Set in and around a large pool of water onstage, Metamorphoses juxtaposes the ancient and the contemporary in both language and image to reflect the variety and persistence of narrative in the face of inevitable change. Nominated for three 2002 Tony Awards, including "Best Play," Metamorphoses earned Zimmerman a Tony for "Best Direction of a Play."

    The show's unconventional structure consists of Cathy, the woman, telling her story backwards while Jamie, the man, tells his story chronologically; the two characters meet only once, at their wedding in the middle of the show.Jason Robert Brown won Drama Desk Awards for the music and the lyrics after the Off-Broadway premiere in 2002 starring Norbert Leo Butz and Sherie Rene Scott. The show has since been produced at almost every major regional theater in the U.S., and has been seen in Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Germany, Italy, Canada, Spain, and the UK.

    This songbook contains easy piano arrangements of a dozen songs from Mel Brooks' Broadway blockbuster, the winner of a record 12 Tony Awards! Includes: Along Came Bialy * Der Guten Tag Hop-Clop * Goodbye! * Haben Sie Gehort Das Deutsche Band? * I Wanna Be a Producer * In Old Bavaria * Keep It Gay * Prisoners of Love * Springtime for Hitler * That Face * 'Til Him * When You Got It, Flaunt It.

    Among them are the anarchist Michael Bakunin, who was to challenge Marx for the soul of the masses; Ivan Turgenev, author of some of the most enduring works in Russian literature; the brilliant, erratic young critic Vissarion Belinsky; and Alexander Herzen, a nobleman's son and the first self-proclaimed socialist in Russia, who becomes the main focus of this drama of politics, love, loss, and betrayal. In The Coast of Utopia, Stoppard presents an inspired examination of the struggle between romantic anarchy, utopian idealism, and practical reformation in this chronicle of romantics and revolutionaries caught up in a struggle for political freedom in an age of emperors.

    Too Much Light is an on-going attempt to perform 30 plays in 60 minutes. The show is in constant flux, with at least 2 to 12 new plays written by the ensemble each week. Since the show's inception in 1988, the ensemble has generated nearly 4,500 short plays, performance pieces, and monologues, from which this collection is culled.The book contains solo performance pieces by 25 authors, covering such diverse topics as racial politics, sex between strangers, child abuse, and what it means to be a "male secretary". Rants, poems, songs, plays without words, straight-ahead monologues, jokes and audience participatory plays are just a few of the forms used by The Neo-Futurists to present their ideas and stories.

    The father is so incapable of forgiveness he puts a gun in his son's mouth; the mother so shattered, she deserts the family and eventually takes leave of her sanity altogether; the son--only 17 years old at the time--sets out for New York City. There, he seeks an uneasy refuge in books and reinvents himself as a writer. Across the decade and a half that follows he tries to cope with the ramifications of his own anguish and estrangement while making a desperate search for redemption. A devastating, elegant, and gripping dissection of the American dream, Nocturne signals a brave new voice in American theater.

    It is for sale but there are no takers for the only eatery in the depressed town, so newcomer Percy suggests to Hannah that she raffle it off. Entry fees are one hundred dollars and the best essay on why you want the grill wins. Soon, mail is arriving by the wheelbarrow full and things are definitely cookin' at the Spitfire Grill."A soul satisfying...work of theatrical resourcefulness. A compelling story that flows with grace and carries the rush of anticipation. The story moves, the characters have many dimensions and their transformations are plausible and moving. The musical is freeing. It is penetrated by honesty and it glows." -The New York Times"Soulful...The amiable country flavored tunes and lyrics are rendered with the kind of conviction and expertise that make them transcendent. What in normal times would be a joy is, in these troubled ones, sheer nourishment." -New York Magazine"Soaring melodies!...Well before the show reaches its conclusion, many...city slickers in the audience may be ready to enter Percy's raffle." -The Wall Street Journal"An abundance of warmth, spirit and goodwill!...Some of the most engaging and instantly infectious melodies I've heard in an original musical in some time." - USA Today

    Cast of 3 men, 1 woman. A chorus of 4 or more who may be either male or female. Fragmentary set which may suggest house and swamp. Costumes, "simple swamp."Set deep within the mysterious Tombigee Swamp, WILEY AND THE HAIRY MAN centers around a young fatherless boy, his conjure-woman Mother, his faithful Hounddog, and the Hairy Man who haunts Wiley's days and dreams. Through rhythm and rhyme, a Chorus creates the mystery of the swamp. The magic of this play is not fairy dust -- it is soil. The magic of the earth and mud of the swamp. The magic of survival. In an exciting duel of wits, Wiley learns to rely upon his own resources and conquers two villains; the Hairy Man and his own fear.

    Set in New York's Chinatown, Scissors is a moving portrait of a weekly haircutting ritual between an elderly Chinese manservant and his Caucasian ex-employer. A Beautiful Country chronicles the turbulent history of Asians in America through the eyes of an immigrant drag queen, Miss Visa Denied. In Wonderland, a family working toward their American dream experiences dramatic and unexpected developments that threaten to shatter their hopes. Although aesthetically and tonally different from one another, Yew's four plays evoke an epic backdrop to the dreams, loves, longings, and lives of Asians in America.

    A compassionate portrait of early nineteenth- century Hawaii, The Conversion of Kaahumanu charts the lives of five women during the traumatic, transforming events that followed Western contact. Set in post-World War II Hawaii, Emmalehua tells the story of a young Hawaiian woman struggling to preserve a cherished cultural heritage in a world eager to forget the past and embrace the new American dream. Through history, humor, and a whodunnit plot, the past and present collide in Ola Na Iwi, which explores the issues surrounding the treatment of indigenous human remains.

    

    Not just to calm him down his jumpiness, C Ana is told, is cerebrally, genetically related to sixteen-year-old brother Justin's gang violence. C Ana believes it's all poppycock. Her nineteen-year-old niece Cheryl, however, hanging around the family's apartment in the projects to tutor Kite and shy eight-year-old sister Kandal, supports the teacher. Cheryl lost all three of her brothers to street violence and desperately seeks a solution. Justin attempts the difficult, dangerous road out of the gangs and along the path is startled by the realization that his mother thinks his extracurricular activities were the result of some brain malformation; Kandal continues getting As while learning nothing a reward for being "well behaved"; and Kite, medicated, gets quieter, skinnier, sleepless and, while there is no academic improvement, the lesson he learns, or comes to believe, is that he is essentially bad and needs his pills to be good.

    Young Venetian Clarice can't marry her lover, Silvio. She had been betrothed to Rasponi, who appears to have returned from the dead to claim her. But the Rasponi who appears is actually Beatrice, Rasponi's sister who is in disguise as her brother and has come to Venice to find her suitor, Florinda. Complications arise when a servant greedily seeks employment with both the disguised Beatrice and Florinda and spends the rest of the play trying to serve two masters while keeping the two unaware of the other's presence. The play is based on the Italian Renaissance theatre style, Commedia dellâ��arte, and reinvigorated the genre, which is so heavily based on carnival, while bringing to it an element of realism, mishaps, mix-ups, confusions, disguises and mistaken identity that come with the style. In this new, rapid fire adaptation by award winning dramatist Lee Hall, the language has been updated to now in order to give the action the fast-paced feeling of a Christmas pantomime.

    Alternately chilling and hilarious, UNWRAP YOUR CANDY is a delectable evening of bedtime tales for adults guaranteed to keep you awake for nights on end. Inspired in equal parts by Alfred Hitchcock, Roald Dahl and , UNWRAP YOUR CANDY boasts a versatile cast of five and minimal production requirements. Together, the plays examine the danger of being a child, the terror of being an adult and even the perils of being an unsuspecting audience member. Spine-tinglers for the twenty-first century, the collected one acts in UNWRAP YOUR CANDY are guaranteed to jolt the senses and stimulate the mind. In the title play, UNWRAP YOUR CANDY, five actors portray actual members of the theatre audience and prove far more intriguing than the play they've come to watch. (3 men, 2 women.) In LOT 13: THE BONE VIOLIN, a stunning young violin prodigy skyrockets to international prominence, only to meet a shocking and supernatural fate. (3 men, 2 women.) In WILDWOOD PARK, a neurotic real-estate agent shows a house filled with unspeakable secrets to a potential buyer who harbors an almost insatiable thirst for tabloid atrocities. (1 man, 1 woman.) And in BABY TALK, a woman is unwound when her precocious baby begins to speak early while still inside her womb. (3 men, 1 woman.)

    As their friendship blossoms into love, Alma struggles to free herself from her mother's poverty and alcoholism, while Eugene must contend with the legacy of being "yellow"—lighter-skinned than his brutal and unforgiving father. In My Red Hand, My Black Hand, a young woman explores her heritage as the child of a blues-loving Native American man and a black sharecropper's daughter from Virginia. Alternately joyous and harrowing, both plays are powerful examinations of the racial tensions that fracture communities and individual lives.From the Trade Paperback edition.

    This book is a collection of plays by one of India's most respected playwrights, and offers for the first time his best-known plays published previously by OUP, together in a single volume.

    Sal, the down-trodden shop owner. wonders what happened to the bright future he once had. As they get to know each other, it becomes clear that Helmet has a secret that could make things even worse for both of them.

    Everywhere, people are falling for an edgy new fashion accessory: a shiny ball filled with poison that hangs from a delicate chain.In this oddly peaceful world, Cassandra, a salesgirl at a clothing store called the Abyss, meets a charismatic ad man named Ben in the graveyard where she is mourning her lover, the last true artist on earth. They find themselves helplessly attracted to one another. Ben walks Cassandra home and invites her out to dinner, which leads to sex, marriage and a house in Semi-Residentia. Then comes baby. All one and a half inches of her.Hello … Hello, nominated for several Dora awards, including Best Play and Best Musical, is a tragic, comedic and curiously erotic attack on western society’s predilection for escapist consumerism and entertainment. If the boy-meets-girl musical is the shiny happy ball, then the content of the play, and its characters, are the poison held within.

    

    Winner of the George Devine Award for 2002, published to tie in with the opening at the Traverse Theatre at the Edinburgh FestivalAnd that is why we can't have these/Fatally radiant creatures/Walking round the place/Reminding us how clumsy/And mean-spirited/And graceless/And cowardly/And shapeless/And flabby and foul we all are.In a drowned world - how far will you go to save your own skin? In this vicious tale of love, revolt and beauty, Gary Owen presents a vision of a world divided between citizens and non-citizens, where friends betray one another and where surfaces matter more than love or kinship.

    Also in this series are Of the Fields, Lately (1973); Salt-Water Moon (1984); and 1949 (1988), which deals with this expatriate family’s reaction to Newfoundland’s entry into confederation.With Soldier’s Heart, French looks back in time at the thoroughly alienated 16-year-old Jacob, standing on a railway platform, his suitcase and one-way ticket away from home in hand. His father Esau, a veteran of the First World War, rushes to the station in a last-ditch effort to persuade his son not to leave. Unable to speak of what had happened in the Great War since his return, Esau begins, in halting and tentative language to tell of his comrades and his brother, their training in Scotland, the agony of Gallipoli, and finally the formative events at the battle of the Somme at Beaumont Hamel. At first defensive in response to his son’s probing and impatient questioning, Esau’s answers evolve into stories of pride, foolishness, anger, desperation and finally mindless terror, leaving only the image of a man driven by the blind animal instinct to survive. It is this devastating and unsparing account of all that is in a soldier’s heart, that finally brings father and son back together.

    After a young girl is lost in a cave on the edge of town, there is a Rashomon-like investigation of her disappearance and the fate of those who survive her.

    They have two children. They live in the heartland. They're respected members of their church and their community. When Roy and Irma go to their pastor for marriage counseling, Roy confesses that he's a woman trapped in a man's body and would like to have a sex change. As would be expected, Irma throws Roy out of the house. But their bond as a couple is stronger than either of them imagined, and eventually Irma finds a way to make peace with this unfathomable situation and accept her transformed husband as her lifelong mate. They not only have to wrestle with the meaning of their marriage, they must deal with the delicate dynamics of their family as well. Roy is burdened by his father's stubborn assessment of his manhood and his mother's sad acceptance of life's cruelties. Irma, in the midst of menopause, is struggling with her adolescent tomboy daughter, Patty Ann, who is raging against the injustices of her own budding hormones. And the grown and absent son, Wayne, who has always bemoaned his father's emotional limitations, is now outraged by his father's desire to be a woman. Overseeing it all is Roy's legendary grandmother, who left her husband and son to pursue her own sexual and emotional needs. The play explores the complexities of marriage, family and deconstructs the very notion of love.

    This collection of Christopher Hampton's screenplays includes his two best-known films, Carrington (winner of a Special Jury Prize at Cannes in 1995) and Dangerous Liaisons (winner of an Academy Award), as well as three works never before published: The Custom of the Country, A Bright Shining Lie and Mary Reilly.Christopher Hampton's entertaining introductions to each of the screenplays published here chart the circuitous routes by which his films have, or have not, been made.

    The title play is a racy, comical, and ultimately shattering portrait of young love; Hands traces the disintegration of a bitter and divided family; Claire is a dark, Sartrean meditation on the brutal power structures in relationships; and Star is a brief but bracing monologue about the nature of obsession. With his minimalist settings and spare, rhythmical dialogue, C. E. Gatchalian creates a dark, claustrophobic world where sex, love and obsession mix to form terrifying realities.Although Gatchalian has been compared to British playwright Sarah Kane and his work bears the imprint of masters like Beckett, Albee and Mamet, the impression left by these plays is that of a writer whose voice is entirely his own.The book includes a foreword by renowned Canadian playwright Bryan Wade.

    2) Dece's deceased parents a practical, optimistic mother and a father frustrated by racism within the ranks of the force. 3) And Dece's grandfather, a man whose experience has instilled within him the awareness that there is a way out of the carnage and distrust between the African-American and police communities. A jagged, precarious journey whereby all gradually grasp that understanding comes not just through seeing others but hearing.

    Ray marries and remains closeted in the small town where they grew up. Gil moves to the city to seek his freedom. Throughout their lives they struggle with their feelings for each other in a society that doesn't know how to make room for them, while their bond shaped by a dark and violent event in their youth forever draws them together.

    58 some terrible news. But what if the shock is too much for them? Blunt and Gobbel didn't join up in order to ruin people's lives. Maybe they'd be happier not knowing. And maybe it would all be much easier if the two constables weren't also stuck in the middle of a full-scale village lynch-mob.

    His series of dazzling hits matched high-speed action and dialogue with ingenious plotting. Reaching the heights of farcical lunacy, his plays nevertheless contain touches of barbed social comment and allowed him to mention subjects which would have provoked outrage in the hands of more serious dramatists.This volume of new, sparkling translations by Kenneth McLeish contains three plays from the peak of his career, The Girl from Maxim 's, She's All Yours (La Main Passe) and A Flea in her Ear (La Puce à L'Oreille), together with an early work, Jailbird (Gibier de potence).

    Erry is eighteen, the opposite of book smart and lives with his wife, Thyme, in the bedroom of her parents' Harlem apartment. Shaneequa is fifteen, Thyme's best friend, mother of an infant and has picked up the habit during her current pregnancy of eating dirt. Erry gets a job in construction, but his health slowly begins to deteriorate: occupational lead inhalation. Besides Thyme's obsessions with all the mechanics of the maturing fetus inside her and with the option of delivering in water, she has recently become fascinated with urban politics of the environment: why communities of color are consistently housed in the most hazardous areas. She is a data-gathering machine yet remains strangely oblivious to Erry's mounting illness her research fixation suddenly, devastatingly brought home.

    This collection of Simon Gray's plays includes: "Butley"; "Otherwise Engaged"; "Quartermain's Terms"; "Close of Play"; and "The Late Middle Classes".

    She is on vacation with her husband and eleven-year-old son. Her son has requested that she jump off the board. She, being terrified of heights, has managed to climb to the platform and now clings to the railings as she tries to will herself to leap into the blue Greek air and down into the water of the pool. As she stands on the board, she considers her life. She begins with the experience of her vacations themselves. At this point, she and her family are in Greece exactly at the moment that CNN has announced Athens as the hottest city in the world, one degree hotter than Cairo. Other vacations have included cold snaps in Florida that caused the fish to freeze in the ocean; the honeymoon in Hawaii during a hurricane season; waking up in Mexico to an 8.1 earthquake and so on. She includes other adventures as well: time spent in VISTA; work in dinner theatre with Dorothy Lamour and Mickey Rooney; an appearance on the show with Peter Lawford as her partner; the walk across a rope bridge in the French Alps at dusk, etc. The key ingredient to this one-woman show, is that it begins in the lobby at half hour. The performer invites audience members (35 people) to participate in the show by reading lines from the script (sides). The lines are delivered from their seats and range from one word to several pages of dialogue. The show then begins with a conversation with the audience about the participation. The involvement of the audience provides the opportunity for them to experience the point of the play: the willingness to take risks and jump in. This is a one-woman show with a very large cast.

    Acting edition.

    As their friendship blossoms into love, Alma struggles to free herself from her mother's poverty and alcoholism, while Eugene must contend with the legacy of being "yellow" -- lighter-skinned than his brutal and unforgiving father. In My Red Hand, My Black Hand, a young woman explores her heritage as the child of a blues-loving Native American man and a black sharecropper's daughter from Virginia. Alternately joyous and harrowing, both plays are powerful examinations of the racial tensions that fracture communities and individual lives.

    

    Four women are drawn into the race to find her. As we watch them grid-search the fields for traces of her passing, we move through the shattering events of their recent lives that have left them as lost as she is. Mentor and protégé, lovers and sisters, they explore one burning question: who’s got the power, and what is he or she going to do with it?Redolent with ambiguity, playing on the multiple meanings of victim, victory, and theatricality while undermining and interrogating these conventions, The Vic creates an ensemble of sharply drawn characters: eight ethnically diverse women, ranging in age from their teens to their fifties, each of them eager to claim the entitlement they feel their status as victim has “naturally” conferred upon them.Drawing on the cult of Rock Thériault (aka “Moses”) near Burnt River, Ontario, in the early 1980s, and the Bernardo case, The Vic starts out where the popular media coverage of these events leaves off: with the media’s inability to penetrate the humanity of its subjects beyond the constructed veils of saints and sinners; evil perpetrators and innocent, “helpless” victims. It is an unsparing, often shocking, sometimes incredibly humorous dramatization of how the status of victim has become the most powerful and effective manipulative tool for social advancement in an age where all public discourse begins and ends with the populist media motto, “if it bleeds it leads.”Cast of 8 women.

    It brings together writings by artists, intellectuals and art activists exploring contemporary practices within multicultural, intercultural and ethnically specific theaters. This provocative and dynamic resource brings forth critical issues of cultural aesthetics engaging theatre as a crucial site for examining the intricate intersections of race, gender, class, sexuality and national and global politics.Contributors include Rustom Bharucha, Thulani Davis, Harry Elam, Guillermo Gomez-Peña, Velina Hasu Huston, Cherríe Moraga, David Román, Sekou Sundiata, Diana Taylor, Una Chaudhuri, Alberto Sandoval-Sánchez and lê thi diem thúy.

    Included are the plays The Misanthrope, Phaedra Britannica and The Prince's Plays.The volume contains introductions, written by Tony Harrison, to each of the plays.

    Introduced by Jenny Sealey, Artistic Director of Graeae Theatre Company, the U.K.’s leading theatre company working with disabled artists.