The second half of the twentieth century has seen the emergence of theater of diversity, which uses the theater to stress multicultural, multiethnic, and gender issues. In such theater, point of view and purpose are particularly important to understand. Most such theaters emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, and they have continued to grow and develop in the decades since then. African-American theater has roots that stretch back to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. By the beginning of the twentieth century, with the emergence of ragtime music, black writers and performers began to achieve prominence. In the 1930s, the Federal Theater Project formed African-American units in twenty-two cities, creating a new generation of African-American theater artists who would develop in the coming decades. Possibly the most important production of the postwar era was Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun. Thereafter, playwrights such a Amiri Baraka, Lonne Elder, Charles Gordone, Douglas Turner Ward, and Charles Fuller wrote important plays. Probably the most noted African-American playwright of the contemporary period is August Wilson, who has won many awards, including two Pulitzer Prizes. Asian-American theater has its beginnings in the long traditions of India, China, and Japan. With the increase in ethnic awareness during the 1960s and 1970s, several theaters devoted to Asian-American drama were created. David Henry Hwang, whose M. Butterfly was very successful on Broadway in 1988, is currently the most influential Asian-American playwright. He, and the actor B. D. Wong have been involved in controversies over the casting of recent plays. Hispanic theater generally comprises of three groups: Chicano theater, whose major theater is the El Teatro Campesino; Cuban American theater, with the noted playwright Maria Irene Fornes; and Nuyorican theater, with the playwright Miguel Pinero. Native American theater has recently begun to attract attention, especially with the 1993 production of Black Elk Speaks by the Denver Theater Center. Since the beginning of the feminist movement, theater has been used to raise consciousness concerning the second-class status of women. Part of this movement has brought recognition to female playwrights who had been neglected in the past. Interest in female playwrights grew, and dramatists such as Beth Henley, Marsha Norman, and Wendy Wasserstein have achieved considerable fame. Another direction feminist theater took was toward a more militant, artistically nonconformist approach, characterized by such theaters as the Omaha Magic Theater and the Spiderwoman Collective. In addition, several theaters have sprung up to address lesbian issues. Such lesbian, and also gay, theaters brought the concerns of homosexuals onto the stage. Plays such as The Boys in the Band, Torch Song Trilogy, and The Ritz have dealt expressly with gay issues, and another group of plays, most notably Tony Kushner's Angels in America, have addressed the AIDS crisis. Theater groups such as Split Britches have addressed similar issues for the lesbian community. Performance art has taken many forms, appearing first as a part of the dance and painting world, then developing more toward performance. In recent years, performance art is now associated with individual artists who present autobiographical material onstage. All of these movements are associated with postmodernism, which reflects issues of power in art and revolts against traditional readings of texts.