Atlanta, Georgia: the Alliance Theatre and Theatre
in the Square. At the end of the decade, more than
two hundred such theaters existed, and many of the
playwrights who would become known as leaders
in their field began in regional or Off-Broadway
and Off-Off Broadway theaters. For example, Beth
Henley’sCrimes of the Heart(pr. 1979), winner of the
1981 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, premiered at the Ac-
tors Theatre of Louisville before moving to Broadway.
Women Playwrights and Feminist Theater Chief
among those who commenced their careers outside
Broadway were a number of important female play-
wrights in addition to Henley—such as Marsha Nor-
man, Tina Howe, and Wendy Wasserstein—two of
whom won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama during the
1980’s: Norman, for’night Mother(pr. 1983), and
Wasserstein, forThe Heidi Chronicles(pr. 1988). In
1983, Howe won a collective Obie Award, the Off-
Broadway award, for her overall contribution to dra-
matic literature. In various ways, these playwrights
and other women playwrights of the decade, such as
two-time Obie Award-winner Corinne Jacker, took
up issues involved in the lives of women and in the
emerging women’s rights movement.
María Irene Fornés’sThe Conduct of Life(pr. 1985)
examined Chicano experiences as women attempted
to deal with male dominance. To explore the ongo-
ing interest in women’s rights, the Women’s Experi-
mental Theatre presented plays investigating the
role pf women in Western patriarchal families. In
1980, Lois Weaver and Peggy Shaw introducedSplit
Britches, based on the lives of Weaver’s aunts in
the Virginia mountains, at the Women’s One World
Festival of feminist theater held in New York City.
In 1982, the Split Britches Company founded the
Women’s One World (WOW) Café in New York City,
dedicated to producing works by and for women.
Along with collaborator Deb Margolin, the Split
Britches Company presented several important fem-
inist plays at WOW Café during the 1980’s. Women
also claimed leadership in other ways. In 1982, Ellen
Burstyn was elected the first female president of
the Actors’ Equity Association, followed by Colleen
Dewhurst in 1985. In the same year, Heidi Lan-
desman became the first female designer to win a
Tony Award, for her scenery forBig River(pr. 1985).
African Americans and Asian Americans In addi-
tion to the emerging women playwrights, the 1980’s
saw the rise of two important Asian American play-
wrights: Philip Kan Gotanda, author of such works as
Yankee Dawg You Die(pr. 1989), and David Henry
Hwang, who won the 1988 Tony Award for the Broad-
way hitM. Butterfly. African American dramatists
were led into the 1980’s by Ntozake Shange, August
Wilson, and Charles Fuller, winner of the 1982 Pulit-
zer Prize for Drama forA Soldier’s Play(pr. 1981). It is
August Wilson, whose work was first produced by
Yale Repertory Theatre under the direction of Lloyd
Richards, whom many consider to be the most signif-
icant playwright of contemporary theater. In 1987,
he won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama forFences(pr.
1985), starring Tony Award-winner James Earl Jones.
Wilson’s other plays of the 1980’s includeMa Rainey’s
Black Bottom(pr. 1982),The Piano Lesson(pr. 1987),
andJoe Turner’s Come and Gone(pr. 1988), all of which
continue to be produced throughout the United
States.
Gay and Lesbian Issues Feminist theater groups
such as Split Britches and WOW Café considered is-
sues of lesbianism, as in the WOW Café 1985 produc-
tions of Alice Forrester’sHeart of the Scorpion(pr.
1984) and Holly Hughes’The Well of Horniness(pr.
1985). In 1983, Harvey Fierstein would win the Pulit-
zer Prize for Drama forTorch Song Trilogy(pr. 1982),
three one-act plays examining homosexual issues
through the evolving life of a Jewish drag queen.
That year also saw the hit drag musicalLa Cage aux
Folles, based on the 1973 French play by Jean Poiret.
Ultimately, however, more serious presentations of
gay men would be made, as in Langford Wilson’s
Burn This(pr. 1987). The gay experience turned ex-
tremely dark in the 1980’s with the advance of the
AIDS epidemic, which is treated seriously in 1985
in William F. Hoffman’s dramaAs Isand Larry
Kramer’sThe Normal Heart.
Musical Theater The most interesting phenome-
non in musical theater of the 1980’s was the matura-
tion of a type of artist developed in the 1970’s: the
director-choreographer. It was this individual who
created both the dance and the overall artistic state-
ment of the musical, often including the story line as
well. When the latter was the case, the work was re-
ferred to as a “concept musical,” perhaps best exem-
plified byA Chorus Line, created by Michael Bennett
in 1975, which ran throughout the 1980’s and was re-
vived in the early twenty-first century. Bennett cre-
atedDreamgirls(pr. 1981) andThe Tap Dance Kid(pr.
1983). He was preceded as a director-choreographerThe Eighties in America Theater 963