The theatrical genre described in the question is vaudeville, a genre that developed in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century America. It has its roots in a range of different disciplines, including stage magic, burlesque, circus sideshows, and musical theater.

These are central characters in Tennessee Williams' 1947 American play, A Streetcar Named Desire. The plot follows Blanche Dubois who abandons her previous life of aristocracy after a series of personal failures to live with her brother and sister-in-law in New Orleans. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1948.

The author is Arthur Miller, and the play, written in 1953, concerns the late-seventeenth-century Salem witch trials in the Massachusetts Bay province of America. The play is intended as an allegory of the 1950s Red Scare and McCarthyism, when the U.S. government became paranoid about the possibility of communism infiltrating the country. As a result of the play (which includes characters such as Abigail Williams, John and Elizabeth Proctor, Tituba, Mary William, Giles Corey, and Reverend Samuel Parris), Miller was questioned by the House Un-American Activities Committee and charged with contempt of Congress.

Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim’s West Side Story is based on Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Originally performed on Broadway in 1957, the musical is set in a neighborhood of immigrants in New York City’s Upper West Side. Like Romeo and Juliet, it includes themes such as love, death, loyalty, and family, but it is also concerned with tensions between immigrants and native citizens in America during the 1950s.

The play in question is A Raisin in the Sun, a work that portrays the experiences of an impoverished black family in mid-century Chicago. It is known for its cast of almost exclusively African-American characters as well as its involvement in a U.S. Supreme Court case about racist housing policies.

This question describes the 1934 Porgy and Bess, first performed in New York City by a controversial cast of all-African-American singers. The play is known for its jazz style, its famous song “Summertime” (since covered by many performers), and for its questionable perpetuation of racial stereotypes. It has gone in and out of fashion for the eighty years since its debut. The play introduces important questions such as the role of the black performer in theater and the use of stereotypes by white composers.

The play in question is Williams’ 1944 play The Glass Menagerie. The play features narrator Tom Wingfield; matriarch Amanda Wingfield, whose husband abandoned the family and whose glory days as a Southern debutante have long faded; the cripplingly shy Laura Wingfield, Tom’s sister and Amanda’s daughter; and the deceitful prospective suitor Jim O’Connor.

The play described in the question stem is Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, which follows the offstage adventures of Hamlet’s two hapless friends. The conceit is that the eponymous characters are confused by the plot of Hamlet, which they aren’t privy to, and this conceit allows Stoppard to pose strong existential questions about human purpose and determinism.

The play described is The Odd Couple, which follows the tiffs and jokes of Oscar, a notoriously laidback slob, and Felix, an extremely organized neat-freak. The play’s main premise is that the two recently divorced main characters become roommates out of financial necessity but end up forming their own close relationship.

The playwright who wrote the plays listed is Eugene O’Neill, a native of New York City and a recipient of the Nobel Prize in literature. O’Neill is widely regarded as one of the most important dramatists in twentieth-century America, and his work makes use of American vernacular, characters who are outcasts or misfits, and a stark, sometimes relentless realism.