In this first collection of writings by Tony Kushner, including his latest play Slavs!, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright grapples with the timeless issues of bigotry, war, faith, love, as well as tackling the contemporary topics as AIDS, gay rights and the moral horrors of the Gulf War.

    Scenery: A bare stageThe six teenage characters communicate only via the internet. Conversations range in subject from Britney Spears to Willy Wonka to - suicide: Jim is depressed and talks of ending his life and Eva and William decide to do their utmost to persuade him to carry out his threat. From this chilling premise is forged a funny, compelling and uplifting play that tackles the issues of teenage life head-on and with great understanding.

    In the earlier play Ostrovsky had adopted a satiric tone that proved him a worthy disciple of Gogol, the great founder of Russian realism. Not one lovable character appears in that gloomy picture of merchant life in Moscow; even the old mother repels us by her stupidity more than she attracts us by her kindliness. No ray of light penetrates the "realm of darkness" -- to borrow a famous phrase from a Russian critic -- conjured up before us by the young dramatist. In Poverty Is No Crime we see the other side of the medal. Ostrovsky had now been affected by the Slavophile school of writers and thinkers, who found in the traditions of Russian society treasures of kindliness and love that they contrasted with the superficial glitter of Western civilization. Life in Russia is varied as elsewhere, and Ostrovsky could change his tone without doing violence to realistic truth. The tradesmen had not wholly lost the patriarchal charm of their peasant fathers. A poor apprentice is the hero of Poverty Is No Crime, and a wealthy manufacturer the villain of the piece. Good-heartedness is the touchstone by which Ostrovsky tries character, and this may be hidden beneath even a drunken and degraded exterior. The scapegrace, Lyubim Tortsov, has a sound Russian soul, and at the end of the play rouses his hard, grasping brother, who has been infatuated by a passion for aping foreign fashions, to his native Russian worth. Alexander Ostrovsky (1823-1886) was an early Russian Realist whose work led to the founding of the Moscow Arts Theatre and to the career of Stanislavsky. He has been acknowledged to be the greatest of the Russian dramatists.

    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.

    Now, Hansberry tells her own life story in an autobiography that rings with the voice of its creator.

    They sailed far out to sea. The blue one returned to the harbor. The red one sailed home too. But the yellow boat sailed up to the sun." Benjamin always concluded his bedtime ritual by saying, "Mom, you can be the red boat or the blue boat, but I am the yellow boat." This remarkable voyage of Benjamin was extensively developed and widely produced in America for several years, always to ovations. Cast of 4 men and 3 women.THE YELLOW BOAT is based on the true story of David and Sonja Saar's son, Benjamin, who was born with congenital hemophilia, and died in 1987 at the age of 8 of AIDS related complications. A uniquely gifted visual artist, Benjamin's buoyant imagination transformed his physical and emotional pain into a blaze of colors and shapes in his fanciful drawings and paintings. The story of THE YELLOW BOAT Is a glorious affirmation of a child's life, and the strength and courage of all children. Recommended for children of age 8 and older, parents, families and adults.

    Hairspray (978-1-5578-3514-7); Rent (978-1-5578-3737-0); Fiddler on the Roof (978-0-8791-0136-7)

    It argues for more audience-responsive approaches to what theatre does for those who witness, watch or participate.

     Anthony had a special feeling about Jonathan Larson's rock musical from his first audition, so he was thrilled when he landed a starring role as the filmmaker Mark Cohen. With his mom's cancer in remission and a reason to quit his newly acquired job at Starbucks, his life was looking up. When Rent opened to thunderous acclaim off Broadway, Rapp and his fellow cast members knew that something truly extraordinary had taken shape. But even as friends and family were celebrating the show's success, they were also mourning Jonathan Larson's sudden death from an aortic aneurysm. By the time Rent made its triumphant jump to Broadway, Larson had posthumously won the 1996 Pulitzer Prize. When Anthony's mom began to lose her battle with cancer, he struggled to balance the demands of life in the theatre with his responsibility to his family. Here, Anthony recounts the show's magnificent success and his overwhelming loss. He also shares his first experiences discovering his sexuality, the tension it created with his mother, and his struggle into adulthood to gain her acceptance. Variously marked by fledgling love and devastating loss, piercing frustration and powerful enlightenment, Without You charts the course of Rapp's exhilarating journey with the cast and crew of Rent as well as the intimacies of his personal life behind the curtain.

    Book annotation not available for this title.

    The profession requires cops to see people at their worst. They see death, tragedy, crime, and despair on a daily basis. The very nature of the tasks cops perform and the things cops see skews their sense of humor. Sometimes, a sense of humor is the only defense mechanism in a police officer's tool box. Stripped of the ability to laugh, or forced to be politically correct in a politically incorrect work environment can be hazardous to one's health. Coping becomes an essential component of a police officer's arsenal. One of the primary coping mechanisms utilized by cops is humor. A cop can find something funny about almost anything, regardless of how tragic the circumstances. Dark humor involves making light of a serious, disturbing or taboo subject matter. It is sometimes viewed as morbid, cruel, offensive, and graphic in nature and is yet, still found funny. This is the story of the author's twenty-year police career with the New York City Transit Police and NYPD as he worked with some of New York City's darkest knights - those cops who did and said the funniest things under the most difficult circumstances.

    This 1960's French farce adapted for the English-speaking stage features self-styled Parisian lothario Bernard, who has Italian, German, and American fiancees, each beautiful airline hostesses with frequent "layovers." He keeps "one up, one down and one pending" until unexpected schedule changes bring all three to Paris and Bernard's apartment at the same time.

    . . . 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.

    Her oldest daughter, Kess, is a university professor in Minneapolis, but she has come home at the request of her sister, Jo who is concerned for Evelyn's mental health. Kess, a professed lesbian, wants to cut her family ties once and for all; Jo, an incurable romantic and longtime virgin, has now become pregnant; while Sherry, salty-tongued and amoral, wants only to finish high school so she can leave home for good. In the end, there is no accommodation possible but, instead, only a kind of arbitrary independence for each of the protagonists, as they come to realize that each must find her own heaven or hell in her own way.

    Beginning with Quintilian and Delsarre he guides us to the present with an inside look at what is currently being taught in the major acting schools and private acting studios; The Actor's Studio, Yale University, NYU, Juillard and many more are visited. Great Acting Teachers and Their Methods will help you understand the most important ideas about acting, where they originated and how they are used in training programs today. Some of the teachers focused on are Stella Adler, Stanford Meisner, Lee Strasberg, Brecht, Stanislavsky, and Suzuki.