Paula Vogel has reaped success from risk, taking on controversial subjects such as AIDS (notably in 'The Baltimore Waltz,' for which she won an Obie in 1992), gay parenting, pornography, and prostitution. It seems unlikely, but it was her most controversial subject matter that brought her the most ma

Contemporary plays, Feminist, Feminist theater, Gay/lesbian theater, Intimate, Layered, Political, Queer, Self-reflection, Sophisticated, Witty

From a small town in Sicily called (prophetically?) Chaos, there emerged one of the comic geniuses of modern European drama. Luigi Pirandello was always ahead of his time, scandalizing hoi polloi with ultra-Modernist experiments in structure, narrative, and staging. The grandfather of the absurd '- I

Absurd, Anxiety, Flux, Layered, Theater of the grotesque (italy)

Playwright, professor, and Performance artist Anna Deveare Smith grounds her avant-garde theater in the infinitely strange world of reality. "I look for the poem that the person is," Smith says of the real-people inspirations for her dramatic characters. Instead of creating intricate backgrounds for

Collage, Huge, Layered, Open-ended, Political, Polychromatic, Sincere, Social protest, Solo performance