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The Manifestos and Essays by Richard Foreman


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Farewell


Horton Foote - 1999
    His adaptation of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird and his original screenplay Tender Mercies earned him Academy Awards. He received an Indie Award for Best Writer for The Trip to Bountiful and a Pulitzer Prize for The Young Man from Atlanta. In his plays and films, Foote has returned over and over again to Wharton, Texas, where he was born and where he lives, once again, in the house in which he grew up. Now for the first time, in Farewell, Foote turns to prose to tell his own story and the stories of the real people who have inspired his characters. His memoir is both a celebration of the immense importance of community and evidence that even a strong community cannot save a lost soul. Farewell is as deeply moving as the best of Foote's writing for film and theater, and a gorgeous testimony to his own faith in the human spirit.

Chekhov's Three Sisters & Woolf's Orlando


Sarah Ruhl - 2011
    . . . Ruhl writes with the imaginative sweep that allows Woolf's poetry to soar."—Variety"Sarah Ruhl's smart new translation [of Three Sisters] feels just right to contemporary American ears—lean, colloquial, and conversational for us and true to Chekhov's original work."—The Cincinnati EnquirerIn her stage adaptation of Virginia Woolf's gender-bending, period-hopping novel, award-winning playwright Sarah Ruhl "is her usual unfailingly elegant, unbeatably witty self, cleverly braiding her own brand-name wit with Woolf's" (New York )magazine. Preserving Woolf's vital ideas and lyrical tone, Ruhl brings to the stage the life of an Elizabethan nobleman who's magically transformed into an immortal woman. In her fresh translation of Three Sisters, the Anton Chekhov classic of ennui and frustration, Ruhl employs her signature lyricism and elegant understanding of intimacy to reveal the discontent felt by fretful Olga, unhappy Masha, and idealistic Irina as they long to leave rural Russia for the ever-alluring Moscow.Sarah Ruhl's other plays include the Pulitzer Prize finalists In the Next Room (or the vibrator play) and The Clean House, as well as Passion Play, Dean Man's Cell Phone, Demeter in the City, Eurydice, Melancholy Play, and Late: a cowboy song. She is the recipient of a Whiting Writers' Award, a PEN/Laura Pels Award, and a MacArthur Fellowship. Her plays have premiered on Broadway, Off-Broadway, and in many theaters around the world.

Animals Out of Paper


Rajiv Joseph - 2009
    DramaFull Length2 men, 1 woman: 3 totalInteriorsTHE STORY: When a world-renowned origami artist opens her studio to a teenage prodigy and his school teacher, she discovers that life and love can t be arranged neatly in this drama about finding the perfect fold.

La Cage Aux Folles


Jerry Herman - 1983
    Complete vocal score to the Broadway sensation with 11 songs: The Best of Times * I Am What I Am * A Little More Mascara * Look over There * Song on the Sand (La Da Da Da) * With You on My Arm * and more.

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

Speaking in Tongues


Andrew Bovell - 1998
    Nine parallel lives, interlocked by four infidelities, one missing person and a mysterious stiletto, are woven through a fragmented series of confessionals and interrogations that gradually reveal a darker side of human nature.

Golden Child


David Henry Hwang - 1998
    A “skillfully-told story that engages the emotions as well as the brain,” Golden Child explores the impact of these decisions on each of his great-grandfather’s three wives, and succeeding generations (Entertainment Focus).David Henry Hwang is the author of the Tony Award-winning M. Butterfly, Yellow Face (OBIE Award, 2008 Pulitzer Prize finalist), Golden Child (1997 OBIE Award), FOB (1981 OBIE Award), Family Devotions (Drama Desk nomination), and the books for musicals Aida ( co-author), Flower Drum Song (2002 Broadway revival), and Tarzan, among other works. David Henry Hwang graduated from Stanford University, attended the Yale School of Drama, and holds honorary degrees from Columbia College in Chicago and The American Conservatory Theatre. He lives in New York City with his wife, actress Kathryn Layng, and their children, Noah David and Eva Veanne.

Blues for an Alabama Sky - Acting Edition


Pearl Cleage - 1999
    Theatre script, playbook

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 Long Christmas Dinner and Other Plays in One Act


Thornton Wilder - 1931
    In The Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden, four kitchen chairs represent an automobile and a family travels seventy miles in twenty minutes. And in Pullman Car Hiawatha, we board an imaginary railroad car and hear the thoughts of passengers, the populace speeding by -- even the planets above.Here are five one-act plays encompassing the full range of Thornton Wilder's theatrical vision: from the experimental to the humorous to the fantastic. As The New York Times has written, "Wilder's plays are now more than ever in rhythm with our changing habit of theatergoing....He relates the moment to eternity, seeks the infinite in the immediate, finds the universal in each grain of wheat."

The Violet Hour


Richard Greenberg - 2004
    He has two manuscripts but lacks the funds to publish both. His difficult decision--whether to publish his lover's memoir or the novel written by his best friend--is further complicated by the arrival of a mysterious machine that produces pages predicting the future of the play's protagonists, affecting their lives and relationships in haunting and unexpected ways. "The Violet Hour" opened on Broadway on November 6, 2003, starring Robert Sean Leonard.

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.

Little Murders


Jules Feiffer - 1968
    As their wedding day grows near, Alfred finds himself embroiled in an urban nightmare not the least of which is his fiance's family, the possiblity of marriage without Faith, muggings, and a sniper's bullet.

How to Enjoy Poetry (Little Ways to Live a Big Life)


Frank Skinner - 2020
    I referred them to Doctor Who's Tardis.'Frank Skinner wants you to read more poetry. Wait, wait - don't stop reading. Whether you're a frequent poetry reader or haven't read any since sixth form, Frank's infectious passion for language, rhythm and metre will win you over and provide you with the basic tools you need to tackle any poem.In this short, easy-to-digest and delightful book, Frank guides us through the twists and turns of 'Pad, pad' by Stevie Smith, a short, seemingly simple poem that contains multitudes of meaning and a deceptive depth of emotion. Revel in the mastery of Stevie Smith's choice of words, consider the eternal mystery of the speaker of the poem and be moved by rhyming couplets like you never have before.Give it a go. You never know, you might even enjoy it.

Dying City


Christopher Shinn - 2006
    . . Dying City is a political play and also a psychodrama about what Arthur Miller called the politics of the soul. It’s about public conscience and private grief, and real and symbolic catastrophes.”?The New York Observer “Anyone who doubts that Mr. Shinn is among the most provocative and probing of American playwrights today need only experience the . . . sophisticated welding of form and content that is Dying City.”?The New York Times In Christopher Shinn’s new play Dying City, a young therapist, Kelly, whose husband Craig was killed while on military duty in Iraq, is confronted a year later by his identical twin Peter, who suspects that Craig’s death was not accidental. Set in a spare downtown-Manhattan apartment after dark, scenes shift from the confrontation between Peter and Kelly, to Kelly’s complicated farewell with her husband Craig. Shinn’s creepy, sophisticated drama?infused with references to 9/11 and the war in Iraq?explores how contemporary politics and recent history have transformed the lives of these three characters. Christopher Shinn was born in Hartford, Connecticut, and lives in New York. His plays include Where Do We Live, Other People, What Didn’t Happen, and On the Mountain, which have been widely produced in New York, across the United States, and in London. He is the recipient of an OBIE Award in Playwriting, as well as the Robert S. Chesney Award. He teaches playwriting at The New School for Drama.