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American Drama — GK Questions with Answers

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25 questions
  1. The first American comedy to be professionally produced was —
    1. The Prince of Parthia
    2. The Contrast
    3. Our Town
    4. Margaret Fleming
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    Answer: (B) The Contrast

    Royall Tyler’s The Contrast (1787).

  2. Which company first produced Eugene O’Neill’s plays?
    1. The Theatre Guild
    2. The Provincetown Players
    3. The Group Theatre
    4. The Federal Theatre Project
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) The Provincetown Players

    The Provincetown Players, from 1916.

  3. Eugene O’Neill won the Nobel Prize for Literature in —
    1. 1930
    2. 1936
    3. 1949
    4. 1954
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    Answer: (B) 1936

    1936 — he remains the only American dramatist to have won it.

  4. Mourning Becomes Electra is modelled on —
    1. Sophocles’ Oedipus
    2. Aeschylus’s Oresteia
    3. Euripides’ Medea
    4. Seneca’s Thyestes
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    Answer: (B) Aeschylus’s Oresteia

    O’Neill transplants the Oresteia to post-Civil-War New England.

  5. Which O’Neill play has characters wearing literal masks?
    1. The Hairy Ape
    2. The Great God Brown
    3. Strange Interlude
    4. The Emperor Jones
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) The Great God Brown

    The Great God Brown uses masks to separate the social from the private self.

  6. The family in Long Day’s Journey into Night is the —
    1. Lomans
    2. Tyrones
    3. Youngers
    4. Wingfields
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    Answer: (B) Tyrones

    The Tyrones — James, Mary, Jamie and Edmund, based on O’Neill’s own family.

  7. Long Day’s Journey into Night was first staged in —
    1. 1941
    2. 1946
    3. 1956
    4. 1962
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    Answer: (C) 1956

    O’Neill withheld it; his widow released it in 1956, and it won the Pulitzer in 1957.

  8. The original title of Death of a Salesman was —
    1. The Salesman
    2. The Inside of His Head
    3. Attention Must Be Paid
    4. All My Sons
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    Answer: (B) The Inside of His Head

    Miller first called it The Inside of His Head.

  9. "Attention must be paid" is spoken by —
    1. Willy
    2. Linda
    3. Biff
    4. Charley
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    Answer: (B) Linda

    Linda Loman, defending her husband to their sons.

  10. In which essay does Miller defend the ordinary man as a tragic hero?
    1. "The Family in Modern Drama"
    2. "Tragedy and the Common Man"
    3. "On Social Plays"
    4. "The Shadows of the Gods"
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) "Tragedy and the Common Man"

    "Tragedy and the Common Man" (1949), answering Aristotle.

  1. The Crucible uses the Salem witch trials as an allegory of —
    1. the Civil War
    2. McCarthyism
    3. the Great Depression
    4. the Vietnam War
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) McCarthyism

    The anti-communist investigations of the early 1950s.

  2. Tennessee Williams’s real first names were —
    1. Thomas Lanier
    2. Thomas Edward
    3. Thomas Wolfe
    4. Thomas Clayton
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    Answer: (A) Thomas Lanier

    Thomas Lanier Williams.

  3. The Glass Menagerie is described by its narrator as —
    1. a tragedy
    2. a memory play
    3. a problem play
    4. a comedy of manners
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    Answer: (B) a memory play

    Tom tells the audience directly that it is a memory play.

  4. "I have always depended on the kindness of strangers" is spoken by —
    1. Amanda Wingfield
    2. Blanche DuBois
    3. Maggie
    4. Stella
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Blanche DuBois

    Blanche DuBois, the last line of A Streetcar Named Desire.

  5. Williams’s term for his use of light, sound and symbol in place of flat realism is —
    1. expressionism
    2. plastic theatre
    3. epic theatre
    4. poetic drama
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) plastic theatre

    Plastic theatre, announced in the production notes to The Glass Menagerie.

  6. The repeated word in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is —
    1. mendacity
    2. desire
    3. dignity
    4. illusion
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    Answer: (A) mendacity

    Mendacity — lying, which Big Daddy says fills the world.

  7. George and Martha are the central couple in —
    1. The Zoo Story
    2. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
    3. A Delicate Balance
    4. Three Tall Women
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    Answer: (B) Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

    Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962).

  8. A Raisin in the Sun takes its title from a poem by —
    1. Countee Cullen
    2. Langston Hughes
    3. Claude McKay
    4. Gwendolyn Brooks
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    Answer: (B) Langston Hughes

    Langston Hughes’s "Harlem" — "like a raisin in the sun".

  9. Lorraine Hansberry is remembered as —
    1. the first American woman to win the Nobel
    2. the first black woman to have a play produced on Broadway
    3. the founder of the Group Theatre
    4. the first woman to win the Pulitzer for Drama
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) the first black woman to have a play produced on Broadway

    A Raisin in the Sun reached Broadway in 1959.

  10. Our Town is staged —
    1. with elaborate realistic sets
    2. on a bare stage with a Stage Manager
    3. in the round
    4. with masks
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    Answer: (B) on a bare stage with a Stage Manager

    Thornton Wilder uses a bare stage and a narrator called the Stage Manager.

  1. The term "Theatre of the Absurd" was coined by —
    1. Edward Albee
    2. Martin Esslin
    3. Samuel Beckett
    4. Eugène Ionesco
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    Answer: (B) Martin Esslin

    Martin Esslin, in his 1961 book of that name.

  2. August Wilson’s ten-play sequence is known as the —
    1. Harlem Cycle
    2. Pittsburgh Cycle
    3. Century Cycle of Chicago
    4. Mississippi Cycle
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    Answer: (B) Pittsburgh Cycle

    The Pittsburgh Cycle, one play for each decade of the twentieth century.

  3. Which play won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1993?
    1. Fences
    2. Angels in America
    3. The Heidi Chronicles
    4. Topdog/Underdog
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Angels in America

    Tony Kushner’s Angels in America.

  4. The Group Theatre is chiefly remembered for introducing —
    1. expressionism
    2. Method acting
    3. the Living Newspaper
    4. epic theatre
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Method acting

    Method acting, derived from Stanislavsky.

  5. Which O’Neill play uses spoken asides to reveal characters’ thoughts?
    1. Anna Christie
    2. Strange Interlude
    3. Desire Under the Elms
    4. Ah, Wilderness!
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Strange Interlude

    Strange Interlude — nine acts with interior monologue spoken aloud.

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