The Navy lawyer, a callow young man more interested in softball games than the case, expects a plea bargain and a cover up of what really happened. Prodded by a female member of his defense team, the lawyer eventually makes a valiant effort to defend his clients and, in so doing, puts the military mentality and the Marine code of honor on trial.

    Written in the fifth century BC, this play concerns the predicament of the outcast hero, Philoctetes, whom the Greeks marooned on the island of Lemnos and forgot about until the closing stages of the Siege of Troy. Abandoned because of a wounded foot, Philoctetes nevertheless possesses an invincible bow without which the Greeks cannot win the Trojan War. They are forced to return to Lemnos and seek out Philoctetes' support in a drama that explores the conflict between personal integrity and political expediency.Heaney's version of Philoctetes is a fast-paced, brilliant work ideally suited to the stage. Heaney holds on to the majesty of the Greek original, but manages to give his verse the flavor of Irish speech and context.

    While visiting a poverty-stricken country far from home, the unnamed narrator of The Fever is forced to witness the political persecution occurring just beyond a hotel window. In examining a life of comfort and relative privilege, the narrator reveals, “I always say to my friends, We should be glad to be alive. We should celebrate life. We should understand that life is wonderful.” But how does one celebrate life—take pleasure in beauty, for instance—while slowly becoming aware that the poverty and oppression of other human beings are a direct consequence of one’s own pleasurable life? In a coruscating monologue, The Fever is most of all an eloquent meditation on whether it is possible to live in an ethical relationship with others in the world.

    The tragicomedy of race, class, manners and naivete of liberalism.

    Set in Londonderry in 1970, this gripping drama by the acclaimed author of Faith Healer and Translations explores the ongoing Irish "troubles" that plague the country to this day.

    The book also includes an introduction by Larry Gelbart, illustrations by Al Hirschfeld, production photographs, and original costume designs.

    With full-color photos from the production. Includes: We Dance * Waiting for Life * Rain * Forever Yours * Ti Moune * Mama Will Provide * Some Girls.

    R. Gurney has wittily captured the manners of upper-middle-class WASP America, but never as gracefully or with such dazzling economy as in Love Letters. Tracing the lifelong correspondence of the staid, dutiful lawyer Andrew Makepeace Ladd III and the lively, unstable artist Melissa Gardner, the story of their bittersweet relationship gradually unfolds from what is written--and what is left unsaid--in their letters. A smash hit both off and on Broadway, Love Letters captures Andy and Melissa with a precision of detail and depth of feeling that only Gurney can command. Two other, thematically related plays by Gurney, The Golden Age and What I Did Last Summer, are included, providing a trio of wry and affectionate paeans to love lost, found, and fleetingly glimpsed.

    "The two rooms of the title are a windowless cubicle in Beirut where an American hostage is being held by Arab terrorists and a room in his home in the United States which his wife has stripped of furniture so that, at least symbolically, she can share his ordeal."Two Rooms received its world premiere at the La Jolla Playhouse in California on June 21, 1988. The cast is two men and two women.

    George Steiner has predicted that the current era in German-language literature will be recognized as the "Bernhard period"; John Updike compares Bernhard with Kafka, Grass, Handke, and Weiss. His dark, absurdist plays can be likened to those of Beckett and Pinter, but their cultural and political concerns are distinctly Bernhard's. While Austria's recent political history lends particular credibility to Bernhard's satire, his criticisms are directed at the modern world generally; his plays grapple with questions of totalitarianism and the subjection of the individual and with notions of reality and appearance.

    They express a passionate longing for social justice and for a stable, nurturing relationship between black men and women. Introductions for each author provide biographical information and critical analyses. A useful bibliography of plays and secondary sources is also included. This anthology helps to fill a serious gap in the standard histories of American drama. Library JournalWines in the Wilderness brings together thirteen plays by black women from the 1920s to the present, including works by Marita Bonner, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Eulalie Spence, May Miller, Shirley Graham, Alice Childress, Sonia Sanchez, Sybil Kein, and Elizabeth Brown-Guillory. The plays and dramatists selected are representative of and have made considerable contributions to African American theater.Although the works of these playwrights span over sixty years, they are closely linked by the theme of women struggling to define their roles in society. The heroines speak out against interracial and intraracial biases, stereotyping, lynch mobs, illiteracy, poverty, promiscuity, self-righteousness, abusive men, rape, and miscegenation. Each play is preceded by a critical introduction that includes biographical information, an assessment of the playwright's contributions to black theater, and a synopsis and critical analysis of the play. The bibliography that follows the plays provides selected lists of published plays, produced plays, and anthologies. An index completes the work. This collection represents an effort to make available plays written by black women that have not been published or are now out of print. In recovering these plays, scholars will now be able to take a close look at the contributions that black women dramatists have made not only to African American theater, but to American theater in general.

    This title gathers previously uncollected poems and dramatic works by the great Spanish playwright.

    Full of grief and love, the plays included in this anthology confront this emotional issue personally and passionately. Alive on the page as well as the theatre, they show us this tragedy of our times.

    A play by one of Britain's best-selling writers"Set in the year 2001 where the class system is numbered from one to five and only the upperclasses are allowed to breed, Ten Tiny Fingers, Nine Tiny Toes is about the births of a perfect but illegal 'class five' baby, and an imperfect 'government' baby bought by a 'class three' mother and exterminated at birth because of her nine toes…compulsive viewing…insanity is served up as commen sense - to sinister effect." Kate Kellaway, Observer

    Most are published by NHB. Caryl Churchill (1938-) is probably the most respected woman dramatist in the English-speaking world. She is the author of some twenty plays including Light Shining in Buckinghamshire, Cloud Nine, Top Girls, Serious Money, The Skriker, Blue Heart, Far Away and A Number, seen and admired all over the world.

    

    Includes:The MarriageDanton's DeathEscurialMedeaCock-a-Doodle Dandy

    Oscar and Felix are two of the stage and screen's most memorable and endearing characters. For the first time, the screenplays are collected in this volume.

    The plays include 'The Romans in Britain', 'Thirteenth Night', 'The Genius', 'Bloody Poetry' and 'Greenland'.

    EARLY WORKS: ACTOS, BERNABE AND PENSAMIENTO SERPENTINE is three books in one: 1) a collection of one act plays by Valdez and the famous farmworker theater, El Teatro Campesino, 2) one of the first fully realized, full-length plays by Valdez alone, and 3) an original narrative poem by Luis Valdez. In the first part are collected the original, improvised works of El Teatro Campesino that deal with the exploitation of Mexican farm labor in the California fields, the discrimination found by Mexicans in the schools, and Mexicans being turned into cannon fodder by the U.S. Army in Vietnam. Bernabe is a touching, Lorcaesque poetic drama about a town fool's enchantment and ultimate unity with the earth. Pensamiento serpentino is a long, philosophical poem, based on Mayan thought and cosmology, which analyzes the cultural, religious and political circumstances of Mexican Americans and prepares a metaphysical framework for their future.

    Drawing on his extensive experience with the rehearsal and performance at Stratford, Ontario in 1986, and at the National Theatre in 1988, Warren demonstrates how rehearsal creates extreme contrasts of mood and action, places intense personal crises in a wider political framework, and inspires spiritual journeys in the actors. Addressing many aspects of production--acting, direction, design, lighting, music, and audience response--this work will be important to all those involved with Shakespearean drama and its performance.

    "The Comfort of Strangers" is based on Ian McEwan's novel and the film of Pinter's screenplay is directed by Paul Schrader, and stars Helen Mirren and Christopher Walken. This collection also includes "Reunion", "Turtle Diary" and "Victory".

    As well as the lyrics written to the musical settings of Weill, Eisler and Dessau, the book contains many less well-known pieces, displaying the full range of Brecht's poetic talent.

    Indeed until the 1970s, almost none of these early plays could be locatedoutside of a library. The Roots of African American Drama fills this gap. Five of the thirteen scripts included here have never been in print, and only three others are presently available anywhere. The plays represent a variety of styles--allegory, naturalism, realism, melodrama, musical comedy, and opera. Four are full length, eight are one-acts, and one is a skit. Their subjects include slavery, share-cropping, World War I, vaudeville, religion, and legend and mythology. In making their selections, the editors used a variety of criteria to insure each play is dramatically sound and historically important. They also searched for those scripts that were unjustly consigned to obscurity. Each selection begins with headnotes that place it in its historical and cultural context. Biographic information and a bibliography of other plays follow each script, providing readers with added sources for study.

    The complete script by the Oscar-winning author of Breaking Away to the play that has been called "An achingly sad, brutal, futuristic comedy that is strangely sweet as often as it is chilling." Linda Winer, Newsday

    In this House which is open to all that is vital on Earth, Emily Carr, with all her greatness and her imperfections, receives visitors from her planet: Lizzie, her sister, is greeted with war whoops and rebuffs, for Lizzie is the adversary, as is all Victorian society; Sophie, her Amerindian friend, who brings messages, reminders and lessons from life; Lawren Harris, her young painter friend from the Group of Seven, who wants to free painting from dogma and revolutionize art in Canada; the Soul Tuner, who hears her cry and vibrates to her thoughts of adoration and compassion ... and D’Sonoqua, the Goddess-Mother on her phosphorescent pedestal, who beckons to Emily from the old world of legends.

    "Victor Bumbalo's ADAM AND THE EXPERTS may be the most important play to deal with the AIDS crisis in gay society since William Hoffman's AS IS and Larry Kramer's THE NORMAL HEART sounded their anguished alarms four and a half years ago. Since those two dramas were first produced Off-Broadway, thousands have died, and thousands more who have gotten AIDS fight to survive. Mr Bumbalo's play expresses a mood of exhaustion, fatalism and embattled determination that, as the decimation continues, has become an overshadowing fact of homosexual life. It has, at least, become possible, Mr Bumbalo's play suggests, to find some bitter humor amid the tragedy. ADAM AND THE EXPERTS is quite funny in a dry satiric way. Most of the humor is situational, deployed by the playwright to reveal the pathetic, ludicrous defenses that people adopt to shield themselves from terrifying realities ..." -Stephen Holden, The New York Times