美国当代戏剧共有三大类。第一类是严肃戏剧。美国的严肃戏剧诞生于廿世纪初。早期的严肃戏剧作家象爱德华·希尔顿,詹姆斯·赫恩和尤金·奥尼尔等最为突出。这种早期严肃戏剧的发展促使了各种不同风格不同形式的戏剧产生,象奥尼尔表现主义的史剧的实验,桑顿·怀尔德的对舞台时空极限的探索。以后又出现了描绘中产阶级家庭生活的现实主义的情节剧,这是一种通过普通人的生活来反映和表现重大生活主题的戏剧。尤金·奥尼尔后来又创作了表现现实主义的家庭剧。到了四十年代美国最突出的两位剧作家是阿瑟·密勒和田纳西·威廉斯。他俩是美国廿 There are three main types of American contemporary drama. The first category is serious drama. The serious drama of the United States was born in the early twentieth century. Early serious theater writers like Edward Hilton, James Hearn and Eugene O’Neill are the most prominent. The development of this early serious drama prompted the production of different forms of drama in different styles and styles, such as the experiment of O’Neill’s playwrights and the exploration of the limits of the stage and space of the stage by Sandton Wilder. Later appeared a realist melodrama depicting middle-class family life, a drama that reflects and expresses the themes of major life through the lives of ordinary people. Eugene O’Neill later created a realistic family drama. By the 1940s the two most prominent playwrights in the United States were Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams. They are twenty in the United States