Book picks similar to
La Bête by David Hirson
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The Great God Pan
Amy Herzog - 2013
Ms. Herzog writes with keen sensitivity to the complex weave of feelings embedded in all human relationships, with particular attention to the way we tiptoe around areas of radioactive emotion." - New York Times"Whatever the ideal contemporary American drama is, it has to look a lot like The Great God Pan. It is provocative and subtle, slowly, carefully revelatory, sweetly moving, thought-provoking, funny and insightful." - New York Observer"An intelligent, delicately articulate writer." - Village Voice"A moving and unsettling look at the nature of identity and the vagaries of memory. With subtlety and compassion, Herzog contemplates how well we can really know ourselves." - BackstageJamie's life in Brooklyn seems just fine: a beautiful girlfriend, a burgeoning journalism career, and parents who live just far enough away. But when a possible childhood trauma comes to light, lives are thrown into a tailspin. Unsettling and deeply compassionate, The Great God Pan tells the intimate tale of what is lost and won when a hidden truth is suddenly revealed.Amy Herzog's plays include 4000 Miles (Pulitzer Prize finalist), After the Revolution and Belleville. Ms. Herzog is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Whiting Writers' Award, an Obie Award and the Helen Merrill Award for Aspiring Playwrights.
The Hot L Baltimore
Lanford Wilson - 1973
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.
Boom
Jean Tay - 2009
Boom tells the story of an elderly woman and her property agent son in Singapore, who are struggling over the potential en bloc sale of their home. Their destinies become interwoven with that of an idealistic civil servant, Jeremiah, who is facing the greatest challenge of his career—persuading a reluctant corpse to yield its memories. Boom is a quirky yet poignant tale about the relocation of both dead and living, and how personal stories get left behind in the inexorable march of progress.Written by economist-turned-playwright Jean Tay, Boom was conceptualised at the Royal Court Theatre in London in 2007, and developed and staged by the Singapore Repertory Theatre in September 2008. It was nominated for Best Original Script for The Straits Times’ Life! Theatre Awards in 2009 and is now an O- and N-Level Literature text in Singapore schools.“Jean Tay is one of the most gifted playwrights I have come across in years.” —Gaurav Kripalani, Artistic Director, Singapore Repertory Theatre
All the Way
Robert Schenkkan - 2012
Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston played the lead role in the play’s celebrated Broadway performance at the Neil Simon Theatre, for which he was awarded the Tony Award for Best Actor. In this volume, Cranston provides a never-before-published illuminating and personal introduction to the play.All The Way tells the story of the tumultuous first year of the presidency of Lyndon Baines Johnson, thrust into power following Kennedy’s assassination and struggling to hold onto the White House in an election that forces him to make concessions. In 1964, this pivotal year in American history, he passes a landmark civil rights bill, but begins his fateful descent into Vietnam. LBJ is fiercely determined to lift the country out of the ashes and rebuild it into The Great Society—by any means necessary.
Things You Shouldn't Say Past Midnight: A Comedy in Three Beds
Peter Ackerman - 2000
Ever been racially slurred in the sack? Ever been subjected to strangers yelling at you at 3am about the most intimate details of your life? Ever been to New York? Six characters from wildly different backgrounds make love, war and hysteria late one night in the cultural, sexual and generational smorgasbord that is Manhattan.
King Charles III
Mike Bartlett - 2014
Queen Elizabeth II is dead. After a lifetime of waiting, her son ascends the throne. A future of power. But how to rule? Drawing on the style and structure of a Shakespearean history play, King Charles III opened at London’s Almeida Theatre, directed by its Artistic Director Rupert Goold, in 2014, before transferring to the West End.
Those Who Can’t, Teach
Haresh Sharma - 2010
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
Grounded
George Brant - 2013
Brant’s writing [is] taut, terse and concentrated on exposing the fissures that open in the heroine’s confidence and sense of honor... Grounded has a grimly fresh topicality." - New York Times"Propulsive drama... A fascinating exploration of personality, Grounded is, of course, all the more interesting because the subject of drone warfare is so much in the news... Thought-provoking." - Washington Post"Brant’s sharp-eyed, timely script... lets no one off easy; it forces the audience into a greater awareness of our own complicity in America’s drifts. Clap all you want at the end of the play—and you’ll want to clap a lot—but the game stays with you." - Time Out New York"Brant's drama is ready for prime time... Compelling and provocative." - San Francisco Chronicle"I was blown away... Grounded powerfully focuses on the human element... Don't miss it." - The Nation"Gripping... A play that challenges us to consider the moral and mortal conflict that is so much a part of our dangerous world... Delivers quite the gut punch... Grounded could not be much more timely." - Baltimore SunSeamlessly blending the personal and the political, Grounded tells the story of a hot-rod F16 fighter pilot whose unexpected pregnancy ends her career in the sky. Repurposed to flying remote-controlled drones in the Middle East from an air-conditioned trailer near Vegas, the Pilot struggles through surreal twelve-hour shifts far from the battlefield, hunting terrorists by day and being a wife and mother by night. A tour de force play for one actress, Grounded flies from the heights of lyricism to the shallows of workaday existence, targeting our assumptions about war, family, and the power of storytelling.Winner of the 2012 Smith Prize, a 2013 Scotsman Fringe First Prize, and Shortlisted for the Amnesty International Freedom of Expression Award 2013 at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, 2013.
Oil
Ella Hickson - 2016
The Iron Age. The Age of Oil.The Stone Age didn't end for want of stones. What do you do when you know it's going to run out? Oil follows the lives of one woman and her daughter in an epic, hurtling crash of empire, history and family.Ella Hickson's explosive new play drills deep into the world's relationship with this finite resource.Oil premiered at the Almeida Theatre, London, in October 2016.
The Vertical Hour
David Hare - 2006
With her faith in academia beginning to erode and memories from her time in the Balkans and the Middle East haunting her, Nadia travels with her boyfriend, Philip Lucas, to rural England to visit her father, Oliver, who has his own past to reckon with. The challenge of Nadia's encounter with Oliver forces decisions on her that will affect her for the rest of her life.
For thirty-five years, David Hare has written plays that capture the flavor of our times and address the interconnection between our secret motives and our public politics. In The Vertical Hour, he continues his investigation of the morality of international intervention, and of how the war in Iraq impacts the lives of British and American citizens.
The Lieutenant of Inishmore
Martin McDonagh - 2001
The cat is reported dead when Padriac is away bombing civilian targets in Northern Ireland as a one-man splinter group and his family and friends on Inishmore desperately try to conceal the cat's death and what caused it before he returns.
Seascape With Sharks and Dancer
Don Nigro - 1985
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.