This seventh release of Twentieth Century North American Drama includes 1,530 plays by 223 playwrights. New to this release are many important names in contemporary theatre, such as Anna Deveare Smith, Chay Yew, Howard Korder, Spalding Gray, Adrienne Kennedy, Richard Nelson, and Pulitzer Prize winner David Mamet. In addition, major several Canadian plays have been added, including works by Michel Tremblay, Dave Carley, George Ryga, Joan MacLeod, Wendy Lill, Guillermo Verdecchia, Leanna Brodie, Margaret Hollingsworth, and Brad Fraser. Also new to the collection are recent works by Horton Foote, Emily Mann, Susan Sontag, Don DeLillo, Romulus Linney, and Sam Shepard.

Many of the preeminent playwrights of the past century are well-represented: Sam Shepard, Marsha Norman, Robert Sherwood, August Wilson, and Eugene O’Neill, among others. Pulitzer prize winners from every decade of the century are included.

The early part of the 20th century is covered thoroughly, with the plays of David Belasco, George Cohan, Susan Glaspell, Rachel Crothers, Elmer Rice, Gertrude Stein, Owen Davis, Langdon Mitchell, Ben Hecht, Augustus Thomas, Percival Wilde, Sophie Treadwell, Zoe Akins, Percy McKaye, and many others. Important works from of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s will include George Kaufman, Maxwell Anderson, William Saroyan, Garson Kanin, Philip Barry, Langston Hughes, George Kelly, S.N. Behrman, and Sidney Kingsley, among others. Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, William Inge, and other prizewinners are targeted for inclusion. Playwrights from the latter part of the twentieth century include David Mamet, Jane Martin, Neil LaBute, John Guare, Sam Shepard, James Baldwin, Emily Mann, David Rabe, Paddy Chayefsky, Beth Henley, Maria Irene Fornes, Moisés Kaufman, Paul Rudnick, Richard Foreman, and Lee Breuer.  Edward Albee, Tony Kushner, Tina Howe, Christopher Durang and others are targeted as well.

In addition, we plan to include a number of plays of particular social significance, such as the "people’s theatre" exemplified in performances by The Living Theatre and The Open Theatre. This material, with its heavy social and political overtones, will be of particular interest to students and scholars of popular culture and history.

For every major author, we aim to include the person’s entire corpus. Students of film will find much of value in Twentieth Century North American Drama. The collection includes texts and details of plays that subsequently were made into films.

The collection includes selected authors from Alexander Street’s other projects, including Black Drama, Latino Literature, Asian American Drama, and North American Women’s Drama. In addition, the project specifically targets gay and lesbian theatre, along with plays drawn from the Jewish theatre, American Indian theatre, and other groups.

Twentieth Century North American Drama includes sections devoted to regional theatre and contemporary theatre. The aim is to have several hundred plays that have never been published before. The collection will contain not only the texts themselves, but also hundreds of playbills, posters, and other ephemera. As with Alexander Street’s other drama databases, significant information is included about productions, performances, theatrical companies, and other details.

Will Whalen
Editor, Twentieth Century North American Drama

When complete, Twentieth Century North American Drama will contain the full text of 2,000 plays written from the late 1800s to the present by more than 300 playwrights from North America. Many of the works are rare, hard-to-find, or out of print.  Nearly a quarter of the collection will consist of previously unpublished plays.

Each play is extensively and deeply indexed, allowing both keyword and multi-fielded searching. The plays are accompanied by reference materials, significant ancillary information, a rich performance database, and images. The result is an exceptionally deep and unified collection that illustrates the many purposes that theater has served.

We consulted several bibliographies in creating the database, and content selection is under the direction of our editors and advisors. The collection’s unpublished portion has evolved mostly under the direction of the playwrights themselves.

It is our goal to have no errors in this database. Below are known errors in this release of the database which will be rectified in the next release.

This release of the database includes 1,530 plays by 223 playwrights.

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Appendix A

• The Customer is XXXX
• The Site is XXXXX
• Authorized Users are the Customer's currently enrolled full-time or part-time students, employees, faculty, staff, affiliated researchers, distance learners, visiting scholars, and walk-in patrons who are physically present at the Site.
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Twentieth Century North American Drama was made possible through the hard work of the following individuals:

Our goal is to create a unique archive of Twentieth Century North American Drama according to the editorial criteria expressed above. We welcome contributions from organizations and individuals, especially if you have materials that are unpublished or of unique interest. Submitting materials to our editors is easy and without obligation on your part. If you have collections of substantial value, we may be able to pay you a royalty in return for the rights to use them.

• To submit materials for inclusion in Twentieth Century North American Drama, please email the Editor at Editor@AlexanderStreet.com or mail them to Alexander Street Press, 3212 Duke Street, Alexandria, VA 22314.
   
• If you are a commercial publisher who would like to discuss licensing materials for inclusion in the database, please contact the Editor at Editor@AlexanderStreet.com or 1-800-889-5937 or 1-703-212-8522.
   
• To report factual errors or to suggest improvements, please email us at Editor@AlexanderStreet.com. Please include the author, the document, and the page number. Please also include your email address, so that we can let you know the status of your correction.

Professionals and amateurs are hereby warned that plays and materials in this database are fully protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America, and all other countries covered by the International Copyright Union (including the British Commonwealth and Canada), and of all countries covered by the Pan-American Copyright Convention, and the Universal Copyright Convention, and of all countries with which the United States has reciprocal copyright relations.  All rights, including but not limited to professional, amateur, motion pictures, recitation, lecturing, public reading, radio broadcasting, television, video or sound taping, all other forms of mechanical or electronic reproduction, including information storage and retrieval systems and photocopying, and the rights of translation into foreign languages, are strictly reserved.

Plays from this collection may not be performed without securing permission from the appropriate copyright holders, as listed in the bibliographic display for each play.  Particular emphasis is laid upon the question of readings, permission for which must be secured in writing.  All production rights reserved.  Under no circumstances may any electronic form (CD-ROM, online, or other local storage medium) be used to create production copies of the play. 

Specific performance rights information for each play can be found in the bibliographic detail display for that play.  Alexander Street Press makes no guarantee that this information is correct.  For plays where no performance rights information is listed Alexander Street Press does not warrant that no performance rights exist. 

We are eager to hear from any rights owners who are not properly identified so that appropriate information may be provided in the future. Please e-mail the editor at the address below.

Texts produced for Twentieth Century North American Drama are considered research materials and receive the same level of stewardship as books, paper documents, and photographs. Once complete, copies of the database will be given to all purchasing institutions, so ensuring that the materials are available to subsequent generations.

MARC records are available for this collection. Each play has its own MARC record to allow linking from the OPAC to the individual item. This will enable patrons to link directly from a publish access catalog to all documents pertaining to that author.To retrieve these records, please see our site at http://marc.alexanderstreet.com and select the records for Twentieth Century North American Drama.