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20 Famous Playwrights Who Shaped the Stage

In the world, there are many playwrights. However, after careful research, we have listed some of the famous playwrights in the world. It is good to note there are many more playwrights apart from the names stated in this article.

In this article, we have discussed only 20 famous playwrights who shaped the stage in no particular order. They include playwrights from different countries and in different periods from the Ancient Greece period to the modern period.

If you want to know more about the playwrights, their work, and when they started, among other things keep on scrolling till the end of this article.

1. William Shakespeare

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William Shakespeare was a well-known English playwright. Apart from being a playwright, he was as well an actor and poet. William is famously remembered as one of the greatest writers in the English language.

William didn鈥檛 work alone he collaborated with other writers and his work consists of 154 sonnets, 39 plays, and 3 narrative poems.

Find the Top 10 Facts about William Shakespeare.

2. Henrik Ibsen

Henri Ibsen was born on March 20, 1828, and died on May 23, 1906. He was a famous Norwegian playwright. Henri was among the founders of modernism in theatre and is remembered as one of the most famous playwrights of his time.

Some of his work includes;

• The Wild Duck
• Rosmersholm
• The Master Builder
• When We Dead Awaken

3. Arthur Miller

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Arthur Miller was an American playwright, essayist, and screenwriter. He is famously known for his notable works such as All My Son, The Crucible, A View from the Bridge, and Death of a Salesman.

4. George Bernard Shaw

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George Bernard Shaw famously known as Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright, political activist, and critic polemicist.

George wrote over 60 successful plays, including Man and Superman, Saint Joan, and Pygmalion.

5. Lorraine Hansberry

Lorraine Hansberry was one of the famous playwrights who shaped the stage. It is interesting to know that, Hansberry was the first African-American female to have a play performed on Broadway.

The play A Raisin in the Sun was her notable work that debuted on Broadway back in 1959.

Here are the Top 10 Interesting Facts about Lorraine Hansberry.

6. Oscar Wilde

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Oscar Wilde was born on October 16, 1854, and died on November 30, 1900. He was a famous playwright from an Irish. He was also a poet.

In the early 1890s, Oscar became one of the most famous playwrights after writing different forms in the 1880s.

7. Edward Albee

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Edward Albee officially known as Edward Fraklin Albee III was an American playwright. He was among the people who shaped the industry.

He wrote many successful plays remembered to date. Some of his well-known works include The Zoo Story, A Delicate Balance, Three Tall Women, and The Sandbox among others.

8. August Wilson

August Wilson is one of the famous playwrights from America. August is remembered for his series of 10 plays which were named The Pittsburgh Cycle. Some of these plays include The Piano Lesson and Fences among others.

Read also the Top 10 Amazing Facts about August Wilson.

9. Tennessee Williams

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Tennessee Williams was an American playwright and screenwriter. He was famously known by his professional name Tennessee Williams; his official name was Thomas Lanier Williams III.

Williams is considered one of the three foremost playwrights of 20th-century American drama together with Eugene O’Neill and Arthur Miller.

10. Jean Racine

Jean Racine was born on December 22, 1639, and died on April 21, 1699. He was a well-known dramatist from France.

Jean was one of the three greatest playwrights of the 17^th century in France. The other 2 were Corneille and Moli猫re.

11. Bertolt Brecht

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The playwright was known as Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht, Bertold Brecht was his professional name. Apart from being a playwright, he was as well a poet and theatre practitioner.

Brecht first became successful as a playwright in Munich before moving to Berlin in 1924 where he collaborated and wrote his successful play known as The Threepenny Opera together with Kurt Weill.

12. Tom Stoppard

Tom Stoppard is a Czech-born British playwright as well as a screenwriter. Tom has written many plays for the radio, stage, television as well as film.

Tom has been a playwright for the National Theatre and is one of the international dramatists of his generation.

Some of his notable works include; Travesties, Night and Day, The Real Thing, and The Coast of Utopia among others.

13. Christopher Marlowe

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Christopher Marlowe was a popular English playwright, translator, and poet. Marlowe was one of the playwrights of the Elizabethan theatre of England which ran from 1558 to 1642.

It is believed Marlowe influenced William Shakespeare who was baptized the same year as Marlowe and replaced him as the pre-eminent Elizabethan playwright.

14. Terrence McNally

Terrence McNally was born back on November 3, 1938, and died on March 24, 2020. He was a playwright, Screenwriter, and librettist.

Terence is described as 鈥渙ne of the greatest contemporary playwrights the theater world has yet produced.鈥� He received several awards including the Tony Awards.

15. Caryl Churchill

Caryl Churchill is a British playwright born on September 3, 1938. Caryl has been described as 鈥渙ne of Britain’s greatest poets and innovators for the contemporary stage”.

She is popularly known and celebrated for her great work such as Serious Money, Blue Heart, Far Away, and A Number among others.

16. Sarah Kane

Sarah Kane was a playwright from England. Apart from being a playwright, she was as well a theatre director and screenwriter.

Sarah is remembered for her plays that mostly dealt with themes of redemptive love, pain, death, and sexual desires.

17. Tony Kushner

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Tony Kushner was born on July 16, 1956. He is an American playwright and screenwriter. His play Angels in America gained him prominence and earned him a Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize.

Tony was lucky to be among the few playwrights to be nominated for several awards such as Tony Award, Oscar, Emmy, and Grammy.

Read more about Tony in this article 25 Most Influential Gay Authors You Should Know About.

18. David Mamet

David Mamet was born back on November 30, 1947, in Chicago, Illinois, U.S. He is a playwright, author, and filmmaker.

David has written several successful plays such as Glengarry Glen Ross which received a Tony nomination and won a Pulitzer Prize. Other plays include Speed-the-Plow, Sexual Perversity in Chicago, and American Buffalo among others.

19. Harold Pinter

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Harold Pinter was a playwright, actor, and director from Britain. He did good work in the industry.

Some of the best-known plays include The Homecoming, Betrayal, and The Birthday Party among others.

20. Wendy Wasserstein

Wendy Wasserstein was a famous playwright from the United States of America. The Heidi Chronicles one of her plays gained him fame and won her Tony Award for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama back in 1989.

The playwrights are very important people in the entertainment industry. They contribute and play an essential role in writing plays. A life without a playwright would be boring.