1. 1900 AD - TODAY Modern Theatre

2. Drama also began in colleges and universities. There had been no courses in Drama till 1903 -- although there had been performances. In 1903, George Pierce Baker (1836-1935) began teaching play writing at Radcliffe, then opened it up to Harvard, then in 1913 included workshops for production. His classes studied Eugene O'Neill, S.N. Behrman, and Robert Edmund Jones In 1945, Baker went to Yale, and established a drama department. Meanwhile, Thomas Wood Stevens was teaching drama at Carnegie by 1914; by 1918, Frederick Koch was working with the Carolina Playmakers. By 1940, Drama education in colleges became accepted.

3. By the 1920s, realism was widespread in England, France, and the U.S. In the 1920s, U.S. theatre boomed. There were 200-275 new productions per year on average. The Theatre Guild, developed in 1919 (discussed below), to bring important foreign works to improve United States theatre, lead to U.S. playwrights competing with the foreign plays. One of the most important Playwrights to appear at this time was Eugene O'Neill (1888-1953), who during the 1924-25 season, had five plays appearing at one time. O'Neill helped establish serious realistic drama as a major form on Broadway.Eugene O'Neill

4. Modern Playwrights T.S. Eliot: Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1888. He is not only one of the greatest playwrights of the twentieth century, but he is also the poet of that century. Stephen Sondheim: With three major productions running simultaneously in London and New York, and a fourth scheduled, Stephen Sondheim’s contribution to musical theater is foremost in both capitals. (Sweeney Todd) Tennessee Williams: “Tennessee Williams Explored” will celebrate the playwright in a festival from April to July at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. In addition to new productions of three Williams classics, A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and The Glass Menagerie,