American Playwrights

Clifford Odets, the great dramatist of the American Depression, salutes a middle-class New York Jewish family, not unlike his own, as it battles to stay afloat during the worst of the 1930s. The play is not all doom and gloom, however. The playwright depicts a family able to call on deep reserves of compassion, fortitude, and humor.

David Mamet, the only one of the playwrights in this American Playwrightsseries still living, looks back in The Old Neighborhood on his earlier years in Chicago, examining his own Jewish heritage and questioning what might have been lost in the thrust of assimilation and contemporary experience more generally. This play, too, is full of humor as well as sharp characterization

This presentation is part of Murray Biggs’ American Playwrights lecture series.