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ImaginaryBody

100 Essential Plays

This list was originally compiled by Dennis Delaney and bolstered by reddit.

  • Classical Greece
  1. Aeschylus, Agamemnon
  2. Aristophanes, Lysistrata
  3. Euripides, Medea
  4. Sophocles, Oedipus Rex
  • England (Medieval and Renaissance)
  1. Ben Jonson, Volpone; The Fox
  2. Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus
  3. William Shakespeare, Hamlet; Macbeth; A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Othello; Romeo and Juliet
  1. William Congreve, The Way of the World
  2. Oliver Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer
  3. Richard Sheridan, The School for Scandal
  4. William Wycherley, The Country Wife

  • Aphra Behn, The Rovers

  • England (19th and Pre-WWI 20th Century)

  1. George Bernard Shaw, Arms and the Man; Candida
  2. Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
  • England (Post WWI to 1960)
  1. Noel Coward, Private Lives
  2. John Osborne, Look Back in Anger
  • England (Post 1960)
  1. Caryl Churchill, Cloud Nine
  2. Joe Orton, Loot
  3. Harold Pinter, Betrayal; The Homecoming
  4. Peter Shaffer, Amadeus
  5. Tom Stoppard, Arcadia; Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
  1. Jean Anouilh, The Lark
  2. Georges Feydeau, A Flea in Her Ear
  3. Jean Genet, The Maids
  4. Victor Hugo, Hernani
  5. Molière, The Misanthrope; Tartuffe
  6. Jean Racine, Phaedre
  7. Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac
  8. Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit
  1. Bertolt Brecht, The Caucasian Chalk Circle; Mother Courage and Her Children
  2. Georg Büchner, Woyzeck
  3. Johann Goethe, Faust, Part 1
  • Ireland
  1. Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot
  2. Martin McDonagh, The Beauty Queen of Lenane; The Pillowman
  3. Sean O’Casey, Juno and the Paycock
  4. J.M. Synge, The Playboy of the Western World
  • Italy
  1. Carlo Goldoni, The Servant of Two Masters
  2. Luigi Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of an Author
  • Russia
  1. Anton Chekhov, The Seagull, The Three Sisters, Uncle Vanya
  2. Nikolai Gogol, The Inspector General
  3. Maxim Gorki, The Lower Depths
  4. Ivan Turgenev, A Month in the Country
  1. Henrik Ibsen, A Doll’s House; Ghosts; Hedda Gabler
  2. August Strindberg, Miss Julie
  • Africa / South Africa
  1. Athol Fugard, “Master Harold”...and the Boys
  • Spain
  1. Calderon de la Barca, Life Is a Dream
  2. Federico Garcia Lorca, Blood Wedding
  3. Lope de Vega, Fuente Ovejuna
  1. Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun
  2. Arthur Miller, The Crucible; Death of a Salesman
  3. Clifford Odets, Waiting for Lefty
  4. Eugene O’Neill, The Iceman Cometh; Long Day’s Journey into Night
  5. Elmer Rice, The Adding Machine
  6. William Saroyan, The Time of Your Life
  7. Thornton Wilder, Our Town; The Skin of Our Teeth
  8. Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menag- erie; A Streetcar Named Desire
  9. Edward Albee, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Zoo Story
  10. Tony Kushner, Angels in America, Parts 1 & 2
  11. David Mamet, American Buffalo; Glengarry Glen Ross
  12. David Rabe, Streamers
  13. Sam Shepard, Buried Child; A Lie of the Mind
  14. Paula Vogel, How I Learned to Drive
  15. August Wilson, The Piano Lesson
  16. Lanford Wilson, 5th of July
  1. Stephen Adly Guirgis, Jesus Hopped the A Train; Our Lady of 121st Street
  1. Lynn Nottage, Ruined; Intimate Apparel
  2. Annie Baker, The Aliens; Circle Mirror Transformation

Posted Jun 5, 2012, 6:17 PM UTC · edited

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