Authors' brief biographies and short stories of theatre

¶ … Dylan Thomas was born in Swansea, Wales in 1914. He was already publishing poems in his teens, including many for which he would become famous. After Swansea was bombed during World War Two, he relocated to London and worked as a screenwriter. He returned to Wales before the end of the war and then after the war worked for the BBC. He was established as a poet at this time, but needed these other jobs to earn a living. He died in New York while on a tour of America, as touring to read poems was one of his main sources of income. He was 39 when he died.

Arthur Miller was born in 1915 in Harlem. He worked producing plays and in 1949 he opened Death of a Salesman on Broadway. This would be the work for which he was best known, and it was a multi-award-winner. He would leave his first wife to marry Marilyn Monroe, and around this time he had problems with the House of Un-American Activities Committee, an event he turned into The Crucible.

Walt Whitman was born in 1819 in the New York area. He came to writing after working as a printer. By age 17, he became a teacher on Long Island, before becoming a journalist. He experienced the slave trade on a visit to New Orleans, something that would change him, but he did not fight in the Civil War. He first published Leaves of Grass in 1855. He mostly worked as a clerk and in hospitals, rather than from writing. He died in 1892.

August Wilson was born in 1945 in Pittsburgh to a black woman and a white man, the latter of whom was usually absent. His experience as a black person in an all-white school and at times in predominantly white neighborhoods was a critical influence for him. He mostly worked at menial jobs but by 1965 he had begun writing poetry. He was influenced as well by Malcolm X and became involved in theater. He won a Pulitzer Prize for Fences. He passed away in 2005 in Seattle, where he had moved and become involved in local theater.

Seamus Heaney was born in 1939 in County Derry, but the family moved a lot when he was a child. He would travel to Derry and Belfast and eventually to the Republic. Much of the inspiration for his work came from the Troubles in the 1970s and 80s. He worked primarily in education to support his family. He would eventually gain positions at Harvard and at Oxford and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995.

Tennessee Williams was born in Mississippi in 1911. He began writing when the family moved to St. Louis, but it was after he moved to New Orleans that he wrote A Streetcar Named Desire. In 1944, he debuted The Glass Menagerie, which was an acclaimed play. By the 1960s, he was tackling more delicate social matters with his works, and this was highly controversial. After his partner died, he began to rely on substance abuse to cope and died in 1983 in New York.

Miguel de Cervantes was born in 1547 near Madrid. He moved to Rome, and the culture and architecture of that city greatly influenced him. He fought the Ottomans while in the Spanish Navy. On his way back to Spain, he was taken hostage and held in Algiers for five years. This experience contributed to Don Quixote. This work was his most popular. In 1606, he moved to Madrid, where he died in 1616.

Ancient Greek Theater forms the foundations of modern theater. Greek theater is said to have evolved from religious rites around 1200 BC, rituals that would eventually come to involve both dancing and poetry. As the subject matter became more complex, the art of drama was born. The performance of Greek plays is similar to that of modern theater, and so are its forms. The most prominent forms are tragedy and comedy, both of which are the basis for theater today as well. Many of the classic stories of Greek mythology found their way to theater, inspiring later theater eras significantly.

Ancient Roman theater was built on the Greek model, translating mythology for the stage. The primary difference was that Roman theater was less inhibited, both in terms of its depictions of violence and sex. Rome valued its arts, and theater flourished during these times. Many plays with Greek themes or based on Greek stories were written. Also, there were stock characters that made fun of caricatures and real people in Roman society.

Moliere is said to have influenced modern theater because of his use of irony and everyday life. His coincidence of opposites is when opposing terms are reversed and the audience must sort out the meaning. Especially of his concern were the concepts of virtue and vice.

Commedia dell'Arte is an Italian comedy form. This form was practices not on stage but usually by troupes in public places. Physical comedy was the emphasis of the form, and there was extensive use of props. Everything from street performance today to modern theater and especially comedy finds influence in these troupes and their signature style of performing.