MODERN THEATER TEXTS (1836-1995)
EVERY EDUCATED PROFESSIONAL ACTOR SHOULD HAVE READ
(one text per author)
Woyzeck (Georg Buchner, 1836/7)
An Enemy of the People
(Henrik Ibsen, 1882; Arthur Miller adaptation, 1950)
Miss Julie (August Strindberg, 1888)
Salome (Oscar Wilde, 1891)
Lulu (Frank Wedekind, 1896; Eric Bently translation “The First Lulu”)
Reigen [aka, La Ronde, Hands-Around](Arthur Schnitzler, 1896-7)
Ubu Roi (Alfred Jarry, 1896)
Cyrano de Bergerac (Edmond Rostand, 1897)
Uncle Vanya (Anton Chekhov, 1899)
The Lower Depths (Maxim Gorki, 1902)
Elektra (Hugo von Hofmannsthal, after Sophocles, 1904)
Major Barbara (George Bernard Shaw, 1905)
The Break of Noon (Paul Claudel, 1906)
The Playboy of the Western World (John Millington Synge, 1907)
Trifles (Susan Glaspell, 1916)
Six Characters In Search of An Author (Luigi Pirandello, 1921)
R. U. R. (Karl Capek, 1923)
Divine Words (Ramon Maria del Valle-Inclan, 1924)
A Crime in a Mad House (Andre de Lorde & Alfred Binet, 1925)
Orpheus (Jean Cocteau, 1926)
Four Saints In Three Acts (Gertrude Stein, 1927)
The Constant Wife (W. Somerset Maugham, 1927)
Journey's End (R.C. Sherriff, 1929)
The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (Bertolt Brecht, 1930)
Design for Living (Noel Coward, 1932)
Blood Wedding (Federico Garcia Lorca, 1933)
Dead End (Sidney Kingsley, 1935)
The Women (Clare Boothe Luce, 1936)
You Can't Take It With You (Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman, 1936)
Our Town (Thornton Wilder, 1938)
The Little Foxes (Lillian Hellman, 1939)
The Time of Your Life (William Saroyan, 1939)
Arsenic and Old Lace (Joseph Kesselring, 1941)
Long Day's Journey Into Night (Eugene O'Neil, 1942/1956)
Corruption in the Palace of Justice (Ugo Betti, 1944)
No Exit (Jean-Paul Sartre, 1944)
The Madwoman of Chaillot (Jean Giraudoux, 1945-6)
A Streetcar Named Desire (Tennessee Williams, 1947)
The Maids (Jean Genet, 1954)
The Visit (of the Old Lady) (Friedrich Duerrenmatt, 1956)
Endgame (Samuel Beckett, 1957)
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Edward Albee, 1961-2)
Dutchman (Amiri Baraka writing as LeRoi Jones, 1964)
Entertaining Mr. Sloan (Joe Orton, 1964)
The Boys In The Band (Mart Crowley, 1968)
The Tooth of Crime (Sam Shepard, 1972)
Equus (Peter Shaffer, 1973)
The Hot L Baltimore (Lanford Wilson, 1973)
Death and the King's Horseman (Wole Soyinka, 1976)
Hamletmachine (Heiner Muller, 1977)
Betrayal (Harold Pinter, 1978)
Cloud Nine (Carol Churchill, 1979)
Glengary Glen Ross (David Mamet, 1984)
The Mystery of Irma Vep (Charles Ludlam, 1984)
Aunt Dan and Lemon (Wallace Shawn, 1985)
Fences (August Wilson, 1985)
Les Liaisons Dangereuses (Christopher Hampton, 1985)
The Normal Heart (Larry Kramer, 1986)
M. Butterfly (David Henry Hwang, 1988)
Angels In America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes [Part I: Millennium Approaches; Part II: Perestroika] (Tony Kushner, 1991-2)
Arcadia (Tom Stoppard, 1993)
Blasted (Sarah Kane, 1995)Back to the Main Page