encourage them to continue the sort of transformation you have seen, in the works of ionesco, miller, capek characters whose inner natures are depicted as a robot, an ape, a rhinoceros, cogs in a machine and numbers, rather than names. strindberg's mummy sits in the closet, albee's old lady sits in a sandbox and waits for death in the person of a handsome young man with a flute. america's favorite playwright, thornton wilder wrote our town, omitting scenery and props, and allowing his characters to say aloud what they would not have actually said to anyone. the departure from realism began with strindberg. this was a co-production of miami-dade community college and british broadcasting corporation british open university.