When the patriarch of the Weston clan disappears one hot summer night, the family reunites at the Oklahoma homestead, where long-held secrets are unflinchingly and uproariously revealed. The three-act, three-and-a-half-hour mammoth of a play combines epic tragedy with black comedy, dramatizing three generations of unfulfilled dreams and leaving not one of its thirteen characters unscathed.

    This innovative new musical won the 2008 Tony Award for Best Book and is soon to be a Spike Lee film. Singer-songwriter and performance artist Stew brings to the stage the story of a young black musician traveling from L.A. to Amsterdam to Berlin and back, all in search of "the real." Heartfelt and hilarious, the soulful songs "pass" from gospel, punk, blues, jazz, and rock. The 15 songs are arranged in standard piano/vocal format with the melody in the piano part. Includes: Amsterdam * The Black One * Love like That * Mom Song * Must Have Been High * Work the Wound * Youth's Unfinished Song * and more.

    “If there is a bleaker, funnier or more desperate play in Edinburgh this year, I’ll eat my hat.”—GuardianA brilliant new play by the author of Disco Pigs and this year’s winner of the Edinburgh First Fringe Award for Outstanding New Writing.

    Through the skillfully disarming use of clichéd language and homilies, the play explores with subtle grace and depth the way the death of a child tears one family apart, while showcasing the talents of a promising young playwright who "in [a] very modern way [is] making a rather old-fashioned case for the power of the written word" (Jason Zinoman, The New York Times).Fresh from its critically acclaimed off-off-Broadway run this past spring, God's Ear moves off-Broadway to the Vineyard Theatre in April 2008.

    It’s just people saying things. It’s all subjective. There’s the truth, and there’s what people think is the truth, and it all depends on how you slant it…’Taking Care of Baby tackles the complex case of Donna McAuliffe, a young mother convicted of the murder of her two infant children. In a series of probing interviews the people in this extraordinary story, including Donna herself and her bewildered mother Lynn, reveal how they may have harmed those they sought to protect.Dennis Kelly’s ambitious new play uses the popular techniques of drama-documentary and verbatim theatre to explore how truth is compromised by today’s information culture. It opens at the Hampstead Theatre in May 2007.

    Book annotation not available for this title.

    This is a new collection of some of David Hare's finest work, including "Skylight" (Winner of the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play, 1996), "Amy's View", "The Judas Kiss", and "My Zinc Bed".

    Our vocal selections book features 13 great songs from the Kander & Ebb musical comedy/murder mystery: Coffee Shop Nights * He Did It * I Miss the Music * In the Same Boat * It's a Business * Kansasland * Show People * Thataway! * Thinking of Him * A Tough Act to Follow * What Kind of Man * Wide Open Spaces * The Woman's Dead. Includes seven pages of color photos.

    This universal love story rendered through a post-modern gay lens slips from domestic comedy into a darkly fantastic fable examining t

    Now, pianists can play music from this record-breaking film with The Dark Knight Overture, a 5 Finger piano arrangement with optional duet accompaniment. This piece contains several key themes from the film's score.

    Acclaimed Broadway playwright Ken Ludwig's humorous adaptation of this classic tale. First performed by the Bristol Old Vic in 2006. Based on Alexandre Dumas' timeless swashbuckler, The Three Musketeers tells the story of young d'Artagnan, who sets off for adventure in Paris and soon allies himself with the greatest heroes of the day - Musketeers Athos, Porthos and Aramis - to defend the honour of the Queen of France. New, innovative activities specifically tailored to support the KS3 Framework for Teaching English and help students to fulfil the Framework objectives. Activities include work on Speaking and Listening, close text analysis, and the structure of playscripts, and act as a springboard for personal writing.

     Edward Gant's Amazing Feats of Loneliness! (Theatre Royal, Plymouth, 2002) mixes Victorian melodrama with a catalogue of grotesque comic tales; The Lying Kind (Royal Court, 2002), a black farce set at Christmas involving two hapless policeman who must break news of tragedy to an elderly couple, 'often reduced much of the audience to tears of laughter' (Financial Times). Produced originally for the 2004 Edinburgh International Festival, The Wonderful World of Dissocia wowed critics and audiences alike. A hugely original play inspired by Alice in Wonderland, it is both magical and moving and confirmed Neilson as one of the major voices in contemporary British Theatre. Realism premiered at the Edinburgh International Festival in 2006. It follows the life of one man during an ordinary day but veers off to become a deliriously surreal trip inside his wayward imagination. It was described by the Guardian as a 'bold and utterly distinctive all-singing, all-dancing show, like nothing else you'll ever see'.

    The play begins with the 1990s controversy over color-blind casting for "Miss Saigon," before it spins into a comic fantasy, in which the character DHH pens a play in protest and then unwittingly casts a white actor as the Asian lead. "Yellow Face" also explores the real-life investigation of Hwang's father, the first Asian American to own a federally chartered bank, and the espionage charges against physicist Wen Ho Lee.

    

    He has consistently lived up to and exceeded that early promise as the plays in this second volume of his work testify. Characterised by a taut mood, a grappling with moral dilemmas, and tough, eloquent dialogue, punctuated by outrageously comic moments, the plays in this volume are:Blue/Orange: An incendiary tale of race, madness and power set in a psychiatric hospital. 'Britain's best new play since Michael Frayn's Copenhagen ? thrillingly original' Financial Times Dumb Show sees TV star Barry caught in a tense game of manipulation and entrapment in this satire on the fame game and the media industry: 'Penhall brings the same sharpness and wit to Dumb Show that he did to his hugely successful Blue/Orange' The Times Wild Turkey (1993): a characteristically taut work about the acrimonious relationships of people in a late-night burger bar. 'More than any of his peers Penhall has shown a rare aptitude for confronting headline issues of the day, using his gift of the gab as a dramatist to interrogate their underlying complexities and contradictions' Daily Telegraph

    Ball and Chemers have created a new version of the play that brings out the erotic playfulness of the original while expanding on Aristophanes' unsparing dissection of militarism. Complete with important notes and historical commentary by Brian Johnston, Lysistrata reminds us that the most powerful weapon against war may be hope.

    . . multi-disciplinary adventures induces territories of dissent and identity, both of and beyond the stage. . . . [Rodrigo] Toscano has produced an often gleeful romp wherein the geometry of the self affirms/celebrates its style while steadfastly subverting institutionalized forms."—Sustainable Aircraft

    The fourth volume of the collected plays of one of the best playwrights alive.Written over a period of ten years and evincing an extraordinary range of topics and techniques, this fourth volume of Caryl Churchill's collected plays confirms her standing as a playwright who is 'amongst the best half-dozen now writing' (The Times).This volume includes:HotelThis is a ChairBlue HeartFar AwayA NumberDrunk Enough to Say I Love You?A Dream Play

    Uniquely, this collection of testimonial plays is based on the lives of the original black South African performers. It includes: A Woman in Waiting, Amajuba: Like Doves We Rise, and He Left Quietly.

    Nine of Gage's most popular one-act plays, including: Bite My Thumb, Patricide, Jane Addams and the Devil Baby, Battered on Broadway, Louisa May Incest, The Rules of the Playground, The Obligatory Scene, The Pele Chant, and Entr'acte, or The Night Eva Le Gallienne Was Raped.

    Murphy's Bailegangaire (1985)portrays a senile old woman's recitation of an epic tale to her twogranddaughters who struggle to free themselves from her and exorcisethe past. Reid's The Belle of the Belfast City, winner of the George Devine Award in 1986,examines the tensions present in three generations of women in aBelfast-Protestant family during the week of an anti-Anglo-Irish rally.Sebastian Barry's The Steward of Christendom won the London Critics' Circle Award for Best Play 1995 and was heralded by the Guardian as 'an authentic masterpiece'. McDonagh's 1996 play The Cripple of Inishmaan is a strange comic tale in the great tradition of Irish storytelling. McDonagh was awarded the Evening Standard Award for Most Promising Playwright.

    A young airman jumps to certain death from his burning aircraft. His last words are to a girl he has never met:I love you June. You are life and I am leaving you. Following an angelic blunder, caused by a classic English pea-souper, Peter Carter miraculously survives and finds June in the flesh. But things are not so simple. To stay alive, Peter is forced to take himself, and the heavenly authorities, to the Universal Court of Appeal.With its characteristic blend of theatrical invention, movement and music, this wildly romantic tale, inspired by Powell and Pressburger's 1946 film, will recall Kneehigh's visit to the Cottesloe Theatre in 2005 with Tristan & Yseult.

    A play in one act.

    In the first two plays, a young pair of Kentuckians named May and Raleigh meet, fall in love, marry and try to reconcile marital expectations and their opinionated mothers-in-law. In GULF VIEW DRIVE, the time frame has moved from World War II to 1953, and May and Raleigh have moved to Florida, where the crush of dreams, families and the turbulence of events just outside their door threaten their comfortable life. Their dream house shrinks as relatives descend, further testing the couple's love in this glimpse of life in the 1950s, as they make unconventional decisions in a changing world. 1 man, 4 women: 5 total Flexible Set

    Their father's dead and their Catskills home is up for sale. Norma's husband hasn't spoken to her since she turned their 15 year old son in for smoking pot. After five miscarriages it appears Herb's wife won't provide him with an heir. Simon has one foot on the moon. Gene's girlfriend is about to have an abortion. And nobody seems very clear about what it is to be a family anyway. What is it to be a family? Does anybody care any more? Is Judaism all there is to hold the family together? Or is that what it will take to push the family apart? As Simon says, the Earth as we know it is really on its last legs too. When all of mankind is blown into oblivion, who's going to care whether there were Jews? Or how hard a few generations fought to keep the faith alive? The Cherry Orchard takes a holiday in the Catskills as the Schwartz family congregates, maybe for the last time, on the one-year anniversary of their father's death. CHARACTERS NORMA. 45. The eldest Schwartz. The keeper of the flame. Fervently self-righteous and religious, but hungry for family. HERB. 40. The oldest Schwartz brother. Financial wizard. BONNIE. 30's. Herb's wife. Generally on the verge of hysteria. Weeps easily. Desperately wants a baby. Has converted to Judaism. SIMON. 35. The middle brother. An Astronomer. Going blind. He wears coke-bottle thick glasses, a very loose-fitting cotton outfit, and white gloves. GENE. 30. The youngest brother. Directs TV commercials. The family's golden boy and a bit of a kiss-up. KIA. 20. A starlet from L.A. She lives to have fun. Can turn any interaction into a party. "incendiary drama and wickedly self-deprecating humor . . . she shows herself to be a vital new voice for the theater willing to wade into potentially abrasive waters and skillful enough to cut the sting with laughter." - Palm Beach Post "]a beautifully crafted new play that weaves hilarity, mystery and loss into a resonant tale about a family's disintegration." - The Miami Herald The Last Schwartz is rollicking, sad, shocking, goofy, and thoughtful. It is comic drama firing on all cylinders, a superb work of theater by a playwright in full command of her considerable gift for character and dialogue. - The Washington Times

    It is the story of the crucial moment in a quarrelbetween the tragic playwright Euripides and Athens' women, who accuse him of slandering them in his plays and are holding a meeting at one of their secret festivals to set a penalty for his crimes. Thesmophoriazusae is a brilliantly inventive comedy, full of wild slapstick humour and devastating literary parody, and is a basic source for questions of gender and sexuality in late 5th-century Athens and for the popular reception of Euripidean tragedy. Austin and Olson offer a text based on a fresh examination of the papyri and manuscripts, and a detailed commentary covering a wide range of literary, historical, and philological issues. The introduction includes sections on the date and historical setting of the play; the Thesmophoria festival; Aristophanes' handling of Euripidean tragedy; staging; Thesmophoriazusae II; and the history of modern critical work on the text. All Greek in the introduction and commentary not cited for technical reasons is translated.

    Spirits To Enforce is a meta-adaptation of The Tempest with 12 Absurd Superheroes on 12 different phones collecting funds for their stage adaptation of The Tempest.

    

    The two men who loved her lie beside her.

    It is an exploration of intimacy, identity, and the courage it takes to be who you really are.

    The monologues are wildly funny, tragically sad and yet courageous. The ultimate journey for this collection is to create the possibility of living lovingly as equals in our modern world. The monologues are organized in chapter thmes with brief sketches to set the scene. The collection features well-known playwrights -- Arthur Miller, Wendy Wasserstein, August Wilson -- and many superb, emerging new writers. There are several original monologues written especially for classroom discussion and exploration. Sample titles include: The Last Yankee by Arthur Miller, Boy Meets Girl by Wendy Wassersteln, The Underpants adapted by Steve Martin, Romantic Fools by Rich Orloff, Voices from September 11 by Lavonne Mueller, Funnylogues for Women by Mort Kaufman, Roger Karshner and Zeda Abel, W.A.C. Iraq by Mel Nieves and many more.

    Never So Good is his newest epic play on British politics, which premiered in the spring of 2008 at the National Theatre.

    

    Though the hopefuls range from shy to outrageous, and from diva-like to determined, everyone has a chance to step into the spotlight. A hilarious and heartbreaking look at the madness of auditioning and the actors who brave the process for that perfect part.

    Unable to understand each other, they embarked on one of the most unusual experiments in British art as the pitmen learned to become painters. Within a few years the most avant-garde artists became their friends, their work was taken for prestigious collections and they were celebrated throughout the British art world; but every day they worked, as before, down the mine.The Pitmen Painters premiered at Live Theatre, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, in September 2007, before transferring to the National Theatre in 2008.

    "Afterlife "opens in the NT Lyttelton in June. Investigating the life of the Austrian impresario and founder of the Salzburg Festival, Max Reinhardt, "Afterlife" is a grand epic and a highly theatrical work that will be directed by Frayn's long-term collaborator Michael Blakemore. With his morality play 'Everyman', Reinhardt captivated first the Prince Archbishop of Salzburg, and then the city itself, with the play opening the Salzburg festival each year from 1920 until the accession of the Nazis in 1938. As Reinhardt and his company are forced into exile, 'Everyman' is taken to America until life imitates art and Death comes for first Reinhardt's master of ceremonies and chief associate, Kommer, and then for Reinhardt himself.

    English traitor John Amery is arrested in Italy and brought back to London for trial. If convicted, he faces the death penalty. But his father is a senior politician. Surely the Establishment will look after its own.

    Its funny, updated and made easy to understand. The Gods walk the Red Carpet. The Creation of Mankind is a botched subcontractors job. Man and Pandora try settling down despite an ominous wedding gift. Love stories are a dating show and the Greek Tragedies are sports highlights! And don t forget the two greatest stories ever told, The Iliad and The Odyssey. Kidnap Helen of Troy and you ve got a 10 year slap-fight of epic proportions with pouty Achilles, war-hungry Agamemnon and clever Odysseus, destined to wander the seas for 10 more years fighting giants, seductresses and the Gods themselves. All the silly decisions, the absurd destinies, and the goofy characters are presented lightning-bolt fast with hysterical results as the clock is stopped with only seconds to spare.

    She finds herself in a neo-Elizabethan Appalachian setting where Gertrude runs a brothel, Hamlet is called a Rude Boy, and nothing is what it seems. In this mirrored world of word-scraps and cold sex, Ophelia cuts a new path for herself.

    

    A play, which provides an exploration of a very real family and the repercussions of war.

    & percussion player This comedy-drama takes a strong political stand on the divisive issue of the United States embargo with Cuba. The play begins with flamboyant writer, Federico making his first trip back to Cuba 30-some years after immigrating to the States as a child. Federico is joined on his journey by his friend, Fred and together in Cuba they meet Ernesto, a car driver and lifelong resident of Havana. The three men get to know each other better and learn where the real boundaries of the world lie. The play examines of the complex relationships that exist not only between men, but between the countries in which they live. Originally produced at the Humana Festival of New American Plays in Louisville. "Havana finds a bright wit and a passion in the grayness of living in limbo." -New York Times

    Taking Sides premiered at the Minerva Theatre, Chichester in 1995; Collaboration premiered at the same theatre in July 2008, when the two plays were staged in repertory.Collaboration In 1931, composer Richard Strauss and writer Stephan Zweig embark on an invigorating artistic partnership. But Zweig is a Jew and the Nazis are on the march. Is it possible to keep artistic aspiration and political action separate? How fine is the line between collaboration and betrayal?Taking Sides Prized by Hitler as the cultural jewel in the crown of the Third Reich, conductor Wilhelm Furtw�ngler became the perfect post-war target for interrogation as a Nazi sympathiser. Major Steve Arnold, who has witnessed the horrors of Belsen, is about to cross-examine him.'What does the artist do in a brutal, totalitarian society? Can art ever claim to be above politics? Harwood's fierce moral debate is set in the American zone of occupied Berlin in 1946. The play acts as a powerful metaphor for the present and all those post-authoritarian societies busy ransacking their pasts.' Guardian'A brave, wise and deeply moving play about the fatal confrontation between culture and power, between art and politics, between irresponsible freedom and responsible compromise. A gripping moral challenge in a cocksure and self-seeking age.' Sunday Times

    There's Beth the reformed Christian and Erkenwald the hot-dog seller, old Ragdale on a quest to find his daughter, actor-playwright and egomaniac Mordechai Thurrock, and Cockburn, Elliot and Clayton the dealers and junkies whose trade both sustains and destroys the lives of those around them.In this vibrant and darkly comic new play, a dozen private stories emerge and their voices give utterance to a storm of subjects and feelings: pop culture and sexual fantasy, the ruins of empire and the delusions of religion, foreign oil and prehistoric London. A panorama of contemporary London encompassing the cruel and the tender, the gutter and the stars.Che Walker's The Frontline premiered at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, London, in July 2008.

    Mayer, an Assistant Professor at USC's School of Theatre did his undergraduate work at Worcester College, Oxford and Cornell University, where he graduated--his MFA was completed at Columbia University. Mayer, whose literary papers are archived at the Stanford University Libraries, was voted one of the nation's "100 Coolest" people by BUZZ Magazine in the late 90s, and, having survived this brush with fame and fortune, his work continues to grow and evolve positioning him as one of the more singular post-movimiento Chicano voices in the American Arts scene. Hyperbole Books is proud to showcase his early works. The Hurt Business includes essays and commentaries by Jorge Huerta, Erin Aubry Kaplan, Caridad Svich, Tommy Tompkins, Raymond Salcedo, Geraint Wyn Davies, Natsuko Ohama, William Nericcio, and Howard Stein.

    With scene-by-scene commentary, and including an account of their life on stage, film and in criticism, this guide illuminates two plays that together rank as one of Shakespeare's greatest achievements.

    Over the course of the play, the fragility and nobility of the human spirit at its most vulnerable is carefully probed and laid bare. Soldiers has been commissioned for the STC Actors Company as a companion piece to Citizens. This title contains these two plays.