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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.

The Who The What: A Play


Ayad Akhtar - 2014
    Zarina has a bone to pick with the place of women in her Muslim faith, and she's been writing a book about the Prophet Muhammad that aims to set the record straight. When her traditional father and sister discover the manuscript, it threatens to tear her family apart. With humor and ferocity, Akhtar's incisive new drama about love, art, and religion examines the chasm between our traditions and our contemporary lives.

The Woman in Black: A Ghost Play


Stephen Mallatratt - 1989
    There he caught sight of the woman in black, the mere mention of whom terrifies the locals, for she is a specter who haunts the neighborhood where her illegitimate child was accidentally killed. Anyone who sees her dies! The lawyer has invited some friends to watch as he and the actor recreate the events of that dark and stormy night. A classic of the genre.

Our Man in Havana


Clive Francis - 2015
    So when the British Secret Service asks him to become their ‘man in Havana’ he can’t afford to say no. There’s just one problem…he doesn’t know anything! To avoid suspicion, he begins to recruit nonexistent sub-agents, concocting a series of intricate fictions. But Wormold soon discovers that his stories are closer to the truth than he could have ever imagined… In Clive Francis’ adaptation, Graham Greene’s classic satirical novel becomes a wonderfully funny and fast-moving romp.

Same Time Next Year


Bernard Slade - 1975
    It remains one of the world's most widely produced plays. The plot follows a love affair between two people, Doris and George, married to others, who rendezvous once a year. Twenty-five years of manners and morals are hilariously and touchingly played out by the lovers. "Delicious wit, compassion, a sense of humor and a feel for nostalgia."-The New York Times "Genuinely funny and genuinely romantic."-The New York Post

The Tale of the Allergist's Wife and Other Plays: The Tale of the Allergist's Wife, Vampire Lesbians of Sodom, Psycho Beach Party, The Lady in Question, Red Scare on Sunset


Charles Busch - 2000
    Of his latest play, The New York Times has written, "Uproarious ... wall-to-wall laughs ... Mr. Busch has swum straight into the mainstream and stays comfortably afloat there." Busch is the author of such plays as Vampire Lesbians of Sodom -- one of the longest-running plays in Off-Broadway history -- and Psycho Beach Party, a cross between Gidget and Spellbound. After a successful Off-Broadway run at New York City's Manhattan Theater Club, Busch moves to Broadway with The Tale of the Allergist's Wife, a hilarious comedy about a self-absorbed Upper West Side doctor's wife whose life is devoted to mornings at the Whitney, afternoons at the Museum of Modern Art, and evenings at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Her world is shaken and transformed when a childhood friend makes an unexpected visit.

The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart


David Greig - 2011
    

Freddie Foreman: The Godfather of British Crime


Freddie Foreman - 2009
    Held responsible for the gangland killings of Ginger Marks and Frank ?The Mad AxemanOCO Mitchell, he was the punisher to those who broke the underworldOCOs strict code of conduct.ForemanOCOs dramatic kidnap and arrest for BritainOCOs biggest cash robbery made headlines around the world, yet this daring raid was just the peak of a safe-blowing, bank-robbing career that spanned decades. His story is a fascinating, yet chilling account of life as a freelance enforcer for the Kray twins, and as LondonOCOs most feared gangster.Bloodshed aside, FreddieOCOs often humorous stories reveal a caring man who believes that violence is a last resort and who always treated people with respect. Revealed in these pages are the amazing details of the heists, the double crossings, the shoot-outs and the betrayals that accompanied life as a career criminal when the streets were controlled by fear. Exposed are the audacious plans behind the centuryOCOs most famous crimes, the damning evidence of police corruption and the eye-opening events that gave Freddie this most revered reputation.OCOThe most blood-curdling gangster memoir youOCOll ever readOCO ? The News of the World"

Necessary Targets


Eve Ensler - 2001
    Necessary Targets is a groundbreaking play about women and war—about the violence of dark memories and the enduring resilience of the human spirit.Melissa, an ambitious young writer, and J.S., a successful but unsatisfied middle-aged psychiatrist, have nothing in common beyond the methods they have been taught to distance themselves from other people. As J.S. begins to feel compassion for the women whose tragedies she has been sent to expose, she turns on Melissa, who finds safety in control. In an unexpected moment of revelation, J.S. and the women she is supposedly treating find a common ground, a place to be taught and a place to learn.Necessary Targets has been staged in New York by Meryl Streep, Anjelica Huston, and Calista Flockhart, and performed in Sarajevo with Glenn Close and Marisa Tomei.

The Threepenny Opera


Bertolt Brecht - 1928
    Based on John Gay's eighteenth-century Beggar's Opera, the play is set in Victorian England's Soho but satirizes the bourgeois society of the Weimar Republic through its wry love story of Polly Peachum and "Mack the Knife" Macheath. With Kurt Weill's music, which was one of the earliest and most successful attempts to introduce jazz into the theater, it became a popular hit throughout the Western world.Commissioned and authorized by the Brecht estate, Arcade's definitive edition contains the acclaimed translation by Ralph Manheim and John Willett that was first staged at the York Theatre Royal and subsequently at Lincoln Center in New York. Willett and Manheim, the joint editors of Brecht's complete dramatic work in English, also provide Brecht's own notes and discarded songs, as well as extensive editorial commentary on the genesis of his play.

Three Plays: Ma Rainey's Black Bottom / Fences / Joe Turner's Come and Gone


August Wilson - 1991
    Three plays from Pulitzer-Prize winning playwright August Wilson: Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, Fences, and Joe Turner's Come and Gone.

Bachelorette


Leslye Headland - 2011
    Fueled by jealousy and resentment, the girls embark on a night of debauchery that goes from playfully wasted to devastatingly destructive. Their old fears, unfulfilled desires and deep bonds with each other transform a prenuptial bender into a night they'll never forget. A wicked black comedy about female friendship and growing up in an age of excess.

The Motherfucker With the Hat


Stephen Adly Guirgis - 2011
    Yet Steven Adly Guiguis has created a profane, hilarious masterpiece that earned a "hatful" of theatrical accolades in 2011, including a Drama Desk award for Outstanding Actor in a Play for Bobby Cannavale. Stars the original Broadway cast: Chris Rock, Bobby Canavale, Annabella Sciorra, Elizabeth Rodriguez and Yul Vazquez.

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.

London Spy: The Complete Scripts


Tom Rob Smith - 2016
    When Danny finds Alex’s body, he is forced to pursue the truth behind his death.   This volume of complete scripts is a brilliant companion to the ratings-winning BBC1 series first shown in November 2015 and set for DVD release in May 2016.