This is a comprehensive survey of modern American drama beginning with its antecedents in Victorian melodrama through to the present. The author discusses the work and the achievement of more than 70 playwrights, from Eugene O'Neill to Susan-lori Parks - from the golden era of Broadway to the rise of Off-Broadway and regional theatre. He shows how world theatre influenced the American stage, and how the views of American dramatists reflected the great American social movements of their times. In addition, he describes the contributions of the early Experimental theatre, the Federal Theatre of the 1930s, African American, feminist, and gay and lesbian drama - and the joyous trends and triumphs of American musical theatre.