American Playwriting and the Anti-Political Prejudice

Twenty years after Tony Kushner's influential Angels in America seemed to declare a revitalized potency for the popular political play, there is a "No Politics" prejudice undermining US theatre production and writing. The prejudice contributes to a crisis of political representation that can be seen in close readings of recent works by America's foremost dramatists, including David Mamet, Sam Shepard, Arthur Miller, and Wendy Wasserstein. This book explores the largely unrecognized cultural patterns that discourage political playwriting on the contemporary American stage.