Two of the most significant American playwrights, whose works shaped the playwriting of the 20th century, passed away in 2003, and their deaths are remembered. They are Tennessee Williams (1911–1983), author of the classic works A Streetcar Named Desire, cat on a tin roof, and the glass zoo, and Eugene O’Neill (1888–1953), winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature and four times Pulitzer Prize winner.

Eugene O’Neill, who has written more than 40 plays, is regarded by experts as the founder of authentic American theater and the first to make a name for himself on a global scale. In 1936, he was honored with the Nobel Prize in Literature.

More than any other playwright, Eugene O’Neill introduced dramatic realism—a style popularized by authors like Anton Chekhov, Henrik Ibsen, and August Strindberg—to the American stage. One of the main issues in his works is the dramatic tension between the divine destiny and the nature of man.

The influence that psychoanalysis had on his work at the period is seen in the piece desire under the elms (1924).

O’Neill, a priest, uses spoken thought to convey the continual stream of consciousness, frustrations, complexes, and other psychoanalytic aspects in pieces like weird interlude (1928) and Dynamo (1929).

His work All God’s Children, a defense of black people, clearly reflects the relevance of his topics. The year 2023 will mark the 70th anniversary of Eugene O’Neill’s passing.

Another anniversary is that of Tennessee Williams, a playwright whose works have been adapted into films more often than not because of their dramatic intensity, dynamism of the action, fluid dialogue, and psychological depth of the characters (especially the female ones), which the author uses to analyze the violence that is a foundational aspect of American society.

Their personalities They frequently engage in confrontations with society, conflicts in which repressed emotions such as shame and passions come to the surface.

Initiator of authentic American theater, Eugene O’Neill, passed away in 1953.

Picture from Wikicommons by Carl van Vechten