AKINS, ZÖE

(1886-1958)

   Born in Humansville, Missouri, Akins loved theatre from childhood, especially after her family moved to St. Louis in 1897. She tried acting and playwriting, but found herself better able to earn a living by magazine writing. She continued this pattern after moving to New York in 1909. Her first professional production came in 1916 when the Washington Square Players staged her one-act tragedy The Magical City. That success led to productions of her earlier Papa (1913), a sly and witty "amorality play." Of the many plays she wrote from the 1910s to the 1940s, the best known are three written in quick succession and featuring complex leading women: Déclassée (1919), Daddy's Gone A-Hunting (1921), and A Texas Nightingale (1922, alternately titled Greatness). Despite melodramatic situations, the wit of Akins's dialogue is trenchant.