Fires in the Mirror


Anna Deavere Smith - 1993
    Derived from interviews with a wide range of  people who experienced or observed New York's 1991  Crown Heights racial riots, Fires In The  Mirror is as distinguished a work of  commentary on current Black-White tensions as it is a  work of drama.

Tusk Tusk


Polly Stenham - 2009
    Let's take check: Finn Bar, slightly ruffled but still in fighting form. Maggie, could do with a full night's sleep but otherwise all in order... Stay here. Don't answer the door. I'll go out and get some proper food.In a new flat, three children play hide and seek. Eliot wears a crown, little Finn, King of the Wild Thing's, draws on the walls. Maggie climbs them. Hiding from the world, needing to be found, their one shared focus a mobile phone. Will it ring? Who will call? And what are they waiting for?Tusk Tusk is a tale of family loyalty as an uncertain future circles. Polly Stenham's second play premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in March 2009.

The Potting Shed


Graham Greene - 1957
    He can remember nothing about a mysterious moment that occurred in the family's potting shed when he was 14-years-old. Family members who recall the event are unwilling to describe it to him. With the help of a psychoanalyst, James tries to recall just what happened that day that left him rejected by his father, alienated from his family, and alone in the world.

The Diviners


Jim Leonard - 1983
    platforms Winner of the American College Theatre Festival, this marvelously theatrical play is the story of a disturbed young man and his friendship with a disenchanted preacher in southern Indiana in the early 1930s. When the boy was young he almost drowned. This trauma and the loss of his mother in the same accident has left him deathly afraid of water. The preacher, set on breaking away from a long line of Kentucky family preachers, is determined not to do what h

Plays 1: Shopping and Fucking / Faust is Dead / Handbag / Some Explicit Polaroids


Mark Ravenhill - 2001
    "Ravenhill has more to say, and says it more refreshingly and wittily, than any other playwright of his generation"—Time Out "There are few stage authors writing more interestingly than Mark Ravenhill … He is - it is now yet more evident - a searing, intelligent, disturbing sociologist with a talent for satirical dialogue and a flair for sexual sensationalism."—Financial Times Shopping and Fucking: "is a darkly humorous play for today's twenty-somethings … a real coup de theatre"—Nicholas de Jongh, Evening Standard Faust: "…an intelligent and witty reappropriation of the legend … alive, pertinent and disturbing"—Michael Coveney, Observer Handbag: "…combines urban grit with sly wit, and reveals Mark Ravenhill as a writer of real daring" —Daily Telegraph Some Explicit Polaroids: "laudably ambitious, pulsates with energy … very funny"—Financial Times

The Sign In Sidney Brustein's Window


Lorraine Hansberry - 1965
    With A Raisin in the Sun she gave this country its most movingly authentic portrayal of black family life in the inner city. Barely five years later, with The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window, Hansberry gave us an unforgettable portrait of a man struggling wit his individual fate in an age of racial and social injustice. These two plays remain milestones in the American theater, remarkable not only for their historical value but for their continual ability to engage the imagination and heart. With an Introduction by Robert Nemiroff.

A Taste of Honey


Shelagh Delaney - 1956
    Jo's greatest fear is that her illegitimate baby might be mentally deficient like her own father. To soothe, clean and cook for her is Geof, an effeminate art student, with whom she makes a temporary home. Bruised by insensitivity and rejection, the boy and girl find a very real comfort in each other.

Frankenstein, Based on the Novel by Mary Shelley


Nick Dear - 2011
    Meeting with cruelty wherever he goes, and increasingly desperate and vengeful, he determines to track down his creator and strike a terrifying deal.I followed nature into her lair, and stripped her of her secrets! I brought torrents of light to a darkening world! Is that wrong?Urgent concerns of scientific responsibility, parental neglect, cognitive development and the nature of good and evil are embedded within this thrilling and deeply disturbing classic gothic tale.Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, adapted for the stage by Nick Dear, premiered at the National Theatre, London, in February 2011.

Serjeant Musgrave's Dance


John Arden - 1959
    In Arden's introductory note to the text, he describes it as "a realistic, but not a naturalistic" play. The work follows three privates in the British Army and their sergeant, all of whom are deserters from a foreign imperialist war. Serjeant Musgrave and his men, Hurst, Sparky and Attercliffe, come to a northern English coal mining town in 1879. The community is in the grip of a coal strike and cut off by winter snow. The one means of reaching the town is by canal barge. They arrive in the company of the Bargee, a foul-mouthed, disrespectful individual who teases and abuses everyone, especially those in authority. In the local inn the soldiers meet Mrs. Hitchcock, who runs the inn, and the barmaid Annie. The soldiers are greeted by the mayor, parson and constable, who ask them to recruit men in hopes of alleviating some of the town's unemployment as a way to rid the town of their economic dead weight. Musgrave pretends that this is indeed his goal, and asks Mrs. Hitchcock about Billy Hicks, a dead fellow soldier from the mining town. It is revealed that Billy was the father of Annie's illegitimate child, but the baby died, and Annie's sanity has suffered from the loss of both Billy and her child.

Born Yesterday: Comedy in 3 Acts


Garson Kanin - 1951
    A "dumb blonde" chorus girl, mistress of a tycoon-gangster diddling in D.C., gets an education from a reporter for The New Republic, and blossoms into a very fair lady.

The Mountaintop


Katori Hall - 2011
    Winner of  the Olivier Award and set to open on Broadway in September 2011, The Mountaintop is set at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis in 1968, on the night before Martin Luther King is assassinated and on the day he delivered a speech in which he foretold his own fate, “I may not get there with you, but I want you to know that tonight, we as a people will get to the Promised Land.”  Playwright Katori Hall takes this historic date with destiny and weaves a powerful surrealistic fantasy about a conversation between King and a mysterious hotel maid who brings him a cup of coffee and prompts him to confront his life, his past, his legacy and the plight and future of African-Americans. Hall's insight, light touch and lively mood depicts King as a real man with very human foibles who was nonetheless capable of inspiring millions to hope and move toward a momentous societal shift for equality and justice.

Death and the Maiden


Ariel Dorfman - 1991
    Gerardo Escobar has just been chosen to head the commission that will investigate the crimes of the old regime when his car breaks down and he is picked up by the humane doctor Roberto Miranda. But in the voice of this good Samaritan, Gerardo's wife, Paulina Salas, thinks she recognizes another man—the one who raped and tortured her as she lay blindfolded in a military detention center years before.

Gem of the Ocean


August Wilson - 2003
    Theatergoers who have followed August Wilson’s career will find in Gem a touchstone for everything else he has written.”—Ben Brantley, The New York Times“Wilson’s juiciest material. The play holds the stage and its characters hammer home, strongly, the notion of newfound freedom.”—Michael Phillips, Chicago TribuneGem of the Ocean is the play that begins it all. Set in 1904 Pittsburgh, it is chronologically the first work in August Wilson’s decade-by-decade cycle dramatizing the African American experience during the 20th century—an unprecedented series that includes the Pulitzer Prize–winning plays Fences and The Piano Lesson. Aunt Esther, the drama’s 287-year-old fiery matriarch, welcomes into her Hill District home Solly Two Kings, who was born into slavery and scouted for the Union Army, and Citizen Barlow, a young man from Alabama searching for a new life. Gem of the Ocean recently played across the country and on Broadway, with Phylicia Rashad as Aunt Esther.Earlier in 2005, on the completion of the final work of his ten play cycle-surely the most ambitious American dramatic project undertaken in our history-August Wilson disclosed his bout with cancer, an illness of unusual ferocity that would eventually claim his life on October 2. Fittingly the Broadway theatre where his last play will be produced in 2006 has been renamed the August Wilson Theater in his honor. His legacy will animate the theatre and stir the human heart for decades to come.

She Kills Monsters: Young Adventurers Edition


Qui Nguyen - 2012
    When Agnes finds Tilly's Dungeons & Dragons notebook, however, she stumbles into a journey of discovery and action-packed adventure in the imaginary world that was Tilly's refuge. In this high-octane dramatic comedy laden with homicidal fairies, nasty ogres, and 90s pop culture, acclaimed young playwright Qui Nguyen offers a heart-pounding homage to the geek and warrior within us all.

The Brothers Size


Tarell Alvin McCraney - 2007
    And there is Oshoosi, fresh out of prison, who always takes the wrong track. When his ex-cell mate Elegba gives him a clapped-out car, true freedom seems just around the corner... The Brothers Size is the European debut of an amazing young writer who plants Nigerian myth in the fertile soil of Louisiana. The play premiered at Drum, Plymouth, in October 2007, before touring and transferring to the Young Vic, London.