An essay by Julia- “What it means to be an American Playwright in 2026”

Happy New Year! As we enter 2026, Julia asked me to post this for her. Julia is one of my reviewers and is also an author and playwright. As many of you know, she has done a few plays where I participated in staged readings, and as she is always working on something, I appreciate the fact that she covers a lot of productions for Around The Town. I believe you will find this essay interesting.

Al

Essay: What It Means To Be An American Playwright in 2026

by Julia W. Rath
December 31, 2025

Being an American playwright ascribes a specific quality to a person who has written one or more plays in that they have some type of affiliation or connection with the United States due to the circumstances of their birth, ancestry, immigration status, or legacy of involuntary servitude. Yet on a deeper level, the term describes a writer who has tackled distinctly American themes. These traditionally have dealt with the desire for individualism and personal freedom (think of Tennessee Williams’ “The Glass Menagerie”), the yearning for social justice (think of Lorraine Hansberry’s “Raisin in the Sun”), and the need to live up to the American Dream (think of Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman”). Whether the characters in these plays consider themselves striving or failing, privileged or marginalized, each is muddling through life with their own hopes, dreams, and aspirations; their loves and their hates; their worries and their fears; their sensitivities and their vulnerabilities; and, above all, their challenges and hardships.

But over the last fifty years, American playwrights have had to examine and reexamine what it means to live in a multiethnic and multicultural nation. This means using the lens of specific characters to celebrate differences in race, sex, age, ethnicity, religion, class, sexual orientation, gender identity, region of the country, and other social cleavages. It involves incorporating the idea of inclusiveness within a play’s storyline while creating plausible narratives that point up uniquely American experiences. In large part, this necessitates developing characters who live in mainstream culture while, at the same time, are a part and parcel of one or more subcultures and are thus grounded in more than one worldview. It is in the translation of ideas and sentiments from one cultural experience to another that makes a modern play enlightening as it entertains. It also allows us to reflect upon the fact that we are all a part of each other.

While a great play tells a story with compelling characters and an interesting plot, a playwright (American or otherwise) who is deserving of recognition must ultimately reach beyond their own identity to reveal or embrace fundamental truths about human nature, the indomitableness of the human spirit, and the universality of the human condition. Developing the skill to depict this multifaceted reality fairly, honestly, and with feeling is what makes being (or becoming) an American playwright both challenging and stimulating.