That play, and the others that followed, have been produced all over the world. This anthology includes Kane's never-before-published Channel 4 screenplay, Skin. Complete Plays include Blasted, Phaedra's Love, Cleansed, Crave, 4.48 Psychosis, and Skin.

    The combination of dazzling wit, subtle social criticism, sumptuous settings and the theme of a guilty secret proved a winner, both here and in his next three plays, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband, and his undisputed masterpiece, The Importance of Being Earnest. This volume includes all Wilde's plays from his early tragedy Vera to the controversial Salome and the little known fragments, La Sainte Courtisane and A Florentine Tragedy. The edition affords a rare chance to see Wilde's best known work in the context of his entire dramatic output, and to appreciate plays which have hitherto received scant critical attention.

    They inspired some of the most famous productions and performances in theatrical and film history, and they continue to grip audiences all over the world. Now, in an authoritative two-volume edition, The Library of America collects the plays that define Williams’s extraordinary range and achievement.This first volume begins with the stunning rediscovered plays of Williams’s early career: Spring Storm, a tragedy of provincial longing that prefigures the mood and language of his later work, and Not About Nightingales, a stark prison drama, produced in 1998 to international acclaim, that resounds with the playwright’s outraged idealism. With the autobiographical The Glass Menagerie in 1944, Williams attained what he later called “the catastrophe of success,” a success made all the greater by A Streetcar Named Desire, his most famous play and one of the most influential works of modern American literature.Forging an idiom that uniquely blended lyricism and brutality, a tragic sense of life and a genius for comic observation, he continued to revolutionize the American theater with a series of masterpieces: the poignant and melancholy Summer and Smoke, the light-hearted erotic comedy The Rose Tattoo, the sprawling and surrealistic Camino Real, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, the Pulitzer Prize–winning portrayal of a ruthless family struggle. This volume also contains Battle of Angels (an early version of Orpheus Descending), and a selection of Williams’s one-act plays, including 27 Wagons Full of Cotton, The Property Is Condemned, and I Rise in Flame, Cried the Phoenix, a meditation on the life and work of D. H. Lawrence.This edition includes a newly researched chronology of Tennessee Williams’s life, explanatory notes (including cast lists of many of the original productions), and an essay on the texts.This volume is edited by Mel Gussow (1933–2005), who was a drama critic, a cultural writer at The New York Times, and author of several books, including Edward Albee: A Singular Journey, and by Kenneth Holditch, professor emeritus at the University of New Orleans, editor since 1989 of the Tennessee Williams Journal, and the author of In Old New Orleans.--front flap

    The struggle of the self to remain intact has moved in her work from civil war, into the family, into the couple, into the individual, and finally into the theatre of phychosis: the mind itself. This play was written in 1999 shortly before the playwright took her own life at age 28. On the page, the piece looks like a poem. No characters are named, and even their number is unspecified. It could be a journey through one person's mind, or an interview between a doctor and his patient.

    It has been produced and taught all over the world. Its companion play, The Destiny of Me, is the stirring story of an AIDS activist forced to put his life in the hands of the very doctor he has been denouncing.

    The adventurous and sometimes shocking later works of playwright Tennessee Williams, from 1957 to 1980, are collected in this volume, which includes "Orpheus Descending, Suddenly Last Summer", and "The Night of the Iguana".

    The letter A is as far as she gets. Hester Smith of Fucking A works the only job available—abortionist to the lower class, in order to save for a reunion picnic with her imprisoned son. Her branded A bleeds afresh every time a patient comes to see her.These are two mature, beautifully crafted, inventive and poetic plays by one of the most unique voices writing for the stage today.

    His death has brought into her midst both her sister, Claire, who wants to take Catherine back to New York with her, and Hal, a former student of Catherine's father who hopes to find some hint of Robert's genius among his incoherent scribblings. The passion that Hal feels for math both moves and angers Catherine, who, in her exhaustion, is torn between missing her father and resenting the great sacrifices she made for him. For Catherine has inherited at least a part of her father's brilliance -- and perhaps some of his instability as well. As she and Hal become attracted to each other, they push at the edges of each other's knowledge, considering not only the unpredictability of genius but also the human instinct toward love and trust.

    Her characters suffer and survive against the enormous weight of the times with a dignity that inspires. Her work challenges the audience and reader to reexamine the conflicts and meaning of our everyday lives through her singular, poetic imagery and language.Includes: One Flea SpareIn the Heart of AmericaSlaughter CityThe War BoysThe Trestle at Pope's Creek

    Of his latest play, The New York Times has written, "Uproarious ... wall-to-wall laughs ... Mr. Busch has swum straight into the mainstream and stays comfortably afloat there." Busch is the author of such plays as Vampire Lesbians of Sodom -- one of the longest-running plays in Off-Broadway history -- and Psycho Beach Party, a cross between Gidget and Spellbound. After a successful Off-Broadway run at New York City's Manhattan Theater Club, Busch moves to Broadway with The Tale of the Allergist's Wife, a hilarious comedy about a self-absorbed Upper West Side doctor's wife whose life is devoted to mornings at the Whitney, afternoons at the Museum of Modern Art, and evenings at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Her world is shaken and transformed when a childhood friend makes an unexpected visit.

    In this fascinating look at the modern stage, Stephen Bottoms draws on original archival material and sources including an exclusive interview with Edward Albee. The Introduction considers the text of the play itself; part one provides a survey of the major productions from 1962 to 1999, with special attention paid to the premiere and the 1966 film version. Part two examines shifting critical responses to the play, demonstrating how changing times and attitudes have altered audience perception of performances. The third and final part offers a detailed examination of five different performances, comparing and contrasting directorial, design and acting approaches to demonstrate how our understanding of the play alters considerably according to its interpretation on stage.

    As an infant, Neat was accidentally fed camphor oil by her illiterate great-grandmother who was unable to read the bottle's label. When the poisoning was discovered, Neat was rushed to the nearest emergency room only to be refused treatment. By the time her mother got her to the black hospital, Neat was permanently brain-damaged.Woodard paints the story of her relationship with her childlike aunt, from her excitement of having a "grown-up" playmate to her embarrassment at some of Neat's simple ways. Alternating between Savannah, Georgia, and Albany, New York, Woodard's story shares some moving, and painful, memories of growing up black.

    You can see all of your favorite TV characters in the flesh, including Rene's tone-deaf wife Edith, Major-General von Klinkerhoffen and the Gestapo officer Herr Flick!He and his wife have stashed a priceless portrait stolen by the Nazis in a sausage in their cellar, where two British airmen are also hiding until the Resistance can repatriate them. Communications with London using the wireless that is disguised as a cockatoo add to the many embarrassments this intrepid proprietor endures in the company of his patrons. News that the Fuhrer is scheduled to visit the town inspires tricksters disguised as Hitler to frequent the cafe. Meanwhile Rene summons all the wit he can muster to save his cafe and his life.

    This courageous and controversial choice indirectly expands the modern definition of literature to include the power of the spoken word."Volume One includes:We Won't Pay! We Won't Pay!ElizabethArchangels Don't Play PinballAbout Face

    CLOUD'S. Homer Wells is born in St. Cloud's, Maine and is returned so many times by so many foster families that he becomes the "boy who belonged to St. Cloud's." His medical education begins when he finds out that Dr. Larch saves not only babies, but mothers, too by performing illegal abortions when necessary. Homer becomes Larch's brilliant medical apprentice, but the arrival of the handsome Wally Worthington and his beautiful girlfriend, Candy Kendall, sets Homer's mind and heart spinning and sends him out into the world to experience life for the first time.

    as if Evelyn Waugh and Bret Easton Ellis had collaborated on a horrifying morality play". These qualities are apparent in this volume, which includes Dealing with Clair, in which a routine real-estate deal results in a mysterious assault on the agent, and The Treatment, which focuses on the fantasies -- sexual and otherwise -- among the young and not so young in New York's Tribeca.

    Introductory essays to each work by some of theatre's most distinguished artists give historical and critical perspective to Gardner's achievement. Includes: A THOUSAND CLOWNS - THE GOODBYE PEOPLE - THIEVES - I'M NOT RAPPAPORT - CONVERSATIONS WITH MY FATHER - WHO IS HARRY KELLERMAN AND WHY IS HE SAYING THOSE TERRIBLE THINGS ABOUT ME?.

    Best known for her ongoing work as a member of The Five Lesbian Brothers, Kron's solo pieces are very personal examinations of both herself and her family history. This is singularly clear in 2.5 Minute Ride, where her writing deftly maneuvers between the tragic drama of the Holocaust and the wry comedy of her family's attempts to pursue pleasure at the local amusement park. This critically acclaimed work played to sold out audience for over six months at New York's Public Theatre. Also included is the riotous 101 Humiliating Stories, which first premiered in 1993, and in fact only consists of seventeen tales but each, as the author observes, has several humiliations. It recounts the adventures and misadventures of a self-described Big Lesbian as she tests the boundaries of decorum in social and professional situations.

    Pace Creagan, seventeen, brimful of adventure, fearless and feared. To Dalton, she's irresistible. To Pace, he's a challenge.The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek is a beautiful and haunting play. A coming-of-age story with a wicked twist, it reaches into the depths of a nation and asks what lies beneath.The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek received its European premi�re at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, in February 2001.

    Durer, foreword by Jan Kott. Painter, playwrights, novelist, aesthetician, philosopher, and expert on drugs, Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz - or Witkacy, as he called himself - remains Poland's outstanding figure in the arts between the two world wars. This volume brings together three of Witkiewicz's best works for the stage as well as a selection from his critical writing. The plays deal with the author's principal themes and obsessions: the dilemma of the artist in the twentieth century; the revolutions in science and politics; and the bankruptcy of all ideology, the decline of western civilization, and the coming of totalitarianism. Yet, far from being solemn or even serious in tone, these apocalyptic dramas are permeated with grotesque humor and characterized by a wild theatricality that particularly appeals to contemporary sensibility.

    Book annotation not available for this title.

    Along with translations are essays on Lorca's work by some of his most prominent Lorca scholars currently working today, and cover art and dramaturgical notes by esteemed Catalan painter, scenic designer, and filmmaker Frederic Amat. This volume seeks to recontextualize Lorca's experimental work for a new audience now that 100 years have passed since the poet's birth, and allows directors, actors, and academics to rediscover the lesser-known plays of Lorca's commedia-influenced period as as reaquaint themselves with his little-performed classic As Five Years Pass.

    In these three pieces, the award-winning writer and performer celebrates the power of words to rescue the young black women she portrays from their constricted worlds.In the Obie Award-winning play "Beauty's Daughter," Diane yearns to free herself from her soul-deadening surroundings, where people drown their unfulfilled aspirations in drugs and alcohol. In "Monster," Theresa imagines a life in the rock-'n'-roll poetry bohemia of Manhattan's Lower East Side and away from her home in East Harlem, where she is scorned as a misfit. And in "The Gimmick," Alexis escapes her brutal reality among the library bookshelves, where she dreams of becoming a writer in Paris. Charged with fearless wisdom, these three electrifying plays transform rage-filled ghetto experience into a triumph of rhapsodic expression.

    The synopses of the plays cover major plot points and offer a general story outline. Plays include: Come Blow Your Horn; The Odd Couple; Plaza Suite; The Sunshine Boys; California Suite; Fools; Brighton Beach Memoirs; Broadway Bound; Jake's Women and London Suite.

    Henley includes her own memories and impressions and those of her friends in introductions to each play.

    Hiding from marauding armies, they travel the country, gathering great art treasures from crumbling museums. But with the border to freedom in sight, they're captured by forces from the new coalition government. They can still buy their freedom - if they agree to do one little job for the new government.

    Placing the protagonists and their suffering in a modern context, Ehn produces what he calls "contemporary fairy tales for the stage." The subject matter, he explains in the Preface, is "exploded biography," or "the means by which the self is overmastered by acts of the imagination, by acts of faith." An important contribution to current explorations of the poetic and spiritual in the theater, these surprising dramas create their own language, interrogating the limits of empathy and faith. "The plays grow out of [Ehn's] deep Catholic faith which reveals a specifically Franciscan spiritual energy in its community-based ethos and hallowed desire to infuse contemporary life with a feeling for the divine... Ehn's saint plays partake of the century-long Judeo-Christian tradition of modern writers dramatizing the great themes of faith, evil, spiritual longing and soul states in plays that include saints, angels or biblical characters... His joyful drama sings the praises of the poetic voice and image in portraits of people crafted like beautiful holy cards."--Bonnie Marranca, Plays for the End of the Century

    Stairs to the Roof is a rare and different Williams' work: a love story, a comedy, an experiment in meta-theater, with a touch of early science fiction. Tennessee Williams called Stairs to the Roof "a prayer for the wild of heart who are kept in cages" and dedicated it to "all the little wage earners of the world." It reflects the would-be poet's "season in hell" during the Depression when he had to quit college to type orders eight hours a day at the International Shoe Factory in St. Louis. Stairs is Williams' revenge, expressed through his alter ego, Benjamin Murphy, the clerk who stages a one-man rebellion against the clock, the monotony of his eight-to-five job, and all the dehumanizing forces of an increasingly mechanized and commercial society. Ben's swift-moving series of fantastic adventures culminate in an escape from the ordinary that is an endorsement of the American dream. In 1941 with the world at war and civilization in danger of collapse, Williams dared to imagine a utopian future as Ben leads us up his stairs towards the Millennium. Stairs to the Roof was produced only twice, once at the Playbox in Pasadena, California, in 1945, and subsequently at the Pasadena Playhouse in 1947. Now, in an edition meticulously prepared by noted Williams scholar Allean Hale, Williams fans can share this play of youthful optimism.

    Marie. The Angelina Project is an extension of that event in which four generations of women come to terms with the violence which has shaped them, and which they sometimes perpetrate. It is a full-length two act play based on actual trial records.

    He's done it before in Spokesong and he does it again in this hard, ribald and hilarious little play' (Sunday Times); Nightshade: 'A rare delight … A mixture of experiment, inventiveness, wit, sheer theatricality, obscure motifs and elements that are deeply moving … It is a highly complex play; there is no story that is told in sequence, no meaning that can be easily grasped. But as theatre it is superb' (Hibernia); Pratt's Fall: 'A delicate, unusual and rather beautiful vehicle … a fascinating and delightful entertainment … Parker's chosen approach is to tackle serious themes - often related to the experience of his native Northern Ireland - through a kind of lyrical comedy, deceptively lightweight, fast-moving, and slightly surreal' (Sunday Standard)

    This VERY tongue-in-cheek version of the legend pits spoon-wielding Merry Men against the Prince John and his evil sidekick the Sheriff of Nottingham in one silly situation after another. Prince John plans to prevent Robin's do-gooding by capturing Maid Marian and marrying her off to the Sheriff of Nottingham. Will Robin win the day? That depends on if he remembers his bowling shoes.

    It hinges upon the feud between the moody Prince (Ethan Hawke) and his villainous stepfather Claudius (Kyle MacLachlan).

    This first-of-its kind collection includes a wide range of works, from an early examination and critique of American society after World War II to plays that reflect socio-political concerns that kept pace with historical events, like the sit-in demonstrations, the bus boycotts, black nationalism, and the women's liberation movement. A hybrid of comedic forms including satire, farce, comedy of manners, romantic comedy, dark comedy, and tragicomedy are presented through vernacular language, stand-up performance art, masks, broad humor, as well as the minstrel show. Essays, articles and interviews complement this critical edition.

    Includes an introduction by Bentley.

    Collected here for the first time are plays many of which have been unavailable for decades which pronounce a black American struggle for freedom, advancement and equality from the days of slavery to the era of civil rights. Includes: Emperor of Haiti by Langston Hughes; Nat Turner by Randolph Edmonds; In Splendid Error by William Branch; Harriet Tubman by May Miller; Paul Robeson by Phillip Hayes Dean; I, Marcus Garvey by Edgar White; and Roads of the Mountain Top by Roy Milner.

    The aging Dr. Larch and his two nurses, Edna and Angela, try to keep the orphanage going while scheming to get Homer Wells to return, as Homer meets the world of the apple farm run by young Wally and finds himself drawn closer to Candy. The Second World War changes all three of their lives forever. A clandestine love affair, a new generation of lovers and a realization of what it means to truly be "of use," force Homer to finally make a choice about his heart and his home.

    Includes: Jack Juggler (Anonymous) * Lucky Peter's Journey (August Strindberg) * Big Mary (Mark Medoff) * Escape to Freedom (Ossie Davis) * No Worries (David Holman) * Soul Gone Home (Langston Hughes) * and more!

    In his great works Strindberg is a playwright second to none, and as such he shares the world stage with his major contemporaries: Ibsen, Chekhov, Pirandello and Shaw.

    The test leads to the expulsion of the favorite daughter, Cordelia; the undermining of the king; and ultimately the unraveling of Lear's sanity. In true Shakespeare fashion, greed, war, lust, and misplaced good intensions intersect to form an inevitable climax of poison and swordplay, making King Lear arguably the greatest tragedy of all time. George Bernard Shaw wrote, "No man will ever write a better tragedy than Lear" (Shaw on Shakespeare, Applause Books). If there ever has been a groundbreaking edition that likewise returns the reader to the original Shakespeare text, it will be the Applause Folio Texts. If there has ever been an accessible version of the Folio, it is this edition, set for the first time in modern fonts. The Folio is the source of all other editions. The Folio text forces us to re-examine the assumptions and prejudices which have encumbered over four hundred years of scholarship and performance. Notes refer the reader to subsequent editorial interventions, and offer the reader a multiplicity of interpretations. Notes also advise the reader on variations between Folios and Quartos. The heavy mascara of four centuries of Shakespearean glossing has by now glossed over the original countenance of Shakespeare's work. Never has there been a Folio available in modern reading fonts. While other complete Folio editions continue to trade simply on the facsimile appearance of the Elizabethan "look " none of them is easily and practically utilized in general Shakespeare studies or performances.

    On the same day another woman, Magda, relives the ghosts of another hiding place and a different betrayal - ghosts from which she still seeks forgiveness. Interweaving lives and secrets Treehouses is a magical tale of refuge, treachery and of love lost and found.

    Set in Timmins, Ontario, the play takes place at a time between a mother's suicide and a daughter's wedding.

    Art and politics collide when the goverment padlocks the doors of the theatre on the opening night of Marc Blitzstein's The Cradle Will Rock. The director, Orson Welles, marches the actors and most of the audience down Seventh Avenue and finds another theatre, and in one brilliant stroke makes theatre history.

    But Ruby's act was not one of simple black and white -- her victim had been her lover, and the unraveling of her motives and their relationship revealed not a simple cold-blooded murder or crime of passion but something far more complicated and insidious. Through the eyes of novelist and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston -- who covered Ruby's trial, confronting lies, secrecy, and good old-fashioned racism -- Thulani Davis has told an important story of race and sex in America. "An engrossing piece of theater with a manifest compassion." -- Peter Marks, The New York Times " An] intriguing and ambitious new play ... that] demonstrates that the truth can be a lot more complicated than fiction." -- David Kaufman, New York Daily News

    The six plays that Keith Newlin has selected for this book nicely illustrate the conflicts of that time over such issues as the double standard, the advent of the "New Woman" and turn-of-the-century feminism, and the clash between a woman's career and conventional marriage. The plays are: William Vaughn Moody's The Great Divide (1906), Rachel Crothers's A Man's World (1910), Augustus Thomas's As a Man Thinks (1911), Alice Gerstenberg's Overtones (1913), Susan Glaspell's The Outside (1917), and the first winner of the Pulitzer Prize for drama, Jesse Lynch Williams's Why Marry? (1917). Both commercial and experimental plays are represented here, including two one-acts, and ranging from symbolic drama to zesty comedy. The point, as Mr. Newlin notes in his introduction, is not to recover significant plays but to illustrate a vibrant social debate from both male and female perspectives, and to do so in a range of dramatic form.

    We're proud to present the vocal selections for Jason Robert Brown's award-winning musical (1999 Tony for Best Original Score, Drama Desk and New York Drama Critics Circle Awards for Best New Musical), which is based on the actual case of Leo Frank, a Jewish man falsely accused of killing a 13-year-old girl in Atlanta in 1913. This edition features a detailed plot synopsis, a note from the composer, a biography of Brown, and 12 piano/vocal selections edited by the composer: Big News * Do It Alone * Come Up to My Office * It's Hard to Speak My Heart * My Child Will Forgive Me * Pretty Music * That's What He Said * What Am I Waiting For? * You Don't Know This Man * more.

    “It’s a Native thing,” he informs his incredulous father (who tells him he’d never heard of such a thing from his wife): “Only boys do it. It’s part of becoming a man.” Of course, what with the threats of the police, the temptation of the barbeque next door, and the distractions of a persistent neighbourhood girl, Simon probably wouldn’t recognize a vision if he fell over it.Girl Who Loved Her Horses is the Native name for the strange and quiet Danielle from the non-status community across the tracks, imbued with the mysterious power to draw the horse “every human being on the planet wanted but could never have.” She is and remains an enigma to the people of the reservation, but the power of her spirit remains strong. Years later, a huge image of her horse reappears, covering an entire side of a building in a blighted urban landscape of beggars and broken dreams. The eyes of her stallion, which once gleamed exhilaration and freedom, now glare with defiance and anger. Danielle has clearly been forced to grow up.With these two plays, Taylor rediscovers an issue long forgotten in our “post-historical” age: the nature of, and the necessity for, these rites of passage in all cultures.

    The short play is staged as a concert work, with five performers sitting on chairs in front of music stands, where they've laid their scripts. The five are playing members--grandfather, grandmother, father, mother, son--of a rich WASP family in Buffalo NY between 1935 and 1942, with a brief coda from the 1960s. The son, Eddie, who goes from age eight to twelve, is our narrator, guide and point of view.... This lovely play unites the microcosm of family to the macrocosm of America at war. On Eddie's first date he brings his girl a paper `war-sage'. It's also about something in between--a city. It's an elegy for Buffalo, a once-glorious place whose fortunes are declining. The texture of life in Buffalo is heartbreakingly evoked in ways reminiscent of The Magnificent Ambersons.... This is a magical play, not a mere exercise in uncritical nostalgia, but a nuanced reminiscence full of time and change and loss and suffering--as well as joy." Donald Lyons, New York Post"...A R Gurney's genteel and gently comic ANCESTRAL VOICES...leaving exceedingly pleasant memories in its wake. Mr Gurney's play is performed in the manner of his popular epistolary drama LOVE LETTERS, with the cast reading from scripts while seated on a bare stage.... The hybrid Mr Gurney has produced is as elegantly faceted as a marquise diamond. What distinguishes the tales is the rueful maturity with which it is recounted by a man gazing back over the decades. The characters feel like fully fleshed-out cousins of the denizens of the novels of John Cheever, to whom the dramatist is often compared. The production is not dramatic in the strictest sense, either; the flare-ups in this confrontation-averse clan flicker only for instants. Yet isn't that the way a lot of families let off steam?" Peter Marks, The New York Times"...with ANCESTRAL VOICES, the result is a wistful, colorful companion piece to LOVE LETTERS. That two-character epistolary goldmine, of course, has been similarly read on stages, cruise ships and wherever pairs of actors hunger for quick-study, quality work. Given the new one's larger cast requirements, it is not likely to duplicate the phenomenal popularity of its predecessor. The story of unraveling expectations in a society that considered itself a constant, however, is no less captivating a human document of recent but very foreign times." Linda Winer, Newsday

    Corcoran "pulls off something surprising--this comedy of anarhronism often feels authentically medieval."—Observer

    She includes with her introductions to each play a selection of her friends' memories.

    With her ever loyal secretary, Pitou, the legendary and infamous actress is discussing the imaginary second volume of her autobiography. She has electrifying encounters with people such as Oscar Wilde, and Bernard Shaw, and recreates some of her greatest roles. This play confirmed John Murrell as one of Canada's preeminent playwrights, and here the original Stratford cast and director come together to present this timeless classic.

    Radium Corporation, but with her own family and friends, who fear that her campaign for justice will backfireWritten with warmth and humor, Radium Girls is a fast-moving, highly theatrical ensemble piece for 9 to 10 actors, who play more than 30 parts - friends, co-workers, lovers, relatives, attorneys, scientists, consumer advocates, and myriad interested bystandersCalled a "powerful" and "engrossing" drama by critics, Radium Girls offers a wry, unflinching look at the peculiarly American obsessions with health, wealth, and the commercialization of science.