Book picks similar to
The Coffin Is Too Big For The Hole And Other Plays by Pao Kun Kuo
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Yellow Face
David Henry Hwang - 2008
The play begins with the 1990s controversy over color-blind casting for "Miss Saigon," before it spins into a comic fantasy, in which the character DHH pens a play in protest and then unwittingly casts a white actor as the Asian lead. "Yellow Face" also explores the real-life investigation of Hwang's father, the first Asian American to own a federally chartered bank, and the espionage charges against physicist Wen Ho Lee.
in the company of men
Neil LaBute - 1997
The story of two white-collar managers, Chad and Howard, who maliciously plot to jointly romance the lonely, deaf, beautiful office temp Christine before simultaneously dumping her, is cool and compelling in its depiction of the worst sorts of emotional abuse. What begins as a cat-and-mouse game of one-upmanship quickly escalates into full-scale psychological warfare. Only too late does this 'frat boy' prank reveal itself as deadly serious, with a struggle between the two men at the heart of the battle. The woman is only a means to an end, a pawn easily captured and tossed aside in a dark, wicked duel for corporate ascension.
Hamlet (Oxford Bookworms Library: Stage 2)
Alistair McCallum - 2005
Perhaps he is mad! But Hamlet thinks that he has discovered a terrible secret about a recent crime in his family. Now he has no time for Ophelia, the sweet girl who loves him. or his friends, who were at school with him. He sits alone, and thinks, and plans. What will he decide to do? Will he ever be happy again? This famous play by William Shakespeare, written in about 1600, is one of the finest in the English language.
'night, Mother
Marsha Norman - 1983
By one of America's most talented playwrights, this play won the Dramatists Guild's prestigious Hull-Warriner Award, four Tony nominations, the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, and the Pulitzer Prize in 1983. 'night, Mother had its world premiere at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in December 1982. It opened on Broadway in March 1983, directed by Tom Moore and starring Anne Pitoniak and Kathy Bates; a film, starring Anne Bancroft and Sissy Spacek, was released in 1986.
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
John Escott - 2005
Tess Durbeyfield leaves home on the first of her fateful journeys, and meets the ruthless Alec d'Urberville. Thomas Hardy's impassioned story tells of hope and disappointment, rejection and enduring love.
Uncle Vanya
Anton Checkhov - 2014
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.
Once in a Lifetime
Moss Hart - 1960
(doubling possible.) / 5 ints. or unit set. Recently revived on Broadway to great acclaim, this is the rollicking tale of three down and out troupers who decide to head for Hollywood and try their luck with the newly invented talkies. Due to a series of consistent blunders, the most stupid of the three is carried to pinnacles of fame and fortune until he's literally made a god of the industry. It's a fast paced and wild romp and a marvelous spoof of tinsel land.
Dying City
Christopher Shinn - 2006
. . Dying City is a political play and also a psychodrama about what Arthur Miller called the politics of the soul. It’s about public conscience and private grief, and real and symbolic catastrophes.”?The New York Observer
“Anyone who doubts that Mr. Shinn is among the most provocative and probing of American playwrights today need only experience the . . . sophisticated welding of form and content that is Dying City.”?The New York Times
In Christopher Shinn’s new play Dying City, a young therapist, Kelly, whose husband Craig was killed while on military duty in Iraq, is confronted a year later by his identical twin Peter, who suspects that Craig’s death was not accidental. Set in a spare downtown-Manhattan apartment after dark, scenes shift from the confrontation between Peter and Kelly, to Kelly’s complicated farewell with her husband Craig. Shinn’s creepy, sophisticated drama?infused with references to 9/11 and the war in Iraq?explores how contemporary politics and recent history have transformed the lives of these three characters.
Christopher Shinn was born in Hartford, Connecticut, and lives in New York. His plays include Where Do We Live, Other People, What Didn’t Happen, and On the Mountain, which have been widely produced in New York, across the United States, and in London. He is the recipient of an OBIE Award in Playwriting, as well as the Robert S. Chesney Award. He teaches playwriting at The New School for Drama.
The Convent of Pleasure and Other Plays
Margaret Cavendish - 1999
Cavendish is the author of many poems, short stories, biographies, memoirs, letters, philosophical and scientific works (including The Description of a New World, Called The Blazing World, the first work of science fiction by a woman), and nineteen plays."The Convent of Pleasure" and Other Plays collects four of Cavendish's dramatic works that are among the most revealing of her attitudes toward marriage and her desire for fame. Loves Adventures (1662) centers on a woman succeeding in war and diplomacy by passing as a man. Similarly, the heroine of Bell in Campo (1662) rescues her husband at the head of an army of women in this tale of a marriage of near equals. The Convent of Pleasure (1668) proposes a separatist community of women and has received attention for its suggestion of lesbian sexuality. The Bridals (1662), a more typical restoration comedy satirizing marriage, rounds out the collection.Edited with notes and annotation by Anne Shaver, "The Convent of Pleasure" and Other Plays also contains a timeline, biography and bibliography of the Duchess, an appreciation of Cavendish's life and work, and a bibliography of critical essays. Also included are all of Cavendish's epistles To the Reader as well as Other Preliminary Matter from Playes (1662), and Cavendish's original preface to Plays Never Before Printed (1668). A valuable collection from an extraordinary writer, "The Convent of Pleasure" and Other Plays raises important issues about women and gender.