This volume chronicles the lives and artistry of Elia Kazan, Jerome Robbins, and Lloyd Richards.

Their commitment to staging new works, which often focused on the experiences of immigrant and working-class families, significantly expanded the scope and possibilities of American theatre across the 20th century. It illuminates too their collaborations with a range of innovative theatre artists, including Lee Strasberg, Clifford Odets, Marlon Brando, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Lorraine Hansberry, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, and August Wilson.

The Great North American Stage Directors series provides an authoritative account of the art of directing in North America by examining the work of twenty-four major practitioners from the late 19th century to the present. Each of the eight volumes examines three directors and offers an overview of their practices, theoretical ideas, and contributions to modern theatre. The studies chart the life and work of each director, placing his or her achievement in the context of other important theatre practitioners and broader social history. Written by a team of leading experts, the series presents the genealogy of directing in North America while simultaneously chronicling crucial trends and championing contemporary interpretation.

Harvey Young is Professor of Theatre at Boston University, USA. His research on the performance and experience of race has been widely published in academic journals, profiled in The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal and The Chronicle of Higher Education. He has published seven books, including Embodying Black Experience, winner of "Book of the Year" awards from the National Communication Association and the American Society for Theatre Research and, most recently, Black Theater is Black Life: An Oral History of Chicago Theater (coauthored with Mecca Zabriskie). He is the current editor of Theatre Survey.