Artaud, however, was not insane but in luciferian pursuit of what society keeps hidden. The man who wrote Van Gogh the Man Suicided by Society raged against the insanity of social institutions with insight that proves more prescient with every passing year. Today, as Artaud’s vatic thunder still crashes above the "larval confusion" he despised, what is most striking in his writings is an extravagant lucidity.This collection gives us quintessential Artaud on the occult, magic, the theater, mind and body, the cosmos, rebellion, and revolution in its deepest sense.Antoine Marie Joseph Artaud, better known as Antonine Artaud, was a French dramatist, poet, essayist, actor, and theatre director, widely recognized as one of the major figures of twentieth-century theatre and the European avant-garde.Jack Hirschman (b. December 13, 1933, in New York, NY) is a poet and social activist who has written more than 50 volumes of poetry. Dismissed from teaching at UCLA for anti-war activities in 1966, he moved to San Francisco in 1973, and was the city's present poet laureate. Hirschman translates nine languages and edited The Artaud Anthology.

    Unfortunately, Elvira is now a ghost and Charles has, understandably, moved on and married Ruth.The bohemian protagonists of Hay Fever wreak emotional havoc on a house full of weekend visitors.In Private Lives, a recently divorced couple find themselves in adjoining hotel rooms while on honeymoon with their new spouses.

    The tragedy of love thwarted by fate has always intrigued writers.  In the sixteenth century, William Shakespeare took this theme and fashioned one of the world's great plays: ROMEO AND JULIET.  In our own time, Shakespeare's drama has been used as a basis for the overwhelmingly successful musical play WEST SIDE STORY.  Though one of these works is set among the nobility of Verona, and the other among immigrant families of New York's West Side, both tell the story of the plight of young star-crossed" lovers.As Norris Houghton writes in his introduction: "What we see is that all four young people strive to consummate the happiness at the threshold on which they stand and which they have tasted so briefly.  All four are deprived of the opportunity to do so, the Renaissance couple by the caprice of fate, today's youngsters by the prejudice and hatred engendered around them."Poets and playwrights will continue to write of youthful lovers whom fate drives into and out of each other's lives.  The spectacle will always trouble and move us, even as the two dramas in this volume do today."

    In A Streetcar Named Desire fading southern belle Blanche Dubois finds her romantic illusions brutally shattered; The Glass Menagerie portrays an introverted girl trapped in a fantasy world; and Sweet Bird of Youth shows how we are unable to escape ‘the enemy, time’.

    This classic comedy opens as a group of the guys assembled for cards in the apartment of divorced Oscar Madison. And if the mess is any indication, it's no wonder that his wife left him. Late to arrive is Felix Unger who has just been separated from his wife. Fastidious, depressed and none too tense, Felix seems suicidal, but as the action unfolds Oscar becomes the one with murder on his mind when the clean-freak and the slob ultimately decide to room together with hilarious results as The Odd Couple is born. "His skill is not only great but constantly growing...There is scarcely a moment that is not hilarious." - The New York Times "Fresh, richly hilarious and remarkably original. Wildly, irresistibly, incredibly and continuously funny." - New York Daily News

    She disposes of the hard-dying myth that the great Italian actress played simply on the inspiration of the moment. Miss Le Gallienne's thesis is that Duse's artistic triumphs resulted from her victories over herself, triumphs of character achieved through intellectual and spiritual struggle. In support of her title Miss Le Gallienne adduces evidence of Duse's long and earnest study of the writings of mystics and philosophers. This book is thoughtful, sensible, candid and literate. Miss Le Gallienne's own memories provide a fascinating glimpse into both herself and the tired, fading great actress whom she adored.

    

    I studied him when I was studying theatre design in NY.

    The door is flung open, letting in a lithe young black man, weirdly gotten up in a soft, high-crowned hat, sunglasses, a cape, short slacks and sneakers. Mr. Hanley calls this act Pas de Deux. In this dance for two, the characters make hesitant approaches, circle, feint, threaten each other with gun and ice pick but scarcely make contact. The young man is obviously a hunted man. Through the circumlocutions of his odd mixture of jive talk and fancy literary allusions, there pants a sense of terror. The storekeeper is a non-Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, is close-mouthed, suspicious, anxious to avoid self-involvement. In the second act, the Pas de Deux becomes Pas de Trois. The third dancer is Rosie, an eigh-teen-year old from Riverdale, has wandered into the shop after losing her way while looking for the address of an abortionist. Rosie has no illusions about her homeliness or about the encounter that has led to her troubles. The laconic German and the flowery young man react to her with a sensitivity and concern that seem to diminish the furies within them. But not for long. Finally the German is driven to revealing the truth about himself as the young man, at last, in the third act, faces his inexorable fate out there on the killing ground.