Wary friend of Existentialism and gentle foe of nature's illusions, Irish novelist, poet, and playwright Samuel Beckett is one of the foremost artists of the twentieth century, and certainly one of the most influential. Awarded the Nobel Prize in 1969 against his more modest wishes, Beckett specializ

Absurd, Depressive, Existentialist literature, Minimal, Modernist literature, Repetition, Repetitive, Theater of the absurd

Edward Albee calls his work "an examination of the American Scene, an attack on the substitution of artificial for real values in our society, a condemnation of complacency, cruelty, and emasculation and vacuity, a stand against the fiction that everything in this slipping land of ours is peachy-keen

Absurd, Deconstructive, Minimal, Neurotic, Off-broadway, Open-ended, Social protest, Theater of the absurd

America's premier poet of twentieth-century theater dominated the stage for almost 20 years. Despite his fall into ignominy and artistic disfavor in the final years of his career, Tennessee Williams is still considered one of the world's finest dramatists. Together with Arthur Miller, Williams pionee

Agitated, Anxiety, Death, Homoerotic, Melancholy, Neurotic, Off-broadway, Post-war theater, Sexy, Southern gothic

Born Konstantin Sergeyevich Alekseyev in Moscow, actor, director, and producer Konstantin Stanislavski was nothing less than the father of modern acting theory. His theories facilitated the evolution of theatrical performance from hyperventilating melodrama to realistic depictions of human behavior.

Psychological, Realist theater