Description: The book offers an account and analysis of the plays of eight leading American playwrights whose careers began in the 21st century.
Brief description: Christopher Bigsby is Emeritus Professor of American Studies at the University of East Anglia, UK, as well as a novelist and a broadcaster. He has published over fifty books, among his more recent being Twenty-First Century American Playwrights (2017) and Staging America (Methuen Drama, 2019). He is also the author of a two-volume biography of Arthur Miller.
Review Quotes:
"[Bigsby's] writing is a breath of fresh air ... the kind of volume that one could recommend to any theatre lover, especially those with an interest in American drama and dramatists today." --British Theatre Guide
"Christopher Bigsby's Staging America: Twenty-First Century Dramatists is a beautifully written book, one brimming with fresh critical insights. What is immediately obvious is his utter command of his material. The book will appeal to theatergoers and scholars interested American dramatists whose works define selected public issues of a nation as reflected through the private anxieties of its citizens ... Bigsby's book has the panoptic reach and cultural depth to make it one of the major coordinates in contemporary American drama scholarship, an area which he has helped re-think and remap over the years." --Modern Drama "Bigsby's probing of the playwrights' diverse backgrounds reveals an interesting commonality: most expressed a sense of double identity, having grown up as Americans within the larger society yet also as outsider observers of that society. Well-chosen epigraphs head each chapter and point to crucial insights. The literary criticism is balanced by brief assessments of theater reviewers' responses ... Summing Up: Recommended. With reservations. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals." --CHOICE