ms (1911-1983) , Arthur Miller (1915-2005), and Edward Albee (b.1928). s Picnic (1953), Bus Stop (1955), and The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1957) show greater technical strength than originality of theme. At his best Inge is a master of dialogue, as he presents modern man s fear and trembling and self-deceits. So too is Edward Albee, whose savage dialogues of academic intellectuals in Who s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962) frighteningly balance the serenity of Wilder s Our Town as a rendering of life in America, Albee s The Zoo Story ( 1959) and The American Dream (1961) were earlier studies of mankind frustrated by the imposition of an ideal. The ambitious Tiny Alice (1964) was a frustration for both characters and audience.the four mentioned above, Williams and Miller stand out. The post-World War II years brought Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams to prominence in American drama: Although other playwrights, such as William Inge, have contributed striking and effective plays, Miller and Williams remain the dominant figures of the second half of the century. They represent the two principal movements in modern American drama: realism and realism combined with an attempt at something more imaginative. From the beginning, American playwrights have tried to break away from realism or to blend it with more poetic expression, as in Miller s Death of a Salesman (1949), Williams s The Glass Menagerie (1944), and Thornton Wilder s Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth.Hellman became one of America s leading playwrights and an outstanding master of the social and psychological play in the modern American theatre.Hellman was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. At the age of five her parents moved to New York. However, she was to return to New Orleans periodically. She preferred life in that Southern city.studied at New York University for three years, but left the university before taking a degree. Later she studied for a short time at Columbia University.the age of nineteen she went to work for a publishing firm. She tried her hand at book reviews and short stories and for a while wrote theatrical reviews. She also spent some time as a play-reader in Hollywood.1932 she returned to New York where she worked as a play-reader for Herman Shumlin, who was later to produce and direct her first five plays. In 1934 she launched on her career as a playwright with The Children s Hour. Over the next three decades came a. succession of plays, among them The Little Foxes (1939), Watch on the Rhine (1941), Another Part of the Forest (1947), The Autumn Garden (1951) and Toys in the Attic (I960). Lillian Hellman was the author of some adaptations: My Mother, My Father and Me (1936), Montserrat (1950) and The Lark (1956). She also wrote an operette Candide (1957), and The Big Knockover: stories and short novels by Dashie Hammett (1966). Wrote an autobiography called Scoundrel Time.Hellman has twice been awarded the New York Drama Critic s Circle Prize for the best play of the year - Watch on the Rhine and Toys in the Attic. In 1972 an edition of all her works for the theatre was published as The Collected Plays. s memoirs An Unfinished Woman (1969) was the winner of the National Book Award. She also received the Gold Medal for Drama from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and other awards, and also honorary degrees from various colleges and universities, in recent years Hellman has been teaching at the University of California and at Hunter College.Hellman has devoted all her life to literature and the theatre. She reviewed books and plays for publishing houses (1927-1930), worked as a critic for the newspaper Herald Tribune (1925-1928) and wrote some scripts for Hollywood. She was the author of a film script Northern Star, which is about a Soviet kolkhoz during the Great Patriotic War.enriched the traditions of the American progressive theatre and the world theatre - the traditions of Ibsen, Chekhov, Gorky.of Lillian Hellman s plays, The Little Foxes and The Autumn Garden, are particularly interesting.this play Hellman deals with human relations in a society, based upon money. The following epigraph precedes the play: Take from us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines: for our vines have tender grapes. The title of the play symbolizes the playwright s thesis that greed creates havoc among, humans. The tender grapes are the gen...
