Book picks similar to
Young Chekhov: Platonov; Ivanov; The Seagull (Faber Drama) by Anton Chekhov
plays
plays-theatre
temporarily-abandoned
translated
Aunt Dan and Lemon
Wallace Shawn - 1985
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.
Once in a Lifetime
Moss Hart - 1960
(doubling possible.) / 5 ints. or unit set. Recently revived on Broadway to great acclaim, this is the rollicking tale of three down and out troupers who decide to head for Hollywood and try their luck with the newly invented talkies. Due to a series of consistent blunders, the most stupid of the three is carried to pinnacles of fame and fortune until he's literally made a god of the industry. It's a fast paced and wild romp and a marvelous spoof of tinsel land.
Collected Stories
Donald Margulies - 1998
Changing styles in feminist thought, the tangled connections between creativity and ideology, the writer’s odd place in our money-centered world, the way we turn our friends into surrogate families—while always fluid and lively, the play is thick with ideas, like a stockpot of good stew.” –Michael Feingold, Village Voice“Beautifully layered. Margulies delivers a spot-on glimpse of New York's literary scene: the power of a Times book review, or the milestone of the 92nd Y's authors series, or the significance of a little-known but much-revered lit mag like the now-defunct Grand Street. He's even better at teasing the sense of betrayal that can dissolve creative friendships…the ethics of friendship and fiction smack into each other.” –Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post“[Collected Stories] digs into its engaging tale of aesthetics and ethics with intelligence and sharp, literate humor….Mr. Margulies has found fertile material in the struggles of the creative classes to reconcile the demands of ambition with the exigencies of life.” –New York Times“This provocative piece of theater serves as a timely reminder that we are defined by our feelings and memories — and such precious thoughts are sacred.” –Matthew J. Palm, Orlando SentinelCollected Stories explores the vexed emotional and legal question of a writer's right to create art from the biographical material of another person's life-particularly when that other person is also a writer. Meditating upon the recent, real-life conflict between poet Stephen Spender and novelist David Leavitt, Margulies has created two of the most vivid and moving fictional characters of his career: Ruth Steiner, an aging, highly regarded author who never wrote about her youthful affair with real-life poet Delmore Schwartz, and Lisa Morrison, a student of Steiner's who, after publishing a much-ballyhooed first short-story collection under Steiner's direction, follows up with a novel that draws upon the Schwartz affair. The result is charged drama with the depth and weight of the finest prose fiction. Winner of the Los Angeles Drama Critics Award for Best New Play.Donald Margulies received the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Dinner with Friends. The play received numerous awards, including the American Theatre Critics Association New Play Award, the Dramatists Guild/Hull-Warriner Award, the Lucille Lortel Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award and a Drama Desk nomination, and has been produced all over the United States and around the world. In addition to his adaptation of God of Vengeance, his many plays include Collected Stories, The Country House, Sight Unseen, The Model Apartment, The Loman Family Picnic, What’s Wrong with This Picture? and Time Stands Still. Mr. Margulies currently lives with his wife and their son in New Haven, Connecticut, where he teaches playwriting at Yale University.
Blues for an Alabama Sky - Acting Edition
Pearl Cleage - 1999
Theatre script, playbook
Uncle Vanya
Anton Checkhov - 2014
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.
All New People
Zach Braff - 2012
Away from the rest of the world, this perfect escape is interrupted by a motley parade of misfits who show up and change his plans. A hired beauty, a fireman, and an eccentric British real estate agent desperately trying to stay in the country all suddenly find themselves tangled together in a beach house where the mood is anything but sunny.This pithy piece portrays a scenario of attempted suicide with mordant humour, where a basis of social alienation leads to unexpected connections. The richly-drawn characters are quick-witted and narcissistic yet self-aware and the dialogue is fluid and witty."All New People" is centred around a clever concept which works as a catalyst for both angst-fuelled scrutiny and morbid humour.
Salomé
Oscar Wilde - 1891
Symbolist poets and writers — Stéphane Mallarmé and Maurice Maeterlinck among them — defended the play's literary brilliance. Beyond its notoriety, the drama's haunting poetic imagery, biblical cadences, and febrile atmosphere have earned it a reputation as a masterpiece of the Aesthetic movement of fin de siècle England.Written originally in French in 1892, this sinister tale of a woman scorned and her vengeance was translated into English by Lord Alfred Douglas. The play inspired some of Aubrey Beardsley's finest illustrations, and an abridged version served as the text for Strauss' renowned opera of the same name. This volume reprints the complete text of the first English edition, published in 1894, and also includes "A Note on Salomé" by Robert Ross, Wilde's lifelong friend and literary executor. Students, lovers of literature and drama, and admirers of Oscar Wilde and his remarkable literary gifts will rejoice in this inexpensive edition.
Peter and Alice
John Logan - 2013
Enchantment and reality collide at a 1932 meeting between Alice Liddell Hargreaves, the original Alice in Wonderland, and Peter Llewelyn Davies, the original Peter Pan. Peter and Alice, which opened on London's West End in March 2013, stars Judi Dench and Ben Whishaw.
The Last Five Years
Jason Robert Brown - 2002
The show's unconventional structure consists of Cathy, the woman, telling her story backwards while Jamie, the man, tells his story chronologically; the two characters meet only once, at their wedding in the middle of the show.Jason Robert Brown won Drama Desk Awards for the music and the lyrics after the Off-Broadway premiere in 2002 starring Norbert Leo Butz and Sherie Rene Scott. The show has since been produced at almost every major regional theater in the U.S., and has been seen in Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Germany, Italy, Canada, Spain, and the UK.
Cyprus Avenue
David Ireland - 2016
He believes his five-week old granddaughter is Gerry Adams.His family keep telling him to stop living in the past and fighting old battles that nobody cares about anymore, but his cultural heritage is under siege. He must act.David Ireland's black comedy takes one man's identity crisis to the limits as he uncovers the modern day complexity of Ulster Loyalism.Cyprus Avenue was first performed at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, on 11 February 2016, before transferring to the Royal Court Theatre, London in April 2016.
The Shadowmen
David Hagberg - 2016
Early in his career, he came up against the Soviet Union's deadliest agent three times, finally killing the man in a flooded tunnel beneath the ruins of a castle in Portugal.Years have passed. The Russian's brother, Kurshin, a Spetsnaz operator twenty-five years younger than McGarvey, vows revenge. He and McGarvey are both shadowmen--living between the real world, and the world of the deep cover spy and assassin. To get McGarvey's attention, Kurshin desecrates the grave of the American's wife. McGarvey pits himself against the Russian--the man of vast experience versus the bold young man who believes he is invincible. The mano a mano begins at Arlington Cemetery and moves across Europe, from the baccarat tables of Monte Carlo to the same the Portuguese castle where the Russian's brother was killed so many years ago. Only one shadowman will be left standing.At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Grey Gardens
Doug Wright - 2007
Grey Gardens is based on the 1975 Albert and David Maysles film about Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis's eccentric aunt and cousin. The touching and sometimes heart-wrenching musical adaptation explores the dysfunctional relationship between former socialite Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter, Little Edie, as they languish in a derelict East Hampton manor, Grey Gardens. Propelled by Christine Ebersole's tour-de-force performance, the gorgeous score, and intricate lyrics, the Broadway musical has garnered much critical praise. "An experience no passionate theatergoer should miss." Ben Brantley, The New York Times