It tells the story of very private lives caught up in the heartrendering ordeal of suffering and doom - an ordeal that was largely ignored for reasons of politics and majority morality.Filled with power, anger, and intelligence, Larry Kramer's riveting play dramatizes what actualy happened from the time of the disease's discovery to the present, and points a moral j'accuse in many directions. His passionate indictment of government, the media, and the public for refusing to deal with a national plague is electrifying theater - a play that finally breaks through the conspiracy of silence with a shout of stunning impact. As Douglas Watt summed it up in his review for the New York Daily News,THE NORMAL HEART is "an angry, unremitting and gripping piece of political theater. You are bound to come away moved."

    Christopher Hampton has made a masterful adaptation for the stage of the conspiracy to corrupt a young girl barely out of her convent.

    When others begin to speak freely around him, he not only becomes privy to secrets both dangerous and frivolous, he also discovers an adventurous extrovert within himself.

    The play is set in a beach bungalow. The young man who lives there has pulled a lost young woman from the ocean. Soon, she finds herself trapped in his life and torn between her need to come to rest somewhere and her certainty that all human relationships turn eventually into nightmares. The struggle between his tolerant and gently ironic approach to life and her strategy of suspicion and attack becomes a kind of war about love and creation which neither can afford to lose. This is an offbeat, wonderful love story. Note: The play contains a wealth of excellent monologue and scene material.

    Vaclav Havel gives us the comically absurd and seemingly autobiographical account of Professor Leopold Nettes, a revered but reluctant revolutionary whose most recent book has irked the totalitarian government in power. The authorities demand a retraction; his friends and fans clamor for heroic defiance. Besieged by onslaught of internal demons, whining lovers, suffocating followers, and ineffectual government thugs, the professor sinks nearer and nearer to crisis, unable to confront the conflicting demands that rule his life and leave him tormented by neurotic inertia. One of Havel's best-known plays, Largo Desolato vividly dramatizes the multiple contradictions of the intellectual trapped in a totalitarian nightmare.

    

    It also includes an introductory essay on the sarsuwela as a traditional Philippine theater form revived and revitalized in recent years; production notes by the playwright, the director, the composers, and the production designer; score for voice and piano of some 20 songs featured in the musical play; and more than 40 photographs taken from the premiere performances of the play at Fort Santiago and at the Rizal Park in early 1882.

    

    Audiences throughout the country have heard Helen Adam perform songs from SAN FRANCISCO'S BURNING, a ballad opera both richly comic and darkly mysterious. Now, Hanging Loose Press is pleased to publish the first complete edition of the play, with the full text by Miss Adam and her sister, Pat, the full score by Al Carmines, and drawings by Jess.

    

    It is Thanksgiving Day, 1973, and they are furiously preparing for the imminent arrival of relatives for a family dinner. At first the action of the play is refreshingly offhand and filled with warmhearted humor, with Maurine fluttering about chattering nonstop and Bob trying to disguise the fact that he has been smoking a forbidden cigarette. But then, as Jeremy's cutting ripostes become more sarcastic and venomous, the mood changes-impelling a series of explosive confrontations as the others struggle to understand and accept Jeremy's alarming bitterness and to convey the love and deep concern which they feel for him. But, in the end, the gulf between them is too great, the harsh words too hurtful, for harmony to be restored. Instead there is violence and rage, and the shattering realization that what once was can be no more, and they can only pick u the pieces and go on as best they can.

    Tony Harrison's light translation of a brace of the northern Mystery plays as performed by the National Theatre in the eighties.

    Mitchel, The Green Bird is a fairy tale written by the 18th century Italian playwright Carlo Gozzi. An evil queen, a dim king, a princess and a mysterious green bird inhabit the world of Carlo Gozzi's theatrical fantasy. It is the story of a dysfunctional royal family where the evil mother in-law, Tartagliona buries her daughter in-law, the Queen, under the royal toilets. First performed in 18th century Venice, The Green Bird is often revived, charming contemporary audiences with its playful take on familiar fairy tale forms and wowing them with its sheer theatrical imagination. This book is complete with stage directions.

    The play focuses on the life and work of Francis Marion Beynon, a Manitoba journalist and political activist. When the play opens, Francis is on her way to Winnipeg, leaving behind a sheltered and religious rural childhood. Soon after she arrives she meets Nellie McClung and becomes involved in the Votes-for-Women movement. She also begins work as the women’s page editor for The Rural Review, airing her controversial political views on the editorial page. Suddenly, Canada is involved in World War I, and the conscription crisis divides the suffragists: should all women have the vote or just Dominion-born women who are sending their husbands and sons off to battle? Should women use their votes to push for conscription or to lobby for a swift end to the war?A play about the polarities of public and private lives, and about issues of racism and pacifism within the women’s movement, The Fighting Days deals with timeless moral concerns. Francis Beynon, says the playwright, “gave up everything for her beliefs and one can only hope the world’s a better place for it.

    Dario Fo and Franca Rame are Italy's best-known performers, playwrights, and political activists. Award-winning actress and director Estelle Parsons toured this version of ORGAMSO ADULTO ESCAPES FROM THE ZOO, concluding with a triumphant run at Joseph Papp's Public Theater in New York. A WOMAN ALONE: Maria, a housewife, has been locked up at home by her jealous husband. Come to think of it, all the men in her life have been oppressing her. Good thing she has a gun. MAMMA FRICCHETONA (THE FREAK MOMMY): A mother becomes a gypsy in order to pursue her son who has joined a commune. WAKING UP: A working-class woman prepares for work while taking care of her baby. Meanwhile, her husband sleeps. WE ALL HAVE THE SAME STORY: A woman's double is a doll who says four-letter words to attract men. DIALOGUE FOR A SINGLE VOICE: A young woman invites her boyfriend up to her room. If her father wakes up, he'll cut off the young man's balls with an ax. MEDEA PROLOGUE: An introduction to the monologue MEDEA. MEDEA: A rebellious woman reacts to betrayal by resorting to infanticide. MONOLOGUE OF A WHORE IN A LUNATIC ASYLUM: A prostitute tells her life story to a psychiatrist. IT HAPPENS TOMORROW: A woman relates her story of torture as a political prisoner.

    It includes a synopsis of the plot, with indications of the themes and motifs used in it, and discusses the style of the opera, Tosca being a typical example of Italian naturalism in operas, verismo. It compares Puccini's libretto with Sardou's play La Tosca, analyses the close-knit structure of the work and examines salient points in the music. It also describes the genesis of the work (quoting wherever appropriate, Puccini's own remarks about it), its first production and early reception. A subsidiary aim of the book is to present the opinions, positive and negative, that have been expressed by various critics about the opera since its first production in 1900. There are contributions from the celebrated singer and producer of Tosca Tito Gobbi, and two other musicologists, Roger Parker and William Ashbrook. Malcolm Walker has provided a discography.