Book picks similar to
Plays by Tony Kushner by Tony Kushner
plays
theatre
kushner
drama
The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
William Finn - 2006
Vocal selections from the popular Broadway musical, including: 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee * My Friend, the Dictionary * Pandemonium * I'm Not That Smart * Magic Foot * Prayer of the Comfort Counselor * My Unfortunate Erection * Woe Is Me * I Speak Six Languages * The I Love You Song.
The Heiress (DPS Acting Edition)
Ruth Goetz - 1951
Catherine's lack of worldliness prevents her from realizing that the young man proposing to her is not entirely drawn to her by her charm. Catherine's father, a successful doctor, sees through the fortune hunter and forbids the marriage, but his daughter proposes an elopement that fails to materialize because the young man knows most of her expected fortune will go elsewhere if he marries her. Catherine retires into a little world of her own. But the fortune hunter turns up once more and again proposes to her. For a moment, Catherine leads him to believe that she will accept him, but when he calls by appointment, she locks the door, blows out all the lights and allows him to realize that she will not be fooled for the second time.
Festen
David Eldridge - 2004
Missing from the roster of invitees is Christian's twin sister, Linda, who recently committed suicide. The reason for her action and the repercussions from it, form the basis of the shocking and painful events that transpire during a twenty-four hour period. In the midst of dinner, Christian makes a startling accusation and, even as the disbelieving guests are choosing sides, the play slowly unwraps the truth.David Eldridge powerful new play is adapted from Thomas Vinterborg's screenplay of the very successful film, Dogme.Published to tie in with Almeida Theatre production in March 2004 directed by Rufus Norris
The Musical Comedy Murders of 1940
John Bishop - 1998
As the composer, lyricist, actors and director prepare their performance, and a blizzard cuts off any possible retreat, bodies start to drop in plain sight, knives spring out of nowhere, masked figures drag their victims behind swiveling bookcases, and accusing fingers point in all directions. However, and with no thanks to the bumbling police inspector who snowshoes in to investigate, the mystery is solved in the nick of time and the "Slasher" unmasked-but not before the audience has been treated to a sidesplitting good time and a generous serving of the author's biting, satiric and refreshingly irreverent wit.
The American Clock
Arthur Miller - 1981
The central figures are the Baums, a wealthy family whose fortune has vanished in the stock market crash, but their story is amplified and illuminated by brief glimpses of other lives; a farmer who has lost all in the dust bowl; a prostitute who exchanges her favors for dental work; a white Southern sheriff in thrall to a black short-order cook; a young man who dreams of success on Tin Pan Alley, etc. Moving deftly from scene to scene, some funny, some movingly poignant, the play becomes a deeply affecting evocation both of a tortured time in American history and of the indomitable spirit of the people who survived and prevailed in the face of unaccustomed adversity.
The Book of Will
Lauren Gunderson - 2017
But without Henry Condell and John Heminges, we would have lost half of Shakespeare’s plays forever! After the death of their friend and mentor, the two actors are determined to compile the First Folio and preserve the words that shaped their lives. They’ll just have to borrow, beg, and band together to get it done. Amidst the noise and color of Elizabethan London, THE BOOK OF WILL finds an unforgettable true story of love, loss, and laughter, and sheds new light on a man you may think you know.“THE BOOK OF WILL…unequivocally announces Gunderson as a playwright with whom to be reckoned. It is, quite frankly, one of the best plays I have ever seen. It will bring tears of both laughter and sorrow to all but the most jaded audience member’s eyes. It is, in a word, a triumph.” —Boulder Weekly (CO). “[Gunderson] has peopled the stage with lively, historically based characters…She paints a vivid portrait of the times in language sometimes formal, sometimes poetic and often…contemporary…She also gives a real feel for theater life and what it means to be an actor; you sense this is a work of both scholarship and love. …[THE BOOK OF WILL] serves as homage to those who sacrificed to make the first folio happen and to Shakespeare’s magnificent words.” —Westword (Denver, CO).
Earthquakes in London
Mike Bartlett - 2010
It is a fast and furious metropolitan crash of people, scenes and decades, as three sisters attempt to navigate their dislocated lives and loves, while their dysfunctional father, a brilliant scientist, predicts global catastrophe.Mike Bartlett's contemporary and directed dialogue combines a strong sense of humanity with epic ambition, as well as finely-aimed shafts of political comment embedded effortlessly into every scene. Earthquakes in London represents modern playwriting at its most exciting and ambitious.It's Cabaret, we've got our heads down and we're dancing and drinking as fast as we can. The enemy is on its way, but this time it doesn't have guns and gas it has storms and earthquakes, fire and brimstone…. You were the glimmer. At the end of the tunnel. And you went out.
Lorca Plays: One: Blood Wedding, Doña Rosita the Spinster, and Yerma
Federico García Lorca - 1935
Blood Wedding tells the story of a couple drawn irresistibly together in the face of an arranged marriage; Doña Rosita the Spinster follows the appalling fate of a young woman beguiled into the expectation of marriage and left stranded for a lifetime whilst Yerma is possibly Lorca's harshest play following a woman's Herculean struggle against the curse of infertility. Set in and around his home territory, Granada, the plays return again and again to the lives of passionate individuals, particularly women, trapped by the social conventions of narrow peasant communities. The plays appear here in new playable translations.
Love Letters and Two Other Plays: The Golden Age, What I Did Last Summer
A.R. Gurney - 1990
R. Gurney has wittily captured the manners of upper-middle-class WASP America, but never as gracefully or with such dazzling economy as in Love Letters. Tracing the lifelong correspondence of the staid, dutiful lawyer Andrew Makepeace Ladd III and the lively, unstable artist Melissa Gardner, the story of their bittersweet relationship gradually unfolds from what is written--and what is left unsaid--in their letters. A smash hit both off and on Broadway, Love Letters captures Andy and Melissa with a precision of detail and depth of feeling that only Gurney can command. Two other, thematically related plays by Gurney, The Golden Age and What I Did Last Summer, are included, providing a trio of wry and affectionate paeans to love lost, found, and fleetingly glimpsed.
X
Alistair McDowall - 2016
This is where they send the new, the under-qualified, the old. And most of all the British. Mars is full of blonde Americans. It's like they're building the master race out there.Billions of miles from home, the lone research base on Pluto has lost contact with Earth. Unable to leave or send for help, the skeleton crew sit waiting.Waiting.Waiting long enough for time to start eating away at them.To lose all sense of it.To start seeing things in the dark outside.Alistair McDowall's play X premiered at the Royal Court on 30 March 2016 in the Jerwood Theatre Downstairs.