This book explores the development of contemporary theatre in the United
States in its historical, political and theoretical dimensions. It
focuses on representative plays and performance texts that experiment
with form and content, discussing influential playwrights and
performance artists such as Tennessee Williams, Adrienne Kennedy, Sam
Shepard, Tony Kushner, Charles Ludlum, Anna Deavere Smith, Karen Finley
and Will Power, alongside avant-garde theatre groups.
Saddik traces the development of contemporary drama since 1945, and
discusses the cross-cultural impact of postwar British and European
innovations on American theatre from the 1950s to the present day in
order to examine the performance of American identity. She argues that
contemporary American theatre is primarily a postmodern drama of
inclusion and diversity that destabilizes the notion of fixed identity
and questions the nature of reality.
