibsen . Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL0521411661.011

Worthen, W. (1992). Modern Drama and the Rhetoric of Theatre . Berkeley: University of California Press.

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Drama in the Twentieth Century

Table of contents.

Twentieth Century British Drama

“ Over time the desire to unsettle, to shock, even to alienate the audience became one hallmark of modern drama .” (Greenblatt 5)

Twentieth Century British theatre is commonly believed to have started in Dublin, Ireland with the foundation of the Irish Literary Theater by William B. Yeats , Lady Gregory, and J.M. Synge . (Greenblatt 1843) Their purpose was to provide a specifically Celtic and Irish venue that produced works that “stage[d] the deeper emotions of Ireland.” (The Abbey’s) The playwrights of the Irish Literary Theater (which later became the Abbey Theater, as it is known today) were part of the literary revival and included: Sean O’Casey , J.M. Synge , W.B. Yeats , Lady Gregory and Edward Martyn, to name a few. In England the well-made play genre was being rejected and replaced with actors and directors who were committed to bringing both reform and a serious audience to the theatre by appealing to the younger, socially conscious and politically alert crowd. In the plays by George Bernard Shaw , Harley Granville Barker, W. Somerset Maugham , and John Galsworthy , characters emulated this new crowd, satirized the well- made play characters, and created new stereotypes and new standards. (Chothia)

The early twentieth century denoted the split between ‘frocks and frills’ drama and serious works, following in the footsteps of many other European countries. “In Britain the impact of these continental innovations was delayed by a conservative theatre establishment until the late 1950s and 1960s when they converged with the counter-cultural revolution to transform the nature of English language theatre.” The West End, England’s Broadway, tended to produce the (Greenblatt 1844) musical comedies and well-made plays, while smaller theatres and Irish venues took a new direction. The new direction was political, satirical, and rebellious. Common themes in the new early 20th century drama were political, reflecting the unease or rebellion of the workers against the state, philosophical, delving into the who and why of human life and existence, and revolutionary, exploring the themes of colonization and loss of territory . They explored common societal business practices (conditions of factories), new political ideologies (socialism), or the rise of a repressed sector of the population (women).(Chothia) Industrialization also had an impact on Twentieth century drama, resulting in plays lamenting the alienation of humans in an increasingly mechanical world. Not only did Industrialization result in alienation; so did the wars. Between the wars, two types of theatre reined. In the West End, the middle class attended popular, conservative theatre dominated by Noël Coward and G.B. Shaw . “Commercial theatre thrived and at Drury Lane large budget musicals by Ivor Novello and Noel Coward used huge sets, extravagant costumes and large casts to create spectacular productions.” (West End) After the wars, taboos were broken and new writers, directors, and actors emerged with different views. Many played with the idea of reality, some were radically political, others shunned naturalism and questioned the legitimacy of previously unassailable beliefs. (Chothia) Towards the end of the century, the term ‘theatre of exorcism’ came into use due to the amount of plays conjuring the past in order to confront and accept it. Playwrights towards the end of the century count among their numbers: Samuel Beckett , Harold Pinter , Andrew Lloyd Webber, Brian Friel , Caryl Churchill , and Tom Stoppard . The last act of the century was a turn back towards realism as well as the founding of Europe’s first children’s cultural center.

For a year-by-year breakdown between 1895 and 1937, please click here .

Realism and Myth

Sigmund Freud inspired an interest in myth and dreams as playwrights became familiar with his studies of psychoanalysis. Along with the help of Carl Jung, the two psychiatrists influenced playwrights to incorporate myths into their plays. This integration allowed for new opportunities for playwrights to increase the boundaries of realism within their writing. As playwrights started to use myths in their writing, a “poetic form of realism” was created. This form of realism deals with truths that are widespread amongst all humans, bolstered by Carl Jung’s idea of the collective unconscious.

Poetic Realism

Much of the poetic realism that was written during the beginning of the twentieth century focused on the portrayals of Irish peasant life. John Millington Synge , W.B. Yeats , and Lady Gregory were but a few writers to use poetic realism. Their portrayal of peasant life was often unappealing and many audiences reacted cruelly. Many plays that are poetically realistic often have unpleasant themes running through them, such as lust between a son and his step-mother or the murder of a baby to “prove” love. These plays used myths as a surrogate for real life in order to allow the audience to live the unpleasant plot without completely connecting to it.

The female characters progressed from the downtrodden, useless woman to an empowered, emancipated woman. They were used to to pose subversive questions about the social order. Many female characters portray the author’s masculine attitudes about women and their place in society. As time passed, though, females began gain empowerment. G.B. Shaw became one of the first English playwrights to follow Ibsen’s influence and create roles of real women. Mrs. Warren, Major Barbara, and Pygmalion all have strong female leads. Women first started voting in 1918. Later in the century, females (and males) were both subjected to the alienation of society and routinely were not given names to suggest to the audience the character’s worth within the play.

Political Theatre and War

Political theatre uses the theatre to represent “how a social or political order uses its power to ‘represent’ others coercively.” It uses live performances and often shows the power of politics through “demeaning and limiting” prejudices. Political theatre often represents many different types of groups that are often stereotyped – “women, gay men, lesbians, ethnic and racial groups, [and] the poor.” Political theatre is used to express one’s political ideas. Agitprop, a popular form of political theatre, even had its roots in the 1930s women’s rights movement. Propaganda played a big role in political theater, whether it be in support of a war or in opposition of political schemes, theater played a big role in influencing the public. The wars also affected the early theatre of the twentieth century. The consternation before WWI produced the Dada movement, the predecessor to Surrealism and Expressionism.

Types of Modern Drama

Realism, in theater, was meant to be a direct observation of human behavior. It began as a way to make theater more useful to society, a way to hold a mirror up to society. Because of this thrust towards the “real” playwrights started using more contemporary settings, backgrounds and characters. Where plays in the past had, for the most part, used mythological or stereotypical characters, now they involved the lower class, the poor, the rich; they involved all genders, classes and races. One of the main contributors to this style was Henrik Ibsen.

Social Realism

Social Realism began showing up in plays during the 1930s. This realism had a political conscience behind it because the world was in a depression. These plays painted a harsh picture of rural poverty. The drama began to aim at showing governments the penalties of unrestrained capitalism and the depressions that lax economies created. One of the main contributors to this style was G.B. Shaw .

Avant Garde Theatre

“Dramatic truth couldn’t be found in the tangibleness of realistic drama, but in symbols, images, legends, myths, fantasies, and dreams” (Klaus)

Absurdist Drama

Absurdist Drama was existentialist theatre which put a direct perception of a mode of being above all abstract considerations. It was also essentially a poetic, lyrical theatre for the expression of intuitions of being through movement, situations and concrete imagery. Language was generally downplayed. (Barnet) Symbolism, Dadaism and their offspring, Surrealism, Theatre of Cruelty, and Expressionism all fall into this category.

Dadaism, or Dada, was a reaction against WWI. Like many of the movements, Dada included writing, painting and poetry as well as theatre. Many Dadaists wrote manifestos detailing their beliefs, which normally outlined their disgust in colonialism and nationalism and tried to be the opposite of the the current aesthetics and values. The more Dada offended, the better. It was considered to be (by Dadaists), the ‘anti-art’. It rejected the values of society and turned everything on its head, preferring to disgust and offend.

Symbolism/Aestheticism

In England, Symbolism was also known as Aestheticism. A very stylized format of drama, wherein dreams and fantasies were common plot devices, Aestheticism was used by numerous playwrights from Yeats to Pinter. The staging was highly stylized, usually using minimal set pieces and vague blocking. While the playwrights who could be considered Aestheticists lived and worked at the beginning of the century, it influenced all of the following styles.

Like Aestheticism, Surrealism has its base in the mystical. It developed the physicality of theatre and downplayed words, hoping to influence its audiences through action. Other common characteristics of surreal plays are unexpected comparisons and surprise. The most famous British playwright in the 20s surrealist style is Samuel Beckett . Theatre of Cruelty is a subset of surrealism and was motivated by an idea of Antonin Artaud. It argues the idea that theatre is a “representational medium” and tried to bring current ideas and experiences to the audience through participation and “ritualistic theater experiments.” Artaud thought that theatre should present and represent equally. This type of theatre relies deeply on metaphors and rarely included a description of how it could be performed.

Expressionism

The term ‘Expressionism’ was first coined in Germany in 1911. (Michaelides) Expressionism also had its hey-day during the 20s although it had two distinct branches. The branches had characters speaking in short, direct sentences or in long, lyrical expanses. This type of theatre usually did not name the characters and spend much time lamenting the present and warning against the future. Spiritual awakenings and episodic structures were also fairly common.

Epic Theatre

Epic theater was created by Bertold Brecht who rejected realistic theatre. He found that such plays were too picture-perfect. Epic Theatre is based on Greek Epic poetry. There are dramatic illusions such as “stark, harsh lighting, blank stages, placards announcing changes of scenes, bands playing music onstage, and long, discomfiting pauses” (Jacobus). Brecht believed that drama should be made within its audiences and he thought that Epic Theatre drama would reinforce the realities that people were facing rather than challenge them. Epic Theatre helped to preserve the social issues that they portrayed.

Physical Advances

To hear Yale University’s Maynard Mack describe some differences between Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre and today’s theatre, click HERE .

Architecture

In the late nineteenth century, early twentieth century, theatre architecture changed from hosting as many audience members as possible without regarding their needs to creating better acoustical, visual, and spatial arrangements for both actors and audience members. Whereas before, theatres were cylindrical shaped, in the twentieth century fan-shaped auditoriums were favored. Audiences liked them because of

the clear sight-lines and favorable acoustics and actors liked them because the natural style of acting that was becoming more popular was conducive to smaller venues. (Klaus)

There was also a renewed interest in the earlier forms of staging such as the thrust and arena stages (theatre-in-the-round). The theatre that most audiences are used to are like the pictured Olivier Theate. Everyone has basically the same view of the stage and the stage itself is viewed through the Proscenium arch, which acts as a picture frame surrounding the stage and framing the play. The Proscenium arch may be anything from a gilded, brightly lit masterpiece surrounding the curtain at the beginning of a show to the simple black walls preventing you from seeing into the wings of the theatre. In a Proscenium theatre, the action takes place either behind the Proscenium or slightly in front of it, on what is known as the apron of a stage. (The piece closest to the audience and which the curtain generally does not hide.) In a thrust theatre, the action takes place almost completely in front of the ‘Proscenium arch’, if indeed there is one. The audience is seated on three sides of the stage and many of these types of theatres make great use of entrances and exits by the hallways through the audience. An arena stage has audience seating on all four sides and has four entrances/exits called vomitoria. (from the Latin ‘vomitorium’ meaning (generally): [an audience] spews forth from them). In today’s American culture, arena stages (and vomitoria) are most commonly found as sports arena.

Found Space is another recycled theatrical convention. The term ‘Found Space’ refers to streets, personal homes, a grocery store, anywhere that is not specifically designated as a theatre.

The set in a theatre is the background upon which the story is told. It can be anything from a very detailed box set (explained below) to absolutely nothing. The set can be physical platforms and walls or it can be projections on sheets.

The box set, or three walls designed to look like the interior of a house, complete with doors, windows and furniture, figured prominently in most, if not all, of the plays performed in the modern realistic tradition at the beginning of the 20th Century. (Klaus)

Before the invention of the electric light bulb in 1879, theatres used either gas or carbon arc lamps. Both gas and carbon arc lamps were

prone to fires. Numerous theatres had switched to the carbon arc lamp during the 1840s, but since the concept of the arc lamp is to send voltage through the open air, there was still a high chance of fire. The Savoy in London was the first public building to operate completely on electricity. In 1882, a year after the Savoy opened, the Munich Exposition displayed an electrified theatre, marking the beginning of a general change-over to electricity-lit theatres. Existing theatres that already had gas lines repurposed them by threading wires through the old gas lines and inserting a row of light bulbs in front of the gas jets.

Unfortunately, electricity had quite a few drawbacks. The set designers or scenographers (combination set designer/costume designer)

did not adapt to the new medium, creating sets that were unsuited to electric light placement. A second drawback was that electricity itself was very dangerous and electricians were hard to find. It might not be as dangerous as gas, but there was still the chance of fire. The front boards, also known as control panels (see above), were live, with handles that could be in an ‘on’ or ‘off’ position. The ‘on’ position did not have protection of any sort, and if the operator was not careful, he or she could die. In the photo to the left, technology had advanced enough for fuses. The third drawback to electricity was that it required a lot of power. Theatres often had to own the generators powering their theatres.

Gordon Craig, a British actor, director,producer, and scenic designer made invaluable contributions to lighting. Instead of putting most of his lights at the foot of the stage (known as footlights or floaters), he hung lighting instruments above the stage. He, along with Adolphe Appia of Switzerland, also realized the dramatic potential of lighting, playing with color and form. Appia also established the first goals of stage lighting in his books: La Mise en scène du drame Wagnérien or The Staging of the Wagnerian Drama and L’Oeuvre d’art vivant (1921) or The Living Work of Art . (Adolphe) (1895)

An American named Jean Rosenthal created the post of ‘lighting designer’ within the theatre world. Before her career in the 1950s, either the master electrician or the set designer would light the play. After her integral designs with the Martha Graham Dance Company and on Broadway, the position of Lighting Designer was added to the production staff. Many designers today credit her with specific lighting techniques and lovingly refer to her as the Mother of Stage Lighting. (Wild)

Advances on the Continent and their Impact on British Drama

Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen’s plays were first translated and performed in England in London, 1888. His startling Real-ist drama jumpstarted modern British drama. “His… serious drama based on moral and social issues hung over what has been called ‘the minority theatre [the ‘Off-Broadway of England]’” (Smart). Ibsen and Frenchman André Antoine pioneered the era of naturalistic drama that later snuck into England through writers in the early 20th Century.

In Germany after the Franco-Prussian War, Georg II, Duke of Saxe-Meiningen, became the first modern director. He enjoyed plays so much that he built a stage, hired actors, had scripts written, and (because he financed it) told everyone what they should do. His productions eventually became the Meiningen Ensemble and toured Europe and England extensively, profoundly altering the actor/director, manger/director or writer/director mindset of the past.

In Russia, Constantin Stanislavski organized the ideas of the Duke of Saxe Meiningen and of André Antoine into the Stanislavski Method of acting. Stanislavski brought the Eastern belief in dedication to the trade (some Japanese actors spend 30 years developing their craft (Worthen)) to the Western world. The Stanislavski Method states that the actor’s primary goal is to be believed. It tells the actor that s/he must use his or her own memories to evoke emotions. The Western world accepted this view and used this method to teach it’s actors for many 20th Century realist actors, although towards the 1990s this method has fallen out of vogue.(American, Sawoski)

Antonin Artaud was a contemporary of Samuel Beckett ‘s. He created what is known as the Theatre of Cruelty .

British Playwrights in the Twentieth Century

• J. M. Barrie
• Samuel Beckett
• Caryl Churchill
• Noël Coward
• Brian Friel
• John Galsworthy
• W. Somerset Maugham
• Sean O’Casey
• Harold Pinter
• Peter Shaffer
• George Bernard Shaw
• Tom Stoppard
• John Millington Synge
• William B. Yeats

Back to The Twentieth Century

• The Abbey’s Cultural Role and Value. Abbey Theatre. Web. 15 May 2010.
• “Adolphe Appia.” Encyclopædia Britannica. 2010. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 17 May. 2010 < http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/30582/Adolphe-Appia >.
• “American Masters . Constantin Stanislavsky.” PBS. Web. 16 May 2010. < http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/stanislavsky_c.html >.
• Ballard, James. “The Independent Theatre Movement in Europe and the Influence of Henrik Ibsen.” Diss. Web. 15 May 2010. < http://infiniterooms.co.uk/pdf/dissertationfull.pdf >.
• Barnet, Sylvan, Morton Berman, and William Burto. “New Form in the Theatre.” Types of Drama: Plays and Essays. Boston: Little, Brown, 1981. 776-779. Print.
• Chothia, Jean. “English Drama of the Early Modern Period, 1890-1940.” London: Longman, 1996. Print.
• Greenblatt, Stephen, and M. H. Abrams. “Twentieth Century Drama.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature. New York: W.W. Norton, 2006. 1843-847. Print.
• Jacobus, Lee A. “The Rise of Realism.” The Bedford Introduction to Drama. Boston: Bedford of St. Martin’s, 1993. 801-808. Print.
• Klaus, Carl H., Miriam Gilbert, and Bradford S. Field. “Modern/Contemporary Theatre.” Stages of Drama: Classical to Contemporary Theater. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1999. 507+.
• Markus, Tom, and Linda Sarver. Another Opening, Another Show: a Lively Introduction to the Theatre. Boston, Mass.: McGraw-Hill, 2005. Print.
• Michaelides, Chris. “Chronology of the European Avant Garde, 1900 – 1937.” Www.bl.uk/breakingtherules . Dec. 2007. Web. 10 June 2011. < http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/features/breakingtherules/images/AvantGardeChronology.pdf >.
• Morash, Chris. “Babel, 1972 — 2000.” A History of Irish Theatre, 1601-2000. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002. 242-71.
• Sawoski, Perviz. “The Stanislavski System Growth and Methodology.” 2nd Ed. Web. 16 May 2010. < https://sites.udel.edu/britlitwiki/files//2018/06/Stanislavski.pdf >.
• Smart, John. “Twentieth Century British Drama.” Jstor. University of Delaware, 2001. Web. 15 May 2010
• “theatre.” Encyclopædia Britannica. 2010. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 17 May. 2010 < http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/590239/theatre >.
• Worthen, William B. “Chapter 1-9.” The Wadsworth Anthology of Drama. 5th ed. Boston, Mass.: Thomson/Wadsworth, 2007. 1-100. Print.
• Bandhu, Pun. “What Is ‘avant-garde’ Theater? Styles Of Plays (The Broadway Producer).” Videojug – Get Good At Life. The World’s Best How to Videos plus Free Expert Advice and Tutorials. The Broadway Producer, 2006. Web. 10 June 2011. < http://www.videojug.com/expertanswer/styles-of-plays-2/what-is-avant-garde-theater >.
• “West End Theatre between the Wars – Victoria and Albert Museum.” West End Theatre between the Wars . V&A Home Page – Victoria and Albert Museum. Web. 30 Nov. 2011. < http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/w/west-end-theatre-between-the-wars/ >.
• Wild, Larry. “Jean Rosenthal 1912-1969.” Jean Rosenthal 1912-1969 . Northern State University, 18 Oct. 2011. Web. 30 Nov. 2011. < http://www3.northern.edu/wild/jr.htm >.

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Modern Drama: A Very Short Introduction

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The story of modern drama is a tale of extremes, testing both audiences and actors to their limits through hostility and contrarianism. Spanning 1880 to the present, Modern Drama: A Very Short Introduction shows how truly international a phenomenon modern drama has become, and how vibrant and diverse in both text and performance. It explores the major developments of modern drama, covering two decades per chapter, from early modernist theatre through post-war developments to more recent and contemporary theatre. The emergence of new theories from the likes of Brecht and Beckett are tracked alongside groundbreaking productions to illuminate the fascinating evolution of modern drama.

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• Corpus ID: 190938122

A history of modern drama

• Published 2012
• History, Art

7 Citations

20th-century baltic drama: comparative paradigms, a chronotopic reading of eugene o'neill's the icceman cometh, the philosopher, the playwright, and the actor: friedrich nietzsche and the modern drama's concept of performance, place, race, and modernism in the works of e.m. forster and eudora welty, woman, body, art: henrik ibsen's when we dead awaken and a doll's house, far from the madding civilization: anarcho-primitivism and revolt against disintegration in eugene o’neill’s the hairy ape, digital technology, human world making and the avoidance of learning, 363 references, dramatists and dramas, the renaissance : studies in art and poetry : the 1893 text, vladimir's carrot: modern drama and the modern imagination, the irish drama of europe from yeats to beckett, staging place: the geography of modern drama, the origin of german tragic drama, nature's dream play: modes of vision and august strindberg's re-definition of the theatre, surrealism: the road to the absolute, ibsen: the dramaturgy of fear, dark tower and the saturday nighters: salons as themes in african american drama, related papers.

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Modernism in European Drama: Ibsen, Strindberg, Pirandello, Beckett

Essays from modern drama.

• Edited by: Christopher Innes and F.J. Marker
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• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Toronto Press
• Copyright year: 1998
• Audience: College/higher education;Professional and scholarly;
• Main content: 336
• Published: November 3, 1998
• ISBN: 9781442677319

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Miller, Williams, and Albee

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Two post-World War II playwrights established reputations comparable to Eugene O’Neill’s . Arthur Miller wrote eloquent essays defending his modern, democratic concept of tragedy; despite its abstract, allegorical quality and portentous language, Death of a Salesman (1949) came close to vindicating his views. Miller’s intense family dramas were rooted in the problem dramas of Henrik Ibsen and the works of the socially conscious ethnic dramatists of the 1930s, especially Clifford Odets , but Miller gave them a metaphysical turn. From All My Sons (1947) to The Price (1968), his work was at its strongest when he dealt with father-son relationships, anchored in the harsh realities of the Great Depression . Yet Miller could also be an effective protest writer, as in The Crucible (1953), which used the Salem witch trials to attack the witch-hunting of the McCarthy era.

Though his work was uneven, Tennessee Williams at his best was a more powerful and effective playwright than Miller. Creating stellar roles for actors, especially women, Williams brought a passionate lyricism and a tragic Southern vision to such plays as The Glass Menagerie (1944), A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), and The Night of the Iguana (1961). He empathized with his characters’ dreams and illusions and with the frustrations and defeats of their lives, and he wrote about his own dreams and disappointments in his beautifully etched short fiction , from which his plays were often adapted.

Miller and Williams dominated the post-World War II theatre until the 1960s, and few other playwrights emerged to challenge them. Then, in 1962, Edward Albee ’s reputation, based on short plays such as The Zoo Story (1959) and The American Dream (1960), was secured by the stunning power of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? A master of absurdist theatre who assimilated the influence of European playwrights such as Samuel Beckett and Eugène Ionesco , Albee established himself as a major figure in American drama . His reputation with critics and audiences, however, began to decline with enigmatic plays such as Tiny Alice (1964) and A Delicate Balance (1966), but, like O’Neill, he eventually returned to favour with a complex autobiographical drama, Three Tall Women (1994).

The centre of American drama shifted from Broadway to Off-Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway with works such as Jack Gelber ’s The Connection (1959). American playwrights, collaborating with the Living Theatre , the Open Theatre, and other adventurous new companies, were increasingly free to write radical and innovative plays. David Rabe ’s The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel (1971) and Sticks and Bones (1972) satirized America’s militaristic nationalism and cultural shallowness. David Mamet won a New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for American Buffalo (1976). In plays such as Glengarry Glen Ross (1984), he showed brilliantly how men reveal their hopes and frustrations obliquely, through their language, and in Oleanna (1992) he fired a major salvo in the gender wars over sexual harassment .

Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) and Ed Bullins inspired an angry Black nationalist theatre. Baraka’s Dutchman and The Slave (1964) effectively dramatized racial confrontation, while Bullins’s In the Wine Time (1968) made use of “street” lyricism. Maria Irene Fornés ’s Fefu and Her Friends (1977) proved remarkable in its exploration of women’s relationships. A clear indication of Off-Broadway’s ascendancy in American drama came in 1979 when Sam Shepard , a prolific and experimental playwright, won the Pulitzer Prize for Buried Child . Shepard’s earlier work, such as The Tooth of Crime (1972), was rooted both in the rock scene and counterculture of the 1960s and in the mythic world of the American West. He reached his peak with a series of offbeat dramas dealing with fierce family conflict, including Curse of the Starving Class (1976), True West (1980), Fool for Love (1983), and A Lie of the Mind (1986).

Other important new voices in American drama were the prolific Lanford Wilson , Pulitzer winner for Talley’s Folly (1979); John Guare , who created serious farce in The House of Blue Leaves (1971) and fresh social drama in Six Degrees of Separation (1990); and Ntozake Shange , whose “choreopoem” For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf moved to Broadway in 1976. Other well-received women playwrights included Marsha Norman, Beth Henley , Tina Howe, and Wendy Wasserstein . In a series of plays that included Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (1984), Fences (1987), for which he won a Pulitzer Prize, and Joe Turner’s Come and Gone (1986), August Wilson emerged as the most powerful Black playwright of the 1980s. Devoting each play to a different decade of life in the 20th century, he won a second Pulitzer Prize, for The Piano Lesson (1990), and completed the 10-play cycle in 2005, shortly before his death.

The anguish of the AIDS epidemic proved a dark inspiration to many gay playwrights, especially Tony Kushner , who had gained attention with A Bright Room Called Day (1991), set in Germany in 1932–33; he won Broadway fame with his epically ambitious two-part drama Angels in America (1991–92), which combined comedy with pain, symbolism with personal history, and invented characters with historical ones. A committed political writer, Kushner often focused on public themes. His later plays included Slavs! (1996) and the timely Homebody/Kabul (2001), a brilliant monologue followed by a drama set in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. After writing several Off-Broadway plays about Chinese Americans, David Henry Hwang achieved critical and commercial success on Broadway with his gender-bending drama M. Butterfly (1988). Richard Nelson found an enthusiastic following in London for literate plays such as Some Americans Abroad (1989) and Two Shakespearean Actors (1990), while Richard Greenberg depicted Jewish American life and both gay and straight relationships in Eastern Standard (1989), The American Plan (1990), and Take Me Out (2002), the last about a gay baseball player who reveals his homosexuality to his teammates. Donald Margulies dealt more directly with Jewish family life in The Loman Family Picnic (1989). He also explored the ambitions and relationships of artists in such plays as Sight Unseen (1992) and Collected Stories (1998).

The 1990s also saw the emergence of several talented women playwrights. Paula Vogel repeatedly focused on hot-button moral issues with humour and compassion, dealing with prostitution in The Oldest Profession (1981), AIDS in The Baltimore Waltz (1992), pornography in Hot ’n’ Throbbing (1994), and the sexual abuse of minors in How I Learned to Drive (1997). A young African American playwright, Suzan-Lori Parks , gained increasing recognition with her surreal pageant The America Play (1993), an adaptation of The Scarlet Letter called In the Blood (1999), and Topdog/Underdog (2001), a partly symbolic tale of conflict between two brothers (named Lincoln and Booth) that reminded critics of Sam Shepard’s fratricidal True West . She later adapted George and Ira Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess in 2012, and her Father Comes Home from the Wars (Parts 1, 2 & 3) , produced in 2014, placed Homer’s Odyssey in the context of the American Civil War . Other well-received works included Heather McDonald’s An Almost Holy Picture (1995), a one-man play about the spiritual life of a preacher; poet Naomi Wallace’s One Flea Spare (1995), set in London during the Great Plague of 1665; and Margaret Edson’s Wit (1995), about the slow, poignant cancer death of a literary scholar whose life has been shaped by the eloquence and wit of Metaphysical poetry .

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The Long-Overlooked Molecule That Will Define a Generation of Science

By Thomas Cech

Dr. Cech is a biochemist and the author of the forthcoming book “The Catalyst: RNA and the Quest to Unlock Life’s Deepest Secrets,” from which this essay is adapted.

From E=mc² to splitting the atom to the invention of the transistor, the first half of the 20th century was dominated by breakthroughs in physics.

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Introducing Microsoft 365 Copilot – your copilot for work

Mar 16, 2023 | Jared Spataro - CVP, AI at Work

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Humans are hard-wired to dream, to create, to innovate. Each of us seeks to do work that gives us purpose — to write a great novel, to make a discovery, to build strong communities, to care for the sick. The urge to connect to the core of our work lives in all of us. But today, we spend too much time consumed by the drudgery of work on tasks that zap our time, creativity and energy. To reconnect to the soul of our work, we don’t just need a better way of doing the same things. We need a whole new way to work.

Today, we are bringing the power of next-generation AI to work. Introducing Microsoft 365 Copilot — your copilot for work . It combines the power of large language models (LLMs) with your data in the Microsoft Graph and the Microsoft 365 apps to turn your words into the most powerful productivity tool on the planet.

“Today marks the next major step in the evolution of how we interact with computing, which will fundamentally change the way we work and unlock a new wave of productivity growth,” said Satya Nadella, Chairman and CEO, Microsoft. “With our new copilot for work, we’re giving people more agency and making technology more accessible through the most universal interface — natural language.”

Copilot is integrated into Microsoft 365 in two ways. It works alongside you, embedded in the Microsoft 365 apps you use every day — Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams and more — to unleash creativity, unlock productivity and uplevel skills. Today we’re also announcing an entirely new experience: Business Chat . Business Chat works across the LLM, the Microsoft 365 apps, and your data — your calendar, emails, chats, documents, meetings and contacts — to do things you’ve never been able to do before. You can give it natural language prompts like “Tell my team how we updated the product strategy,” and it will generate a status update based on the morning’s meetings, emails and chat threads.

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Uplevel skills. Copilot makes you better at what you’re good at and lets you quickly master what you’ve yet to learn. The average person uses only a handful of commands — such as “animate a slide” or “insert a table” — from the thousands available across Microsoft 365. Now, all that rich functionality is unlocked using just natural language. And this is only the beginning.

Copilot will fundamentally change how people work with AI and how AI works with people. As with any new pattern of work, there’s a learning curve — but those who embrace this new way of working will quickly gain an edge.

The Copilot System: Enterprise-ready AI

Microsoft is uniquely positioned to deliver enterprise-ready AI with the Copilot System . Copilot is more than OpenAI’s ChatGPT embedded into Microsoft 365. It’s a sophisticated processing and orchestration engine working behind the scenes to combine the power of LLMs, including GPT-4, with the Microsoft 365 apps and your business data in the Microsoft Graph — now accessible to everyone through natural language.

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Built on Microsoft’s comprehensive approach to security, compliance and privacy. Copilot is integrated into Microsoft 365 and automatically inherits all your company’s valuable security, compliance, and privacy policies and processes. Two-factor authentication, compliance boundaries, privacy protections, and more make Copilot the AI solution you can trust.

Architected to protect tenant, group and individual data. We know data leakage is a concern for customers. Copilot LLMs are not trained on your tenant data or your prompts. Within your tenant, our time-tested permissioning model ensures that data won’t leak across user groups. And on an individual level, Copilot presents only data you can access using the same technology that we’ve been using for years to secure customer data.

Integrated into the apps millions use every day. Microsoft 365 Copilot is integrated in the productivity apps millions of people use and rely on every day for work and life — Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams and more. An intuitive and consistent user experience ensures it looks, feels and behaves the same way in Teams as it does in Outlook, with a shared design language for prompts, refinements and commands.

Designed to learn new skills.  Microsoft 365 Copilot’s foundational skills are a game changer for productivity: It can already create, summarize, analyze, collaborate and automate using your specific business content and context. But it doesn’t stop there. Copilot knows how to command apps (e.g., “animate this slide”) and work across apps, translating a Word document into a PowerPoint presentation. And Copilot is designed to learn new skills. For example, with Viva Sales, Copilot can learn how to connect to CRM systems of record to pull customer data — like interaction and order histories — into communications. As Copilot learns about new domains and processes, it will be able to perform even more sophisticated tasks and queries.

Committed to building responsibly

At Microsoft, we are guided by our AI principles and Responsible AI Standard and decades of research on AI, grounding and privacy-preserving machine learning. A multidisciplinary team of researchers, engineers and policy experts reviews our AI systems for potential harms and mitigations — refining training data, filtering to limit harmful content, query- and result-blocking sensitive topics, and applying Microsoft technologies like InterpretML and Fairlearn to help detect and correct data bias. We make it clear how the system makes decisions by noting limitations, linking to sources, and prompting users to review, fact-check and adjust content based on subject-matter expertise.

Moving boldly as we learn  

In the months ahead, we’re bringing Copilot to all our productivity apps—Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, Viva, Power Platform, and more. We’ll share more on pricing and licensing soon. Earlier this month we announced Dynamics 365 Copilot as the world’s first AI Copilot in both CRM and ERP to bring the next-generation AI to every line of business.

Everyone deserves to find purpose and meaning in their work — and Microsoft 365 Copilot can help. To serve the unmet needs of our customers, we must move quickly and responsibly, learning as we go. We’re testing Copilot with a small group of customers to get feedback and improve our models as we scale, and we will expand to more soon.

Learn more on the Microsoft 365 blog and visit WorkLab to get expert insights on how AI will create a brighter future of work for everyone.

And for all the blogs, videos and assets related to today’s announcements, please visit our microsite .

Tags: AI , Microsoft 365 , Microsoft 365 Copilot

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