This critical exploration of modern drama begins with Büchner and Ibsen and then discusses the major playwrights who have shaped modern theater. A new introduction by the author assesses developments of recent years.

'The actual facts are so simple. I love you. You love me. You love Otto. I love Otto. Otto loves you. Otto loves me. There now! Start to unravel from there.' Design for Living is a wickedly witty dark romantic comedy by Noel Coward. Initially banned in the UK, this provocative play portrays three amoral, glib and stylish characters and their hopelessly inescapable, if also unconventional, emotional entanglement. From 1930s bohemian Paris to the dizzying heights of Manhattan society, a tempestuous love triangle unravels between a vivacious interior designer, Gilda, playwright Leo and artist Otto - three people unashamedly and passionately in love with each other. They are trapped in what Coward called 'a three-sided erotic hodge podge.' With Coward's trademark piquant style, this lively, funny but also atypical play looks at dazzling, egotistical creatures and their self-destructive dependence on each other. Exploring themes of bisexuality, celebrity, success and self-obsession, Design for Living is a stylish and scandalous comedy.

Here are six plays that stand as landmarks of the modern drama: Chekhov’s THREE SISTERS repeats, in terms of a handful of people, the spasms of a dying society. Isben’s THE MASTER BUILDER is the tragedy of the modern romantic, caught between desire and reality. Shaw’s MRS. WARREN’S PROFESSION shocked England and America; this play was the first honest attempt in our era to deal with prostitution. O’Casey’s RED ROSES FOR ME is about a Protestant worker of Dublin who is a symbol of the ravaging conflicts in Ireland—and in man. Williams’s THE GLASS MENAGERIE is a tender, despairing portrait of two women, one lost in the past, the other in herself. Miller’s ALL MY SONS is a biting though compassionate, indictment of success through moral betrayal. We call these plays “modern.” But the they are high art, and are written with devotion to truth, and those two qualities have already made them timeless.

At an elite East Coast university, an ambitious young black student and her esteemed white professor meet to discuss a paper the college junior is writing about the American Revolution. They're both liberal. They're both women. They're both brilliant. But very quickly, discussions of grammar and Google turn to race and reputation, and before they know it, they're in dangerous territory neither of them had foreseen – and facing stunning implications that can't be undone.

The intelligent, intuitive, indomitable, large, black, American male actor explores Shakespeare, race, and America ... not necessarily in that order. Keith Hamilton Cobb embarks on a poetic exploration that examines the experience and perspective of black men in America through the metaphor of Shakespeare's character Othello, offering up a host of insights that are by turns introspective and indicting, difficult and deeply moving. American Moor is a play about race in America, but it is also a play about who gets to make art, who gets to play Shakespeare, about whose lives and perspectives matter, about actors and acting, and about the nature of unadulterated love. American Moor has been seen across America, including a successful run off-Broadway in 2019. This edition features an introduction by Professor Kim F. Hall, Barnard College.

It's like being at a crossroads - a point of absolute, unequivocal change. It makes the blood rush. Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, 1833. Edmund Kean, the greatest actor of his generation, has collapsed on stage whilst playing Othello. A young black American actor has been asked to take over the role. But as the public riot in the streets over the abolition of slavery, how will the cast, critics and audience react to the revolution taking place in the theatre? Lolita Chakrabarti's play creates imagined experiences based on the little-known, but true, story of Ira Aldridge, an African-American actor who, in the nineteenth century, built an incredible reputation on the stages of London and Europe. Red Velvet received its world premiere at the Tricycle Theatre, London, on 11 October 2012, starring Adrian Lester as Ira Aldridge. It was revived at the Tricycle Theatre on 23 January 2014, before transferring to St Ann's Warehouse, New York, on 25 March 2014. This second edition includes the revisions made to the script for the 2014 revival of the play. It also features contextual articles by Lolita Chakrabarti about the real Ira Aldridge, and a piece by Professor Ayanna Thompson about the significance of Aldridge's erasure from standard theatre history and the importance of the play in this regard.

The first book-length study of the notion of place and its implications in modern drama