Sweat


Lynn Nottage - 2017
    Set in 2008, the powerful crux of this new play is knowing the fate of the characters long before it's even in their sights.Based on Nottage's extensive research and interviews with real residents of Reading, Sweat is a topical reflection of the present and poignant outcome of America's economic decline.

Bent


Martin Sherman - 1979
    Martin Sherman's worldwide hit play Bent took London by storm in 1979 when it was first performed by the Royal Court Theatre, with Ian McKellen as Max (a character written with the actor in mind). The play itself caused an uproar. "It educated the world," Sherman explains. "People knew about how the Third Reich treated Jews and, to some extent, gypsies and political prisoners. But very little had come out about their treatment of homosexuals." Gays were arrested and interned at work camps prior to the genocide of Jews, gypsies, and handicapped, and continued to be imprisoned even after the fall of the Third Reich and liberation of the camps. The play Bent highlights the reason why - a largely ignored German law, Paragraph 175, making homosexuality a criminal offense, which Hitler reactivated and strengthened during his rise to power.

The Way of the World


William Congreve - 1700
    With Mirabell? You call my blood into my face with mentioning that traitor. She durst not have the confidence. I sent her to negotiate an affair, in which if I'm detected I'm undone. If that wheedling villain has wrought upon Foible to detect me, I'm ruined. O my dear friend, I'm a wretch of wretches if I'm detected.

The Heiress (DPS Acting Edition)


Ruth Goetz - 1951
    Catherine's lack of worldliness prevents her from realizing that the young man proposing to her is not entirely drawn to her by her charm. Catherine's father, a successful doctor, sees through the fortune hunter and forbids the marriage, but his daughter proposes an elopement that fails to materialize because the young man knows most of her expected fortune will go elsewhere if he marries her. Catherine retires into a little world of her own. But the fortune hunter turns up once more and again proposes to her. For a moment, Catherine leads him to believe that she will accept him, but when he calls by appointment, she locks the door, blows out all the lights and allows him to realize that she will not be fooled for the second time.

The Hothouse


Harold Pinter - 1981
    Beneath the surface comedy there are frightening implications concerning a bureaucracy ostensibly dedicated to humanitarian concerns, but where people are referred to by numbers and forgotten as easily as troublesome figures on a balance sheet. Written in 1958, The Hothouse was first performed at London's Hampstead Theatre in April 1980, in a production directed by Pinter himself. "A blistering funny play. . . . Hothouse is wild, impudent, fiercely funny."-Jack Kroll, Newsweek

Jesus Christ Superstar -- A Rock Opera: Piano/Vocal


Tim Rice - 1970
    Songs include: Heaven on Their Minds * Everything's Alright * Hosanna * Pilate's Dream * I Don't Know How to Love Him * The Last Supper * I Only Want to Say (Gethsemane) * King Herod's Song * Superstar.

The Sense and Sensibility Screenplay and Diaries: Bringing Jane Austen's Novel to Film


Emma Thompson - 1995
    This engaging and beautiful book includes the complete Academy Award-winning script and Thompson's own diaries detailing the production of the film, reviewed by Stanley Kauffmann in The New Republic as "vivid, funny, and gamy"

Night of January 16th (Final Revised Version)


Ayn Rand - 1936
    To his beautiful secretary-mistress, he was a god-like hero to be served with her mind, soul and body. To his aristocratic young wife, he was an elemental force of nature to be tamed. To his millionaire father-in-law, he was a giant whose single error could be used to destroy him.What kind of man was Bjorn Faulkner? Only you, the reader, can decide.On one level, Night of January 16th is a totally gripping drama about the rise and destruction of a brilliant and ruthless man. On a deeper level, it is a superb dramatic objectification of Ayn Rand's vision of human strength and weakness. Since its original Broadway success, it has achieved vast worldwide popularity and acclaim.

Dunsinane


David Greig - 2010
    Struggling to contain his men and the ambitions of his superiors, the commanding officer attempts to negotiate the unspoken rules of this alien country. He seeks to restore peace to a country ravaged by war. This is Scotland in the eleventh century at the height of the fight for succession of the Scottish throne.David Greig's Dunsinane premiered in February 2010 at Hampstead Theatre, London, in a production by the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Light Shining in Buckinghamshire


Caryl Churchill - 1992
    It was first staged in 1976 at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs and revived at the National Theatre in 1996.Caryl Churchill has written for the stage, television and radio. A renowned and prolific playwright, her plays include Cloud Nine, Top Girls, Far Away, Drunk Enough to Say I Love You?, Bliss, Love and Information, Mad Forest and A Number. In 2002, she received the Obie Lifetime Achievement Award and 2010, she was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.

Boris Godunov


Alexander Pushkin - 1831
    Is it possible? An unfrocked monk against us Leads rascal troops, a truant friar dares write Threats to us! Then 'tis time to tame the madman! Trubetskoy, set thou forth, and thou Basmanov; My zealous governors need help. Chernigov Already by the rebel is besieged; Rescue the city and citizens.

Journey into the Whirlwind


Evgenia Ginzburg - 1967
    Yet like millions of others who suffered during Stalin's reign of terror, she was arrested—on trumped-up charges of being a Trotskyist terrorist and counter-revolutionary—and sentenced to prison. With an amazing eye for detail, profound strength, and an indefatigable spirit, Ginzburg recounts the years, days, and minutes she endured in prisons and labor camps, including two years of solitary confinement. A classic account of survival, Journey into the Whirlwind is considered one of the most important documents of Stalin's regime ever written.

Mother Courage and Her Children


Bertolt Brecht - 1941
    Set in the seventeenth century, the play follows Anna Fierling -- "Mother Courage" -- an itinerant trader, as she pulls her wagon of wares and her children through the blood and carnage of Europe's religious wars. Battered by hardships, brutality, and the degradation and death of her children, she ultimately finds herself alone with the one thing in which she truly believes -- her ramshackle wagon with its tattered flag and freight of boots and brandy. Fitting herself in its harness, the old woman manages, with the last of her strength, to drag it onward to the next battle. In the enduring figure of Mother Courage, Bertolt Brecht has created one of the most extraordinary characters in the literature of drama.

Shakespeare in Love


Lee Hall - 2014
    Their forbidden love soon draws everyone, including Queen Elizabeth, into the drama, and inspires Will to write the greatest love story of all time: Romeo and Juliet. Based on the Oscar-winning screenplay by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard, Shakespeare in Love has been deftly adapted for the stage by Lee Hall and has been playing to rave reviews and a sold-out theatre at the Noël Coward in London. The London production is directed by Declan Donnellan and designed by Nick Ormerod, the driving force behind the world-renowned theatre company, Cheek by Jowl. A Broadway transfer is planned for Spring 2015.

A Touch of the Poet


Eugene O'Neill - 1957
    The tavern is owned by a tempestuous Irishman who is a s proud as he is ill-tempered and is determined to show his pride and importance to the Yankee townsmen.