Telling jokes for money offers an escape from the building site or the milk round. But the humour is a deadly serious business that also involves anger, pain and truth.' Financial Times'Trevor Griffiths has not shown his brilliance as a writer more clearly than in Comedians.' Daily Telegraph

    This is convincing proof that Manual Puig was one of our most talented writers - no matter what the medium. Puig is the author of seven novels, translated into fourteen languages.

    All of them are in one way or another frustrated and unhappy. Most of them are under the illusion that some day the things from which they suffer will be removed and they will be once more at peace. But when they come to see themselves, they realize that man is the sum of his past life, that they are incapable of any real revolt against their past, and that what they have made of themselves in earlier years is what they are when age approaches. Nor are they tragic figures. All of them are troubled average people, human, commonplace but they are studied with great understanding and a touch of intelligently unsentimental compassion."

    

    This new volume collects the author’s plays written in the past five years, including References to Salvador Dalí Make Me Hot ("effortlessly melds otherworldly fantasy with gritty realism to make sparks fly onstage."—The Journal News), Sueño (a reworking for Pedro Calderón’s Life is a Dream) and Sonnets for an Old Century, the author’s most recent work, which recently premiered in Los Angeles.Puerto Rican-born playwright José Rivera plays have been produced all over the world and his work has been translated into seven languages. His best known work includes Marisol and Each Day Dies with Sleep. "Rivera has a messianic mission to replace old and dying creeds with vibrant new visions."—Robert Brustein, New RepublicAlso available by José RiveraMarisol and Other Plays PB $15.95 1-55936-136-0 • USA

    The laughs come at a manic pace, inthis delightfully venomous play that has taken off-Broadway by storm.

    Gradually distancing herself from her friends, she watches them move from the idealism and political radicalism of their college years through militant feminism and, eventually, back to the materialism that they had sought to reject in the first place. Heidi's own path to maturity involves an affair with the glib, arrogant Scoop Rosenbaum, a womanizing lawyer/publisher who eventually marries for money and position; a deeper but even more troubling relationship with a charming, witty young pediatrician, Peter Patrone, who turns out to be gay; and increasingly disturbing contacts with the other women, now much changed, who were a part of her childhood and college years. Eventually Heidi comes to accept the fact that liberation can be achieved only if one is true to oneself, with goals that come out of need rather than circumstance. As the play ends she is still "alone," but having adopted an orphaned baby, it is clear that she has begun to find a sense of fulfillment and continuity that may well continue to elude the others of her anxious, self-centered generation.

    "Peter Brook is one of the artistic geniuses of our time."--The San Francisco Chronicle¶The first paperback edition of this major collection of essays--the culmination of forty years' work by one of the most thoughtful directors in contemporary theatre.

    The lawyer is married to a beautiful, well-to-do girl in the midwest whose family sets the pace in local society and intends to run his marriage and his career as well. He has rebelled, come to New York, and taken up residence with this intriguing young woman. He is lonely and in need of consolation; she is one of those rare women whose only purpose seems to be making others happy. Their briefly fulfilling relationship is unhappily destined to failure: he is a cultured gentile with a wife and painful memories while she is a plain Jewish girl with little education and a horrible Bronx accent. They share happy and humorous moments together, but they both see with sadness the utter hopelessness of the affair."It's a whale of a hit, a bittersweet joy ride." - The New York Mirror ."An absorbing, affectionate, and funny delight." - The New York Daily News

    It’s like getting knocked in the head with a baseball bat—except far more pleasant. Though she’s supposed to be all business while her company tries to win a lucrative development contract in the oil-rich country of Qadir, Holly simply can’t stop herself from happily succumbing to his charm. When she’s called back home after her father suffers a stroke, thoughts of her sheikh romance are never far away. It’s only when she’s ready to return to Qadir to continue her work that she discovers Malik gave her more than sexy memories. She’s pregnant—with twins. And when she sees him again, Malik makes it painfully clear he’s not only rejecting her development proposal, he’s not interested in any other formal proposal either. He wants all of her. But Holly isn’t sure that’s available, or ever will be. Sheikh Malik has never reacted to another woman like he does Holly. She’s all business—at least in the beginning—and he finds himself oddly compelled to get to know her other side. Intimately. When he finds out she’s pregnant with his children, he finds himself wanting her more. But when Holly begins to talk about how she wants to develop his oasis herself—the one that her company had been desperate to buy and the very one his mother loved and hoped one day would belong to Malik’s future wife, he pulls the breaks on their whirlwind romance. How can he love a woman who seems so out of touch with everything he values? And yet, how can he not love the only woman whose ever touched his soul? USA Today Bestseller Leslie North invites you to indulge in a sexy sheikh romance with a smoldering billionaire, alpha male Sheikh falling for his head-strong American woman in this interracial romance... This novel contains sexual content.

    A short critical essay which considers the significance of the title.

    The superstitious townspeople resent their happiness and their subsequent meddling ends in violence and tragedy. This play was proclaimed a Broadway hit.

    Theatre script, playbook

    "Une femme seule dans une chambre en désordre téléphone à son amant qui vient de la quitter pour une autre.

    When a young actor from the big city lives with two aging bachelor farmers to gather stories about rural life, the farmers' lives are irrevocably altered when art attempts to imitate life and the line between truth and fiction is crossed.