Plays of Three Decades

Plays of Three Decades is a collection of three plays by the prolific playwright, screenwriter, and science writer Robert Ardrey. The three plays included are Thunder Rock, Ardrey's international classic about hope and human progress; Jeb, Ardrey's post-World War II civil rights play about a black soldier returning from the Pacific; and Shadow of Heroes, a documentary drama about the prelude to and aftermath of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. The last play resulted in the release of two political prisoners from Soviet custody.

Preface

Plays of Three Decades includes a lengthy preface by the author entitled "A Preface to the Plays Including Certain Personal Reflections." The introduction includes information about Ardrey's personal relationship to the theater, but it is mainly concerned with detailing the history of the avant garde theater movement of 1930s New York which Ardrey identifies the plays as belonging to.

An avant garde theatre occurs when enough skeptical artists raise their voices in a common tune. The three plays presented in this volume might be dedicated to that avant garde theatre of which they were a part and which, born in the 1930s, died prematurely soon after the Second World War and like a tropical sunset left no afterglow. We had no real name for our kind of play in America. Sometimes we called it the Theatre of Social Protest, a phrase which scarcely did the plays justice. On the Continent it was called the théâtre engagé—the theatre engaged with its times—and that is the term I prefer."

Ardrey writes that the théâtre engagé was part of a larger flourishing of dramatic talent that began in 1920s New York. Among the playwrights important to this moment he identifies Eugene O'Neill, Sidney Howard, Maxwell Anderson, Elmer Rice, Marc Connelly, Philip Barry, S. N. Behrman, Robert E. Sherwood, George S. Kaufman, Moss Hart, Howard Lindsay, Russel Crouse, Charles MacArthur and Ben Hecht.