Author Description

Offers close textual readings of plays by American and British 20th century playwrights—both canonical and some that fall outside the mainstream—looking at how whiteness as an identity is created onstage, and how this has changed historically. Includes discussions of G.B. Shaw’s Captain Brassbound’s Conversion, W. Somerset Maugham’s The Explorer, W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood’s The Ascent of F6, Eugene O’Neill’s The Hairy Ape, Langston Hughes’ Mulatto, Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes, Bridget Boland’s The Cockpit, T.S. Eliot’s The Cocktail Party, John Osborne’s The Entertainer, Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh, Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, Arthur Miller’s A View From the Bridge, Edward Albee’s The American Dream, Amiri Baraka’s Dutchman, David Rabe’s Sticks and Bones, Adrienne Kennedy’s A Movie Star Has to Star in Black and White, Edward Bond’s Early Morning, John Arden’s and Margarette D’Arcy’s The Island of the Mighty, Caryl Churchill’s Cloud Nine, Wendy Wasserstein’s The Heidi Chronicles, Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, Suzan-Lori Parks’ The America Play, Philip Osment’s This Island’s Mine, Michael Ellis’ Chameleon, and David Hare’s The Absence of War. – from publisher information.