Rabindrath Tagore was the first modern Indian dramatist to achieve a world wide reputation, receiving the
Nobel Prize for literature in
1913.
Arthur miller Perhaps the most intelligent of 20th century American playwrights, Miller is best known for his
Death of a Salesman.
First preformed in
1949 and since produced to great acclaim worldwide, the play successfully combines realism and symbolic expression in a study of personnel wealth versus personal value.
Between the 1970s-2000 August Wilson's commitment to portraying African Americans realistically and sensitively and to “raise consciousness through theatre, ”has produced some of the finest plays of the contemporary theatre”, including Black Bottom , Fences , Joe turners com and go , and so on. Each of these plays is set in a different decade ,and taken together ,to form a cycle presenting African American life in the 20th centaury.
In 1904 Irish poet W.B Yeats and his friend, playwright and folklorist lady Augusta
Gregory, co-founded the
Abbey theatre in Dublin to present woks by Irish playwrights on Irish slejects
In the 1920s and 30s reacting against what they saw as overemphasis on artistic illusion and aesthetic emotion in theatre, two
Germans, director Erwin Piscator and playwright Bertolt Brecht, went out to create a new style
“epic theatre” or “
Theater of alienation,” that would serve a Marxist social purpose of educating audiences.
Edward Bond was challenged by the government for unlawful performances in the mid
1960s,Bond’s savagely realist plays Saved and
Early Morning created a debate ultimately led to the end of censorship, which had plagued
Shakespeare's days.
Bond’s plays always challenged the political status quo in Britain.
In the 1990s creating political theatre in the tradition of
Bertolt Brecht,
British playwright
Caryl Churchill writes plays with feminist and socialist themes, such as Top
Girls , which feature famous women from the past who defied conventions.

 Melodrama was the main form of theatre during the
19 th century. The main characteristics of melodrama were:
 The use of music to raise emotions
 Morals were much simpler
 Episodic; in series
 2-5 acts never more than 5
 The use of special effects

 Gas lightening made it possible to darken theatre and light the stage
 Costumes became historically accurate
 Scenery became elaborate and realistic
 During one of the plays of Hannibal, live elephants rumbled across the stage

Widowers' Houses
Catiline
Beyond the Horizon

 In what year did W.B Yeats and Augusta Gregory cofounded the Abbey theatre?
 Who was Rabindranath Tagore?
 What was one of Eugene O'Neil's plays?

 www.reuber-norwegen.de/IbsenHenry.jpg
 www.eohoppe.com/.../images/16076-B.jpg
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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chdmuseum.nic.in/art_gallery/images/rabindran.
 www.bbc.co.uk/.../images/w_b_yeats.jpg