Megan Terry came to international prominence in the 1960s as a playwright with the Open Theatre and as the author of Viet Rock (1966), America's first play about the Vietnam War. She is a prolific writer, having scripted over fifty musical plays, most of which have been published and produced. In Broadway's terms, her work is experimental and avant-garde--in content she confronts sexuality, politics, and sexual politics; in technique she pushes cultural cliches to extremes in order to expose the attitudes that breed them; in construction she formalizes the acting exercise known as "transformations" to create new dramatic structures. In American popular culture terms, however, her tone and sense of social responsibility are rooted in vaudeville, burlesque, evangelism, and stand-up comedy.

Born Marguerite Duffy in Seattle, Washington, to Harold Joseph Duffy, Jr., and Marguerite Cecelia Henry Duffy, Megan Terry had a "life long ambition ... to be in the theatre...