The guide presents the major debates that surround these works as they develop, from Martin Esslin's early appropriation of the plays as examples of the Theatre of the Absurd, to recent poststructuralist and postcolonial readings by critics such as Steven Connor, Mary Bryden and Declan Kiberd. Throughout, Boxall clarifies and contextualizes critical responses to the plays, and considers the difficult relationship between Beckett and his critics.

    But when a major global catastrophic event strikes the planet, their date takes on evolutionary significance and the fate of humanity hangs in the balance. Will they survive? What about the fish in the tank? And who is that woman pulling levers and playing the timpani? An epic and intimate comedy that spans over billions of years, boom explores the influences of fate versus randomness in the course of one's life, and life as we know it on the planet.

    It also provides cast and performance information from every production of Gypsy. Titles include: Let Me Entertain You * Some People * If Momma Was Married * Everything's Coming Up Roses * Together Wherever We Go * Rose's Turn and more.

    EARLY WORKS: ACTOS, BERNABE AND PENSAMIENTO SERPENTINE is three books in one: 1) a collection of one act plays by Valdez and the famous farmworker theater, El Teatro Campesino, 2) one of the first fully realized, full-length plays by Valdez alone, and 3) an original narrative poem by Luis Valdez. In the first part are collected the original, improvised works of El Teatro Campesino that deal with the exploitation of Mexican farm labor in the California fields, the discrimination found by Mexicans in the schools, and Mexicans being turned into cannon fodder by the U.S. Army in Vietnam. Bernabe is a touching, Lorcaesque poetic drama about a town fool's enchantment and ultimate unity with the earth. Pensamiento serpentino is a long, philosophical poem, based on Mayan thought and cosmology, which analyzes the cultural, religious and political circumstances of Mexican Americans and prepares a metaphysical framework for their future.

    With her mother dead and her father away, she must learn to fight the monsters that have slithered and insinuated their way into her heart and mind. In this wondrous drama Timberlake Wertenbaker explores the beauty and terror inherent in growing up.The Ash Girl premiered at Birmingham Rep in 2001.

    

    But at a time when women are second-class citizens, can her charm and spirit protect her from the dangers of the court? And at what cost?

    This story takes place *after* where Felicity Found ends.

    . .Katie’s carefully structured world is shattered by the news that her headstrong younger sister, Mia, has been found dead in Bali – and the police claim it was suicide.With only the entries of Mia’s travel journal as her guide, Katie retraces the last few months of her sister’s life, and – page by page, country by country – begins to uncover the mystery surrounding her death.What she discovers changes everything. But will her search for the truth push their sisterly bond – and Katie – to breaking point?The Sea Sisters is a compelling story of the enduring connection between sisters.

    But hidden there is a secret no one wants to confront, and when they stumble upon it the friends set off an unstoppable chain of events. A supernatural thriller of suburban teenagers fleeing a mysterious plague.

    This play, first staged at the Leicester Haymarket Theatre, is based on a tenth-century Jain myth about a king who finds his queen involved with an elephant-keeper.

    Free, for the time being, from the power of the gods and the ceaseless weight of the rock, he struggles to navigate twenty-first-century America. In language by turns mordant and tender, often elegiac, Dunn illuminates the quotidian burdens of his all-too-human hero, as well as the abrasions of ambivalence and choice, finally concluding that "here / and there, though mostly here, even fate is reversible / with struggle or luck."In a second sequence of poems, nineteenth-century novelists become "local visitors" to the author's South Jersey towns. "Chekhov in Port Republic," "Jane Austen in Egg Harbor," "Dostoyevsky in Wildwood": these inventions and others give Dunn provocative new latitudes. As in his previous books, "he balances the casual and the vivid as he plumbs the ambiguity and mystery of human relations" (New York Times Book Review).

    When war is declared, the love lives of the Granville girls suffer. Rosie's husband is killed during the Blitz. Then Lousie falls in love with Jack, a sixteen-year-old evacuee from the slums of London. When she falls pregnant, she is sent to Wales in disgrace. The girls? mother, Liza, can only pin her hopes on Charlotte now . . .

    With a nod to his mentor, Harold Pinter, Mamet once again employs his signature verbal jousting in this battle of two women over freedom, power, money, religion—and the lack thereof. Broadway premiere, under the direction of the playwright, in fall 2012 starring Patti LuPone and Debra Winger.David Mamet is a playwright, director, author, essayist, screenwriter, and film director. His plays include Glengarry Glen Ross, Speed-the-Plow, American Buffalo, A Life in the Theatre, Oleanna, The Cryptogram, and Race.