Postwar American Plays

Landmark American plays first staged on Broadway in the late 1940s. A play belongs here when the cited article names an American playwright and a Broadway premiere. Both plays reached the stage within a few years of each other and became staples of the American theatre. They deal with the failure of the American dream, family pressure and the fragile hold of the characters on reality, and both are regularly revived and taught in schools and colleges. It excludes plays by European writers and plays first staged at other times.