American Drama articles

Recent articles from American Drama

"Quite a moon!": the archetypal feminine in Our Town.
June 22, 2007... Near the end of Act I in Our Town, Wilder enumerates different characters' casual reactions to the moon or moonlight, (1) establishing "a mood or feeling which the audience is nearly powerless to resist" (Haberman 71). The same irresistibility characterizes the entire play, which, despite its...

Real Women Have Curves: a feminist narrative of upward mobility.
June 22, 2007... The film Real Women Have Curves, directed by Patricia Cardoso and starring America Ferrera, was generally well-reviewed and achieved modest box-office success for HBO Films in 2002. What many may not know is that the film is based on Mexican-American playwright Josefina Lopez's play by the...

Arthur Miller's sojourn in the heartland.
June 22, 2007... The history of midwestern drama is one of identity masking and regional cross-fertilization. Quintessentially midwestern playwrights like Susan Glaspell and William Inge made their way East to pursue theatrical opportunities. In Glaspell's case, despite a staunch loyalty to her home region,...

"Moments" the fade, love that abides in Tina Howe's Painting Churches.
June 22, 2007... Just as much as other Tina Howe plays, Painting Churches, from beginning to end, echoes the themes of a novelist Virginia Woolf, of whom Howe has long declared herself an admirer (Barlow 171). In fact, in Painting Churches, Howe expands Woolfian themes considerably by making Woolfian metaphor...

Rationalizing the "decentered" white male in Neil Simon's The Prisoner of Second Avenue.
June 22, 2007... First presented at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre in November 1971, Neil Simon's The Prisoner of Second Avenue articulates the rage felt by white men as a result of the liberation movements that took place in the sixties. Through Mel Edison, Simon laments the changes brought about by the women's...