Book picks similar to
York Realist, The by Peter Gill


plays
plays-scripts
queer
21st-century

Spring Awakening


Steven Sater - 2007
    Inspired by Frank Wedekind’s controversial 1891 play about teenage sexuality and society’s efforts to control it, the piece seamlessly merges past and present, underscoring the timelessness of adolescent angst and the universality of human passion.Steven Sater’s plays include the long-running Carbondale Dreams, Perfect for You, Doll (Rosenthal Prize/Cincinnati Playhouse), Umbrage (Steppenwolf New Play Prize), and a reconceived version of Shakespeare’s Tempest, which played in London.Duncan Sheik is a singer/songwriter who also collaborated with Sater on the musical The Nightingale. He has composed original music for The Gold Rooms of Nero and for The Public Theater’s Twelfth Night in Central Park.

Mother of the Bride


Kim Hartfield - 2019
    Things get more complicated when she realizes the groom's mother was her best friend back in high school - the first woman who ever made her heart beat faster, as well as her first kiss. Gloria and Bethany reconnect during the engagement, and Gloria begins to wonder if she could have her own fairytale romance. Is it too late for Gloria to find love? Or could the mother of the bride be the star of her own story?

Next Fall - Acting Edition


Geoffrey Nauffts - 2010
    But when Luke is hospitalized in a tragic accident, Adam must come face-to-face with Luke's faith and his family.

Changing Leaves


Edie Bryant - 2018
    One of those people being Jess, her best friend who she'd completely lost contact with. Though she never stopped thinking of her, she could never bring herself to reach out after the shame of what she'd done to her. Gina didn't even want to come back to her hometown in fear of running into Jess, but she had to take care of her mother who is ill with cancer.But fate and a kitten brings them together again, meeting for the first time in years. The connection is clearly still there between them, but will Jess be able to forgive Gina in her time of need? As the change in seasons brings color to the autumn leaves, will it also bring a drastic change in both of their lives? In this heartwarming, steamy novella Edie Bryant takes the reader on an emotional rollercoaster toward happily ever after.

The History Boys


Alan Bennett - 2004
    A maverick English teacher at odds with the young and shrewd supply teacher. A headmaster obsessed with results; a history teacher who thinks he's a fool.In Alan Bennett's classic play, staff room rivalry and the anarchy of adolescence provoke insistent questions about history and how you teach it; about education and its purpose.The History Boys premiered at the National in May 2004.

The Gap of Time


Jeanette Winterson - 2015
    His daughter is found and brought up by a shepherd on the Bohemian coast, but through a series of extraordinary events, father and daughter, and eventually mother too, are reunited.In The Gap of Time, Jeanette Winterson’s cover version of The Winter’s Tale, we move from London, a city reeling after the 2008 financial crisis, to a storm-ravaged American city called New Bohemia. Her story is one of childhood friendship, money, status, technology and the elliptical nature of time. Written with energy and wit, this is a story of the consuming power of jealousy on the one hand, and redemption and the enduring love of a lost child on the other.

Conversations with Friends


Sally Rooney - 2017
    A college student and aspiring writer, she devotes herself to a life of the mind--and to the beautiful and endlessly self-possessed Bobbi, her best friend and comrade-in-arms. Lovers at school, the two young women now perform spoken-word poetry together in Dublin, where a journalist named Melissa spots their potential. Drawn into Melissa's orbit, Frances is reluctantly impressed by the older woman's sophisticated home and tall, handsome husband. Private property, Frances believes, is a cultural evil--and Nick, a bored actor who never quite lived up to his potential, looks like patriarchy made flesh. But however amusing their flirtation seems at first, it gives way to a strange intimacy neither of them expect. As Frances tries to keep her life in check, her relationships increasingly resist her control: with Nick, with her difficult and unhappy father, and finally even with Bobbi. Desperate to reconcile herself to the desires and vulnerabilities of her body, Frances's intellectual certainties begin to yield to something new: a painful and disorienting way of living from moment to moment.Written with gem-like precision and probing intelligence, Conversations With Friends is wonderfully alive to the pleasures and dangers of youth."

The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey


James Lecesne - 2016
    It was directed by Tony Speciale; it was produced by Dixon Place; the original music was by Duncan Sheik; the visuals were by Matthew Sandager; and the clothing was by Paul Marlow.

Bullied Boy


Daring Diane - 2018
    Self-image, body changes, and social changes chip away at individual’s self-confidence. Withdrawal and hiding can often seem like the easiest escape. You cannot escape from life. An excellent student, our hero is ripped from his friends and everything he knows when his father is moved across the country for his job. Intent on re-establishing the mother’s employment, the parents appear to withdraw from their high school student as he is dropped into a situation where he knows no one. Everyone experiences physical and emotional problems but our protagonist is ashamed of his body and won’t even talk to his parents who seem oblivious. Wearing baggy clothes, coats and hoods, it is easy to hide his body and isolate himself since he knows no one. Others assume he is overweight, shy or has acne problems. The strangely dressed student is a magnet for bullies and everyone else ignores him. Teachers might have gotten involved or pushed him to participate in class, but as an excellent student, grades are not an issue. Life evolves into a strategy to be left alone and survive another day. Because of this, attacks are not reported. An accident at school will expose our protagonist’s secrets to a classmate. How that classmate responds will change our protagonist’s life. There are still bullying and attacks, but with newfound confidence, our hero will deal with things differently. Can this quiet, isolated person evolve into an example and build real friendships while accepting life’s little hurdles? This series of books contain examples of high school life that help the reader to identify and deal with bullying behavior in a high school setting. The books in this series are intended to be safe reading for teens and tweens. Thank you for reading on Daring Diane Disclaimer This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Angels in America


Tony Kushner - 1993
    Prior is a man living with AIDS whose lover Louis has left him and become involved with Joe, an ex-Mormon and political conservative whose wife, Harper, is slowly having a nervous breakdown. These stories are contrasted with that of Roy Cohn (a fictional re-creation of the infamous American conservative ideologue who died of AIDS in 1986) and his attempts to remain in the closet while trying to find some sort of personal salvation in his beliefs.

Six Degrees of Separation


John Guare - 1990
    The tragicomedy of race, class, manners and naivete of liberalism.

The Laramie Project


Moisés Kaufman - 2001
    But for the people of Laramie–both the friends of Matthew and those who hated him without knowing him–the tragedy was personal. In a chorus of voices that brings to mind Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, The Laramie Project allows those most deeply affected to speak, and the result is a brilliantly moving theatrical creation.

Something Cloudy, Something Clear


Tennessee Williams - 1995
    In 1962, Williams retitled and expanded The Parade into a full-length play. Both versions of the play are set on the fishing wharves and in the sand dunes of Provincetown, Massachusetts, and tell the story of a young playwright named August dealing with his unrequited love for another man. It was produced posthumously in Provincetown in 2006.

The Quite Nice and Fairly Accurate Good Omens Script Book


Neil Gaiman - 2019
    The series is written and show-run by Neil himself and stars David Tennant, Michael Sheen, Jon Hamm and Miranda Richardson, to name but a few.**Includes an introduction by Neil Gaiman about bringing GOOD OMENS to the screen**In 1990, dream literary collaborators Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman published 'the funniest book they could write' about the end of the world. Now, Neil Gaiman reinvents their groundbreaking classic for 2019 with his original shooting scripts from the show, and gives readers a unique insight into his adaptation and vision for translating this iconic novel to the screen in an introductory essay.This all-new take on a tale about representatives of good and evil who join forces to prevent the coming apocalypse (which is scheduled to happen on a Saturday, just after tea) will be a joy for fans and new readers alike.

Twists and Turns


Matthew Mitcham - 2012
    I always responded, 'Why would I change? Being me is the easiest person to be.' I was lying. It wasn't. At the Beijing Olympic Games, he made history with an unforgettable dive, the first to ever score perfect tens from all four judges, and won gold for Australia. Grinning with pride from front pages around the world, there was no hint of the personal demons that had led this supremely talented young dynamo to quit diving less than two years before. Joyously out and proud, Matthew was a role model for his courage both in and out of the pool. Yet the crippling self-doubt and shadow of depression that had plagued him all his life forced him into premature retirement, at one point reduced to circus diving to earn money. Even after Beijing and being ranked No 1 in the world, those closest to Matthew could not guess that beneath that cheeky, fun-loving exterior he was painfully aware of how easily it could unravel. In the lead-up to the London Olympics, when injury threatened his hopes, he will have to find the strength again to balance his striving for perfectionism with the fear of his self-doubt taking hold again. Told with the honesty and courage he is admired for, Twists and Turns is an inspiring story of a true champion, in and out of the pool.