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. The intervening decades have seen many productions of O’Neill, Williams, and Hansberry, along with Arthur Miller, August Wilson, and more. But there has also been another important trend: contemporary theatre’s interest in rethinking, reimagining, and responding to modern American “classics.” For example, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Purpose contends with the “American Dream,” controversial Off-Broadway show Slam Frank puts a Hamilton-esque spin on The Diary of Anne Frank, and Kimberly Belflower’s John Proctor is the Villain takes Arthur Miller’s The Crucible to task. These examples live alongside a major rethinking of Hansberry’s life and work over the last few years in light of the revelation of her lesbian identity. Following ASTR’s prompt to “[take] stock”, this working session asks: what does “modern drama” have to say to us today? Why are so many pieces of postmodern and metamodern American drama looking back on modernist classics and responding to the same themes with contemporary values and concerns? In this present moment, when all attempts at “diversity” are under direct attack, how can the “safe” canon of American modernism become a conduit for contemporary discussions around the still pressing concerns of diversity, equity, and inclusion?
 
This working session will take stock of American modernisms through paired examples of modernist plays and more contemporary works. This two-hour working session invites proposals that reconsider, take to task, and reorient the place of American modernist playwrights, plays, stagecraft, acting and directing techniques, and the archival records containing them within the context of theatre’s current moment. We encourage scholars to make direct connections to specific examples of people, plays, productions, and methods from today so that each paper has at least one pairing of a modernist and contemporary work. The organizers will create small groups around shared methodological approaches (rather than by a specific playwright or style) so that each participant’s paper will receive feedback from a small group and both organizers. Paper drafts of 8-10 pages will be circulated three weeks before the conference, and the small groups will be responsible for touching base briefly before the conference session so that they can agree on two or three takeaways from the papers they read. Our session at ASTR will then involve sharing out and then discussing the overall takeaways so that we can truly take stock. Please follow this link to apply to this or any other working session: https://site.pheedloop.com/event/astr2026/sessions/SES3JH5SMTS237V0Y.