In this sly critique of contemporary relationships, Reza skillfully picks apart the friendship of three men via a bowl of olives and a white-on-white painting. Now translated into more than 30 languages, Art continues to be performed worldwide, even as Reza's other plays have garnered similar acclaim. Life x 3, Reza's most recent offering, again highlights her satirical wit as two couples face off in three different versions of the dinner from hell. Praised as "compact, cool and clever" by Christopher Isherwood of Variety, Reza uses the acidic exchanges of her characters to illuminate their inner desire for love and acceptance. Also included in this edition are two earlier plays, The Unexpected Man and Conversations After a Burial. Each elucidates the startling difference between public and private life, be it in the confines of a train compartment or a country estate in the aftermath of a loved one's passing.

    She is a successful writer, he is a revered columnist. They have a perfect understanding of each other. Until a pushy young female journalist—on assignment to profile Gus—quite deliberately seeks to undermine that understanding. The fallout is dreadful—but beautifully and convincingly portrayed in all its painful consequences.

    But when a domestic disturbance call takes a turn for the worse, their friendship is put on the line. The result is a difficult journey into a moral gray area where trust and loyalty struggle for survival against a sobering backdrop of pimps, prostitutes, and criminal lowlifes.A dark duologue filled with sharp storytelling and biting repartee, A Steady Rain explores the complexities of a lifelong bond tainted by domestic affairs, violence, and the rough streets of Chicago.

     Danger is no stranger to the heartaches of the world. After losing her adoptive mother, she almost crumbles under a domino effect of misfortune. When she meets Sleep, she thinks she’s finally found a captain to save her, but when she learns his main goal is to pimp her out, Danger wastes no time getting from under his thumb. On the run to get as far away from Sleep as possible, she lands in Dallas, where she reunites with her bestie. Free is the true definition of dangerous curves. A BBW with enough personality to steal any show, she’s quick to flash a smile that hides her own set of demons. It’s hard to be comfortable in your skin, especially when family is the main one trying to tear you down, but Free is determined to stunt on everybody that has a problem with her weight— family included. Add the kind of street smarts that make a natural born hustler, and Free is every hitta’s dream come true. Whether they can handle her is the real question. Stranger is a self-made boss in his own right, a dude whose name rings bells in the streets and commands respect even while he’s locked up. Growing up with a schizophrenic for a mother made him unbreakable, but not above the law when he gets caught slipping. Done serving his time, he only has two things on his mind: hitting the streets and getting to the money by any means necessary. After stumbling across a connect and an offer he can’t refuse, Stranger agrees to collect a blood debt in exchange for the keys to the streets. Will his decision cost him more than he’s willing to give up? Where Stranger is a silent killer, Spazz, his younger brother, leaves a path of destruction with anything he touches. Wild, rude, and reckless, he’s ready to get it poppin’ if you even look at him wrong, and there’s only one thing that can tame his temper: his five-year-old daughter. With a mouth to feed and a street legacy to claim, he’s down with no hesitation when Stranger brings him into his plan to re-claim the streets. With his brother by his side, Spazz is ready to put his city on the map. Stranger never let his heart take his focus off the money, until he meets Danger. Mesmerized by her effortless beauty, he just has to have her, but there’s one problem: she’s on the arm of the same guy he’s planning to take down. Is he willing to kill for love? Spazz always gets what he wants, and he knows Free will be his from the minute he meets her. Never being attracted to BBWs in the past, he’s powerless against Free’s hypnotizing thickness, and her confidence and slick mouth are just the type of bonus that makes her worth the chase. Will he convince Free to take a chance on a real one? Ain’t nothin’ like lovin’ a savage, and once you get inside the head of one, your life will never be the same. Take a journey with Danger, Free, Stranger, and Spazz as they try to cheat the past for the future. Nothing goes as planned in love, especially once you’re Turned out by a Savage.

    

    The guide presents the major debates that surround these works as they develop, from Martin Esslin's early appropriation of the plays as examples of the Theatre of the Absurd, to recent poststructuralist and postcolonial readings by critics such as Steven Connor, Mary Bryden and Declan Kiberd. Throughout, Boxall clarifies and contextualizes critical responses to the plays, and considers the difficult relationship between Beckett and his critics.

    After their mother's death, two estranged half-sisters discover a book of rare stamps that may include the crown jewel for collectors. One sister tries to collect on the windfall, while the other resists for sentimental reasons. In this gripping tale, a seemingly simple sale becomes dangerous when three seedy, high-stakes collectors enter the sisters' world, willing to do anything to claim the rare find as their own.

    The Globe and Mail describes THE MEMORY OF WATER as "both gloriously funny and deeply felt Indeed, THE MEMORY OF WATER is so funny that it appears at first to be pure black comedy, with the newly bereaved sisters indulging wildly in witty bickering and dope-induced dress-ups Their quarrels over the fu-neral arrangements, their well-worn family roles, their unsatisfactory men and their mixed memories of a highly feminine working-class mother are hilarious In THE MEMORY OF WATER, [Shelagh Stephenson] skillfully charts the joyous and painful territory of family relationships with insight and compassion."

    As the action unfolds, the residents, ranging from young to old, from the defiant to the resigned, meet and talk and interact with each other during the course of one day. The drama is of passing events in their lives, of everyday encounters and of the human comedy, with conversations often overlapping into a contrapuntal musical flow. In the resulting mosaic each character emerges clearly and perceptively defined, and the sum total of what they are-or wish they were-becomes a poignant, powerful call to America to recover lost values and to restore itself in its own and the world's eyes.

    Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the Tony Award and the Critics' Circle Award, this is one of the most successful plays of the modern theater.

    The play is set in a beach bungalow. The young man who lives there has pulled a lost young woman from the ocean. Soon, she finds herself trapped in his life and torn between her need to come to rest somewhere and her certainty that all human relationships turn eventually into nightmares. The struggle between his tolerant and gently ironic approach to life and her strategy of suspicion and attack becomes a kind of war about love and creation which neither can afford to lose. This is an offbeat, wonderful love story. Note: The play contains a wealth of excellent monologue and scene material.

    As the teachers struggle daily to nurture and groom, the students prefer to hang out and “chillax”. With upskirting and Facebooking, griping and politicking, school takes on a whole new meaning as the colourful characters struggle to prove that those who can, teach.Written by Singapore’s most prolific playwright Haresh Sharma, Those Who Can’t, Teach was first staged by The Necessary Stage in 1990 to critical acclaim. Twenty years later, Sharma revisits this classic to revitalise it for the Singapore Arts Festival 2010, transforming it into a powerful portrayal of the pressures and challenges facing teachers (and students) in schools in the 21st century.“The play throws up questions on the roles of parents, students and teachers, but does not collapse into an impotent tirade against society. The script is joyous. The laughter is warmly wry, not caustic.” —The Straits Times“Those Who Can’t, Teach does much to do away with the stereotypes and fallacies of the teaching profession.” —The Business Times

    Inspired by a series of master classes the great diva conducted at Juilliard toward the end of her career, this drama puts Maria Callas at center stage again as she coaxes, prods, and inspires students—"victims" as she calls them—into giving the performances of their lives while revealing her own. As she slips off into memories, we experience her days at La Scala, her marriage to Meneghini, and her great doomed love for Aristotle Onassis. But the dazzling theatricality comes from Callas's emotional explosions, her cutting wit, and the soaring music as each student sings an aria that exposes the Divina's vulnerabilities ... and her genius.

    Hailed as "America's Alchemist," his proclamation that "debt is an asset" has propelled him to a dizzying level of success. By orchestrating the takeover of a massive steel manufacturer, Merkin intends to do the "deal of the decade," the one that will rewrite all the rules. Working on his broadest canvas to date, Pulitzer Prize winner Ayad Akhtar chronicles the lives of men and women engaged in financial civil war: insatiable investors, threatened workers, killer lawyers, skeptical journalists, and ambitious federal prosecutors. Although it's set 40 years in the past, this is a play about the world we live in right now; a world in which money became the only thing of real value.

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