Book picks similar to
Polygraph by Robert Lepage
plays
theatre
canadian
read-for-school
Someone Who'll Watch Over Me
Frank McGuinness - 1992
As victims of political action, powerless to initiate change, what can they do? How do they live and survive?Frank McGuinness explores the daily crisis endured by hostages whose strength comes from communication, both subtle and mundane, from humour, wit and faith.Someone Who'll Watch Over Me premiered at the Hampstead Theatre, London, in 1992 before transferring to the West End. On Broadway, it was awarded the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Foreign Play and nominated for the Tony Award for Best Play in 1993.
Fool for Love
Sam Shepard - 1983
May is hiding out at an old motel in the Mojave Desert. Eddie, an old flame and childhood friend, finds her there and threatens to drag her back into the life from which she had fled. Reality and dream; truth and lies; past and present mingle in an explosive, emotional experience.
Long Day's Journey into Night
Eugene O'Neill - 1956
First published by Yale University Press in 1956, it won the Pulitzer Prize in 1957 and has since sold more than one million copies. This edition includes a new foreword by Harold Bloom.The action covers a fateful, heart-rending day from around 8:30 am to midnight, in August 1912 at the seaside Connecticut home of the Tyrones - the semi-autobiographical representations of O'Neill himself, his older brother, and their parents at their home, Monte Cristo Cottage.One theme of the play is addiction and the resulting dysfunction of the family. All three males are alcoholics and Mary is addicted to morphine. They all constantly conceal, blame, resent, regret, accuse and deny in an escalating cycle of conflict with occasional desperate and half-sincere attempts at affection, encouragement and consolation.
Goldberg Street: Short Plays and Monologues
David Mamet - 1985
From the Pulitzer Prize- winning author of Glengarry Glen Ross, here is a collection of thirty-two one-act plays and short dramatic pieces that David Mamet himself considers to be some of the best writing he has ever done.
My Name is Rachel Corrie
Rachel Corrie - 2006
But what it can do, when it’s as good as this, is to send us out enriched by other people’s passionate concern.” –Guardian (London)“An impassioned eulogy… It’s hard not to be impressed – and also somewhat frightened – by the description of her as a two-year-old looking across Capital Lake in Washington State and announcing, ‘This is the wide world, and I’m coming to it.’” –New York TimesOn March 16, 2003, Rachel Corrie, a twenty-three-year-old American, was crushed to death by an Israeli Army bulldozer in Gaza as she was trying to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian home. My Name is Rachel Corrie is a one-woman play composed from Rachel’s own journals, letters and emails – creating a portrait of a messy, articulate, Salvador Dali-loving chain-smoker (with a passion for the music of Pat Benatar), who left her home and school in Olympia, Washington, to work as an activist in the heart of Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Since its Royal Court premiere (London), the piece has been surrounded by both controversy and impassioned proponents, and has raised an unprecedented call to support political work and the difficult discourse it creates.ALAN RICKMAN is a British actor and director, who directed the London and New York productions of the play. KATHERINE VINER is an award-winning journalist and editor of the Guardian’s Weekend Magazine.
The Theatre of Tennessee Williams: Battle of Angels, The Glass Menagerie , A Streetcar Named Desire (the Theatre of Tennessee Williams, #1)
Tennessee Williams - 1971
Arranged in chronological order, this ongoing series includes the original cast listings and production notes.Volume 1 leads with Battle of Angels Williams's first produced play (1940), and early version of Orpheus Descending. this is followed by the texts of his first great popular successes: The Glass menagerie (1945) and the Pulitzer Prize-winning A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), which established Williams's reputations once and for all as a genius of the modern American theatre.
Mr. Marmalade
Noah Haidle - 2006
Unfortunately, her imaginary friend Mr. Marmalade doesn't have much time for her. Not to mention he beats up his personal assistant, has a cocaine addic-tion, and a penchant for pornography and very long dildos. Larry, her only real friend, is the youngest suicide attempt in the history of New Jersey. MR. MARMALADE is a savage black comedy about what it takes to grow up in these difficult times.
A Piece of My Heart
Shirley Lauro - 1988
The play portrays each young woman before, during, and after her tour in the war torn jungle and ends as each leaves a personal token at The Wall in Washington.A Piece of My Heart premiered in New York at Manhattan Theatre Club, and now has enj
Translations
Brian Friel - 1981
The 'scholars' are a cross-section of the local community, from a semi-literate young farmer to and elderly polygot autodidact who reads and quotes Homer in the orginal.In a nearby field camps a recently arrived detachment of the Royal Engineers, engaged on behalf of the Britsh Army and Government in making the first Ordnance Survey. For the purposes ofr cartography, the local Gaelic place names have to be recorded and transliterated - or translated - into English, in examining the effects of this operation on the lives of a small group of people, Irish and English, Brian Friel skillfully reveals the unexperctedly far-reaching personal and cultural effects of an action which is at first sight purely administrative and harmless. While remaining faithful to the personalities and relationshiops of those people at that time he makes a richly suggestive statement about Irish - and English - history.
The Boys Next Door
Tom Griffin - 1988
Norman, who works in a doughnut shop and is unable to resist the lure of the sweet pastries, takes great pride in the huge bundle of keys that dangles from his waist; Lucien P. Smith has the mind of a five-year-old but imagines that he is able to read and comprehend the weighty books he lugs about; Arnold, the ringleader of the group, is a hyperactive, compulsive chatterer, who suffers from deep-seated insecurities and a persecution complex; while Barry, a brilliant schizophrenic who is devastated by the unfeeling rejection of his brutal father, fantasizes that he is a golf pro. Mingled with scenes from the daily lives of these four, where "little things" sometimes become momentous (and often very funny), are moments of great poignancy when, with touching effectiveness, we are reminded that the handicapped, like the rest of us, want only to love and laugh and find some meaning and purpose in the brief time that they, like their more fortunate brothers, are allotted on this earth.
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
After Magritte
Tom Stoppard - 1969
'Mother lies prone on an ironing board under a basket of fruit suspended from the ceiling, while a young couple - the girl in a ball dress, the man stripped to the waist in waders - are frantically changing light bulbs; through a street window at the back a policeman spies on this domestic scene in a posture of frozen astonishment...You see the author at full stretch when the police burst in and embark on a lunatic investigation involving four characters who all see the facts in a totally different light, and pounce on every ambiguous word to shoot off in their own direction: the dialogue operates like a railway junction with a madman switching over the points.' Irving Wardle in The Times.