The rebel, known by various names, is rumored to have performed miracles throughout the countryside. The General plans to crucify the mysterious man, and the exclusive television rights to the twenty-four-hour reality-TV eventhave been sold to an American network for $25 million. An allegory that asserts the interconnectedness of our actions and each person’s culpability in world events, Resurrection Blues is a comedic and tragic satire of precarious morals in our media-saturated age.

    Steel is known for her heartfelt love stories and this piece joins the ranks with the charming romance between Stephanie Adams and Chase Taylor. Although the plot itself is the familiar blueprint to many romance novels, Steel’s well-developed characters steal the show and provide an enjoyable performance. Stephanie and Chase shine in the leading roles, their strong likeability factor making them a team to root for. Steel takes care to give all the characters a clear purpose and journey of their own, adding to their depth and to their level of importance in Stephanie and Chase’s lives. Stephanie Adams has devoted her entire life to her husband and her children, remaining trapped in a loveless marriage in an effort to keep her family intact. The sudden death of her husband sends her reeling and she feels lost without his familiar presence. With her children grown and living elsewhere, she is forced to face the reality that her life no longer holds the purpose it once did. Danielle Steel’s novel is a sweet romantic tale that brings together an underappreciated widow with a famous music star in a simple twist of fate that changes their lives forever. This companion to Country also includes the following: • Book Review • Story Setting Analysis • Story elements you may have missed as we decipher the novel • Clear, concise description and analysis of personalities • Summary of the text, with some analytical comments interspersed • Thought Provoking /or Discussion Questions for both Readers & Book Clubs • Discussion & Analysis of Themes, Symbols… • And Much More! This Analysis fills the gap, making you understand more while enhancing your reading experience.

    Starring WillFerrell, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Dustin Hoffman, Queen Latifah,and Emma Thompson, Stranger Than Fiction is a heartfelt film,perhaps a comedy, perhaps a tragedy, about love and literatureand death and taxes.

    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.

    Winner of  the Olivier Award and set to open on Broadway in September 2011, The Mountaintop is set at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis in 1968, on the night before Martin Luther King is assassinated and on the day he delivered a speech in which he foretold his own fate, “I may not get there with you, but I want you to know that tonight, we as a people will get to the Promised Land.”  Playwright Katori Hall takes this historic date with destiny and weaves a powerful surrealistic fantasy about a conversation between King and a mysterious hotel maid who brings him a cup of coffee and prompts him to confront his life, his past, his legacy and the plight and future of African-Americans. Hall's insight, light touch and lively mood depicts King as a real man with very human foibles who was nonetheless capable of inspiring millions to hope and move toward a momentous societal shift for equality and justice.

    

    Using the format of an end-of-term play, the new drama teacher's progress through two terms of recalcitrant classes, synical colleagues and obstructive caretakers is reviewed. Disillutioned, he departs for a safer private school.

    Lemon tells the audience about the overwhelming influence in her life of her parents' friend "Aunt Dan," an eccentric, passionate professor whose stories and seductive opinions enthrall Lemon from the time she is a young girl. The relationship that develops between Lemon and Aunt Dan and the conversations that went on in a small house on the bottom of an English garden form the focus of this play about political orientation and the allure of certain ideas-even if they lead to murder. A forceful play exposing the banality of society's evil, Aunt Dan & Lemon explores the ease with which good and bad become reconciled in the human mind.

    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.

    Gradually distancing herself from her friends, she watches them move from the idealism and political radicalism of their college years through militant feminism and, eventually, back to the materialism that they had sought to reject in the first place. Heidi's own path to maturity involves an affair with the glib, arrogant Scoop Rosenbaum, a womanizing lawyer/publisher who eventually marries for money and position; a deeper but even more troubling relationship with a charming, witty young pediatrician, Peter Patrone, who turns out to be gay; and increasingly disturbing contacts with the other women, now much changed, who were a part of her childhood and college years. Eventually Heidi comes to accept the fact that liberation can be achieved only if one is true to oneself, with goals that come out of need rather than circumstance. As the play ends she is still "alone," but having adopted an orphaned baby, it is clear that she has begun to find a sense of fulfillment and continuity that may well continue to elude the others of her anxious, self-centered generation.

    They live alone with their dog Taliban, playing Playstation, watching porn; surviving. Occasionally their chaotic mum Maggie visits, sometimes she passes out on the front lawn. But when Jenny knocks on the door, the boys discover a world far beyond what they know, a world full of love, possibility and danger.

    He visits an old flame, buys a gun and goes on a blistering road trip through the new home front.'I don't blame the war. The war was alright. I miss it. It's just you come back to this.'Written during the London bombings of 2005, Motortown is a fierce, violent and controversial response to the anti-war movement - and to the war itself. Chaotic and complex, powerful and provocative, Simon Stephen's new play portrays a volatile and morally insecure world.Motortown premieres at the Royal Court Theatre on 21 April 2006. It follows the critically acclaimed On the Shore of the Wide World (Manchester Royal Exchange/National Theatre), winner of the Olivier Award for Best New Play (2005).

    Written before 9/11, Homebody/Kabul premiered in New York in December 2001 and has had highly successful productions in London, Providence, Seattle, Chicago and Los Angeles. This version incorporates all the playwright's changes and is now the definitive version of the text.

    When one of them sets out to expose the truth, secrets become currency, the stakes get higher, and the trio s connection grows deeper in this searching, fiercely funny dark comedy with music.

    Baker practices astonishing verbal magic over and over again." - Clancy Martin, Paris Review"Strikingly intimate... Free of the stilted or formal locutions that clutter up some of the more antique-sounding translations... Ms. Baker has given the play a natural but distinctly contemporary American sound." - Charles Isherwood, New York Times"Devastatingly beautiful... People are going to be talking about this one for years." - Jacob Gallagher-Ross, Village Voice"More than a modern-dress treatment of a classic work, it's a fresh rethinking of the material from the perspective of a modern mind." - Marilyn Stasio, VarietyAnnie Baker, one of the most celebrated playwrights in the United States, lends her truthful observation and elegant command of the colloquial to Anton Chekhov's despairing masterpiece Uncle Vanya. A critical hit in its sold-out Off-Broadway premiere, Baker's telling is a refreshingly intimate and modern treatment of a Chekhovian classic.Annie Baker's plays include The Flick (The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, Obie Award), The Aliens (Obie Award), Circle Mirror Transformation (Obie Award) and Body Awareness. Her work has been produced at more than a hundred theaters in the U.S. and in more than a dozen countries internationally. Recent honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, Steinberg Playwright Award and New York Drama Critics Circle Award. She is a resident playwright at the Signature Theatre.