First Season

Amanda "The Glass Menagerie" (Julie Harris, Olympia Dukakis, Ruby Dee, Molly Regan, Martha Plimpton, Eric Stoltz, Robert Sean Leonard, Sam Waterston; directors Mark Brokaw, Austin Pendleton)

A middle-aged single mother, struggling to survive, and in many ways failing, Amanda is often dismissed as too overbearing for her own good. But viewers will learn about an Amanda who is almost too purposeful, relentlessly determined to find her children a place in the world, consumed by the fear that they will fail once she is gone. Her actions spark revolt and attacks from her disaffected son, Tom, and outright deception from her crippled daughter, Laura. She has ambitious plans for her children, but falls tragically short.

Ruth Younger "A Raisin in the Sun" (Ruby Dee, Ernestine Jackson, Joe Morton, Ralph Carter, Kim Yancey, John Fiedler, Starletta DuPois, Audra McDonald, Phylicia Rashad; director Lloyd Richards)

"A Raisin in the Sun" offered white America its first authentic look into an extended, three-generation black family. When Ruth married Walter, she envisioned a life held together by a mutual dedication to create and nurture a family, by supporting each other against the hostile, white-run world. Ruth discovers that the pressures on her marriage also come from her own family. Anyone who strains to resist criticizing a spouse, to avoid further tensions, can see something of their challenge in Ruth's choices. And any woman who faces the soul-wrenching decision whether or not to avoid the added pressures of bringing another child into an already tremulous family will see a woman pulled in all directions, eager to satisfy everyone's needs, and barely able to satisfy her own.

Rose "Gypsy" (Bernadette Peters, Tyne Daly, Angela Lansbury, Betty Buckley, Crista Moore, John Dossett; choreographer Jerry Mitchell; creators Arthur Laurents, Stephen Sondheim)

When the real-life Rose Hovick looked around at her life in Seattle in the early 1920s, what she saw was in confinement. In "Gypsy," Rose mirrors that story, packing up her two small girls, one of whom was genuinely talented, and heading out to find any lodge hall, church basement or vaudeville theatre where she could get them on stage. She is everyone's best example of the world's worst mother. One daughter abandons her, and the other becomes the world's highest-paid burlesque stripper, Gypsy Rose Lee. Show business creates larger-than-life characters, and none is larger than Rose ... Momma Rose, Madame Rose ... a woman who pushed her children into the spotlight, and in the process, cast a shadow over the rest of their lives.