Book picks similar to
Halcyon Days by Steven Dietz
plays
politics
theatre
1
My Sister in This House
Wendy Kesselman - 1981
This extraordinary drama, produced to acclaim at the Actors Theatre of Louisville originally, and at NYC's Second Stage is about a celebrated 1930's French murder case, in which two maids sisters were convicted of murdering their employer and her daughter. This very cinematically structured work explores the motivations whi
Good Grief
Ngozi Anyanwu - 2020
GOOD GRIEF follows Nkechi, or N- a med-school dropout, a first generation Nigerian, a would-be goddess- as she navigates first loves and losses, and tries to find answers in her parents, the boy next door, and the stars.
Romeo & Juliet: The Contemporary Film, the Classic Play
Craig Pearce - 1996
Starring Leonardo DiCaprio (What's Eating Gilbert Grape, The Basketball Diaries) and Claire Danes (My So-Called Life, Little Women) as the doomed lovers, the film is set in a modern city. The actors speak Shakespeare's words--but with their own American accents.Readers can now experience this new vision of Shakespeare's violent, tragic play alongside the Bards original text, in a special single volume that features an introduction by the film's director.--back cover
Collected Screenplays 1: Jokes / Gummo / julien donkey-boy
Harmony Korine - 2002
This collection of three screenplays displays his defiantly unorthodox approach to film form, as well as the unclassifiable imaginative energy that drives all of his work.
Jackie Old: A tale of the future told in the past (Kindle Single)
Armistead Maupin - 2014
As usual, Maupin’s tone is both bittersweet and achingly funny in this tale of a post-catastrophic San Francisco and a young man’s resilient love for his mother. Cover Design by Darryl Vance
I'd Rather Be Single
Lashonda Devaughn - 2011
Tyra went from dating deadbeats to dating athletes. But living the good life came at a price.... "The Skeletons In My Closet" By: LaShonda DeVaughn, Author of A Hood Chick's Story I & II - They say in order to receive true and real love, we must all take chances. Will Kenneth end up being the real deal? Or will Rita end up regretting her decision in courting a young thug? "Taking Chances" By: Mimi Renee, Author of Deadly Decisions and Pretty Bright - Despite years of women playing games to take her husband away from her, Jai was determined to hold on. Her best friend questions why she puts up with his infidelity. Jai reasons: It's just Something In His Backstroke. "Something In His Backstroke" By: Tysha - Author of The Boss...the story of a female hustler - Fairytales should all have happy endings. Unfortunately, in Zoe's world each ending comes with a tale of lies... "Sleeping With The Enemy" By: Kaie Golson
Major Barbara
George Bernard Shaw - 1905
When a Salvation Army officer learns that her father, a wealthy armaments manufacturer, has donated lots of money to her organization, she resigns in disgust but eventually sees the truth of her father's reasoning that social iniquity derives from poverty; it is only through accumulating wealth and power that people can help each other.
Chekhov's Three Sisters & Woolf's Orlando
Sarah Ruhl - 2011
. . . Ruhl writes with the imaginative sweep that allows Woolf's poetry to soar."—Variety"Sarah Ruhl's smart new translation [of Three Sisters] feels just right to contemporary American ears—lean, colloquial, and conversational for us and true to Chekhov's original work."—The Cincinnati EnquirerIn her stage adaptation of Virginia Woolf's gender-bending, period-hopping novel, award-winning playwright Sarah Ruhl "is her usual unfailingly elegant, unbeatably witty self, cleverly braiding her own brand-name wit with Woolf's" (New York )magazine. Preserving Woolf's vital ideas and lyrical tone, Ruhl brings to the stage the life of an Elizabethan nobleman who's magically transformed into an immortal woman. In her fresh translation of Three Sisters, the Anton Chekhov classic of ennui and frustration, Ruhl employs her signature lyricism and elegant understanding of intimacy to reveal the discontent felt by fretful Olga, unhappy Masha, and idealistic Irina as they long to leave rural Russia for the ever-alluring Moscow.Sarah Ruhl's other plays include the Pulitzer Prize finalists In the Next Room (or the vibrator play) and The Clean House, as well as Passion Play, Dean Man's Cell Phone, Demeter in the City, Eurydice, Melancholy Play, and Late: a cowboy song. She is the recipient of a Whiting Writers' Award, a PEN/Laura Pels Award, and a MacArthur Fellowship. Her plays have premiered on Broadway, Off-Broadway, and in many theaters around the world.
Poverty Is No Crime
Aleksandr Ostrovsky - 1854
In the earlier play Ostrovsky had adopted a satiric tone that proved him a worthy disciple of Gogol, the great founder of Russian realism. Not one lovable character appears in that gloomy picture of merchant life in Moscow; even the old mother repels us by her stupidity more than she attracts us by her kindliness. No ray of light penetrates the "realm of darkness" -- to borrow a famous phrase from a Russian critic -- conjured up before us by the young dramatist. In Poverty Is No Crime we see the other side of the medal. Ostrovsky had now been affected by the Slavophile school of writers and thinkers, who found in the traditions of Russian society treasures of kindliness and love that they contrasted with the superficial glitter of Western civilization. Life in Russia is varied as elsewhere, and Ostrovsky could change his tone without doing violence to realistic truth. The tradesmen had not wholly lost the patriarchal charm of their peasant fathers. A poor apprentice is the hero of Poverty Is No Crime, and a wealthy manufacturer the villain of the piece. Good-heartedness is the touchstone by which Ostrovsky tries character, and this may be hidden beneath even a drunken and degraded exterior. The scapegrace, Lyubim Tortsov, has a sound Russian soul, and at the end of the play rouses his hard, grasping brother, who has been infatuated by a passion for aping foreign fashions, to his native Russian worth. Alexander Ostrovsky (1823-1886) was an early Russian Realist whose work led to the founding of the Moscow Arts Theatre and to the career of Stanislavsky. He has been acknowledged to be the greatest of the Russian dramatists.
Mud
María Irene Fornés - 1983
Lloyd, who lives with Mae, spends his time caring a little too much for the farm animals; he scorns to learn from a book, and treats Mae with angry disrespect. When Lloyd becomes ill, Mae goes searching for a diagnosis, and brings their simple, yet eloquent, neighbor Henry home with her, in order to help her read the difficult medical language. The ensuing love / hate triangle that brews between the three creates a toxic environment, and Mae, whose love and respect for Henry turn to impatience and resentment after an accident renders him helpless, determines that to escape the ill-luck of her life, she must escape the men who depend upon her.
Harvey
Mary Chase - 1944
Dowd starts to introduce his imaginary friend Harvey, a six and a half foot rabbit, to guests at a dinner party, his sister, Veta, has seen as much of his eccentric behavior as she can tolerate. She decides to have him committed to a sanitarium to spare her daughter, Myrtle Mae, and their family, from future embarrassment. Problems arise, however, when Veta herself is mistakenly assumed to be on the fringe of lunacy when she explains to doctors that years of living with Elwood's hallucination have caused her to see Harvey also! The doctors commit Veta instead of Elwood, but when the truth comes out, the search is on for Elwood and his invisible companion. When he shows up at the sanitarium looking for his lost friend Harvey it seems that the mild-mannered Elwood's delusion has had a strange influence on more than one of the doctors. Only at the end does Veta realize that maybe Harvey isn't so bad after all.
A Mersey Duet
Anne Baker - 1996
Elsa's parents, who run the highly successful Mersey Antiques, take Lucy home, while Patsy has a more down-to-earth upbringing with her father and other grandmother above the Railway Hotel. When Patsy is invited to work at Mersey Antiques, she hopes it will bring her closer to Lucy, but it takes a series of dramatic events before they are drawn together.