American Theatre in the Twenty-First Century: Absurd, Symbolic & Poetic Short Plays (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781953818324)

In the first anthology of this series, Chicago and Baltimore playwrights share short plays written for the stage. Performance-ready new ideas, contained within insightful dialogue and monologues span, the pages of this anthology.

Since America earned its title as "the melting pot" by most historians, Future Publishing House combines with playwrights and theatre artistry to create this unequivocally dynamic collection of work. As artists living with the freedom to create meaningful new work, the plays in this first volume inform the beginning of a millennia of performance art.

Plays comment on universal themes:

• Emma Rund's characters in To Fix a Dinosaur deal with conditional forgiveness.
• The struggle of political power to overcome scientific knowledge comes through in John Joseph Enright's Starry Night.
• Women's liberation ideas are featured in Easy as Pie by Melania Coffey.
• Gentrification is discussed in poetic verse in Alexander Scally's Chalked.
• Jealousy, envy, and the future of humanity are addressed in Dylan Kinnett's Party Planet.
• A scene from a play by Cameron Sheppard is dramatic and biographic

Some pieces in this anthology fall into symbolism, surrealism, and absurdism, such as Barbara Bryan's Leaving the Universe. Other plays are written as melodramas, such as Love, Lust, Lyrics & Stamps by Matt Brown and Andre Thespies.

With an introduction by editor Shaun Vain.