What playwrights do you love?

Seen the Seafarer by Conor Macpherson in Dublin recently and it was astonoshingly good. His other stuff is pretty good too but that's a standout.

Marlowe and Henrik Ibsen are another two of my favourites.

Thomas Middleton's 'The Revenger's Tragedy' to see a blistering riposte to 'Hamlet'.
Arthur Schnitzler ('La Ronde', etc)
Chekhov
Modern ones... Michael Frayn, Alan Ayckbourn, Martin McDonagh, SOME David Hare

There's Shakespeare (aka "Shakspeer", alias "Willie the Bard"), and I'm a bit partial to that Kit Marlowe fellow. I do like me some J.M. Synge, too, even with the comic irishman jumpsuit he sometimes dons.

Joe Orton is always good to read, also I have a lot of love for Caryl Churchill. Don't know how well either of them translate outside of Britishesland. Never read any of Mamet's but don't see how you could go wrong really.

is Churchill the one who did Cloud 9? i was just trying to think of her name recently. i loved that play for some reason.

Tennesee Williams! Brilliant.

My aunt was incredibly surprised to see the word 'playwright' spelled that way on Jeopardy the other day. She was sure it was misspelled and could not be convinced otherwise.

Watch plays, don't read them.

Anyway, I wuv:

Shakespeare, Ionesco, Ibsen, Marlowe, etc.

Oh, yeah, Tennessee Williams! And Ionesco!

what about the iceman cometh guy

that one was kind of depressing.

I saw it on stage once... thought it was good, but it did go on a bit and you could pretty much tell where it was going from a very early stage. I don't think it needed to be nearly four hours and nearly cause the break-up of my then relationship.

I don't go to the theatre much, but usually enjoy things by Tom Stoppard when I do: neat cerebral kick.
Prefer reading plays mostly: the usual c16th/17th suspects (Marlowe, Webster, Middleton, that other guy from Doctor Who & the rest, down to Otway and Lee later in the 17th). I'm a sucker for poetry, so I'm often up for reading plays by interesting poets (Yeats, R. Browning, etc) which are a bit broken by normal theatrical standards.
Also Congreve, Beckett, Chekhov (I like the Frayn translations).

You might like Craig Lucas' plays.

Churchill's plays are sometimes better on the page than on the stage.

Lucas reads well on the page.

Shanley's good.

Oh, and Charles Ludlam's collected plays.