Great American Playwrights
Great American Playwrights is a structured people dataset with 20 entries. Its fields include Playwright, Years, Signature Play. The source values are preserved as a structured reference table.
Every row is shown below and is also available as CSV, JSON, or Excel.
Dataset details
- Table scope
- All 20 rows
- Fields
- 5 columns
- Source
- Community curated
- Data updated
- Apr 9, 2026
Included fields: Playwright, Years, Signature Play, Pulitzer Prizes, Known For.
The table contains every record in this dataset; the same records are available in each download format.
Preview observations
- Years span
- 1888 to 1981
- Across 20 preview rows
- Pulitzer Prizes range
- 0 to 4
- Across 20 preview rows
Useful for
- Comparing Playwright, Years, and Signature Play across people entries
- Building reference tables, charts, or analyses from 20 downloadable records
Playwright↕ | Years↕ | Signature Play↕ | Pulitzer Prizes↕ | Known For↕ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Eugene O'Neill | 1888-1953 | Long Day's Journey Into Night | 4 | Only American playwright to win Nobel Prize in Literature (1936), autobiographical tragedy |
Tennessee Williams | 1911-1983 | A Streetcar Named Desire | 2 | Southern Gothic lyricism, The Glass Menagerie, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, tortured characters |
Arthur Miller | 1915-2005 | Death of a Salesman | 1 | The Crucible as McCarthyism allegory, married Marilyn Monroe, moral seriousness |
August Wilson | 1945-2005 | Fences | 2 | Pittsburgh/Century Cycle — 10 plays, one per decade of Black American life in the 20th century |
Edward Albee | 1928-2016 | Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? | 3 | Absurdism, Zoo Story debut, A Delicate Balance, Three Tall Women, contentious marriage plays |
Thornton Wilder | 1897-1975 | Our Town | 3 | Our Town's bare stage, The Skin of Our Teeth, also won Pulitzer for fiction (Bridge of San Luis Rey) |
Lorraine Hansberry | 1930-1965 | A Raisin in the Sun | 0 | First Black woman to have play on Broadway, youngest American to win Drama Critics Circle Award |
David Mamet | 1947- | Glengarry Glen Ross | 1 | Profane rapid-fire dialogue (Mamet-speak), American Buffalo, Oleanna, screenplays |
Sam Shepard | 1943-2017 | Buried Child | 1 | True West, Fool for Love, Curse of the Starving Class, also actor, American family dysfunction |
Tony Kushner | 1956- | Angels in America | 1 | Angels two-part epic on AIDS in Reagan era, Lincoln and Munich screenplays |
Neil Simon | 1927-2018 | The Odd Couple | 1 | Broadway comedy king, Brighton Beach Memoirs trilogy, Barefoot in the Park, Lost in Yonkers |
Lanford Wilson | 1937-2011 | Talley's Folly | 1 | Circle Rep co-founder, Hot l Baltimore, Fifth of July, lyrical Americana |
Paula Vogel | 1951- | How I Learned to Drive | 1 | Indecent, Baltimore Waltz, Brown and Yale playwriting teacher to generation |
Suzan-Lori Parks | 1963- | Topdog/Underdog | 1 | First Black woman to win Pulitzer for Drama, 365 Days/365 Plays project |
Lynn Nottage | 1964- | Sweat | 2 | Only woman to win two Pulitzers for Drama (Ruined and Sweat), MFA Columbia, documentary roots |
David Henry Hwang | 1957- | M. Butterfly | 0 | First Asian American to win Tony for Best Play, Chinglish, Yellow Face, librettist |
Horton Foote | 1916-2009 | The Young Man from Atlanta | 1 | Orphans Home Cycle (9 plays), To Kill a Mockingbird screenplay, Texas-set Americana |
Beth Henley | 1952- | Crimes of the Heart | 1 | Southern Gothic comedies, Mississippi sisters, youngest woman to win Pulitzer for Drama at the time |
Stephen Adly Guirgis | 1965- | Between Riverside and Crazy | 1 | LAByrinth Theater, Jesus Hopped the A Train, streetwise NYC voice |
Annie Baker | 1981- | The Flick | 1 | Naturalistic pauses, Circle Mirror Transformation, Shirley VT plays, hyper-real dialogue |
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Frequently asked questions
How is Great American Playwrights organized?
The table starts in the source data's default order. You can sort and filter the loaded rows by the displayed fields.
How much data is available on this page?
This dataset contains 20 entries, and every row is available in the table and in the downloadable files.
Can I download the complete dataset?
Yes. CSV, JSON, and Excel downloads contain all 20 rows. Before republishing the data, review the source and any usage terms listed on this page; dtbse does not replace the original source's licensing terms.
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