Playwrights

Eugene O'Neill, (October 16, 1888 – November 27, 1953)
The Hairy Ape 1922
The Iceman Cometh written 1939, published 1940, first performed 1946
Long Day's Journey into Night written 1941, first performed 1956 - Pulitzer Prize 1957
Anna Christie (Pulitzer Prize 1922), Desire Under the Elms (1924), Strange Interlude (Pulitzer Prize 1928), Mourning Becomes Electra (1931)
Ah, Wilderness 1933,


George Michael Cohan (1878 –1942),

George Abbott 1887–1995


T.S. Eliot (1888 –1965)
• Sweeney Agonistes (published in 1926, first performed in 1934)
• The Rock (1934)
• Murder in the Cathedral (1935)
• The Family Reunion (1939)
• The Cocktail Party (1949)
• The Confidential Clerk (1953)
• The Elder Statesman (first performed in 1958, published in 1959)

Antonin Artaud, 1896 – 4 March 1948

Thornton Wilder, 1897 – December 7, 1975
Our Town (1938) — won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama[2]
The Skin of Our Teeth (1942) — won the Pulitzer Prize[2]


Bertolt Brecht (1898 – 14 August 1956)
The Threepenny Opera 1928/1928
Mother Courage 1938–39/1941)

Sir Noel Coward, 1899 – 26 March 1973)
Hay Fever, (1925),
Private Lives, (1930
Design for Living, (1933),
Present Laughter (1939),
Blithe Spirit, (1941),


Jean-Paul Sartre 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980)
The Flies (1943)

Samuel Beckett (13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989)
Human Wishes (c. 1936; published 1984)
Eleutheria (1940s; published 1995)
Waiting for Godot (1953)
Act Without Words I (1956)
Act Without Words II (1956)
Endgame (1957)
Krapp's Last Tape (1958)
Rough for Theatre I (late 1950s)
Rough for Theatre II (late 1950s)
Happy Days (1961)
Play (1963)
Come and Go (1965)
Breath (1969)
Not I (1972)
That Time (1975)
Footfalls (1975)
Neither (1977) (An "opera", music by Morton Feldman)
A Piece of Monologue (1980)
Rockaby (1981)
Ohio Impromptu (1981)
Catastrophe (1982)
What Where (1983)

Eugène Ionesco 1909 – 28 March 1994)
The Chairs 1952
Rhinoceros 1959

Jean Anouilh (1910 – 3 October 1987)
Antigone (1943)

Jean Genet French: [ʒɑ̃ ʒənɛ]; December 19, 1910 – April 15, 1986)
The Maids (1947)


Tennessee Williams, (March 26, 1911 – February 25, 1983)
• The Glass Menagerie (1944)
• A Streetcar Named Desire (1947)
• Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955)
Jerome Lawrence (July 14, 1915 – February 29, 2004) and Robert E.Lee (October 15, 1918 – July 8, 1994)
Inherit the Wind 1955

Arthur Miller (October 17, 1915 – February 10, 2005)
All My Sons (1947),
Death of a Salesman (1949),
The Crucible (1953)
A View from the Bridge (one-act, 1955; revised two-act, 1956



Sandy Wilson 1924.
The Boy Friend 1953

Friedrich Dürrenmatt, (5 January 1921 – 14 December 1990)

Neal Simon 1927
• Barefoot in the Park (1963)
• The Odd Couple (1965)
• Sweet Charity (1966)
• The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1971)
• The Sunshine Boys (1972)
• Brighton Beach Memoirs (1983)
• Biloxi Blues (1985)
• Lost in Yonkers (1991)
• The Goodbye Girl (1993)


Edward Albee, 1928
The Zoo Story (1958),
The Sandbox (1959),
The American Dream (1960)
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962)
The Goat or Who is Sylvia? (2002)

Lorraine Hansberry (May 19, 1930[1] – January 12, 1965)
A Raisin in the Sun 1959

Harold Pinter 1930 – 24 December 2008)
The Birthday Party (1957),
The Dumb Waiter (1959),
The Homecoming (1964),
Betrayal (1978),


Sir Arnold Wesker, 1932

Michael Frayn, 1933)

Steven Berkoff, 1937)

Tom Stoppard, 1937)
Arcadia 1993
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead 1966


Caryl Churchill 1938)
Cloud 9 (1979)

Sam Shepard 1943
True West 1980
Fool For Love 1983


August Wilson, (April 27, 1945 – October 2, 2005)
Fences 1987) - Pulitzer Prize[6]
The Piano Lesson (1990) - Pulitzer Prize[6]

David Hare, (born 1947),

David Mamet, (1947)
Glengarry Glen Ross 1984
Oleanna 1992

John Patrick Shanley 1950 - Doubt: A Parable (2004)