List of playwrights from the United States
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This is a list of playwright
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
s from the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
.
18th century
- Hugh Henry BrackenridgeHugh Henry BrackenridgeHugh Henry Brackenridge was an American writer, lawyer, judge, and justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.A frontier citizen in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, he founded both the Pittsburgh Academy, now the University of Pittsburgh, and the Pittsburgh Gazette, still operating today as the...
- William DunlapWilliam DunlapWilliam Dunlap was a pioneer of the American theater. He was a producer, playwright, and actor, as well as a historian. He managed two of New York's earliest and most prominent theaters, the John Street Theatre and the Park Theatre...
- Robert Munford
- Royall TylerRoyall TylerRoyall Tyler , American jurist and playwright who wrote The Contrast in 1787 and published The Algerine Captive in 1797. He wrote several legal tracts, six plays, a musical drama, two long poems, a semifictional travel narrative, The Yankey in London , and essays...
- Mercy Otis WarrenMercy Otis WarrenMercy Otis Warren was a political writer and propagandist of the American Revolution. In the eighteenth century, topics such as politics and war were thought to be the province of men. Few women had the education or training to write about these subjects. Warren was the exception...
19th century
- Benjamin A. Baker
- Nathaniel H. Bannister
- James Nelson BarkerJames Nelson BarkerJames Nelson Barker was an American soldier, playwright, and politician. He rose to major in the army during the War of 1812, wrote ten plays, and served as mayor of Philadelphia.-Life:...
- Sidney Cole Bateman
- David BelascoDavid BelascoDavid Belasco was an American theatrical producer, impresario, director and playwright.-Biography:Born in San Francisco, California, where his Sephardic Jewish parents had moved from London, England, during the Gold Rush, he began working in a San Francisco theatre doing a variety of routine jobs,...
- Robert Montgomery BirdRobert Montgomery BirdRobert Montgomery Bird was an American novelist, playwright, and physician.-Background:Bird was born in New Castle, Delaware on February 5, 1806. After attending the New Castle Academy and Germantown Academy, he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1824...
- George Henry BokerGeorge Henry BokerGeorge Henry Boker was an American poet, playwright, and diplomat.-Youth:Boker was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His father was Charles S...
- Dion BoucicaultDion BoucicaultDionysius Lardner Boursiquot , commonly known as Dion Boucicault, was an Irish actor and playwright famed for his melodramas. By the later part of the 19th century, Boucicault had become known on both sides of the Atlantic as one of the most successful actor-playwright-managers then in the...
- John BroughamJohn BroughamJohn Brougham was an Irish-American actor and dramatist.-Biography:He was born at Dublin. His father was an amateur painter, and died young. His mother was the daughter of a Huguenot, whom political adversity had forced into exile. John was the eldest of three children...
- Oliver Bell Bunce
- George Washington Parke CustisGeorge Washington Parke CustisGeorge Washington Parke Custis , the step-grandson of United States President George Washington, was a nineteenth-century American writer, orator, and agricultural reformer.-Family:...
- Augustin DalyAugustin DalyJohn Augustin Daly was an American theatrical manager and playwright active in both the US and UK.-Biography:Daly was born in Plymouth, North Carolina and educated at Norfolk, Va...
- Henry C. DeMille
- Elizabeth F. ElletElizabeth F. ElletElizabeth Fries Lummis Ellet was an American writer, historian and poet. She was the first writer to record the lives of women who contributed to the American Revolutionary War....
- Clyde FitchClyde FitchClyde Fitch was an American dramatist.-Biography:Born William Clyde Fitch at Elmira, New York, he wrote over 60 plays, 36 of them original, which varied from social comedies and farces to melodrama and historical dramas.As the only child to live to adulthood, his father, Captain William G...
- William GilletteWilliam GilletteWilliam Hooker Gillette was an American actor, playwright and stage-manager in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who is best remembered today for portraying Sherlock Holmes....
- Archibald C. Gunter
- Edward HarriganEdward HarriganEdward Harrigan was an American actor, playwright, theatre manager, and composer. Harrigan and Tony Hart formed the first famous collaboration in American musical theatre.-Life and career:...
- Bret HarteBret HarteFrancis Bret Harte was an American author and poet, best remembered for his accounts of pioneering life in California.- Life and career :...
- James A. Herne
- Bronson HowardBronson HowardBronson Howard was a well-known American dramatist and son of Detroit mayor Charles Howard. He prepared for college at New Haven, Conn., but instead of entering Yale he turned to Journalism in New York. From 1867 to 1872 he worked on several newspapers, among them the Evening Mail and the Tribune...
- William Dean HowellsWilliam Dean HowellsWilliam Dean Howells was an American realist author and literary critic. Nicknamed "The Dean of American Letters", he was particularly known for his tenure as editor of the Atlantic Monthly as well as his own writings, including the Christmas story "Christmas Every Day" and the novel The Rise of...
- Washington IrvingWashington IrvingWashington Irving was an American author, essayist, biographer and historian of the early 19th century. He was best known for his short stories "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle", both of which appear in his book The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. His historical works...
- Joseph S. Jones
- David D. Lloyd
- Cornelius A. Logan
- Steele MacKayeSteele MacKayeJames Morrison Steele MacKaye was an American playwright, actor, theater manager and inventor. Having acted, written, directed and produced numerous and popular plays and theatrical spectaculars of the day, he became one of the most famous actors and theater producers of his...
- Cornelius MathewsCornelius MathewsCornelius Mathews , was an American writer, best known for his crucial role in the formation of a literary group known as Young America in the late 1830s, with editor Evert Duyckinck and author William Gilmore Simms....
- James J. McCloskey
- Joaquin MillerJoaquin MillerJoaquin Miller was the pen name of the colorful American poet Cincinnatus Heine Miller , nicknamed the "Poet of the Sierras".-Early years and family:...
- Anna Cora MowattAnna Cora MowattAnna Cora Mowatt Ritchie was an author, playwright, public reader, and actress.- Childhood :Anna Cora Ogden was born in Bordeaux, France, March 5, 1819. She was the tenth of fourteen children. Her father was Samuel Gouveneur Ogden , an American merchant...
- Frank Murdock
- John Howard PayneJohn Howard PayneJohn Howard Payne was an American actor, poet, playwright, and author who had most of his theatrical career and success in London. He is today most remembered as the creator of "Home! Sweet Home!", a song he wrote in 1822 that became widely popular in the United States, Great Britain, and the...
- James Pilgrim
- Epes SargentEpes SargentEpes Sargent was an American editor, poet and playwright.-Early life:Epes Sargent was the son of Epes Sargent and Hannah Dane Coffin , and was born in Gloucester, Massachusetts, on September 27, 1813, where his father was a ship master. In 1818 the family moved to Roxbury, Massachusetts...
- Richard Penn SmithRichard Penn SmithRichard Penn Smith was a minor American playwright who is best known for writing a largely fictitious account of events at and leading up to the Battle of the Alamo, which was presented as the work of Davy Crockett....
- John Augustus StoneJohn Augustus StoneJohn Augustus Stone was an American actor, dramatist, and playwright.-Biography:He appeared on the New York stage beginning in 1822....
- Augustus ThomasAugustus ThomasAugustus Thomas was an American playwright, born in St. Louis, Missouri. The son of a doctor, he worked a number of jobs including a page in the 41st Congress, studying law and gaining some practical railway work experience before he turned to journalism and became editor of the Kansas City Mirror...
- Denman ThompsonDenman ThompsonHenry Denman Thompson was an American playwright and theatre actor.Rufus Thompson, a carpenter, and his wife Anne Hathaway Baxter moved in 1831 from West Swanzey, New Hampshire to Girard, Pennsylvania, where their son Henry Denman Thompson was born...
- Edward G.P. Wilkins
- Nathaniel Parker WillisNathaniel Parker WillisNathaniel Parker Willis , also known as N. P. Willis, was an American author, poet and editor who worked with several notable American writers including Edgar Allan Poe and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. He became the highest-paid magazine writer of his day. For a time, he was the employer of former...
- Samuel WoodworthSamuel WoodworthSamuel Woodworth was an American author, literary journalist, playwright, librettist, and poet.-History:...
20th century
- Edward AlbeeEdward AlbeeEdward Franklin Albee III is an American playwright who is best known for The Zoo Story , The Sandbox , Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? , and a rewrite of the screenplay for the unsuccessful musical version of Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's . His works are considered well-crafted, often...
- Franco AmbrizFranco AmbrizFranco Ambriz is a playwright and director. His plays have been produced in New York and Los Angeles. He co-wrote Footsteps In The Dark with the late Iranian director Reza Abdoh for the Los Angeles Festival, artistic director Peter Sellars...
- Jane AndersonJane AndersonJane Anderson is an American actress-turned-award-winning playwright, screenwriter and director. She has written and directed one feature film, The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio and wrote the script for the Nicolas Cage film It Could Happen to You.- Career :Prior to film directing, Anderson...
- Jacob M. AppelJacob M. AppelJacob M. Appel is an American author, bioethicist and social critic. He is best known for his short stories, his work as a playwright, and his writing in the fields of reproductive ethics, organ donation, neuroethics and euthanasia....
- Todd BashTodd BashTodd Bash is an avant-garde playwright from Los Angeles, California.He has written more than twenty works for the theatre, many performed and published, as well as prose, poetry and film projects...
- Douglas Carter BeaneDouglas Carter BeaneDouglas Carter Beane is an American playwright and screenwriter. Born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania and raised in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, Beane now lives in New York...
- Stephen BelberStephen BelberStephen Belber is an American playwright , screenwriter and film director.-Early life:Belber was born in Washington, D.C.. He studied philosophy as an undergraduate at Trinity College in Hartford, CT, and moved to New York at the age of 25. There he unwittingly moved in with a roommate with AIDS,...
- Leo BirinskiLeo BirinskiLeo Birinski was a playwright, screenwriter and director. He worked in Austria-Hungary, Germany and in the United States. As a playwright in Europe he gained his biggest popularity in 1910 – 1917, then he was forgotten. From the 20s to the 40s of the 20th century he worked mainly as a...
- Eric BogosianEric BogosianEric Bogosian is an American actor, playwright, monologist, and novelist of Armenian descent.-Personal life:Bogosian, an Armenian-American, was born in Woburn, Massachusetts, the son of Edwina, a hairdresser and instructor, and Henry Bogosian, an accountant. After graduating from Oberlin College,...
- Miranda Brennan
- Murray Burnett
- Percy Jewett BurrellPercy Jewett BurrellPercy Jewett Burrell was an author and director of historical and civic pageants, or dramas, and was known for his skills in oratory and elocution, . He also taught public speaking and drama, and was known as a "public reciter"...
- Sheila CallaghanSheila CallaghanSheila Callaghan is a New York City-based playwright and screenwriter who emerged from the RAT movement of the 1990s. Her work is considered to be part of the downtown theater scene, and is known for its unusual use of language and narrative structure...
- Linda ChambersLinda Chambers (playwright)Linda Chambers is an American playwright, screenwriter, actress and college instructor living and working in Baltimore, Maryland.-Career:Linda Chambers first began serious writing after becoming involved with Corner Theatre ETC, an experimental theatre located in Baltimore...
- Constance Congdon
- Jorge Ignacio CortiñasJorge Ignacio CortiñasJorge Ignacio Cortiñas is an American playwright. He first studied playwrighting with Octavio Solis, Cherríe Moraga and María Irene Fornés. He received an MFA from Brown University and currently lives in New York.-Plays:...
- Nilo CruzNilo CruzNilo Cruz is an Cuban-American playwright and pedagogue. With his award of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play, Anna in the Tropics, he became the first Latino so honored.-Early years:...
- Steven DietzSteven DietzSteven Dietz is an American playwright whose work is largely performed regionally, i.e. outside of New York City...
- Tom DonaghyTom DonaghyTom Donaghy is a playwright whose work has been produced by major theatre companiesacross the United States, including Atlantic Theater Company, Lincoln Center Theatre, and Playwrights Horizons in New York City, the Goodman Theater in Chicago, the La Jolla Playhouse and South Coast Repertory in...
- Christopher DurangChristopher DurangChristopher Ferdinand Durang is an American playwright known for works of outrageous and often absurd comedy. His work was especially popular in the 1980s.- Life :...
- T. S. EliotT. S. EliotThomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
- Will EnoWill EnoWill Eno is an American playwright based in Brooklyn, New York.His plays include Tragedy: a tragedy, The Flu Season, King: a problem play, Thom Pain , Middletown, Oh, the Humanity and other good intentions and an adaptation of Ibsen's Peer Gynt titled Gnit...
- Don EvansDon EvansDonald Thomas "Don" Evans was a noted African-American playwright, theatre director, actor and educator.-Early life and education:...
- Charles EveredCharles EveredCharles Evered is an American-born playwright, screenwriter and film director. Born in Passaic, New Jersey, Evered grew up in Rutherford, New Jersey, the fifth child of Marie and Charles J. Evered...
- Bob Jude FerranteBob Jude FerranteBob Jude Ferrante is an American playwright and composer from New York City. By his own claim his work is composed solely of comedies, although the serious core at the heart of many of his plays seems to contradict that claim somewhat. He received a B.A...
- Horton FooteHorton FooteAlbert Horton Foote, Jr. was an American playwright and screenwriter, perhaps best known for his Academy Award-winning screenplays for the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird and the 1983 film Tender Mercies, and his notable live television dramas during the Golden Age of Television...
- D. B. GillesD. B. GillesD.B. Gilles is an American screenwriter, playwright, academic, Script Consultant and Writing Coach specializing in screenplays, TV pilots and novels. In 2010 he entered the world of blogging with the introduction of his blog Screenwriters Rehab: For Screenwriters Who Can't Get Their Acts...
- Andrew GlazeAndrew GlazeAndrew Glaze is an American poet, playwright, and novelist. About him, Robert Frost wrote, “I have high hopes for Mr. Glaze”. Although much of Glaze's poetry reflects his coming of age in the South, and eventual return there, he also lived in New York City for 31 years...
- Ain GordonAin Gordon-Life:He began writing and directing for the stage in 1985. He emerged on to the downtown dance/performance scene with four consecutive seasons at Dance Theater Workshop plus performances at Movement Research, The Poetry Project, and Performance Space 122...
- Richard GreenbergRichard GreenbergRichard Greenberg is an American playwright. He is the author of over 25 plays including eight South Coast Repertory world premieres: Our Mother's Brief Affair, The Injured Party, The Violet Hour, Everett Beekin, Hurrah at Last, Three Days of Rain Richard Greenberg (1958–present) is an American...
- David GrimmDavid Grimm (playwright)David Grimm is an American playwright and screenwriter, residing in Brooklyn, New York.-Early years:Grimm was born October 18, 1965, in Oberlin, Ohio, and raised in Israel. In Junior High, David Grimm produced, directed, and starred in an 1890’s melodrama which was presented to the entire Oberlin...
- Jason Grote
- Rinne GroffRinne Groff-Biography:Groff was trained at Yale University and New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, where she currently teaches.A founding member of Elevator Repair Service Theater Company, she has been a part of the writing, staging, and performing of their shows since the company’s inception in...
- Elizabeth Forsythe HaileyElizabeth Forsythe HaileyElizabeth Forsythe Hailey is an American journalist and playwright.-Career:She studied at the Sorbonne in Paris and received her Bachelor's Degree from Hollins College, now Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia in 1960. In the same year she married Oliver Hailey, a playwright and the father of...
- Rob Handel
- Lorraine HansberryLorraine HansberryLorraine Hansberry was an African American playwright and author of political speeches, letters, and essays...
- Moss HartMoss HartMoss Hart was an American playwright and theatre director, best known for his interpretations of musical theater on Broadway.-Early years:...
- Jeffrey HatcherJeffrey HatcherJeffrey Hatcher is a playwright and screenwriter. He wrote the stage play Compleat Female Stage Beauty, which he later adapted into a screenplay, shortened to just Stage Beauty...
- Lillian HellmanLillian HellmanLillian Florence "Lily" Hellman was an American playwright, linked throughout her life with many left-wing causes...
- Glenn HergenhahnGlenn HergenhahnGlenn Hergenhahn is an American playwright. He graduated from The Evergreen State College where he studied Art History and Painting....
- George HermanGeorge Herman (playwright)-Early years and Education:Herman was born in Norfolk, Virginia. He attended a parochial school and High School in Maryland, and then earned a Bachelor's Degree in Philosophy from Loyola College. From 1947 to 1949, Herman also spent three summers at the Boston College School of Expressional Art...
- Michael HollingerMichael HollingerMichael Hollinger is an American playwright who is currently an assistant professor of Theatre at Villanova University and a resident playwright at . He received a Bachelor of Music in viola performance from Oberlin Conservatory in 1984 and a Master of Arts in theatre from Villanova in 1989...
- Tina HoweTina HoweTina Howe is an American playwright. She is the daughter of journalist Quincy Howe and was raised in a literary family...
- Langston HughesLangston HughesJames Mercer Langston Hughes was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist. He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form jazz poetry. Hughes is best known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance...
- David Henry HwangDavid Henry HwangDavid Henry Hwang is an American playwright who has risen to prominence as the preeminent Asian American dramatist in the U.S.He was born in Los Angeles, California and was educated at the Yale School of Drama and Stanford University...
- William IngeWilliam IngeWilliam Motter Inge was an American playwright and novelist, whose works typically feature solitary protagonists encumbered with strained sexual relations. In the early 1950s, he had a string of memorable Broadway productions, and one of these, Picnic, earned him a Pulitzer Prize...
- Len Jenkin
- Arthur M. JollyArthur M. JollyArthur M. Jolly is an American writer.Jolly was born in Lewes, England, the son of Sir Richard Jolly, a development economist, and Lady Alison Jolly, a primatologist...
- George S. KaufmanGeorge S. KaufmanGeorge Simon Kaufman was an American playwright, theatre director and producer, humorist, and drama critic. In addition to comedies and political satire, he wrote several musicals, notably for the Marx Brothers...
- Adrienne KennedyAdrienne KennedyAdrienne Kennedy is an African-American playwright and was a key figure in the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. She is best known for her first major play Funnyhouse of a Negro....
- Stanley KeyesStanley Keyes-Career:Stanley Keyes began his theatre career in Baltimore performing various roles at Theatre Hopkins in the early 1970s. It did not take long for him to become associated with Corner Theatre ETC, an experimental theatre also located in Baltimore, where he continued acting as well as trying his...
- Elizabeth Kinman
- Harry KondoleonHarry KondoleonHarry Kondoleon was a gay American playwright and novelist.He was born on February 26, 1955; and died of AIDS on March 16, 1994, aged 39.He graduated from Hamilton College and the Yale School of Drama...
- Tony KushnerTony KushnerAnthony Robert "Tony" Kushner is an American playwright and screenwriter. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1993 for his play, Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, and co-authored with Eric Roth the screenplay for the 2005 film, Munich.-Life and career:Kushner was born...
- Neil LaButeNeil LaButeNeil N. LaBute is an American film director, screenwriter and playwright.-Early life:LaBute was born in Detroit, Michigan, the son of Marian, a hospital receptionist, and Richard LaBute, a long-haul truck driver. LaBute is of French Canadian, English and Irish ancestry, and was raised in Spokane,...
- Warren LeightWarren LeightWarren Leight is an American playwright, screenwriter, film director and television producer. He is best known for his work on Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Lights Out and the showrunner for In Treatment and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit....
- David Lindsay-AbaireDavid Lindsay-AbaireDavid Lindsay-Abaire is an American playwright and lyricist. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2007 for his play Rabbit Hole, which also earned several Tony Award nominations.-Early life and education:...
- Romulus LinneyRomulus Linney (playwright)Romulus Zachariah Linney IV was an American playwright and professor.-Life and career:Linney was born in Philadelphia, the son of Maitland Clabaugh and Romulus Zachariah Linney III. His great-grandfather was Republican Congressman Romulus Zachariah Linney. Linney was raised in Boone, North...
- Craig LucasCraig LucasCraig Lucas is an American playwright, screenwriter, theatre director, musical actor, and film director.-Biography:...
- Archibald MacLeishArchibald MacLeishArchibald MacLeish was an American poet, writer, and the Librarian of Congress. He is associated with the Modernist school of poetry. He received three Pulitzer Prizes for his work.-Early years:...
- David MametDavid MametDavid Alan Mamet is an American playwright, essayist, screenwriter and film director.Best known as a playwright, Mamet won a Pulitzer Prize and received a Tony nomination for Glengarry Glen Ross . He also received a Tony nomination for Speed-the-Plow . As a screenwriter, he received Oscar...
- Donald MarguliesDonald MarguliesDonald Margulies is an American playwright and a professor of English and Theater Studies at Yale University...
- Charles L. MeeCharles L. MeeCharles L. Mee is an American playwright, historian and author known for his collage-like style of playwriting, which makes use of radical reconstructions of found texts.-Early Life and Early Career:...
- Arthur MillerArthur MillerArthur Asher Miller was an American playwright and essayist. He was a prominent figure in American theatre, writing dramas that include plays such as All My Sons , Death of a Salesman , The Crucible , and A View from the Bridge .Miller was often in the public eye,...
- Ellen McLaughlinEllen McLaughlinEllen McLaughlin is an American playwright and actor for stage and film. Her plays include Days and Nights Within, A Narrow Bed, Infinity's House, Iphigenia and Other Daughters, Tongue of a Bird, The Trojan Women, Helen, The Persians and Oedipus.Producers include: Actors' Theater of Louisville,...
- Scott McMorrowScott McMorrowScott McMorrow is an American playwright and actor. McMorrow's plays have been translated into Italian, and they have been produced extensively throughout the United States, including Off-Off Broadway. His award-winning plays and poetry have been widely anthologized, and McMorrow has published...
- Terrence McNallyTerrence McNallyTerrence McNally is an American playwright who has received four Tony Awards, an Emmy, two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Rockefeller Grant, the Lucille Lortel Award, the Hull-Warriner Award, and a citation from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has been a member of the Council of the...
- Leonard MelfiLeonard MelfiLeonard Melfi is an American playwright and actor whose work has been widely produced for the American stage.-Career:...
- Langdon Mitchell
- Itamar MosesItamar MosesItamar Moses is an American playwright, author, and television writer.Moses grew up in Berkeley, California, earned his bachelor's degree at Yale University, and his Master of Fine Arts degree in dramatic writing from New York University...
- Sean Muir
- Ken Munch
- Josefina NiggliJosefina NiggliJosefina Niggli was a Mexican-born Anglo-American playwright and novelist. Writing about Mexican-American issues in the middle years of the century, before the rise of the Chicano movement, she was the first and, for a time, the only Mexican American writing in English on Mexican themes; her...
- Marsha NormanMarsha NormanMarsha Norman is an American playwright, screenwriter, and novelist. She received the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play night, Mother...
- Joyce Carol OatesJoyce Carol OatesJoyce Carol Oates is an American author. Oates published her first book in 1963 and has since published over fifty novels, as well as many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction...
- Eugene O'NeillEugene O'NeillEugene Gladstone O'Neill was an American playwright and Nobel laureate in Literature. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into American drama techniques of realism earlier associated with Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish...
- Eric OvermyerEric OvermyerEric Overmyer is a writer and producer. He has written and/or produced numerous TV shows, including St. Elsewhere, Homicide: Life on the Street, Law & Order, The Wire, New Amsterdam, and Treme.-Biography:...
- Rochelle OwensRochelle OwensRochelle Bass Owens is an American poet and playwright.-Life:She is the daughter of Maxwell and Molly Bass. A native New Yorker, Owens studied at the New School for Social Research and University of Montreal...
- Suzan-Lori ParksSuzan-Lori ParksSuzan-Lori Parks is an African American playwright and screenwriter. She received the MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant in 2001, and the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play, Topdog/Underdog.-Early years:...
- Gordon PorterfieldGordon PorterfieldGordon Porterfield is an American playwright, novelist, poet and teacher, whose work has been produced for the stage in Baltimore, New York and London.-Career:...
- Craig PospisilCraig PospisilCraig Pospisil is an American playwright, and musical bookwriter. He has written nine full length plays and musicals,, mostly comedies, and more than 40 short plays and musicals.- Biography :...
- Sarah RuhlSarah RuhlSarah Ruhl is an American playwright. She is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship.-Biography:Ruhl was born in Wilmette, Illinois. Originally, she intended to be a poet. However, after she studied under Paula Vogel at Brown University , she was convinced to switch to playwrighting...
- Isabella Russell-IdesIsabella Russell-IdesIsabella Russell-Ides is an American playwright. She received the 2008 Critics Forum Award for her play Coco & Gigi. She has also received critical acclaim for her works, Leonard's Car , Fortune Cookie Smash...
- Ayn RandAyn RandAyn Rand was a Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. She is known for her two best-selling novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and for developing a philosophical system she called Objectivism....
- Jonathan RandJonathan RandJonathan Rand is a playwright born in Jacksonville, Florida. According to the annual survey conducted by the Educational Theatre Association, his short plays are the most produced in North American high schools. As of November 2011, Jonathan Rand's plays have been produced over 5,800 times in all...
- Ronald RibmanRonald RibmanRonald Burt Ribman is an American author, poet and playwright.-Biography:Ribman was born in Sydenham Hospital in New York City to Samuel M. Ribman, a lawyer, and Rosa Ribman. He attended public school in Brooklyn, and graduated P.S. 188 in 1944. Ribman attended Mark Twain Jr. High School,...
- William H. Rinn
- Robert Rome
- Robert SchenkkanRobert SchenkkanRobert Frederic Schenkkan, Jr. is an American playwright, screenwriter, and actor, perhaps most recognizable as the character of Lieutenant Commander Dexter Remmick in Star Trek: The Next Generation...
- John SchneiderJohn Schneider (stage actor)John Schneider is an actor, theatre director, playwright, and musician based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.He was one of the founding members of Theatre X, has appeared in hundreds of the group's productions since 1969, and was its Artistic Director and resident playwright until the group disbanded in 2004...
- John Patrick ShanleyJohn Patrick ShanleyJohn Patrick Shanley is an American playwright, screenwriter, and director. He also contributed articles on the performing arts to The New York Times among other publications.-Life and career:...
- Wallace ShawnWallace ShawnWallace Michael Shawn , sometimes credited as Wally Shawn, is an American stand-up comedian, actor, writer, author, voice artist, and intellectual. His best-known film roles include Wally Shawn in My Dinner with Andre , Vizzini in The Princess Bride , and debate teacher Mr...
- Jane ShepardJane ShepardJane Shepard is an American playwright, filmmaker and cartoonist She was born in Galesburg, Illinois.-Early life:Shepard's father, Paul Shepard, was an American environmentalist and author of the 13 books which have become landmark texts in the ecology movement.Shepard grew up in Boulder,...
- Sam ShepardSam ShepardSam Shepard is an American playwright, actor, and television and film director. He is the author of several books of short stories, essays, and memoirs, and received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1979 for his play Buried Child...
- Robert B. ShermanRobert B. ShermanRobert Bernard Sherman is an American songwriter who specializes in musical films with his brother Richard Morton Sherman...
- Larry ShueLarry ShueLarry Shue was an American playwright and actor, best known for writing two often-performed farces, The Nerd and The Foreigner.-Early life:...
- Nicky SilverNicky SilverNicky Silver is an American playwright. Formerly of Philadelphia, he resides in New York City.As a teen, Silver attended Stagedoor Manor Performing Arts Training Center in upstate New York. He began writing after graduating from the New York University Theatre program. Many of his early plays...
- Neil SimonNeil SimonNeil Simon is an American playwright and screenwriter. He has written numerous Broadway plays, including Brighton Beach Memoirs, Biloxi Blues, and The Odd Couple. He won the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play Lost In Yonkers. He has written the screenplays for several of his plays that...
- Kenneth Jarrett Singleton
- Jeffrey StanleyJeffrey StanleyJeffrey Stanley is a playwright born in Roanoke, Virginia. He began writing in elementary school, and graduated from New York University Tisch School of the Arts Undergraduate Film Program and Graduate Dramatic Writing Program...
- Donald Ogden StewartDonald Ogden StewartDonald Ogden Stewart was an American author and screenwriter.-Life:His hometown was Columbus, Ohio. He graduated from Yale University, where he became a brother to the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity , in 1916 and was in the Naval Reserves in World War I.After the war he started to write and found...
- Aoise Stratford
- Adam Szymkowicz
- Lucy ThurberLucy Thurber-Career:As of 2007, she is the author of eight plays: Where We’re Born, Ashville, Innocence is a Sin, Killers & Other Family, Stay, Bottom of the World, Monstrosity, and Scarcity. She was the recipient of the 2000/2001 Manhattan Theatre Club playwriting fellowship...
- Sophie TreadwellSophie TreadwellSophie Treadwell , was a leading American playwright and journalist of the first half of the 20th century. Among her prominent works are Machinal and Intimations For Saxophone...
- Rodolfo UsigliRodolfo UsigliRodolfo Usigli was a Mexican playwright. He was called the "playwright of the Mexican Revolution."Usigli born to an Italian father and a Polish mother in Mexico City. He studied drama at Yale from 1935-1936 on a Rockefeller scholarship, later becoming a professor and diplomat...
- Paula VogelPaula VogelPaula Vogel is an American playwright and university professor. She received the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play, How I Learned to Drive.-Early years:...
- Ian WalkerIan Walker (playwright)Ian Walker is an African-American playwright, stage actor, designer, producer, director, and advocate for the arts.- Life :Ian Walker is the son of George Walker , the first African-American to win the Pulitzer Prize in Music, and music historian Helen Walker-Hill. He is co-founder of the Second...
- Naomi WallaceNaomi WallaceNaomi Wallace is a playwright, screenwriter and poet from Prospect, Kentucky, United States.-Life:Wallace obtained her Bachelor of Arts from Hampshire College and did graduate studies at the University of Iowa....
- Eugene WalterEugene Walter (playwright)Eugene Walter was a playwright.-Biography:He was born on November 27, 1874 in Cleveland. He was married to actress Charlotte Walker, but the marriage ended in divorce sometime before 1930, when he secretly married Mary Kissel in Mexico. She was a New York artists' model.He died on September 26,...
- Wendy WassersteinWendy WassersteinWendy Wasserstein was an American playwright and an Andrew Dickson White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University...
- George WellerGeorge WellerGeorge Anthony Weller was an American novelist, playwright, and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for The New York Times and Chicago Daily News...
- Mac WellmanMac WellmanMac Wellman is an American playwright, author, and poet. Wellman is best known for his experimental work in the theater which rebels against theatrical conventions, often abandoning such traditional elements as plot and character altogether...
- Thornton WilderThornton WilderThornton Niven Wilder was an American playwright and novelist. He received three Pulitzer Prizes, one for his novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey and two for his plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth, and a National Book Award for his novel The Eighth Day.-Early years:Wilder was born in Madison,...
- Tennessee WilliamsTennessee WilliamsThomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams III was an American writer who worked principally as a playwright in the American theater. He also wrote short stories, novels, poetry, essays, screenplays and a volume of memoirs...
- Beau WillimonBeau WillimonBeau Willimon is a playwright, whose works have been developed and performed at MCC Theater, Ars Nova, HERE Arts Center, the Phoenix Theatre in Arizona, and the Battersea Arts Centre in London....
- August WilsonAugust WilsonAugust Wilson was an American playwright whose work included a series of ten plays, The Pittsburgh Cycle, for which he received two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama...
- Lanford WilsonLanford WilsonLanford Wilson was an American playwright who helped to advance the Off-Off-Broadway theater movement. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1980, was elected in 2001 to the Theater Hall of Fame, and in 2004 was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters...
- David WiltseDavid WiltseDavid Wiltse is an American playwright. He currently writes plays, but has also written a dozen novels and numerous screenplays and teleplays. He is the current playwright in residence at the Westport Country Playhouse. His recent works include The Good German, A Marriage Minuet , and Hatchetman...
- Lee WochnerLee WochnerLee Wochner is a Los Angeles, California-based playwright, producer, and theatre director.In 1992 he co-founded Moving Arts theatre, where he served as founding artistic director from 1992 to 2002. While at Moving Arts, he produced or directed plays by Luis Alfaro, John Belluso, Sheila Callaghan,...
- George C. WolfeGeorge C. WolfeGeorge Costello Wolfe is an American playwright and director of theater and film. He won a Tony Award in 1993 for directing Angels in America: Millennium Approaches and another Tony Award in 1996 for his direction of the musical, Bring in 'da Noise/Bring in 'da Funk.-Early life and...
- John Yearley
- Mary ZimmermanMary ZimmermanMary Zimmerman is an American theatre director and playwright, born in Lincoln, Nebraska.-Career:Zimmerman is a member of the Lookingglass Theatre Company and is an Artistic Associate of the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, Illinois. She received her BS, MA and PhD from Northwestern University, where...
Further reading
- Meserve, Walter J. An Outline History of American Drama, 2nd ed., New York: Feebback Theatrebooks/Prospero Press, 1994.