Theater HistoryAMERICAN THEATER HISTORY

American Non-Musical TheatreFirst original theater, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, first staged in 1952.Eugene O’Neill / Long Day’s Journey into Night , presents a depressing and horrifying picture of a wealthy family in which one son is suffering from tuberculosis, and the father and other son are drunks. The play leaves its audiences drained, partly because it is so powerful and partly because it is about O’Neil’s own family, he being the son with tuberculosis.

Non-Musical cont. Little Foxes, a powerful drama about Southern corruption by our most celebrated woman dramatist, Lillian Hellman.

Our Town by Thornton Wilder

Arsenic and Old Lace by Joseph Keller

Life with Father by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse

Non-Musical cont.The Glass Menagerie, A Street Car Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee WilliamsAll my Sons, Death of a Salesman, The Crucible, and a View from the Bridge by Arthur Miller

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? By Edward Albee

Sam Shepherd Lanford Wilson David Rabe

Non-Musical cont. (3)Neil Simon the biggest money maker of all time and certainty on of the funniest writers in all theatre history. Barefoot in the Park, The Odd Couple, and the Goodbye Girl

Woody Allen

Musical TheaterGreat Collaborators: Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein also knows as Rodgers and Hammerstein.

Starts off Musical with Oklahoma! In 1944. They also collaborated on such hits as The King and I, The Sound of Music, South Pacific, and Carousel.

Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Lowe also know as Learner and Lowe. Their greatest hits are Brigadoon, My Fair Lady, and Camelot.

Famous Contemporaries of the Great Collaborators Stephen Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein / Westside Story

Meredith Wilson / The Music Man

Highlights of the 1960’s Hello Dolly! The Fantasticks Fiddler on the Roof

The New MuscialsAndrew Lloyd Webber / Cats, Joseph’s Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat, Phantom of the OperaClaude-Michel Schonberg, Alain Boublil, and Herbert Kretzmer / Les MiserablesEdward Kleban / A Chorus LineStephen Sondheim / A Funny thing happened on the way to the forum, Sweeney Todd, Into the Woods , and West-side story

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