Book picks similar to
Enough (NHB Modern Plays) by Stef Smith
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American Moor
Keith Hamilton Cobb - 2020
not necessarily in that order.Keith Hamilton Cobb embarks on a poetic exploration that examines the experience and perspective of black men in America through the metaphor of Shakespeare's character Othello, offering up a host of insights that are by turns introspective and indicting, difficult and deeply moving. American Moor is a play about race in America, but it is also a play about who gets to make art, who gets to play Shakespeare, about whose lives and perspectives matter, about actors and acting, and about the nature of unadulterated love.American Moor has been seen across America, including a successful run off-Broadway in 2019. This edition features an introduction by Professor Kim F. Hall, Barnard College.
God's Ear: A Play
Jenny Schwartz - 2008
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.
Love and Money
Dennis Kelly - 2007
A series of scenes that gradually tell the story of how the financial collapse affects a British couple and how fiscal worry, stress, and fear can strain mankind's greatest emotion.
Almost an Evening
Ethan Coen - 2009
Now, one half of the duo, Ethan Coen, adds playwriting to his eclectic bio. In these three short plays that ran to sold-out audiences Off-Broadway in 2008, the theme is hell–both on earth and in the hereafter.In “Waiting,” a man faces an uncertain future in an uncertain location that seems to be some kind of waiting room. The anxiety and despair hark back to dramas of the fifties–Sartre, Beckett, Pinter.“Four Benches” depicts an unlikely meeting in a steam room between a straight-talking Texan and an uptight Brit. Both men learn from the encounter, though only one survives it.In “Debate,” the cantankerous god of the Old Testament roundly abuses the mealymouthed god of the New. His profanity and ill humor receive a startling comeuppance, and further reversals and changes of point of view lead to a denouement that is no more preposterous than anything else in the play.Clever, provocative, and as engaging as the best fiction, these plays showcase yet another talent of one of our most celebrated contemporary writers.
Wonder of the World: Trade Edition
David Lindsay-Abaire - 2002
The New York production featured knockout performances by Sarah Jessica Parker and Amy Sedaris. Ben Brantley, in the "New York Times" wrote "clearly, Mr. Lindsay-Abaire hasn't lost his playfully wicked eye, equally appalled and affectionate . . . his style both embraces and spoofs the All-American appetite for spiritual lift, sitcom perkiness, and slimy tabloid prurience." A firm believer in destiny-and inspired by a Marilyn Monroe movie-Cass leaves her husband and boards a bus to Niagara Falls, where she hopes to meet the unknown man she believes herself fated to end up with. Along the way toward the inevitable climax on the brink of the waterfall, she checks items off her list of "things to do in life," and takes the audience on an often moving, always hilarious journey.
Blood Relations and Other Plays (REV Ed)
Sharon Pollock - 2002
Her characters are the oppressed, from the spinster Lizzie Borden in the title play, Blood Relations, to the prisoners of One Tiger to a Hill, to Leah, "chosen" daughter/mistress of rum runner Mr. Big in Whiskey Six Cadenza.
The Book of Will
Lauren Gunderson - 2017
But without Henry Condell and John Heminges, we would have lost half of Shakespeare’s plays forever! After the death of their friend and mentor, the two actors are determined to compile the First Folio and preserve the words that shaped their lives. They’ll just have to borrow, beg, and band together to get it done. Amidst the noise and color of Elizabethan London, THE BOOK OF WILL finds an unforgettable true story of love, loss, and laughter, and sheds new light on a man you may think you know.“THE BOOK OF WILL…unequivocally announces Gunderson as a playwright with whom to be reckoned. It is, quite frankly, one of the best plays I have ever seen. It will bring tears of both laughter and sorrow to all but the most jaded audience member’s eyes. It is, in a word, a triumph.” —Boulder Weekly (CO). “[Gunderson] has peopled the stage with lively, historically based characters…She paints a vivid portrait of the times in language sometimes formal, sometimes poetic and often…contemporary…She also gives a real feel for theater life and what it means to be an actor; you sense this is a work of both scholarship and love. …[THE BOOK OF WILL] serves as homage to those who sacrificed to make the first folio happen and to Shakespeare’s magnificent words.” —Westword (Denver, CO).
Zoot Suit and Other Plays
Luis Valdez - 1992
Jorge Huerta of the University of California-San Diego. Luis Valdez, the most recognized and celebrated Hispanic playwright of our times, is the director of the famous farm-worker theater, El Teatro Campesino.
Italian American Reconciliation
John Patrick Shanley - 1998
He enlists the aid of his lifelong buddy, Aldo Scalicki, a confirmed bachelor who tries, without apparent success, to convince Huey that he would be better off sticking with his new lady friend, Teresa, a usually placid young waitress whose indignation flares when she learns what Huey is up to. In a moonlit balcony scene (hilariously reminiscent of Cyrano de Bergerac) Aldo pleads his lovesick friend's case and, to his astonishment, Janice capitulates although not for long. However we do learn that her earlier abuse of Huey was intended to make him "act like a man" which, at last, he does. And, more than that, he (and the audience) become aware that, in the final essence, "the greatest and only success is to be able to love" a truth which emerges delightfully from the heartwarming, wonderfully antic and always imaginatively conceived action of the play.
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.
The Dreams of Tipu Sultan and Bali: The Sacrifice: Two Plays by Girish Karnad
Girish Karnad - 2004
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.
The Violet Hour
Richard Greenberg - 2004
He has two manuscripts but lacks the funds to publish both. His difficult decision--whether to publish his lover's memoir or the novel written by his best friend--is further complicated by the arrival of a mysterious machine that produces pages predicting the future of the play's protagonists, affecting their lives and relationships in haunting and unexpected ways. "The Violet Hour" opened on Broadway on November 6, 2003, starring Robert Sean Leonard.