 A succession of major American plays streamed out of the small edifice, by writers including F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos, and Elmer Rice in the 1920s; Eugene O'Neill, Seán O'Casey, Clifford Odets, W. H. Auden, Gertrude Stein, Luigi Pirandello, and William Saroyan in the 1940s; Samuel Beckett, Pablo Picasso, T. S. Eliot, Jean Anouilh, and Tennessee Williams in the 1950s; Harold Pinter, LeRoi Jones, Eugène Ionesco, Terrence McNally, Lanford Wilson, and Lorraine Hansberry, in the 1960s, as well as Edward Albee, staging a large number of his plays; and Sam Shepard, Joe Orton and David Mamet in the 1970s and 1980s.Beckett's "Happy Days" had its world premiere at the Cherry Lane, directed by Alan Schneider, on September 17, 1961.Sam Shepard's "True West" had its New York premiere at the Cherry Lane on October 17, 1982, starring John Malkovich and Gary Sinise, and produced by Kevin Dowling, Wayne Adams and Harold Thau.