Marsha Norman's first published essay, "Why Do Good Men Suffer"" (1964), written while she was in high school, was awarded first place in a local writing contest and subsequently published in the Kent...
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In the following conversation, which was held on 9 July 1987 at Norman's home in New York City, Norman discusses her approach to playwriting.
[Savran]: What got you interested in theatre? And w...
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In the excerpt below, Hart examines the hunger imagery in Getting Out, which "captures the elemental struggle for autonomy" that Arlie-Arlene undergoes.,
Marsha Norman became a celebrity...
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In the following review, Weales focuses on the ways in which Jessie and her mother are "caught in a social and psychological web that gives them little room to maneuver. "
Marsha Norman ...
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In this interview, Norman focuses on influences on her writing.
[DiGaetani]: Some of your plays remind me of some of the plays of Tennessee Williams. I suspect he had a great influence on your work.
[...
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In the essay below, Spencer examines issues related to "feminine identity and female autonomy" in Getting Out, The Laundromat, and 'night, Mother.
In the prologue to the The Fair ...
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In the following highly favorable review of the first New York run, Simon declares that the characters in Getting Out are "brutally, sadly, and sometimes thrillingly real. "
The Phoenix ...
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Here, reviewing Getting Out after its return to New York, Simon offers a detailed and highly laudatory examination of the play.
Marsha Norman's Getting Out is an astonishing first play, especia...
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In the following, Kerr offers a negative appraisal of Getting Out, arguing that the "barrage of ills that assails the curiously passive Arlene is so unremitting … that we come to see som...
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In the review below, Raidy focuses on the performances of Pamela Reed and Susan Kingsley as Arlie-Arlene, .
Marsha Norman's starkly real first play, Getting Out, first presented in New York las...
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In this review, Kauffman dismisses Getting Out as "one more Girls in the Big House story" and characterizes the use of two actresses as Arlie-Arlene as a "stale theatrical device....
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In the following favorable review, Weales describes Getting Out as "an effective theater piece " and Norman as "an impressive addition to the list of good young American playwrigh...
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In the following essay, Burkman analyzes the references to the classical myth of Demeter and Persephone in 'night, Mother, focusing on the play's motif of doubling.
Marsha Norman'...
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In the following essay, Coen posits that Norman's body of work characterizes her as a feminist playwright whose dramas typically portray women struggling to gain control of their lives.
Marsha ...
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In the following review, Weales discusses New York productions of Sarah and Abraham and Edward Albee's Marriage Play, arguing that Sarah and Abraham suffers from a weak script.
Plays by Marsha ...
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In the following essay, Hinson draws on Freudian psychoanalytic theory to argue that the characters in Traveler in the Dark are portrayed with remarkable depth and psychological realism.
Marsha Norman...
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In the following essay, Bitonti discusses how Norman utilizes off-stage characters as a recurrent theatrical technique in her plays, arguing that these characters exert a strong influence on Norman&#x...
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In the following review, Isherwood asserts that a December 1999 production of Trudy Blue does not live up to the potential of the play's dramatic premise.
Marsha Norman takes an alternately pla...
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In the following review, Mall comments that The Fortune Teller combines two disparate plotlines—“a wise, tender story of a woman's relationship with her daughter” and an in...
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In the following essay, Burke examines the influence of playwright Lillian Hellman on Norman's body of work.
In October 1974, Israel Horowitz told of a conversation with Samuel Beckett during w...
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In the following essay, Schroeder argues that both Getting Out and Wendy Kesselman's My Sister in This House utilize an imaginative combination of realist and experimental theatrical techniques...
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In the following essay, Forte asserts that Norman's use of theatrical realism in 'night, Mother ultimately perpetuates dominant patriarchal ideology, despite its surface-level treatment ...
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In the following essay, Greiff compares Jessie Cates in 'night, Mother with Laura Wingfield in Tennessee Williams's Glass Menagerie, noting the effect of mother-daughter relationships on...
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In the following essay, Kane offers a critical reading of several of Norman's plays, drawing focus to Norman's recurrent themes of mother-daughter conflict, the struggle for personal aut...
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In the following review, Weales compliments Traveler in the Dark as “an intriguing character study and a fascinating philosophical and theological debate.”
Marsha Norman's Travele...
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In the following essay, Wattenberg asserts that, through Norman's reimagining of traditional American initiation rites, The Holdup offers a new feminist perspective on the myth of the American ...
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Critical Essay by Terry Curtis Fox
[Getting Out] is a post-prison drama: we watch Arlene … make her shattered way back into the real world while Arlie …, Arlene's former self, is ...
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Critical Essay by John Simon
[Getting Out] is a spiny, realistic play about not exactly pre-possessing people, but it is written with such a brisk, fresh, penetrating touch that sordid, brooding thing...
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Critical Essay by Walter Kerr
When I first saw Marsha Norman's technically accomplished and vigorously acted "Getting Out" …, I left the theater irritated with myself for h...
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Critical Essay by Gerald Weales
Marsha Norman is not the ordinary beginning playwright. Most talented neophytes display either a passionate concern about their subjects or an imaginative flair for the...
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Marsha Norman
