By the Bog of Cats - Acting Edition


Marina Carr - 1998
    Set on the bleak, ghostly landscape of the Bog of Cats, this provocative drama discloses one woman's courageous attempts to lay claim to that which is hers, as her world is torn in two. At the age of seven, Hester was abandoned on the side of the bog by her wild and fiercely independent mother, Big Josie Swane. Hester has spent a lifetime waiting for Big Josie to return. To compound her sense of abandonment, Hester's long-term lover, Carthage Kilbride, with whom she has a seven-year-old daughter, is selling her "down the river" for the promise of land and wealth through a marriage with the local big farmer's daughter. Alone and dejected, Hester has no one to whom she can turn except the local misfits, Monica Murray and the Catwoman. As ever in Carr's dramas, the small community is populated by richly woven characters from the outrageous, stultifying mother of the groom, Mrs. Kilbride, to the brutal and mercenary farmer, Xavier Cassidy. In the final moments of the action, we witness a woman provoked beyond the limits of human endurance. BY THE BOG OF CATS is a furious, uncompromising tale of greed and betrayal, of murder and profound self-sacrifice.

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.

Blackbird


David Harrower - 2005
    The production received the 2007 Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play. In 2007, the play opened simultaneously at the Manhattan Theater Club in New York and and at American Conservatory Theatre, San Francisco.

After the Revolution


Amy Herzog - 2011
    But when history reveals a shocking truth about the man himself, the entire family is forced to confront questions of honesty and allegiance they thought had been resolved. AFTER THE REVOLUTION is a bold and moving portrait of an American family, thrown into an intergenerational tailspin, forced to reconcile a thorny and delicate legacy.

The Explorers Club


Nell Benjamin - 2014
    But the intrepid Phyllida Spotte-Hume turns out to be the least of their troubles, in this hilarious farce starring members of the original Broadway cast. An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring Jack Cutmore-Scott, Carson Elrod, David Furr, John Getz, Martin Jarvis, David Krumholtz, Lorenzo Pisoni, Jennifer Westfeldt, Matthew WolfDirected by Kate Benjamin. Recorded by L.A. Theatre Works before a live audience.Explorers Club is part of L.A. Theatre Works' Relativity Series featuring science-themed play. Major funding for the Relativity Series is provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to enhance public understanding of science and technology in the modern world.

Absurd Person Singular


Alan Ayckbourn - 1974
    The "lower class" but very much up and coming Hopcrofts are in their bright new, gadget filled kitchen anxiously giving a little party for their bank manager and his wife and an architect neighbor. Next there are the architect and his wife in their neglected, untidy flat. Then the bank manager and his wife are in their large, slightly modernized, old Victorian style kitchen. Running like a dark thread through the wild comedy of behind the scenes disasters at Christmas parties is the story of the advance of the Hopcrofts to material prosperity and independence and the decline of the others. In the final stages the little man is well and truly on top, with the others, literally and unnervingly, dancing to his tune.

The Lemon Table


Julian Barnes - 2004
    The characters in The Lemon Table are facing the ends of their lives–some with bitter regret, others with resignation, and others still with defiant rage. Their circumstances are just as varied as their responses. In 19th-century Sweden, three brief conversations provide the basis for a lifetime of longing. In today’s England, a retired army major heads into the city for his regimental dinner–and his annual appointment with a professional lady named Babs. Somewhere nearby, a devoted wife calms (or perhaps torments) her ailing husband by reading him recipes. In stories brimming with life and our desire to hang on to it one way or another, Barnes proves himself by turns wise, funny, clever, and profound–a writer of astonishing powers of empathy and invention.

Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo


Rajiv Joseph - 2012
    Rajiv Joseph's groundbreaking new American play explores both the power and the perils of human nature.

Tape


Stephen Belber - 2002
    Jon's new film is being shown at a festival in Lansing, Michigan, and Vince has come from Oakland to see it. Over the course of the evening, Vince finally gets Jon to admit that ten years ago he date-raped Amy Randall, a girl whom they both dated in high school only then to reveal that he's taped their entire conversation. And not only that, he's invited Amy to have dinner with them that night. Beneath its suspenseful, high-stakes surface, TAPE examines questions of motive, memory, truth and perception.

Sarum: The Novel of England


Edward Rutherfurd - 1987
    This rich tapestry weaves a compelling saga of five families—the Wilsons, the Masons, the family of Porteus, the Shockleys, and the Godfreys—who reflect the changing character of Britain. As their fates and fortunes intertwine over the course of the centuries, their greater destinies offer a fascinating glimpse into the future. An absorbing historical chronicle, Sarum is a keen tale of struggle and adventure, a profound human drama, and a magnificent work of sheer storytelling.

The History of the Devil


Clive Barker - 1999
    He bemoans the loss of his angel-wings, his freedom of flight, his elegance, and grace. And he misses God. So he calls a trial, his appeal, to seek re-admittance into Heaven. As the trial moves through space and time, we revisit scenes of humanity's great failures - or are they the work of the Devil, his own wicked crimes? If Satan wins his day in court, he'll be with his Father in Heaven. And if he loses? He'll spend eternity here with us - on Earth.

When the Rain Stops Falling


Andrew Bovell - 2009
    From the writer of the award-winning film Lantana.It interweaves a series of connected stories as seven people confront the mysteries of their past in order to understand their future, revealing how patterns of betrayal, love and abandonment are passed on. Until finally, as the desert is inundated with rain, one young man finds the courage to defy the legacy.

Men on Boats


Jaclyn Backhaus - 2017
    Four boats. One Grand Canyon. MEN ON BOATS is the true(ish) history of an 1869 expedition, when a one-armed captain and a crew of insane yet loyal volunteers set out to chart the course of the Colorado River.

Frozen


Bryony Lavery - 2002
    Her mother, Nancy, retreats into a state of frozen hope. Agnetha, an academic, comes to England to research a thesis entitled Serial Killings: A Forgivable Act? Then there's Ralph, a loner with a bit of a record who's looking for some distraction . . . Drawn together by horrific circumstances, these three embark upon a long, dark journey that finally curves upward into the light.

Howards End


E.M. Forster - 1910
    M. Forster about social conventions, codes of conduct and relationships in turn-of-the-century England. A strong-willed and intelligent woman refuses to allow the pretensions of her husband's smug English family to ruin her life. Howards End is considered by some to be Forster's masterpiece.