Editing Problem play (section)

==20th century==
The genre was especially influential in the early 20th century. In Britain plays such as Houghton's ''[[Hindle Wakes (play)|Hindle Wakes]]'' (1912), developed the genre to shift the nature of the 'problem'. This "resolutely realistic problem play set in domestic interiors of the mill town Hindle" starts with the 'problem' of an apparently seduced woman, but ends with the woman herself rejected due to her status as a victim of seduction: "the 'problem' is not, after all, the redemption of a betrayed maiden's tarnished honour, but the readiness of her respectable elders to determine a young woman's future for her without regard to her rights—including here her right to erotic holiday enjoyment."<ref name = "cris"/>

In America the problem play was associated with the emergence of debates over civil rights issues. Racial issues were tackled in plays such as [[Angelina Weld Grimké]]'s, ''Rachel''.<ref>Robert J. Fehrenbach, "An Early Twentieth-Century Problem Play of Life in Black America: Angelina Grimké's ''Rachel''," in ''Wild Women in the Whirlwind: Afra-American Culture and the Contemporary Literary Renaissance'', ed. Joanne M. Braxton and Andree Nicola McLaughlin ( New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1990), pp. 89-106.</ref> It was a tool of the socialist theatre in the 1920s and 30s, and overlapped with forms of documentary theatre in works such as Carl Crede's ''Paragraph 218'' (1930), which concerns the issue of [[abortion]], and which was directed by [[Erwin Piscator]].<ref>Gary Fisher Dawson, ''Documentary Theatre in the United States: An Historical Survey and Analysis of Its Content, Form, and Stagecraft'', Greenwood Press, Westport, CT., 1999, p.126.</ref>