Wicked: The Complete Book and Lyrics of the Broadway Musical


Stephen Schwartz - 2010
    Each Complete Book and Lyrics is approved by the writers and attractively designed with color photo inserts from the Broadway production. All titles include introduction and foreword by renowned Broadway musical experts. Long before Dorothy dropped in, two other girls meet in the Land of Oz. One, born with emerald green skin, is smart, fiery, and misunderstood. The other is beautiful, ambitious, and very popular. The story of how these two unlikely friends end up as the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda the Good Witch makes for the most spellbinding new musical in years.

Bent


Martin Sherman - 1979
    Martin Sherman's worldwide hit play Bent took London by storm in 1979 when it was first performed by the Royal Court Theatre, with Ian McKellen as Max (a character written with the actor in mind). The play itself caused an uproar. "It educated the world," Sherman explains. "People knew about how the Third Reich treated Jews and, to some extent, gypsies and political prisoners. But very little had come out about their treatment of homosexuals." Gays were arrested and interned at work camps prior to the genocide of Jews, gypsies, and handicapped, and continued to be imprisoned even after the fall of the Third Reich and liberation of the camps. The play Bent highlights the reason why - a largely ignored German law, Paragraph 175, making homosexuality a criminal offense, which Hitler reactivated and strengthened during his rise to power.

Beautiful Thing


Jonathan Harvey - 1996
    The gaucheness, the rush of excitement, and the inarticulate tenderness of young love are beautifully captured in writing of great truth and delicacy. Only the most irrational of homophobes could fail to be moved by it."—Daily Telegraph"Deliciously upbeat ... seldom has there been a play which so exquisitely and joyously depicts what it's like to be sixteen, in the first flush of love and full of optimism. Truly a most unusual and beautiful thing."—Guardian"An unfakeably truthful portrait of adolescent self-discovery, showing sensitivity and fun pushing up like wild flowers through the concrete crevices of a Thamesmead estate. This is the most heartening working-class comedy since A Taste of Honey."—Independent on Sunday

Uncle Rudolf: A Novel


Paul Bailey - 2003
    Andre's father, in a desperate effort to save him from the coming holocaust, hands him over to his captivating uncle Rudolf, an internationally famous singer of popular operettas. Rudolf is a sublimely gifted lyric tenor, a dashing leading man who is the object of many women's affections-but also an artist who lives in the shadow of his own unachieved potential as an opera star. Rudolf takes the boy to back to London, renames him Andrew, turns all his attention and sardonic humor upon him, and gradually sculpts him into a gentleman.Vivid, often lighthearted scenes of Andrew's worldly life with Rudolf are intertwined with the unfolding secrets of his forgotten past as Andre, which have shadowed his otherwise happy life. Told in matchless prose, Uncle Rudolf captures in fine detail the mood of 1940s Europe--and reveals the emotions of a man whose achievement falls short of his brilliant promise. It is a wise, knowing, elegant story about the sacrifices we make for those we love.

Three Plays by Mae West: Sex / The Drag / The Pleasure Man


Mae West - 1997
    She was a tough-talking, wise-cracking vaudeville performer who made her way onto the Broadway stage and then into the hearts of the American public with a highly visible Hollywood film career. Rarely, however, do people think of Mae West as a writer even though she wrote eight scripts for the stage and her own dialogue for many of her films. In "Three Plays By Mae West, " Lillian Schlissel brings this underexplored part of West's career to the fore by offering for the first time in book form, three of the plays West wrote in the 1920s--"Sex" (1926), "The Drag" (1927) and "Pleasure Man" (1928). Schlissel's introduction offers insight to the life and early career of this legendary stage and screen actress. In her first starring role on Broadway, West played Margy LaMont in "Sex, " which had 375 continuous performances but was closed by the police after more than a year, when she was tried and convicted of corrupting the morals of youth. Set in a Montreal brothel, the play confronts the issue of women separated by class and attitudes of sexuality. West's character learns the painful lesson that women are not bound in sisterhood simply because they have both shared the betrayal of men. In "The Drag, " which opened in Bridgeport, Connecticut, but not in New York, West argued that, like sexuality in a woman, homosexuality had no class identification. In this play West used the theatricality of the drag "queens" who had become her friends and "sisters." "Pleasure Man" is once again set in the world of theatre, and is both a forerunner to "La Cage aux Folles" and a revenge fantasy in which a man is castrated after seducing and impregnating an innocent girl. "Pleasure Man" had two and a half performances in the city before it was closed by the police. While West won the legal right to have her play performed, its controversial nature marked the end of her box office success.

Oklahoma!


Richard Rodgers - 1943
    6 easy piano arrangements of songs from this Broadway classic, including: Many a New Day * Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin' * Oklahoma * Out of My Dreams * People Will Say We're in Love * The Surrey with the Fringe on Top.

Unmarked Treasure: Poems


Cyril Wong - 2004
    The poet wonders at his own existence and struggles between actual living and the desire to die."Cyril Wong continues to explore the nuances of relationships, in language that is lyrical, beautifully crafted, and erotically charged. There are several fine love poems that reach out to embrace a common humanity. Wong swims into the undercurrents of family tensions, hidden desires, and the meaning of a self... as well as questioning our understanding of both life and death."- Rebecca Edwards, author of Scar Country and Holiday Coast Medusa"Reading Cyril Wong is always to encounter risk, the painful suturing of art and life, trials of faith and baptisms of fire. I have only the deepest respect for someone who has razed the walls between the private and the public, and in doing so, carved more space for all of us."- Alfian Sa'at, author of One Fierce Hour and A History of Amnesia

Next Fall - Acting Edition


Geoffrey Nauffts - 2010
    But when Luke is hospitalized in a tragic accident, Adam must come face-to-face with Luke's faith and his family.

Never the Sinner


John Logan - 1999
    and Richard Loeb -- abducted and killed fourteen-year-old Bobby Franks, horrifying a nation. Never the Sinner is John Logan's brilliant documentary play about the infamous Leopold and Loeb case, known in its time as the "crime of the century" and still one of the most notorious.Leopold and Loeb were richer than most, and smarter. They knew every hot topic of the day, from Freud to Nietzsche; they were also lovers. Considering themselves Nietzsche's "supermen, " they decided to commit the "perfect murder, " just for the thrill of it. But they proved to be considerably less than supermen, and within a matter of hours police questioners cracked their alibis. In the ensuing sensational trial, they were defended by the legendary Clarence Darrow, who got them life sentences rather than the expected execution.

Usual Suspects


Christopher McQuarrie - 1999
    One of a hand-picked selection of some of the most popular and cult-worthy titles on Faber and Faber's extensive list of film scripts.

Jeffrey


Paul Rudnick - 1994
    From the publisher's synopsis: "Jeffrey, a gay actor/waiter, has sworn off sex after too many bouts with his partners about what is "safe" and what is not. In gay New York, though, sex is not something you can avoid. Whether catering a ditzy socialite's "how-down for AIDS" or cruising at a funeral; at the gym or in the back rooms of an anonymous sex club; at the annual Gay Pride Parade, or in the libidinous hands of a father-confessor, Jeffrey finds the pursuit of love and just plain old physical gratification to be the number one preoccupation of his times - and the source of plenty of hilarity."

Where the Blood Mixes


Kevin Loring - 2009
    Though torn down years ago, the memories of their Residential School still live deep inside the hearts of those who spent their childhoods there. For some, like Floyd, the legacy of that trauma has been passed down through families for generations. But what is the greater story, what lies untold beneath Floyd’s alcoholism, under the pain and isolation of the play’s main character?Loring’s title was inspired by the mistranslation of the N’lakap’mux (Thompson) place name Kumsheen. For years, it was believed to mean “the place where the rivers meet”—the confluence of the muddy Fraser and the brilliant blue Thompson Rivers. A more accurate translation is: “the place inside the heart where the blood mixes.” But Kumsheen also refers to a story: Coyote was disemboweled there, along a great cliff in an epic battle with a giant shape-shifting being that could transform the world with its powers—to this day his intestines can still be seen strewn along the granite walls. In his rage the transformer tore Coyote apart and scattered his body across the nation, his heart landing in the place where the rivers meet.Floyd is a man who has lost everyone he holds most dear. Now after more than two decades, his daughter Christine returns home to confront her father. Set during the salmon run, Where the Blood Mixes takes us to the bottom of the river, to the heart of a People.In 2009 Where the Blood Mixes won the Jessie Richardson Award for Outstanding Original Script; the Sydney J. Risk Prize for Outstanding Original Script by an Emerging Playwright; and most recently the Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama.

Tea and Sympathy


Robert Woodruff Anderson - 1952
    From the author of I Never Sang for My Father, this groundbreaking drama explores a sensitive young man's coming of age amid the taunts and suspicions of his classmates and teachers at a private boy's academy. Only a sympathetic act of compassion by the wife of the headmaster gives young Tom the courage to grow into a man. A hit onstage and film with Deborah Kerr.

Take Me Out


Richard Greenberg - 2002
    An extraordinary athlete, he fills both his fans and his teammates with awe at his abilities and his presence on the field and off. When he makes the matter-of-fact announcement that he's gay, he throws his team into turmoil and confusion, while he also emboldens his closeted accountant, Mason Marzac, to come to terms with his own sexuality and to fully experience the pure joy of watching great athletes play a sport as well as it can be played. But Darren's announcement brings to the fore the confused and twisted hostilities of the Empires' brilliantly talented but deeply racist and homophobic pitcher, Shane Mungitt from whose rage tragic consequences ensue.The American premiere of Take Me Out took place at the Public Theater in New York City in September 2002. It will move to the Walter Kerr Theatre on Broadway in February 2003.

Another Part of the Forest


Lillian Hellman - 1948
    Marcus Hubbard, rich, despotic and despised, made a fortune during the Civil War by running the blockade and worse. In his family life he is equally injurious: one son he bulldozes while the other he holds in contempt for his frailty. By Marcus's side stands his mentally deranged wife and, finally, Regina, the adored daughter amoral, conniving, and beautiful as an evil flower. Marcus, it would seem, has been on the top of the heap long enough and someone must depose him. Turning the tables on a tyrant has always made for high drama, and when Hellman puts her brilliant talents to work on such a theme the result is a play of great theatrical intensity.