The Other American Drama

In The Other American Drama, Marc Robinson presents an alternative to the received history of modern American drama. Rather than beginning with O'Neill, the conventionally acknowledged father of American theatre, Robinson opens this collection with a long essay on the prolific but neglected theatrical career of O'Neill's contemporary, Gertrude Stein. Subsequent essays rethink familiar figures such as Tennessee Williams and Sam Shepard, and make the case for undervalued writers such as Maria Irene Fornés, Adrienne Kennedy and Richard Foreman. Robinson explores the new directions seen in the work of several younger playwrights, and demonstrates how these writers upset assumptions about narrative and psychology, recharging aspects of performance often taken for granted – speech, movement, and space. Together these essays describe the evolution of a truly innovative American drama.

• traces American theatre from Gertrude Stein, not Eugene O'Neill
• re-evaluates 'patriarchs' of the theatre, such as O'Neill, Tennessee Williams, Sam Shepard
• treats previously marginalised writers (Fornes, Kennedy, Foreman) as essential figures in American drama