Congressional Theatre is the first book to identify and examine the significant body of plays, films, and teleplays that responded to the actions of the House Committee on Un-American Activities during the 'show business hearings' it held between 1947 and 1960. Brenda Murphy discusses the dramatization in the works of HUAC's effects on American life and the political, social, and moral issues that its actions raised for American citizens. Among the writers discussed are Arthur Miller, Bertolt Brecht, Lillian Hellman, Maxwell Anderson, Elia Kazan, Barrie Stavis, Herman Wouk, Eric Bentley, Saul Levitt, Budd Schulberg, Carl Foreman, Abraham Polonsky, and Walter Bernstein.
Congressional Theatre is the first book to identify and examine the significant body of plays, films, and teleplays that responded to the actions of the House Committee on Un-American Activities during the 'show business hearings' it held between 1947 and 1960. Brenda Murphy discusses the dramatization in the works of HUAC's effects on American life and the political, social, and moral issues that its actions raised for American citizens. Among the writers discussed are Arthur Miller, Bertolt Brecht, Lillian Hellman, Maxwell Anderson, Elia Kazan, Barrie Stavis, Herman Wouk, Eric Bentley, Saul Levitt, Budd Schulberg, Carl Foreman, Abraham Polonsky, and Walter Bernstein.
This novel about Dashiell Hammett, author of The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man, and Lillian Hellman, author of The Children's Hour, reintroduces their larger-than-life personalities and the vicissit
This volume addresses the work of women playwrights throughout the history of the American theatre, from the early pioneers to contemporary feminists. Each chapter introduces the reader to the work of one or more playwrights and to a way of thinking about plays. Together they cover significant writers such as Rachel Crothers, Susan Glaspell, Lillian Hellman, Sophie Treadwell, Lorraine Hansberry, Alice Childress, Megan Terry, Ntozake Shange, Adrienne Kennedy, Wendy Wasserstein, Marsha Norman, Beth Henley and Maria Irene Fornes. Playwrights are discussed in the context of topics such as early comedy and melodrama, feminism and realism, the Harlem Renaissance, the feminist resurgence of the 1970s and feminist dramatic theory. A detailed chronology and illustrations enhance the volume, which also includes bibliographical essays on recent criticism and on African-American women playwrights before 1930.
Eight plays written during the twentieth century by such women as Lillian Hellman, Doris Lessing, and Clare Boothe focus on the problems and struggles of women
Richard Wright's dramatic imagination guided the creation of his masterpieces Native Son and Black Boy and helped shape Wright's long-overlooked writing for theater and other performative mediums. Drawing on decades of research and interviews with Wright's family and Wright scholars, Bruce Allen Dick uncovers the theatrical influence on Wright's oeuvre--from his 1930s boxing journalism to his unpublished one-acts on returning Black GIs in WWII to his unproduced pageant honoring Vladimir Lenin. Wright maintained rewarding associations with playwrights, writers, and actors such as Langston Hughes, Theodore Ward, Paul Robeson, and Lillian Hellman, and took particular inspiration from French literary figures like Jean-Paul Sartre. Dick's analysis also illuminates Wright's direct involvement with theater and film, including the performative aspects of his travel writings; the Orson Welles-directed Native Son on Broadway; his acting debut in Native Son's first film version; and his play "Da
