Contemporary Playwrights
While ancient Greek playwrights addressed large abstract political forces, such as the injustices of authority and tyranny (within a framework of gods, demi-gods, and those of "noble birth"), and social issues mainly through comedy, contemporary playwrights often make skillful use of drama to take on important causes, challenging their audiences to see beyond the stage stories and reflect on their own lives and the world around them.
Arthur Miller
Arthur Miller (1915-2005) used his plays to express criticism of American political and social issues in the mid-twentieth century, from his anti-McCarthyism parable in The Crucible (1953) to the intangibility of the American dream in Death of a Salesman (1949). Both The Crucible and Death of a Salesman demonstrate an appreciation of basic themes, conventions, and structure of Greek tragedy, most notably the idea of a "curse" on the land and the protagonist's downfall brought on by his own hubris followed by redemption through becoming self-aware—but the mirroring is preserved in each within the framework of the life of an "everyman."
Lorraine Hansberry
Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965) was deeply committed to the struggle for African-American civil rights. Her dramatic theme resonates Ancient Greek dramas' stand against political and social injustice, but in her writing the them is introduced through a realistic portrayal of black culture within white America. A Raisin in the Sun (1959) was inspired by Hansberry's family's legal battle against racially segregated housing laws in Chicago during her childhood and addressed many issues important in the 1950s, including poverty, feminism, discrimination, racial identity, and tension within the black community over how to respond to an oppressive white community.
Tennessee Williams
Many of the plays written by Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) rejected the artificial spectacle of the stage with an unprecedented direct portrayal of the human condition. Williams' characters dealt with violence, rape, incest, alcoholism, and other secret traumas that could haunt everyday life. The pathos in A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) reflects much of the drama of Williams' life—alcoholism, depression, thwarted desire, loneliness, and insanity. Threads running throughout Williams' plays are reminiscent of narrative themes in some Greek tragedies—for example the "insanity" of the character Io or the desperation of Prometheus in Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound.
