Lillian Hellman and August Wilson

The Author: An internationally acclaimed theatre director and founding Artistic Director of Seattle’s Intiman Theatre, Margaret Booker has received numerous awards for her work including Fulbright, Ford, and Rockefeller fellowships and recognition as a Woman of Achievement. She earned her Ph.D. in drama from Stanford University in Stanford, California, and assisted Ingmar Bergman at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm, Sweden. She co-authored Chekhov’s Major Plays with Karl Kramer, directed August Wilson’s Fences at the Beijing People’s Art Theatre, and has taught at Stanford University and the University of California, Santa Cruz.

«A sterling accomplishment ... thoughtful and provocative. Margaret Booker has woven a passionate quilt of ideas.» (August Wilson)«With Lillian Hellman striding over so many of our stages these days, what a pleasure to have Margaret Booker’s fresh and relevant perspective handy.» (Jack O’Brien, Broadway Director and Artistic Director of San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre)«Margaret Booker’s refreshingly original discussion finds much common ground in an unlikely pairing of two giants of American theatre – Lillian Hellman and August Wilson. According to Booker, Hellman’s and Wilson’s approaches to drama ring familiar in plays that question historically guarded access to the so-called American Dream. Indeed, it is their stubborn belief in equal access to America and their outrage at various guises of its denial that form the basis for the political conflicts that emerge in their plays. Hellman’s and Wilson’s challenge to the American Dream is heightened by the license they take to dissect and analyze it more closely. Central to their analogous agendas, as Booker convincingly argues, is a dismantling or rewriting of history as we know it in order to give voice and bring worth to the ‘historyless’. Despite perceived external differences in gender, race, and historical perspectives (‘lieux de memoire’), Hellman and Wilson follow noticeably similar strategies in their re-examination of the American Dream.» (Sandra Shannon, Professor, Howard University, Washington, D.C.; Author, ‘The Dramatic Vision of August Wilson and August Wilson’s Fences: A Reference Guide’)«This book is the first to bring together in comparative analysis these giants of American theater, Lillian Hellman and August Wilson. Although these writers are of different races, genders, and historic eras, Margaret Booker persuasively finds in them a mutual commitment to American humanism and social critique. In a detailed critical analysis that probes their individual approaches to stage realism, Booker effectively reveals their common interest in the power of the past to impact on the present. This is a valuable work for scholars and students of American drama and theater history.» (Harry J. Elam, Jr., Professor of Drama and Co-Editor, ‘Theatre Journal’, Stanford University, Stanford, California)