A compendium of playwrights who are discussing playwriting, and their own plays. Published around the middle of the last century, much of this seems dated at times, at least in terms of what theatre can and can't do, or should and shouldn't be, but a lot of it is still relevant to discussions that are being held today. Some of the things the playwrights talk about sound pretentious, others sound silly, and still others just plain wrong. But there is a lot of interesting stuff in here, too, and the playwrights are almost all ones that are familiar to anyone who is committed to theatre. One big downside is that there are no women included among the playwrights, though I'm sure there must be stuff out there written by some interesting playwrights at the time, playwrights such as Lillian Hellman or Gertrude Stein, or several other women who were writing plays and getting them produced. It might also have helped balance some of the casual misogyny that is so common among works of the period, not just in their plays but in the way they talk about their own or other people's plays. Overall, a worthwhile work, though perhaps a bit disappointing to find out that most of these men are not always brilliant. ( )

Archer, Brecht, Chekhov, Cocteau, Duerrenmatt, Eliot, Fry, Galsworthy, Giraudoux, Ibsen, Ionesco, Lorca, Meterlinck, Miller, O’Casey, O’Neill, Osborne, Pirandello, Sartre, Shaw, Strindberg, Synge, Toller, Wilder, Williams, Yeats, Zola