Famous Playwrights: 50 of the Greatest Playwrights of All Time

From Sophocles and Shakespeare to August Wilson and Annie Baker: 50 famous playwrights, the plays to read first and why actors love them.

By Mike Stoneman Updated Nov 11, 2026 · 22 min read

On this page 10 sections

How we chose these famous playwrights
Famous playwrights at a glance
Ancient Greek playwrights
Renaissance and early modern playwrights
The founders of modern drama
Famous American playwrights
Famous British and European playwrights
Playwrights from around the world
Contemporary playwrights to know
Famous playwrights FAQs

Famous playwrights are the writers every actor ends up living with: their words are what we audition with, rehearse and perform. William Shakespeare is the playwright most often named the greatest of all time, and his roughly 39 plays are still the most performed in the world. Sophocles, Anton Chekhov, Henrik Ibsen and Eugene O’Neill are the names critics most often place beside him.

Below are 50 of the greatest playwrights of all time, grouped by era from ancient Athens to today, with the plays to start with and the roles worth reading. For the plays themselves, see our ranking of the greatest plays of all time.

How we chose these famous playwrights

We picked 50 playwrights for their influence on the theater that followed, how often their plays are still produced, the strength of their roles for actors and how widely critics agree on them. The list runs from ancient Greece to today and focuses on writing for the stage. Within each era, playwrights appear in rough chronological order, not ranked.

Famous playwrights at a glance

#	Playwright	Lived	Country	Start with
1	Aeschylus	c. 525–456 BC	Greece	The Oresteia, The Persians
2	Sophocles	c. 497–406 BC	Greece	Oedipus Rex, Antigone, Electra
3	Euripides	c. 480–406 BC	Greece	Medea, The Trojan Women, The Bacchae
4	Aristophanes	c. 446–386 BC	Greece	Lysistrata, The Frogs, The Birds
5	Christopher Marlowe	1564–1593	England	Doctor Faustus, Edward II
6	William Shakespeare	1564–1616	England	Hamlet, Macbeth, Twelfth Night, King Lear
7	Lope de Vega	1562–1635	Spain	Fuenteovejuna, The Dog in the Manger
8	Molière	1622–1673	France	Tartuffe, The Misanthrope, The School for Wives
9	Henrik Ibsen	1828–1906	Norway	A Doll’s House, Hedda Gabler, Ghosts
10	August Strindberg	1849–1912	Sweden	Miss Julie, The Father, A Dream Play
11	Anton Chekhov	1860–1904	Russia	The Seagull, The Cherry Orchard
12	Oscar Wilde	1854–1900	Ireland	The Importance of Being Earnest, An Ideal Husband
13	George Bernard Shaw	1856–1950	Ireland	Pygmalion, Saint Joan, Major Barbara
14	Eugene O’Neill	1888–1953	United States	Long Day’s Journey into Night, The Iceman Cometh, A Moon for the Misbegotten
15	Thornton Wilder	1897–1975	United States	Our Town, The Skin of Our Teeth
16	Clifford Odets	1906–1963	United States	Awake and Sing!, Golden Boy
17	Tennessee Williams	1911–1983	United States	A Streetcar Named Desire, The Glass Menagerie, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
18	Arthur Miller	1915–2005	United States	Death of a Salesman, The Crucible, A View from the Bridge
19	Lorraine Hansberry	1930–1965	United States	A Raisin in the Sun, The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window
20	Edward Albee	1928–2016	United States	Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Zoo Story, Three Tall Women
21	Neil Simon	1927–2018	United States	The Odd Couple, Barefoot in the Park, Brighton Beach Memoirs
22	Sam Shepard	1943–2017	United States	True West, Buried Child, Fool for Love
23	David Mamet	b. 1947	United States	Glengarry Glen Ross, American Buffalo, Oleanna
24	August Wilson	1945–2005	United States	Fences, The Piano Lesson, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
25	Tony Kushner	b. 1956	United States	Angels in America, Caroline, or Change
26	Bertolt Brecht	1898–1956	Germany	Mother Courage and Her Children, The Caucasian Chalk Circle, The Threepenny Opera
27	Federico García Lorca	1898–1936	Spain	The House of Bernarda Alba, Blood Wedding, Yerma
28	Noël Coward	1899–1973	England	Private Lives, Blithe Spirit, Hay Fever
29	Samuel Beckett	1906–1989	Ireland	Waiting for Godot, Endgame, Happy Days
30	Eugène Ionesco	1909–1994	Romania and France	Rhinoceros, The Bald Soprano, The Chairs
31	John Osborne	1929–1994	England	Look Back in Anger, The Entertainer
32	Harold Pinter	1930–2008	England	The Homecoming, Betrayal, The Birthday Party
33	Peter Shaffer	1926–2016	England	Amadeus, Equus
34	Tom Stoppard	1937–2025	England	Arcadia, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, The Real Thing
35	Caryl Churchill	b. 1938	England	Top Girls, Cloud Nine, A Number
36	Wole Soyinka	b. 1934	Nigeria	Death and the King’s Horseman, The Lion and the Jewel
37	Athol Fugard	1932–2025	South Africa	“Master Harold”… and the Boys, Sizwe Banzi Is Dead, Blood Knot
38	Yasmina Reza	b. 1959	France	Art, God of Carnage
39	María Irene Fornés	1930–2018	Cuba and United States	Fefu and Her Friends, Mud, The Conduct of Life
40	Christopher Durang	1949–2024	United States	Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, Beyond Therapy
41	Marsha Norman	b. 1947	United States	‘night, Mother, Getting Out
42	David Henry Hwang	b. 1957	United States	M. Butterfly, Yellow Face
43	Suzan-Lori Parks	b. 1963	United States	Topdog/Underdog, Venus, Father Comes Home from the Wars
44	John Patrick Shanley	b. 1950	United States	Doubt, Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, Outside Mullingar
45	Tracy Letts	b. 1965	United States	August: Osage County, Killer Joe, Bug
46	Stephen Adly Guirgis	b. 1965	United States	Between Riverside and Crazy, Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train
47	Lynn Nottage	b. 1964	United States	Sweat, Ruined, Intimate Apparel
48	Sarah Ruhl	b. 1974	United States	Eurydice, The Clean House, In the Next Room
49	Martin McDonagh	b. 1970	England and Ireland	The Beauty Queen of Leenane, The Pillowman, The Lieutenant of Inishmore
50	Annie Baker	b. 1981	United States	The Flick, Circle Mirror Transformation, John

Ancient Greek playwrights

Western drama starts in Athens in the 5th century BC, where tragedies and comedies were staged at religious festivals. Four playwrights’ work survives, and every actor who has played a tragic role owes them something.

Aeschylus

Greece · c. 525–456 BC

Aeschylus is the earliest playwright whose work survives complete. His The Persians, first staged in Athens in 472 BC, is the oldest surviving play, and The Oresteia (458 BC) is the only Greek trilogy we still have whole. He is credited with adding a second actor to the stage, which turned choral performance into drama between characters.

Start withThe Oresteia, The Persians. Roles to know: Clytemnestra, Cassandra, Orestes, Electra.

Sophocles

Greece · c. 497–406 BC

Sophocles wrote more than 120 plays, but only seven survive. Aristotle held up Oedipus Rex as the model tragedy in the Poetics, and it is still the template for dramatic structure. Sophocles added a third actor and gave his characters choices that feel painfully human.

Start withOedipus Rex, Antigone, Electra. Roles to know: Oedipus, Jocasta, Antigone, Creon, Electra.

Euripides

Greece · c. 480–406 BC

Euripides is the most psychologically modern of the Greek tragedians. He questioned the gods, sided with the outsider and wrote the great female roles of ancient drama. More of his plays survive than of Aeschylus and Sophocles combined.

Start withMedea, The Trojan Women, The Bacchae. Roles to know: Medea, Hecuba, Andromache, Pentheus, Dionysus. More on Euripides plays, Euripides monologues.

Aristophanes

Greece · c. 446–386 BC

Aristophanes is the father of comedy. His plays mocked politicians, philosophers and generals by name, mixing bawdy slapstick with sharp satire. Lysistrata (411 BC), in which the women of Greece go on strike to end a war, is still produced everywhere.

Start withLysistrata, The Frogs, The Birds. Roles to know: Lysistrata, Dionysus, Xanthias.

Renaissance and early modern playwrights

Between the 1580s and the 1670s, England, Spain and France each produced a golden age of theater. These are the playwrights from that period actors still meet in drama school and in audition rooms.

Christopher Marlowe

England · 1564–1593

Marlowe made blank verse the music of the English stage before Shakespeare had written a play. Ben Jonson called it “Marlowe’s mighty line”. In six years he wrote Doctor Faustus, Tamburlaine and Edward II, then was killed in a fight at 29.

Start withDoctor Faustus, Edward II. Roles to know: Faustus, Mephistopheles, Edward, Gaveston.

William Shakespeare

England · 1564–1616

Shakespeare is the playwright most often named the greatest of all time, and his roughly 39 plays are still the most performed in the world. He moves from farce to tragedy to romance with the same command, and his soliloquies remain the ultimate test of an actor’s breath, thought and verse.

Start withHamlet, Macbeth, Twelfth Night, King Lear. Roles to know: Hamlet, Lady Macbeth, Viola, Rosalind, Lear, Iago. More on William Shakespeare, Shakespeare monologues, monologues from Hamlet.

Lope de Vega

Spain · 1562–1635

Lope de Vega was the engine of Spain’s Golden Age. He is said to have written more than 1,500 plays, several hundred of which survive, and he set out the rules of Spanish comedy in verse. Fuenteovejuna, about a village that rises against a tyrant, still plays as a political thriller.

Start withFuenteovejuna, The Dog in the Manger. Roles to know: Laurencia, Diana, Teodoro.

Molière

France · 1622–1673

Molière is the master of French comedy and still the most performed playwright at the Comédie-Française. He skewered hypocrites, snobs and quack doctors in rhyming verse, and acted in his own plays. He collapsed on stage during the fourth performance of The Imaginary Invalid and died hours later.

Start withTartuffe, The Misanthrope, The School for Wives. Roles to know: Tartuffe, Alceste, Célimène, Orgon, Elmire. More on Molière’s greatest plays.

The founders of modern drama

In the late 19th century, a handful of writers swapped kings and gods for drawing rooms and ordinary people. Realism, and the way most actors are trained today, starts here.

Henrik Ibsen

Norway · 1828–1906

Ibsen is called the father of modern drama. A Doll’s House (1879) ends with Nora walking out on her husband and children, one of the most famous exits in theater, and Hedda Gabler gave actresses a role often called the female Hamlet. His realism changed what plays could be about.

Start withA Doll’s House, Hedda Gabler, Ghosts. Roles to know: Nora, Hedda, Mrs. Alving, Torvald.

August Strindberg

Sweden · 1849–1912

Strindberg pushed realism into naturalism and then broke it open into expressionism. Miss Julie (1888), a single midsummer night between an aristocrat’s daughter and her father’s valet, is a pressure cooker of class and desire that actors still fight to play.

Start withMiss Julie, The Father, A Dream Play. Roles to know: Miss Julie, Jean, Kristin, the Captain.

Anton Chekhov

Russia · 1860–1904

Chekhov wrote four major plays, The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard, and they changed acting as much as writing. Stanislavski’s Moscow Art Theatre made its name staging them, and his system grew out of that work. Nothing much happens on the surface, and everything happens underneath.

Start withThe Seagull, The Cherry Orchard. Roles to know: Nina, Konstantin, Masha, Vanya, Ranevskaya, Lopakhin.

Oscar Wilde

Ireland · 1854–1900

Wilde wrote the wittiest comedy in English. The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) is almost perfectly built, and nearly every line is quotable. Behind the epigrams, his society comedies are sharp about money, marriage and hypocrisy.

Start withThe Importance of Being Earnest, An Ideal Husband. Roles to know: Lady Bracknell, Algernon, Jack, Gwendolen, Cecily. More on Oscar Wilde monologues, Oscar Wilde’s plays.

George Bernard Shaw

Ireland · 1856–1950

Shaw wrote more than 60 plays of argument dressed as comedy, on class, money, war and women’s independence. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1925 and later an Academy Award for the screenplay of Pygmalion, the play that became My Fair Lady.

Start withPygmalion, Saint Joan, Major Barbara. Roles to know: Eliza Doolittle, Henry Higgins, Joan, Barbara Undershaft.

Famous American playwrights

American drama came of age in the 20th century, and Broadway and off-Broadway turned out the plays that dominate scene study classes today. These are the American playwrights every actor should know.

Eugene O’Neill

United States · 1888–1953

O’Neill is the father of serious American drama. He won four Pulitzer Prizes and, in 1936, became the only American playwright to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Long Day’s Journey into Night, his portrait of his own family, premiered in 1956, three years after his death.

Start withLong Day’s Journey into Night, The Iceman Cometh, A Moon for the Misbegotten. Roles to know: Mary Tyrone, Jamie Tyrone, Hickey, Josie Hogan. More on Eugene O’Neill plays, Eugene O’Neill monologues.

Thornton Wilder

United States · 1897–1975

Wilder stripped the stage bare and found the universe in a small town. Our Town (1938) and The Skin of Our Teeth (1942) both won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and he remains the only writer to win Pulitzers for both fiction and drama.

Start withOur Town, The Skin of Our Teeth. Roles to know: The Stage Manager, Emily Webb, George Gibbs, Sabina.

Clifford Odets

United States · 1906–1963

Odets was the voice of the Group Theatre and of Depression-era New York. Waiting for Lefty (1935) brought audiences to their feet shouting “Strike!”, and his street-poet dialogue in Awake and Sing! and Golden Boy is a gift to actors.

Start withAwake and Sing!, Golden Boy. Roles to know: Bessie Berger, Ralph Berger, Joe Bonaparte, Lorna Moon.

Tennessee Williams

United States · 1911–1983

Williams brought poetry and raw desire to the American stage. The Glass Menagerie made his name, and A Streetcar Named Desire (1948) and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955) each won the Pulitzer Prize. His women are some of the greatest roles ever written.

Start withA Streetcar Named Desire, The Glass Menagerie, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Roles to know: Blanche DuBois, Stanley Kowalski, Amanda Wingfield, Laura, Maggie. More on Tennessee Williams.

Arthur Miller

United States · 1915–2005

Miller made tragedy out of ordinary American lives. Death of a Salesman won the 1949 Pulitzer Prize, and The Crucible (1953) used the Salem witch trials to attack the McCarthy hearings. His plays ask what we owe each other, and they still play to packed houses.

Start withDeath of a Salesman, The Crucible, A View from the Bridge. Roles to know: Willy Loman, Linda Loman, John Proctor, Abigail Williams, Eddie Carbone. More on Arthur Miller plays, Arthur Miller monologues.

Lorraine Hansberry

United States · 1930–1965

Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun (1959) made her the first Black woman to have a play produced on Broadway, and the youngest American to win the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award. She died at 34, but the Younger family’s fight for a home remains one of the great American plays.

Start withA Raisin in the Sun, The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window. Roles to know: Walter Lee Younger, Lena Younger, Beneatha, Ruth.

Edward Albee

United States · 1928–2016

Albee brought the absurd to American living rooms. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962) is a night of vicious games between two married couples, and he won three Pulitzer Prizes, for A Delicate Balance, Seascape and Three Tall Women.

Start withWho’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Zoo Story, Three Tall Women. Roles to know: Martha, George, Honey, Jerry.

Neil Simon

United States · 1927–2018

Simon was Broadway’s most successful comic playwright. The Odd Couple and Barefoot in the Park set the rhythm of American comedy, his autobiographical Eugene plays went deeper, and Lost in Yonkers won the Pulitzer Prize in 1991. His timing is a masterclass for comic actors.

Start withThe Odd Couple, Barefoot in the Park, Brighton Beach Memoirs. Roles to know: Oscar Madison, Felix Ungar, Corie Bratter, Eugene Jerome.

Sam Shepard

United States · 1943–2017

Shepard wrote the myth of the American West gone sour. Buried Child won the 1979 Pulitzer Prize, and True West and Fool for Love are scene-study staples full of brothers, lovers and violence. He was also an Oscar-nominated actor.

Start withTrue West, Buried Child, Fool for Love. Roles to know: Austin, Lee, May, Eddie, Vince. More on Sam Shepard monologues.

David Mamet

United States · b. 1947

Mamet’s clipped, profane, rhythmic dialogue is so distinctive it has its own name: “Mamet speak”. Glengarry Glen Ross won the 1984 Pulitzer Prize, and American Buffalo and Oleanna are favorites for actors who like language that works like a weapon.

Start withGlengarry Glen Ross, American Buffalo, Oleanna. Roles to know: Ricky Roma, Shelley Levene, Teach, Carol, John.

August Wilson

United States · 1945–2005

Wilson’s Century Cycle is ten plays, one for each decade of the 20th century, charting Black life in America, nine of them set in Pittsburgh’s Hill District. Fences (1987) and The Piano Lesson (1990) both won the Pulitzer Prize. His monologues are some of the richest in American drama.

Start withFences, The Piano Lesson, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Roles to know: Troy Maxson, Rose Maxson, Boy Willie, Berniece, Ma Rainey. More on August Wilson plays, August Wilson monologues.

Tony Kushner

United States · b. 1956

Angels in America, Kushner’s two-part “gay fantasia on national themes”, won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize and back-to-back Tony Awards. It mixes politics, AIDS, religion and angels with jokes, and it is often called the most important American play of the late 20th century.

Start withAngels in America, Caroline, or Change. Roles to know: Prior Walter, Louis Ironson, Roy Cohn, Harper Pitt, Belize.

Famous British and European playwrights

From Brecht’s Berlin to the London stage of the 1950s and beyond, these playwrights reinvented what theater could do, and many of their plays are still in the repertoire.

Bertolt Brecht

Germany · 1898–1956

Brecht created epic theatre, which wants audiences to think rather than lose themselves. He showed the lights, broke scenes with songs and used the “alienation effect” to make the familiar strange. Mother Courage and Her Children and The Threepenny Opera remain his best-known works.

Start withMother Courage and Her Children, The Caucasian Chalk Circle, The Threepenny Opera. Roles to know: Mother Courage, Grusha, Galileo, Macheath.

Federico García Lorca

Spain · 1898–1936

Lorca’s rural tragedies are poetry on fire. Blood Wedding, Yerma and The House of Bernarda Alba are full of passion, honor and repression, with some of the best roles for women anywhere. He was killed at the start of the Spanish Civil War.

Start withThe House of Bernarda Alba, Blood Wedding, Yerma. Roles to know: Bernarda, Adela, Yerma, the Bride, Leonardo.

Noël Coward

England · 1899–1973

Coward was the master of brittle, elegant comedy. Private Lives, Hay Fever and Blithe Spirit are built on lightning-quick banter that rewards precise timing, and he wrote, directed and starred in his own hits.

Start withPrivate Lives, Blithe Spirit, Hay Fever. Roles to know: Elyot, Amanda, Madame Arcati, Judith Bliss.

Samuel Beckett

Ireland · 1906–1989

Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, first staged in Paris in 1953, became the defining play of the Theatre of the Absurd: two tramps wait for someone who never comes. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1969, and his late plays pare theater down to a voice and a light.

Start withWaiting for Godot, Endgame, Happy Days. Roles to know: Vladimir, Estragon, Lucky, Hamm, Winnie, Krapp.

Eugène Ionesco

Romania and France · 1909–1994

Ionesco turned the nonsense of language into theater. The Bald Soprano (1950) began as a parody of an English phrasebook, and Rhinoceros, in which a town’s people turn into rhinos, is a comic nightmare about conformity.

Start withRhinoceros, The Bald Soprano, The Chairs. Roles to know: Bérenger, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, the Old Man and Old Woman.

John Osborne

England · 1929–1994

Osborne’s Look Back in Anger (1956) blew up polite British theater. Jimmy Porter’s rage gave the press the label “angry young men” for a generation of writers, and it opened the doors for working-class voices on the London stage.

Start withLook Back in Anger, The Entertainer. Roles to know: Jimmy Porter, Alison Porter, Archie Rice.

Harold Pinter

England · 1930–2008

Pinter made silence and menace into drama. The “Pinter pause” is famous for a reason: in The Birthday Party, The Homecoming and Betrayal what is not said matters more than what is. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2005.

Start withThe Homecoming, Betrayal, The Birthday Party. Roles to know: Ruth, Lenny, Max, Emma, Jerry, Robert.

Peter Shaffer

England · 1926–2016

Shaffer wrote big, theatrical plays about genius and obsession. Equus (1973) follows a psychiatrist trying to understand why a boy blinded six horses, and Amadeus (1979) tells Mozart’s story through the jealous eyes of Salieri.

Start withAmadeus, Equus. Roles to know: Salieri, Mozart, Alan Strang, Martin Dysart.

Tom Stoppard

England · 1937–2025

Stoppard made ideas thrilling on stage. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966) turned two of Shakespeare’s walk-ons into heroes, Arcadia mixes chaos theory with country-house comedy, and he won an Oscar for co-writing Shakespeare in Love.

Start withArcadia, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, The Real Thing. Roles to know: Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, Thomasina, Septimus, Henry.

Caryl Churchill

England · b. 1938

Churchill reinvents the form of every play she writes. Top Girls (1982) opens with a dinner party of famous women from history, Cloud Nine plays with gender and casting, and her short late plays are some of the boldest writing in English theater.

Start withTop Girls, Cloud Nine, A Number. Roles to know: Marlene, Joyce, Angie, Pope Joan, Bernard.

Playwrights from around the world

Great drama is not only European and American. These three writers took the theater of their countries to the world stage.

Wole Soyinka

Nigeria · b. 1934

Soyinka became the first African writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1986. His plays blend Yoruba myth, ritual and music with Western forms, and Death and the King’s Horseman is a modern tragedy about duty, colonialism and sacrifice.

Start withDeath and the King’s Horseman, The Lion and the Jewel. Roles to know: Elesin Oba, Olunde, Iyaloja, Sidi, Baroka.

Athol Fugard

South Africa · 1932–2025

Fugard wrote South Africa’s apartheid years onto the stage, often with tiny casts and enormous stakes. “Master Harold”… and the Boys (1982) is one of the great two- and three-hander plays, and his collaborations with John Kani and Winston Ntshona changed political theater.

Start with“Master Harold”… and the Boys, Sizwe Banzi Is Dead, Blood Knot. Roles to know: Hally, Sam, Willie, Sizwe Banzi.

Yasmina Reza

France · b. 1959

Reza writes sharp, funny plays about civilized people falling apart. Art (1994), three friends arguing over a white painting, won the Tony Award for Best Play, and God of Carnage did the same in 2009.

Start withArt, God of Carnage. Roles to know: Serge, Marc, Yvan, Véronique, Alain.

Contemporary playwrights to know

These are the playwrights shaping theater since the 1970s, and the ones most likely to give you a fresh audition piece.

María Irene Fornés

Cuba and United States · 1930–2018

Fornés was the quiet giant of off-off-Broadway and one of the most influential teachers American theater has had. Fefu and Her Friends (1977) moves the audience through different rooms of a house, and her spare, strange plays won multiple Obie Awards.

Start withFefu and Her Friends, Mud, The Conduct of Life. Roles to know: Fefu, Julia, Mae.

Christopher Durang

United States · 1949–2024

Durang was American theater’s funniest absurdist. Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You and Beyond Therapy made him an off-Broadway favorite, and Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike won the 2013 Tony Award for Best Play.

Start withVanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, Beyond Therapy. Roles to know: Vanya, Sonia, Masha, Sister Mary Ignatius.

Marsha Norman

United States · b. 1947

Norman’s ‘night, Mother (1983 Pulitzer Prize) is a mother and daughter on one evening, and one of the most demanding two-handers in American drama. She also wrote the book for the Tony-winning musical The Secret Garden.

Start with‘night, Mother, Getting Out. Roles to know: Jessie, Thelma (Mama), Arlene.

David Henry Hwang

United States · b. 1957

Hwang’s M. Butterfly (1988) made him the first Asian American playwright to win the Tony Award for Best Play. His work, from Yellow Face to Chinglish, explores identity, culture and who gets to tell which stories.

Start withM. Butterfly, Yellow Face. Roles to know: Rene Gallimard, Song Liling, DHH.

Suzan-Lori Parks

United States · b. 1963

Parks became the first African American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, for Topdog/Underdog (2002), two brothers named Lincoln and Booth. Her plays rewrite American history with wordplay, repetition and rhythm all her own.

Start withTopdog/Underdog, Venus, Father Comes Home from the Wars. Roles to know: Lincoln, Booth, Hester.

John Patrick Shanley

United States · b. 1950

Shanley writes about tough, tender New Yorkers, and his scenes are fixtures of acting class. Doubt won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award, Danny and the Deep Blue Sea is one of the most-used scenes in the business, and he won an Oscar for Moonstruck.

Start withDoubt, Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, Outside Mullingar. Roles to know: Sister Aloysius, Father Flynn, Danny, Roberta. More on John Patrick Shanley, John Patrick Shanley monologues.

Tracy Letts

United States · b. 1965

Letts writes big, dark family comedies and thrillers. August: Osage County won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award, and he is also a Tony-winning actor. He is a longtime ensemble member of Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company.

Start withAugust: Osage County, Killer Joe, Bug. Roles to know: Violet Weston, Barbara Fordham, Ivy, Johnna.

Stephen Adly Guirgis

United States · b. 1965

Guirgis writes New York in all its profane, funny, desperate glory. Between Riverside and Crazy won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize, and Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train and The Motherf**ker with the Hat are packed with monologues actors love. He came up through the LAByrinth Theater Company.

Start withBetween Riverside and Crazy, Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train. Roles to know: Walter “Pops” Washington, Angel Cruz, Lucius Jenkins, Jackie. More on Stephen Adly Guirgis plays, our interview with Stephen Adly Guirgis.

Lynn Nottage

United States · b. 1964

Nottage is the only woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama twice, for Ruined (2009) and Sweat (2017). She researches deeply, from Congolese women in wartime to steelworkers in Pennsylvania, and builds big, humane plays out of what she finds.

Start withSweat, Ruined, Intimate Apparel. Roles to know: Mama Nadi, Tracey, Cynthia, Esther.

Sarah Ruhl

United States · b. 1974

Ruhl writes lyrical, funny plays where the everyday turns magical. Eurydice retells the myth from the bride’s point of view, and In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play) was a Pulitzer finalist. She is a MacArthur Fellow.

Start withEurydice, The Clean House, In the Next Room. Roles to know: Eurydice, Orpheus, Matilde, Lane.

Martin McDonagh

England and Ireland · b. 1970

McDonagh writes savage black comedy set mostly in the west of Ireland. The Beauty Queen of Leenane and The Pillowman made his name on stage before he turned to film with In Bruges and The Banshees of Inisherin.

Start withThe Beauty Queen of Leenane, The Pillowman, The Lieutenant of Inishmore. Roles to know: Maureen, Mag, Katurian, Padraic.

Annie Baker

United States · b. 1981

Baker writes quiet, naturalistic plays where the pauses do the work. The Flick, about three employees at a run-down Massachusetts movie theater, won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize. Her plays are a gift for actors who love detail.

Start withThe Flick, Circle Mirror Transformation, John. Roles to know: Sam, Avery, Rose, Marty, Mertis.

Famous playwrights FAQs

Who is the greatest playwright of all time?

William Shakespeare is the playwright most often named the greatest of all time. His roughly 39 plays, from Hamlet to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, are performed more than any others. Sophocles, Anton Chekhov, Henrik Ibsen and Eugene O’Neill are the names critics most often place beside him.

Who was the first playwright?

The earliest playwright whose work survives complete is Aeschylus, whose The Persians was staged in Athens in 472 BC. Greek tradition credits Thespis, around 534 BC, as the first actor to step out of the chorus, which is why actors are still called thespians.

Who is the most famous American playwright?

Eugene O’Neill is usually called the greatest American playwright: he won four Pulitzer Prizes and is the only American dramatist to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller and August Wilson are his closest rivals.

Who are the most famous female playwrights?

The most famous female playwrights include Lorraine Hansberry (A Raisin in the Sun), Caryl Churchill (Top Girls), Lynn Nottage, the only woman with two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama, Suzan-Lori Parks, María Irene Fornés, Sarah Ruhl and Annie Baker.

Which playwrights should actors read first?

Start with Shakespeare for verse, Chekhov and Ibsen for realism, and Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller and August Wilson for the great American roles. Then add a contemporary voice such as Lynn Nottage, Annie Baker or Stephen Adly Guirgis, so your reading reflects the plays being produced today.

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