But never has he blended these disparate elements into such a brilliantly cohesive whole as he has in Lips Together, Teeth Apart,hailed by Frank Rich of the New York Times as McNallys"most ambitious and most accomplished play yet."At the heart of this haunting play is a dramatically incisive portrait of two married couples - the Trumans and the Haddocks. Uncomfortable with themselves and each other, they are forced to spend a Fourth of July weekend at the Fire Island house that the brother of one of the women left his sister when he died of AIDS. Though the house is beautiful, it is as empty as their lives and marriages have become, a symbol of their failed hopes, their rage, their fears, and of the capricious nature of death. Acerbic and haunting, Lips Together, Teeth Apart probes the stifledlives of people and their prejudices with a stunning clarity that resonates long after.

    She has spent her career on both sides of the auditioning process, both as an award-winning casting director who has worked with Harold Prince, Bernard Bertolucci, and James Ivory, and as an accomplished actor herself. In this highly informative and accessible book, Merlin provides everything the actor needs to achieve self-confidence and artistic honesty–from the most basic practical tips to an in-depth framework for preparing a part. Filled with advice from the most esteemed people in the business, such as James Lapine, Nora Ephron, and Stephen Sondheim, and charged with tremendous wisdom and compassion, this indispensable resource will arm the reader to face an actor's greatest challenge: getting the part.

    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 plot involves a young woman in a bathtub and a case of mistaken identity.

    Winner of three Tony Awards, including Best Book, Urinetown is a tale of greed, corruption, love, and revolution in a time when water is worth its weight in gold.

    It is a guide to advanced improvisation. This sequel to the best-selling improv book "Truth in Comedy" is designed to help improv performers move up to the more advanced levels of improvisation. Accompanying the book is a DVD featuring performers in action demonstrating the instructions and ideas covered in the book. The DVD includes performances by four popular improv groups: Upright Citizens Brigade, Beer Shark Mice, Armando Diaz Theatrical Experience, The Reckoning and assorted short clips with Peter Hulne. Also on the DVD are interviews with many celebrity improv artists including: Tina Fey, Rachel Dratch, Amy Poehler, Stephnie Weir, Tim Meadows, Andy Dick, and Adam McKay.

    Twistfully illustrated by Campbell Grant"

    Information for Foreigners is a drama of disappearance, an experimental work dealing with the theme of random and meaningless punishment in which the audience is led through darkened passageways to a series of nightmarish tableaux. The collection also includes The Walls and Antigona Furiosa.

    She meets the women of Lockerbie, who are fighting the U.S. government to obtain the clothing of the victims found in the plane s wreckage. The women, determined to convert an act of hatred into an act of love, want to wash the clothes of the dead and return them to the victim s families. THE WOMEN OF LOCKERBIE is loosely inspired by a true story, although the characters and situations in the play are purely fictional. Written in the structure of a Greek tragedy, it is a poetic drama about the triumph of love over hate. Winner of the silver medal in the Onassis International Playwriting Competition and the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays award.

    "Softcops renders the philosophy of Foucault as a music-hall turn and Victorian freakshow "theatre and history combine to give such intelligent fun" —The London Standard "Top Girls brings five great and less-than-great women from history together for a dinner party and "has a combination of directness and complexity which keeps you both emotionally and intellectually alert"—Sunday Times Fen scrutinizes the lives of the low-paid women potato pickers of the fens (in Eastern England) and "the playwright pins down her poetic subject matter in dialogue of impressive vigour and economy"—Financial Times Serious Money is a satirical study of the effects of the Big Bang - "Pure genius…the first play about the city to capture the authentic atmosphere of the place."—Daily Telegraph

    As a woman, as an African-American, her artistic objectivity and sensitivity to history combine with, but do not overshadow, her capacity to dig for truth and present it flat out as she sees it – with a finger snap or a shout and sometimes with a wink. Among the most satisfying roles I’ve undertaken on stage is surely Miss Leah in Flyin’ West. She brings the bushel nuggets of drama and humor that capture the ear, the heart and the imagination. She’s devilish, too.” –Academy Award® Nominee Ruby Dee“Ms. Cleage writes with amazing grace and killer instinct.” –Alvin Klein, New York Times “Pearl Cleage is a brilliant storyteller. I am always engrossed in the drama and compassion she brings to her characters. Flyin’ West, Bourbon at the Border, Blues for an Alabama Sky, Late Bus to Mecca and Chain are marvelous examples of a playwright at the top of her form, bravely moving into the new century.” –Woodie King, Jr., Producing Director, New Federal TheatrePearl Cleage’s body of work for the stage provides us with a remarkable and penetrating look at the African-American experience over the last 100 years. This volume collects her major full-length plays and one-acts, including Flyin’ West, Blues for an Alabama Sky, Bourbon at the Border, Chain and Late Bus to Mecca.PEARL CLEAGE is an Atlanta-based writer whose recent plays have premiered at The Alliance Theatre Company with subsequent productions throughout the country. Her first novel What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day was a recent Oprah’s Book Club Selection and a national bestseller. She is a former columnist of the Atlanta Tribune and a contributor to Essence Magazine.

    She understands and exploits the unique strengths of her medium: the ability to viscerally connect with an audience.” –The EconomistExperimental Korean American theatre artist Young Jean Lee has been called “one of the best experimental playwrights in America” (Time Out New York). This volume contains two of her recent works:In The Shipment, Lee provides a provocative look at African-American identity in our not-yet post-racial society. The New York Times calls this take on cultural images of black America “a subversive, seriously funny new theater piece… Ms. Lee wields sharp, offbeat humor to point up the clichés, distortions and absurdities” (Charles Isherwood, New York Times).LEAR is Lee’s own version of Shakespeare’s tragedy, focusing on the king’s three daughters. A production in which Lear himself never appears, LEAR is a “wacky blend of ‘To be or not to be,’ Beckett, and Pirandello…full of exhilarating, illuminating moments” (Village Voice).Young Jean Lee has written and directed shows in New York with Young Jean Lee’s Theater Company and toured her work to over twenty cities around the world. Her plays include Straight White Men, We’re Gonna Die, Untitled Feminist Show, The Shipment, Lear and Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven. Awards include two Obies, the Festival Prize of the Zuercher Theater Spektakel, a Prize in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Doris Duke Artist Award.

    In this her latest collection of essays she explores the story-telling impulse, and asks how she, as a product of postmodernism, can reconnect to the primal act of making meaning and telling stories. She also asks how theatre practitioners can think of themselves not as stagers of plays but orchestrators of social interactions and participants in an on-going dialogue about the future.We dream. And then occasionally we attempt to share our dreams with others. In recounting our dreams we try to construct a narrative... We also make stories out of our daytime existence. The human brain is a narrative creating machine that takes whatever happens and imposes chronology, meaning, cause and effect... We choose. We can choose to relate to our circumstances with bitterness or with openness. The stories that we tell determine nothing less than personal destiny. (From the introduction)This compelling new book is characteristically made up of chapters with one-word titles: Spaciousness, Narrative, Heat, Limits, Error, Politics, Arrest, Empathy, Opposition, Collaboration and Sustenance. In addition to dipping into neuroscience, performance theory and sociology, Bogart also recounts vivid stories from her own life. But as neuroscience indicates, the event of remembering what happened is in fact the creation of something new."

    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.