Hand to God: A New American Play


Robert Askins - 2017
    But when the young members of the Christian Puppet Ministry put those teachings into practice, one devout young man's puppet takes on a shocking personality that no one could have expected. In this hilarious black comedy, a foul-mouthed sock puppet named Tyrone soon teaches those around him that the urges that can drive a person to give in to their darkest desires fit like a glove. In Hand to God, a "true tour de force" (New York Times), Robert Askins has written a play of "unerring perfection" (Huffington Post). The must-see hit of the 2015 Broadway season, starring Steven Boyer and Geneva Carr, garnered an Obie Award and five Tony Award nominations, including Best Play, following its sold out, critically acclaimed off-Broadway runs at MCC Theater and Ensemble Studio Theatre.

Animals (Williamstown Theatre Festival)


Stacy Osei-Kuffour - 2020
    Wine bottles and years of unspoken tensions are uncorked, and, before the evening is through, Lydia must confront her long-held fears and feelings if she’s going to commit to a future with Henry. Directed by Whitney White, Stacy Osei-Kuffour’s world premiere comedy marches into the muddy intersection of romantic entanglement, identity, pride, and survival.

The Lovely Bones


Alice Sebold - 2018
    She wants to be beautiful, adores her charm bracelet and has a crush on a boy from school. There's one big difference though – Susie is dead.Now she can only observe while her family manage their grief in their different ways. Her father, Jack is obsessed with identifying the killer. Her mother, Abigail is desperate to create a different life for herself. And her sister, Lindsay is discovering the opposite sex with experiences that Susie will never know. Susie is desperate to help them and there might be a way of reaching them…Alice Sebold's novel The Lovely Bones is a unique coming-of-age tale that captured the hearts of readers throughout the world. Award-winning playwright Bryony Lavery has adapted it for this unforgettable play about life after loss.

My Sister in This House


Wendy Kesselman - 1981
    This extraordinary drama, produced to acclaim at the Actors Theatre of Louisville originally, and at NYC's Second Stage is about a celebrated 1930's French murder case, in which two maids sisters were convicted of murdering their employer and her daughter. This very cinematically structured work explores the motivations whi

To Kill a Mockingbird (The Screenplay): And Related Readings


Horton Foote - 1900
    

The Rivalry


Norman Corwin - 2009
    Douglas. The play features Academy Awards nominees Paul Giamatti in the role of Stephen A. Douglas and David Straithairn as Abraham Lincoln. Two Presidential candidates - one a rising Illinois legislator, the other a bombastic US Senator. Obama and McCain? Think again. In this transcendent Broadway play, the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates tackle the day's most passionate issue - slavery. Their battle comes to life through the eyes of Adele Douglas, wife of candidate Stephen Douglas. Challenged by the charming man from Illinois, she reexamines her basic beliefs about the American concept of freedom. Evocative, inspiring and stirring theatre]] raves The New York Times.

Pomona


Alistair McDowall - 2014
    Searching Manchester in desperation, she finds all roads lead to Pomona - an abandoned concrete island at the heart of the city.Here at the centre of everything, journeys end and nightmares are born.A sinister and surreal thriller from Alistair McDowall, Pomona received its world premiere at the Orange Tree Theatre, London, on 12 November 2014.

This is a Chair


Caryl Churchill - 1999
    This short play by Caryl Churchill was an entry in the 1997 London International Festival of Theatre.

Never the Sinner


John Logan - 1999
    and Richard Loeb -- abducted and killed fourteen-year-old Bobby Franks, horrifying a nation. Never the Sinner is John Logan's brilliant documentary play about the infamous Leopold and Loeb case, known in its time as the "crime of the century" and still one of the most notorious.Leopold and Loeb were richer than most, and smarter. They knew every hot topic of the day, from Freud to Nietzsche; they were also lovers. Considering themselves Nietzsche's "supermen, " they decided to commit the "perfect murder, " just for the thrill of it. But they proved to be considerably less than supermen, and within a matter of hours police questioners cracked their alibis. In the ensuing sensational trial, they were defended by the legendary Clarence Darrow, who got them life sentences rather than the expected execution.

Lorca Plays: One: Blood Wedding, Doña Rosita the Spinster, and Yerma


Federico García Lorca - 1935
    Blood Wedding tells the story of a couple drawn irresistibly together in the face of an arranged marriage; Doña Rosita the Spinster follows the appalling fate of a young woman beguiled into the expectation of marriage and left stranded for a lifetime whilst Yerma is possibly Lorca's harshest play following a woman's Herculean struggle against the curse of infertility. Set in and around his home territory, Granada, the plays return again and again to the lives of passionate individuals, particularly women, trapped by the social conventions of narrow peasant communities. The plays appear here in new playable translations.

33 Variations


Moisés Kaufman - 2011
    A composer coming to terms with his genius. And, even though they're separated by 200 years, these two people share an obsession that might, even just for a moment, make time stand still. Drama, memory and music combine to transport you from present-day New York to nineteenth-century Austria in this extraordinary American play about passion, parenthood and the moments of beauty that can transform a life.

Next Fall - Acting Edition


Geoffrey Nauffts - 2010
    But when Luke is hospitalized in a tragic accident, Adam must come face-to-face with Luke's faith and his family.

Polaroid Stories: An Adaptation of Ovid's Metamorphoses


Naomi Iizuka - 1999
    Not all the stories these characters tell are true; some are lies, wild yams, clever deceits, baroque fabrications. But whether or not a homeless kid invents an incredible history for himself isn't the point, explains diarist-of-the-street Jim Grimsley. "All these stories and lies add up to something like the truth."Inspired in part by Ovid's Metamorphoses, Iizuka's Polaroid Stories takes place on an abandoned pier on the outermost edge of a city, a way stop for dreamers, dealers and desperadoes, a no-man's land where runaways seek camaraderie, refuge and escape. Serpentine routes from the street to the heart characterize the interactions in this spellbinding tale of young people pushed to society's fringe. Informed, as well, by interviews with young prostitutes and street kids, Polaroid Stories conveys a whirlwind of psychic disturbance, confusion and longing. Like their mythic counterparts, these modem-day mortals are engulfed by needs that burn and consume. Their language mixes poetry and profanity, imbuing the play with lyricism and great theatrical force.

Spring Storm


Tennessee Williams - 1999
    His professor, the renowned E. C. Mabie, remarked as he got up and dismissed the seminar, "Well, we all have to paint our nudes!" Tom's earlier comment in his journal that the play "is well-constructed, no social propaganda, and is suitable for the commercial stage" seems accurate enough in 1999, but woefully naive deep in the Depression when the play's sexual explicitness—particularly its matter-of-fact acceptance of a woman's right to her own sexuality—would have been seen as not only shocking but also politically radical. Spring Storm would later be disavowed by the author as "simply a study of Sex—a blind animal urge or force (like the regenerative force of April) gripping four lives and leading them into a tangle of cruel and ugly relations."But the solid and deft characterizations of the four young people whose lives intertwine—the sexually alive Heavenly Critchfield, her earthy lover Dick Miles, Heavenly's wealthy but tongue-tied admirer Arthur Shannon, and the repressed librarian Hertha Nielson who loves Arthur—are archetypes of characters we will meet again and again in the Williams canon. Epic in scope, a bit melodramatic in execution, tragic in outcome, Spring Storm created a wave of excitement among theatre insiders when it was given a staged reading at The Ensemble Studio Theatre's Octoberfest '96. This edition has been prepared, with an illuminating introduction, by Dan Isaac, who initiated the Octoberfest production.

Stick Fly: A Play


Lydia R. Diamond - 2008
    With only six characters, she constructs a vivid weekend of crossed pasts and uncertain but optimistic futures. On Martha's Vineyard, an affluent African-American family gathers in their vacation home, joined by the housekeeper's daughter, who is filling in for her mother. The family patriarch is a philandering physician; one of his sons has followed in his footsteps, while the other, after numerous false starts in a variety of careers, is a struggling novelist. Both bring along their current girlfriends, to meet the family for the first time. With such highly--perhaps over--educated vacationers, the conversation and the barbs fly, on subjects ranging from race to economics to politics. But there is also more than enough human drama, which reaches its climax when an old family secret comes out. Through lively exchanges and simmering wit, the family tackles a history filled with complications both within the family and in the outer world.