9 Parts of Desire - Acting Edition


Heather Raffo - 2006
    Book annotation not available for this title.

Sense and Sensibility


Kate Hamill - 2016
    Set in gossipy late 18th-century England, with a fresh female voice, the play is full of humor, emotional depth, and bold theatricality. SENSE AND SENSIBILITY examines our reactions, both reasonable and ridiculous, to societal pressures. When reputation is everything, how do you follow your heart?

The Waiting Room


Lisa Loomer - 1998
    Three women from different centuries meet in a modern doctor's waiting room. Forgiveness From Heaven is an eighteenth-century Chinese woman whose bound feet are causing her to lose her toes. Victoria is a nineteenth-century tightly corsetted English woman suffering from what is commonly known as "hysteria." Then there is Wanda, a modern gal from New Jersey who is having problems with her silicone breasts. Husbands, doctors, Freud, the drug industry and the FDA all come under examination. The play is a wild ride through medical and sexual politics, including the politics of the ever-present battle with breast cancer.

The Glass Menagerie


Tennessee Williams - 1945
    As Williams's first popular success, it launched the brilliant, if somewhat controversial, career, of our pre-eminent lyric playwright. Since its premiere in Chicago in 1944, with the legendary Laurette Taylor in the role of Amanda, Menagaerie has been the bravura piece for great actresses from Jessica Tandy to Joanne Woodward, and is studied and performed in classrooms and theatres around the world. The Glass Menagerie (in the reading text the author preferred) is now available only in its New Directions Paperbook edition. A new introduction by the editor of The Tennessee Williams Annual Review, Robert Bray, reappraises the play more than half a century after it won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award. This edition of The Glass Menagerie also includes Williams's essay on the impact of sudden fame on a struggling writer, "The Catastrophe of Success," as well as a short section of Williams's own "Production Notes." (back cover)

A Man for All Seasons


Robert Bolt - 1960
    The classic play about Sir Thomas More, the Lord chancellor who refused to compromise and was executed by Henry VIII.

Agnes of God


John Pielmeier - 1982
    Martha Livingstone, a court-appointed psychiatrist, is charged with assessing the sanity of a young novitiat accused of murdering her newborn. Miriam Ruth, the Mother Superior, determindly keeps young Agnes from the doctor, arousing Livingstone's suspicions further. Who killed the infant and who fathered the tiny victim? Livingstone's questions force all three women to re-examine the meaning of faith and the power of love leading to a dramatic, compelling climax. A hit on Broadway and later on film."Riveting, powerful, electrifying drama...the dialogue crackles."-New York Daily News"Outstanding play [that]...deals intelligently with questions of religion and psychology."-The New York Times"Unquestionably blindingly theatrical...cleverly executed blood and guts evening in the theatre."-New York Post

West Side Story


Irving Shulman - 1961
    Maria was young and innocent and had never known love—until Tony. And he, who had been seeking something beyond the savagery of the streets, discovered it with her. But Maria’s brother was leader of the Sharks and Tony had once led the rival Jets. Now both gangs were claiming the same turf. Tony promised Maria that he would stay out of it. Would he be able to keep his word? Or would their newfound love be destroyed by sudden death?

The Women


Clare Boothe Luce - 1937
    The author carries us through a number of varied scenes and shows us not only a somewhat unflattering picture of womanhood, but digging under the surface, reveals a human understanding for and sympathy with some of its outstanding figures. The plot involves the efforts of a group of women to play their respective roles in an artificial society that consists of vain show, comedy, tragedy, hope and disappointment.

The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade


Peter Weiss - 1963
    But this play-within-a-play is not historical drama. Its thought is as modern as today's police states and The Bomb; its theatrical impact has everywhere been called a major innovation. It is total theatre: philosophically problematic, visually terrifying. It engages the eye, the ear, and the mind with every imaginable dramatic device, technique, and stage picture, even including song and dance. All the forces and elements possible to the stage are fused in one overwhelming experience. This is theatre such as has rarely been seen before. The play is basically concerned with the problem of revolution. Are the same things true for the masses and for their leaders? And where, in modern times, lie the borderlines of sanity?

Godspell


Stephen Schwartz - 1971
    13 selections from one of the most popular musicals ever. Includes: All Good Gifts * Bless the Lord * By My Side * Day by Day * Prepare Ye (The Way of the Lord) * and more.

I Never Sang for My Father


Robert Woodruff Anderson - 1968
    Booklet bought for a college class. No internal marking. Looks "like new". Please ask if questions.

Zoot Suit


Luis Valdez - 1978
    Latino/Latina Studies. This bilingual edition combines the original English-language version with the first-ever Spanish translation of the critically acclaimed play by Luis Valdez, a work that cracked open the depiction of Chicanos on the stage, challenging viewers to revisit a troubled moment in our nation's history. From the moment the myth-infused character El Pachuco burst onto the stage, literally cutting his way through the drop curtain with a switchblade, Valdez spurred a revolution in Chicano theater. Experimenting with brash forms of narration, pop culture of the war era, and complex characterizations, this quintessential exploration of the Mexican-American experience in the United States during the 1940s was the first, and only, Chicano play to open on Broadway.

Polaroid Stories: An Adaptation of Ovid's Metamorphoses


Naomi Iizuka - 1999
    Not all the stories these characters tell are true; some are lies, wild yams, clever deceits, baroque fabrications. But whether or not a homeless kid invents an incredible history for himself isn't the point, explains diarist-of-the-street Jim Grimsley. "All these stories and lies add up to something like the truth."Inspired in part by Ovid's Metamorphoses, Iizuka's Polaroid Stories takes place on an abandoned pier on the outermost edge of a city, a way stop for dreamers, dealers and desperadoes, a no-man's land where runaways seek camaraderie, refuge and escape. Serpentine routes from the street to the heart characterize the interactions in this spellbinding tale of young people pushed to society's fringe. Informed, as well, by interviews with young prostitutes and street kids, Polaroid Stories conveys a whirlwind of psychic disturbance, confusion and longing. Like their mythic counterparts, these modem-day mortals are engulfed by needs that burn and consume. Their language mixes poetry and profanity, imbuing the play with lyricism and great theatrical force.

Anatomy of a Suicide


Alice Birch - 2017
    For each, the chaos of what has come before brings with it a painful legacy.“I have Stayed. I have Stayed – I have Stayed for as long as I possibly can.”

Stop Kiss


Diana Son - 1999
    Son's story is deceptively simple: two young women in New York meet, talk about their boyfriends, feel a growing, unspoken attraction for each other, and finally kiss. And that one innocent kiss sets off a savage gay-bashing. But even as Stop Kiss confronts the reality of physical violence, Son's imaginative, moving, and surprising comedy brings audiences -- and her principal characters -- to unexpected places.Callie is holding down a job as a radio traffic reporter when she meets Sara, a midwesterner who, against her parents' wishes, has moved to the city to teach third-grade students in the Bronx. Both have boyfriends, but as they get to know each other, their shared experiences and sense of humor create a strong bond. The tragic consequences of their kiss -- the center of this powerful drama -- serve as both an indictment of hatred and a moving study of the perils inherent in living life fully.