Mapping the American Dream
1931
“The American dream, that has lured tens
of millions of all nations to our shores in the past century has not been a dream of merely material plenty, though that has doubtlessly counted heavily. It has been much more than that. It has been a dream of being able to grow to fullest development as man and woman, unhampered by the barriers which had slowly been erected in the older civilizations, unrepressed by social orders which had developed for the benefit of classes rather than for the simple human being of any and every class.” As families lived and reshaped James Truslow Adams’ concept of the American Dream, playwrights humanized its story and evolution on the American stage. The following plays present landmark narratives of families and dreamers over the past century, transporting us to living rooms, kitchens, front yards—familiar landscapes of middle America. Along with an image of each play’s world, this timeline includes the opening, scene-setting description from the text, tracing how the American Dream has been depicted and interpreted onstage.
1935
The 2006 revival of Awake and Sing! directed by Bartlett Sher at the Belasco Theatre, where it premiered in 1935.
Awake and Sing! Clifford Odets Exposed on the stage are the dining room and adjoining front room of the BERGER apartment. These two rooms are typically furnished. There is a curtain between them. A small door off the front leads to JACOB’S room. When his door is open one sees a picture of SACCO and VANZETTI on the wall and several shelves of books...Time: The present; the family finishing supper. Place: An apartment in the Bronx, New York City.
Odet’s story follows three generations of a working-class Jewish family during the Great Depression, all of whom”share a fundamental activity: a struggle for life amidst petty conditions.” Bessie, the family’s indomitable matriarch, struggles against shifting familial and societal roles. The family’s story explores the value of self-sacrifice and loyalty amidst economic and personal adversity.
1947
A Streetcar Named Desire
The 1947 Broadway debut of Williams’ play, directed by Elia Kazan.
Tennessee Williams The exterior of a two-story corner building on a street in New Orleans which is named Elysian Fields and runs between the L&N traces and the river. The section is poor but, unlike corresponding sections in other American cities, it has a raffish charm. The houses are mostly white frame, weathered grey, with rickety outside stairs and galleries and quaintly ornamented gables. This building contains two flats, upstairs and down. Faded white stairs ascend the entrances of both.
A portrait of contrasts, Williams’ play examines post-World War II America through the eyes of a dreamer. After losing her family’s ancestral home, Belle Reve—French for “Beautiful Dream”—Blanche Dubois arrives at the downtrodden doorstep of her sister and brother-in-law, Stella and Stanley Kowalski. A faded Southern belle, Blanche is suddenly surrounded by the brutal realism of working-class America, and she desperately clings to her illusions of prosperity: “I don't want realism. I want magic!”
1949
Death of a Salesman Arthur Miller Before us, at first only partly visible, is the Salesman’s house. We are aware of towering, angular shapes behind it, surrounding it on all sides. Only the blue light of the sky falls upon the house and forestage, the surrounding area shows an angry glow of orange. As more appears, we see a solid vault of apartment houses around the small, fragile-seeming home. An air of the dream clings to the place, a dream rising out of reality.
The 2012 Broadway revival of Miller’s play, directed by Mike Nichols and starring Philip Seymour Hoffman. For Willy Loman, the titular Salesman, the American Dream is rooted in financial stability. Miller’s play tracks Loman’s final 24 hours, a montage of memories, dreams, confrontations and arguments. As Loman’s past, character and sanity unravel, his desires to provide for his family and appear “well-liked” prove empty and destructive. What Miller himself described as a “tragedy of the common man,” the play examines the dreams, idealisms, and failures of middle-class America.
1956
Long Day’s Journey Into Night
The 1956 Broadway debut of Long Day's Journey Into Night, with Florence Eldridge and Fredric March as Mary and James Tyrone.
Eugene O’Neill Living room of James Tyrone’s summer home on a morning in August, 1912. At rear are two double doorways with portieres. The one at right leads into a front parlor with the formally arranged, set appearance of a room rarely occupied. The other opens on a dark, windowless back parlor, never used except as a passage from living room to dining room. Against the wall between the doorways is a small bookcase, with a picture of Shakespeare above it, containing novels ...
James Tyrone, a renowned actor, has provided his family with enough money to afford a summer home, complete with a live-in maid and cook. The family’s American Dream, however, does not guarantee happiness. James values money over family, his wife is addicted to morphine, his older son is an alcoholic, his younger son faces an impending death sentence—and looming over all of their heads is the threat of financial destruction and public disgrace.
1959
A Raisin in the Sun Lorainne Hansberry The YOUNGER living room would be a comfortable and well-ordered room if it were not for a number of indestructible contradictions to this state of being. Its furnishings are typical and undistinguished and their primary feature now is that they have clearly had to accommodate the living of too many people for too many years—and they are tired.
Sidney Poitier and the rest of the original 1959 Broadway cast in the 1961 film adaptation of A Raisin in the Sun. In a crowded apartment in Chicago's South Side, each member of the Younger family yearns for a different version of a better life. Their dreams finally seem attainable through the long-awaited insurance policy left behind by the family patriarch. Even after death, Mr. Younger’s dream haunts the crowded household: “Seem like God didn’t see fit to give the black man nothing but dreams. But he did give us children to make them dreams seem worthwhile.”
1986
The 2010 staging at Seattle Repertory Theatre.
Fences August Wilson The setting is the yard which fronts the only entrance to the MAXSON household, an ancient two-story brick house set back off a small alley in a big-city neighborhood. The entrance to the house is gained by two or three steps leading to a wooden porch badly in need of paint. A relatively recent addition to the house and running its full width, the porch lacks congruence. It is a sturdy porch with a flat roof. One or two chairs of dubious value sit at one end where the kitchen window opens to the porch. An oldfashioned icebox stands silent guard at the opposite end.
After a lifetime of racial and economic adversity, Troy Maxson is a proud and embittered father and husband. Throughout the play, he battles his two greatest enemies—poverty and mortality—but finds himself limited by his work as a garbage collector and daily efforts to care for his family. His efforts to escape these confines rear disastrous results. Wilson’s story grapples with notions of generational disparity, race, betrayal, and broken dreams.
2007
August: Osage County Tracy Letts A rambling country house outside Pawhuska, Oklahoma, sixty miles northwest of Tulsa. More than a century old, the house was probably built by a clan of successful Irish homesteaders. Additions, renovations and repairs have essentially modernized the house until 1972 or so, when all structural care ceased.
The 2012 WaterTower Theatre staging of August: Osage County, following its premiere at Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago. At first glance, the Weston family has achieved the American dream—a sprawling, beautiful home, collegeeducated children, respectable white-collar careers—but the three-act, three-plus-hour tragicomedy speeds through the consequences and aftermath of their patriarch’s suicide. The subsequent family reunion quickly unravels, revealing the truth behind their outwardly idyllic world.
2013
Rancho Mirage Steven Dietz Time and Place: The present. A gated community in an American city. Setting: The front/sitting room of Diane and Nick Dahner’s home. Three hallways/doorways: one leads off to the front entrance; one leads off to the kitchen; one leads off to the other rooms of the house. The room is furnished with taste and originality—an inviting blend of elegance, comfort and wit.
A digital rendering of the set of Olney Theatre Center’s production of Rancho Mirage, designed by Russell Parkman. Nick and Diane Dahner open their home to their four best friends for what begins as an ordinary dinner party. The evening evolves into a wine-induced marathon of truth-telling as the three couples divulge longkept secrets and deceptions. Ultimately, they take stock of what they value most in their lives—their house, material possessions, family, friends—and grapple with where their most fundamental values lie.