Chapter 7: Post World War II European/Absurdist/American Drama (1940-1960)

By lilligilliam

  • Oklahoma

    Oklahoma
    Created by Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein II. This musical is created to focus on love and rivalry at the turn of the 20th century in Western Indian Territory. This Pulitzer Prize winning musical was the "first musical to feature a two person opening". (Brockett, Ball, Fleming, Carlson)

  • Jean-Paul Sartre

    Jean-Paul Sartre
    Developed the writing style that denies the existence of God and verifiable moral codes. The style shows people are free because no one can prove a standard to live by and people should think and act on their own values and not what they are told. (Brockett, Ball, Fleming, Carlson)

  • All My Sons

    All My Sons
    Written by Arthur Miller. This play begins in a small town after WWII and is set around the Keller family. After one Keller son does not return from the war due to a plane crash the town wonders if the issue came from the defective plane parts used in the Keller's airplane manufacturing plant. (Schlegel) Miller likes to have his audience focus on the moral choices of characters.

  • The Berliner Ensemble

    The Berliner Ensemble
    Created by Bertolt Brecht and his wife Helene Weigel to put a focus on socially conscious plays which helped spread the Brechtian approach. (Brockett, Ball, Fleming, Carlson)

  • Absurdist

    Absurdist
    Critic Martin Esslin created Absurdist based upon German ideas by Sartre and Camus that making rational and meaningful choices is impossible in an irrational world. (Brockett, Ball, Fleming, Carlson)

  • The Crucible

    The Crucible
    Written by Arthur Miller. Set in 1692 during the Salem witch trials it focus's on the desire for conformity inspired by Senator Joseph McCarthy's communist allegations. (Brockett, Ball, Fleming, Carlson)

  • Waiting for Gadot

    Waiting for Gadot
    Written by Samuel Beckett. This play is about two men who sit and wait for an individual they have never met before or seen named Gadot. As they wait, both men discuss and realize there is no meaning behind their existence (Frederickson). This play gave Samuel Beckett and absurdist international recognition and generated additional plays to be created focusing on loneliness, alienation, codependency and lack of objective meaning.(Brockett, Ball, Fleming, Carlson)

  • Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

    Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
    Written by Tennesse Williams. This play focuses on Big Daddy, the family patriarch, at his 65th birthday celebration on the family's wealthy southern plantation. (Cao) The focus turns towards how Big Daddy's inheritance will be split between his sons as we view the lying and deception to oneself and others.

  • The Visit

    The Visit
    Written by Friedrich Duerrenmatt. This play is set around a women returning after 45 years to her hometown to get revenge on a man that betrayed her. (Diego)

  • Bierdman and the Firebugs

    Bierdman and the Firebugs
    Written by Max Fritsch. The play was written to make the audience think about how moral citizens can be taken in by evil. Set after WWII and as a metaphor for Communism and Nazism, it shows how a fictious town that is currently under attack take individuals in and how destruction follows. (Gabrish)