As a playwright coming of age in the 1950s, Wilson, like his other dramatic cohorts, drew his inspiration from the social and historical conditions that transformed the United States into a superpower after World War II. Despite the general optimism buoyed by post-war economic growth throughout the 1950s, the rush towards building and maintaining a nuclear arsenal ready to be deployed at any moment resulted in social anxiety and occasional panic about the possibility of nuclear annihilation. In Drama Since 1960: A Critical History, Matthew Roudane notes that "Some of our dramatists lived through many of these historical and social experiences, and their plays reflect an uneasiness with an increasingly atomized and mechanized postwar America." The growth of the military state resulted in the production of thousands of warheads capable of reaching the Soviet Union at any time. In addition, the conservative cultural climate of the cold...