In the 1930’s and 1940’s American theater came into its own. The variety, quality and social relevance of the plays made it truly the Golden Age of American Theater. The plays selected for this SDG deal with the social and political issues that engaged the country, including the Great Depression, economic inequality, Freudian theories, World War II and American economic success after the War. The best of them combine serious treatment of those issues with skillful and entertaining drama. The playwrights include Odets, Kingsley, Miller, Williams, van Druten, Wilder, Hellman, O’Neill, Barry and McCullers.
Discussions will include each play’s structure, language and characters, as well as its societal setting and message. There will also be a focus on the lives and careers of the playwrights and two organizations that sponsored important plays in the 1930’s, the Group Theater and the Federal Theater Project. Each Presenter will be encouraged to select key passages of the plays for that week for SDG members to read aloud "in character."
