En avant: Taking Stock of Modernism and its Antecedents
1956 was a year of theatrical milestones. Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night was published posthumously while The Diary of Anne Frank won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. And, of course, the American Society for Theatre Research was founded. O’Neill’s meditation on troubled family dynamics and addiction would go on to win the Pulitzer in 1957. The previous year, the Pulitzer went to Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, a Tennessee Williams play about alcoholism and (potentially) sublimated queer desire. In 1959, Lorraine Hansberry became the first Black woman to have a play produced on Broadway when A Raisin in the Sun premiered.
