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.

    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.

    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.

    Includes: Mud, The Danube, Sarita, and The Conduct of Life.

    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.

    

    An evocative story of three outsiders, richly realized through all of the resources of theatre, including poetry, character, and story. Various locations in and around Ware, Illinois, in the late spring of 1935. (THE TASTE OF SUNRISE by Suzan L. Zeder is the prequel to this play.) CAST: 4 men, 4 women (minimum) who create 10 roles.Set in southern Illinois, during the great Depression, this play is about three outsiders - - a foundling girl known only as Girl; a deaf boy, eloquent in the language of his silence; and an eccentric recluse, Mother Hicks, who is suspected of being a witch. The tale, told with poetry and sign language, chronicles the journeys of these three to find themselves, and each other, in a troubled time. Provocative productions through North America have revealed the power and appeal of this play.

    16 vocal selections from Roger Miller's classic Broadway score, including: Arkansas How Blest We Are * The Boys * Crossing, The * Do Ya Wanna Go to Heaven * Free at Last * Gov'ment * Hand for the Hog * I, Huckleberry, Me * Leavin's Not the Only Way to Go * Muddy Water * River in the Rain * The Royal Nonesuch * Waitin' for the Light to Shine * When Sun Goes down in the South * Worlds Apart * You Aughta Be Here with Me.

    Dealing with the grim realities of the battlefield free-fire zones, trip wires, drugs, body bags, rat infested bunkers and the ever-present stench of death the men become increasingly isolated from the "outside world" and from a society that finds honor in such mindless violence and destruction. Ultimately the play, through its gut-wrenching verisimilitude, becomes a moving and eloquent plea for sanity and forbearance, as it assails our minds and hearts with the grim message of what can happen when conscience is overruled by expedi-ence, and clear reason by a warped sense of national purpose.

    

    By the 1960s, however, encouraged by changes in social attitudes toward children, playwrights began to respond to a growing tendency on the parts of both parents and teachers to have children face, rather than avoid, the more difficult truths of existence. Thus children's dramatic literature was opened to new subjects, themes and characters previously considered unsuitable for the young audience.Theatre for Youth seeks to identify and illustrate this trend by examining twelve plays that deal with mature themes: aging, death and dying, conformity, sexuality, divorce, moral culpability. The plays have been chosen not only for their mature content, but also for their professional integrity, the delicacy with which they handle their subject matter, and their respect for their intended audience.A foreword by Jed H. Davis, an introduction and summary paragraphs for each play by Jennings and Berghammer, and a lengthy annotated list of suggested plays for further reading or viewing make this volume extremely useful both for directors of children's theatre and for teachers.