as scientists’ diaries, with government films and ex-
cerpts from opera and night club acts to present a
surrealistic image of atomic nightmares. Another
such group presenting surrealistic productions was
Richard Foreman’s Ontological-Hysteric Theatre,
which offered four productions in the 1980’s.
Impact The 1980’s signaled a coming of age of the
theater in the United States. Gay and lesbian issues
and the matter of women’s rights were thoroughly
and openly explored. Female playwrights and de-
signers made considerable impact, as did African
and Asian American artists. New writers, perform-
ers, and other theater artists appeared who would
lead the theater into the twenty-first century. More-
over, successful professional theaters were located
not only Off-Broadway but also in most major U.S.
cities.
Further Reading
Brockett, Oscar G., and Franklin J. Hildy.Histor y of
the Theatre. 9th ed. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2002.
An excellent history of the theater from its begin-
nings, with a general section on theater in the
United States since 1968.
Wilmeth, Don B., and Christopher Bigsby, eds.Post-
World War II to the 1990’s.Vol.3inThe Cambridge
Histor y of American Theatre. New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2000. A collection of essays by
recognized experts detailing every aspect of Amer-
ican theater since the 1940’s.
Wilmeth, Don B., and Tice L. Miller, eds.The Cam-
bridge Guide to American Theatre. New York: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1993. Contains more than
two thousand entries covering people, places,
venues, and subject matter from the beginnings
of American theater to the early 1990’s.
August W. Staub
See also African Americans; AIDS epidemic; Art
movements; Asian Americans; Broadway musicals;
Heidi Chronicles, The; Close, Glenn; Feminism;
Henley, Beth; Hoffman, Dustin; Homosexuality and
gay rights; Hwang, David Henry; Literature in Can-
ada; Literature in the United States; Mamet, David;
Performance art;Phantom of the Opera, The; Shepard,
Sam; Streep, Meryl;Torch Song Trilogy; Turner,
Kathleen; Wilson, August.
Third Wave, The
Identification The second book in a trilogy on the
process, directions, and control of technological
and social changes
Author Alvin Toffler (1928- )
Date Published in 1980At a time of bewildering changes and societal upheavals,
Toffler argued that industrialized countries were in the
birth throes of a new knowledge-based civilization.In 1970, Alvin Toffler publishedFuture Shock, whose
depiction of individuals and organizations over-
whelmed by accelerating technological and societal
changes helped to define the 1970’s, and in 1990 he
publishedPowershift, in which he foretold a future in
which companies as well as countries would split into
opposing power centers based on different “wealth
creation systems.” Sandwiched between these two
books wasThe Third Wave, in which he expanded
and deepened ideas he had introduced inFuture
Shock, and in which he prepared the ground for the
changes in power structures that he analyzed in
Powershift.The primary focus ofThe Third Waveis on
a new civilization that he foresaw emerging out of in-
dustrial civilization. InFuture Shock, he called this
new civilization “super-industrial society,” but in his
new book he eschewed this term for the “Third
Wave.” He was not the first to use the metaphor of a
wave for radical societal change, but he claimed that
he was the first to apply it to the civilizational shift oc-
curring in the 1980’s.
According to Toffler’s framework, the “First Wave”
began about ten thousand years ago when soci-
eties based on domesticated plants and animals re-
placed hunter-gatherer cultures. The “Second Wave”
is Toffler’s term for what traditional historians have
called the Industrial Revolution, associated with the
mass production, mass distribution, and mass con-
sumption of goods. It took thousands of years for the
First Wave to decline, whereas the Second Wave
played itself out in about three hundred years (1650
to 1950). Toffler believes that the Third Wave will
grow, crest, and decline in several decades rather
than centuries or millenniums. Humans in the 1980’s
had difficulty perceiving this Third Wave because
they were not yet in it but in a transition between the
Second and Third Waves. Consequently, Toffler’s
description of the Third Wave is more foretellingThe Eighties in America Third Wave, The 965