Best of
Drama

1986

The Prince of Tides


Pat Conroy - 1986
    Spanning forty years, this is the story of turbulent Tom Wingo, his gifted and troubled twin sister Savannah, and their struggle to triumph over the dark and tragic legacy of the extraordinary family into which they were born.Filled with the vanishing beauty of the South Carolina low country as well as the dusty glitter of New York City, The Prince of Tides is PAT CONROY at his very best.

The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe


Jane Wagner - 1986
    Jane Wagner's masterpiece--The first play in more than 20 years to become a national bestseller--is now a motion picture!In this satire, a form all too lacking in American theater, Trudy the bag lady, Wagner's central character, tries to explain modern American material society to an alien (i.e., interstellar) committee.

The Ambassador's Women:


Catherine Gaskin - 1986
    Geraldine Penrose is the wife of an aristocratic British diplomat. American Ginny Clayton belongs to a family whose name commands influence. From this chance meeting grows a friendship that will link the two families.

Forrest Gump


Winston Groom - 1986
    After accidentally becoming the star of University of Alabama's football team, Forrest goes on to become a Vietnam War hero, a world-class Ping-Pong player, a villainous wrestler, and a business tycoon -- as he wonders with childlike wisdom at the insanity all around him. In between misadventures, he manages to compare battle scars with Lyndon Johnson, discover the truth about Richard Nixon, and survive the ups and downs of remaining true to his only love, Jenny, on an extraordinary journey through three decades of the American cultural landscape. Forrest Gump has one heck of a story to tell -- and you've got to read it to believe it...

The Singing Detective


Dennis Potter - 1986
    The narrative counterpoints life in a hospital ward of a writer crippled by a horrific skin disease with the plot of his atmospheric thriller to the point where fantasy and reality seem to exchange places. The result is the most painful and disturbing screen drama of the 1980s.

The Collected Plays, Vol. 2


Neil Simon - 1986
    They and the critics agree that a trip to see any one of this master of comedy's stage triumphs ranks among the most wonderful experiences that the American theater offers. The eight plays in this, the second volume of The Collected PLays of Neil Simon, bear eloquent witness to the unique genius of this master playwright who so magnificently blends the joy of laughter and the love of life.

No Perfect Fate


Jackie Weger - 1986
    Alone is good and she is finding her way. On a whim, she parks her Play-mor in a fish camp in the wilds of the Okefenokee Swamp, where gators yawn, bears slumber, and snakes slither. The camp pace is slow, the owner kind, and the people friendly. Cleo encounters Fletcher Freemont Maitland and his goddaughter, eleven year-old Katie. Cleo didn’t know her life was about to unravel yet again, her heart would shatter, and that Fletcher Maitland would help her mend. But Cleo is about to find these things out the hard way. Both Fletcher and Katie will change her life and if Cleo does not learn to accept that life is bountiful and fate imperfect, she will lose both forever.

Theater Games for the Classroom: A Teacher's Handbook


Viola Spolin - 1986
    It includes over 130 theater games, plus exercises and instructional strategies. First developed by Spolin, the originator of modern improvisational theater techniques, these games have been tried and tested for over fifty years.

True Stories


David Byrne - 1986
    This is a one-man-band job for David Byrne (lead singer of the Talking Heads), who writes, stars, and directs, It's ostensibly about the sesquicentennial celebration of a small Texas town, but it's really about strange characters and strange attitudes. Byrne is our guide, driving us around and giving tour information about Texas in an innocuous patter, frequently running into Louis Fyne (John Goodman), a lonely man looking for love. At various times, and with little provocation, the film swoons into a Talking Heads number with preachers and bar patrons belting out tunes. If you make room for it, however, True Stories can surprise and delight with its inventiveness and its unconventional treatment of the residents. A scene in which a construction worker launches into an aria, on a makeshift stage when no one else is around, is but one example of numerous such moments in this bizarre, delightful, and benign film. Any Talking Heads fan who doesn't own it should. --Keith Simanton

Lend Me a Tenor


Ken Ludwig - 1986
    So the impresario's diminutive assistant blacks up and goes on as Otello. The tenor awakens, dons his costume, and thence follows a hilarious comedy involving two Otellos, a volatile Italian wife, an outrageous bellhop and a cynical impresario.

Yes, Prime Minister: The Diaries Of The Right Hon. James Hacker: Volume 1


Jonathan Lynn - 1986
    

ಸಾಕ್ಷಿ [Saakshi]


S.L. Bhyrappa - 1986
    Yama, the God of death and righteousness, commands him to return to earth in spiritual form to witness but not to intervene in the subsequent events. The village elder observes the other characters as they are confronted by difficult decisions and revelations which cause them look inward and attempt

Sex and Death to the Age 14


Spalding Gray - 1986
    Included are "Sex and Death at the Age of 14," "Booze, Cars, and College Girls," "47 Beds," "Nobody Wanted to Sit Behind a Desk," "Travels through New England," and "Terror of Pleasure: The House." Also includes a preface by the author.

Time Steps


Charlotte Vale Allen - 1986
    THE MARCH OF TIME SHATTERED THEIR DREAMS.Beatrice Crane and Bobby Bradley were Hollywood's greatest movie dance team, and nothing could keep them apart...Not the film studio moguls who demanded they make love on-screen--and hide their love when they were off.Not the bitter ex-dance partner who vowed to destroy Beatrice for taking another man on the road to stardom.Not the director who married her.Not the daughter who hated her.The events of one horrific night changed their lives forever.

The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: Volume 1


Bert Coules - 1986
    These four stories, written by the main dramatist on the complete BBC Radio 4 Sherlock Holmes canon, imaginatively flesh out the cases behind those references to wonderful effect. As in the complete dramatised canon, Clive Merrison plays the great sleuth. Andrew Sachs plays the role of Doctor Watson, while the star cast includes Tom Baker, Eleanor Bron, Jane Asher, Tim West and Toyah Willcox. The stories are: 'The Madness of Colonel Warburton'; ‘The Star of the Adelphi'; 'The Saviour of Cripplegate Square' and 'The Singular Inheritance of Miss Gloria Watson'.4 CDs. 2 hrs 55 mins.

Plays: Maria Irene Fornes


María Irene Fornés - 1986
    Includes: Mud, The Danube, Sarita, and The Conduct of Life.

Derek Jarman's Caravaggio: The Complete Film Script and Commentaries


Derek Jarman - 1986
    

Expressionist Texts


Mel Gordon - 1986
    Several of the classics of the style are represented in this volume, including: Sphinx and the Strawman by Oskar Kokoschka, Sancta Susanna by August Stramm, From Morn to Midnight by Georg Kaiser, Ithaka by Gottfried Benn, The Son by Walter Hasenclever, The Transfiguration by Ernst Toller, Crucifixion by Lothar Schreyer.

Outrageous: One Act Plays


Miguel Piñero - 1986
    Pinero finds comedy, hilarity, paradox and pathos in such unlikely places as subway toilets, pimp bars, drug "shooting galleries", crowded tenements and in the writer's own struggles with his Smith-Corona and penury.

Peter Greenaway: A Zed & Two Noughts


Peter Greenaway - 1986
    One begins to obsessively photograph dead animals, while the crusades to set them free. A bizarre and unexpected story emerges.

Nine Plays by Black Women


Beah E. Richards - 1986
    Continuing that tradition of excellence, a whole new generation of exciting black women playwrights is now giving a much-needed vitality and fresh perspective to the contemporary stage.

The Prodigal Apprentice


George MacDonald - 1986
    Book by MacDonald, George

The Mystery of Edwin Drood: A New Musical


Rupert Holmes - 1986
    

Dirt Rich


Clark Howard - 1986
    Crossing America in the early twenties, midwesterners Georgia and Sam Sheridan unknowingly take the first steps on a quest for identity and a search for an ocean of oil that will make them rich.

William Shakespeare's Hamlet


Harold BloomFrancis Barker - 1986
    A collection of eight critical essays on Shakespeare's play "Hamlet" arranged in chronological order of publication from 1951 to the present.

CliffNotes on Faulkner's The Bear


James Lamar Roberts - 1986
    "The Bear," in addition to being one of the greatest hunting stories of all time, is one of the finest stories about the initiation of a young man into the rituals of the hunt and the wilderness, and it is also a compelling story of that young man's maturation into full manhood.