Talking With...


Jane Martin - 1983
    is a series of women's monologues tackling many different aspects of the complex female psyche.

Bachelorette


Leslye Headland - 2011
    Fueled by jealousy and resentment, the girls embark on a night of debauchery that goes from playfully wasted to devastatingly destructive. Their old fears, unfulfilled desires and deep bonds with each other transform a prenuptial bender into a night they'll never forget. A wicked black comedy about female friendship and growing up in an age of excess.

Over the River and Through the Woods


Joe DiPietro - 1999
    His parents retired and moved to Florida. That doesn't mean his family isn't still in Jersey. In fact, he sees both sets of his grandparents every Sunday for dinner. This is routine until he has to tell them that he's been offered a dream job. The job he's been waiting for - marketing executive - would take him away from his beloved, but annoying, grandparents. He tells them. The news doesn't sit so well. Thus begins a series of schemes to keep Nick around. How could he betray his family's love to move to Seattle for a job, wonder his grandparents? Well, Frank, Aida, Nunzio, and Emma do their level best, that includes bringing the lovely - and single - Caitlin O'Hare as bait.

Blasted


Sarah Kane - 1995
    and was the sensation of that year's theatre season, making front-page headlines and outraging some critics who thought her premise that there was a connection between a rape in a Leeds hotel room and the hellish devastation of civil war was simply an attempt to shock audiences. The questions raised in this play about violence are at the heart of Kane's writing.

Anatomy of Gray


Jim Leonard - 2006
    At first, the new doctor cures anything

By the Way, Meet Vera Stark


NOT A BOOK - 2011
    Fluidly incorporating film and video elements into her writing for the first time, Nottage's comedy tells the story of Vera Stark, a headstrong African American maid and budding actress who has a tangled relationship with her boss, a white Hollywood star desperately grasping to hold onto her career. Stirring audiences out of complacency by tackling racial stereotyping in the entertainment industry—a topic that remains largely unexplored in mainstream arts and entertainment—Nottage highlights the paradox of black actors in 1930s Hollywood while jumping back and forward in time and location in this uniquely theatrical narrative.Lynn Nottage's plays include the Pulitzer Prize–winning Ruined; Intimate Apparel, the most widely produced play of the 2005–06 theater season in America; Fabulation, or the Re-Education of Undine; Crumbs from the Table of Joy; Las Meninas; Mud, River, Stone; Por'knockers; and POOF!

The Tale of the Allergist's Wife and Other Plays: The Tale of the Allergist's Wife, Vampire Lesbians of Sodom, Psycho Beach Party, The Lady in Question, Red Scare on Sunset


Charles Busch - 2000
    Of his latest play, The New York Times has written, "Uproarious ... wall-to-wall laughs ... Mr. Busch has swum straight into the mainstream and stays comfortably afloat there." Busch is the author of such plays as Vampire Lesbians of Sodom -- one of the longest-running plays in Off-Broadway history -- and Psycho Beach Party, a cross between Gidget and Spellbound. After a successful Off-Broadway run at New York City's Manhattan Theater Club, Busch moves to Broadway with The Tale of the Allergist's Wife, a hilarious comedy about a self-absorbed Upper West Side doctor's wife whose life is devoted to mornings at the Whitney, afternoons at the Museum of Modern Art, and evenings at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Her world is shaken and transformed when a childhood friend makes an unexpected visit.

Hughie


Eugene O'Neill - 1958
    Only two characters appear on stage; Hughie, the third and most important one, is dead. It is Hughie's innocence, gullibility, and need to believe in a far more exciting existence than he ever knew which gives some kind of purpose to the shabby lives of the two who remain. O'Neill here again writes of the defeated and the courage that comes by way of illusions reflecting still other illusions in a world that needs them all.Hughie, the only surviving manuscript from a series of eight one-act monologue plays that O'Neill planned in 1940, was completed in 1941.

Death and the King's Horseman: A Play


Wole Soyinka - 1975
    The king has died and Elesin, his chief horseman, is expected by law and custom to commit suicide and accompany his ruler to heaven. The stage is set for a dramatic climax when Pilkings learns of the ritual and decides to intervene and Elesin's son arrives home.

Detroit


Lisa D'Amour - 2011
    The fledgling friendship soon veers out of control, shattering the fragile hold that newly unemployed Ben and burgeoning alcoholic Mary have on their way of life—with unexpected comic consequences. Detroit is a fresh, offbeat look at what happens when we dare to open ourselves up to something new. After premiering at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre last year to rave reviews, Lisa D'Amour's brilliant and timely play moves to Broadway this fall.

Three Plays: Ma Rainey's Black Bottom / Fences / Joe Turner's Come and Gone


August Wilson - 1991
    Three plays from Pulitzer-Prize winning playwright August Wilson: Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, Fences, and Joe Turner's Come and Gone.

As Bees in Honey Drown


Douglas Carter Beane - 1998
    Book annotation not available for this title.

Dry Land


Ruby Rae Spiegel - 2015
    Amy is curled up on the locker room floor. DRY LAND is a play about abortion, female friendship, and resiliency, and what happens in one high school locker room after everybody’s left.

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.

Everything in the Garden


Edward Albee - 1968
    Albee there is a theme beneath the surface, in this case the corruption of money and the rottenness of this bigoted exurbia where conformity to its illiberal standards and its hypocritical show of respectability is all that counts. The scene is the suburban home of Jenny and Richard, beautifully played by Barbara Bel Geddes and Barry Nelson. The only thing that seems to stand in the way of their happiness is a lack of money. The action starts in an entertaining comedy of manners style. Then abruptly there enters a Mrs. Toothe in the menacing and fascinating person of Beatrice Straight who offers Jenny the opportunity to make more money than they have ever had, to buy a greenhouse and all the other luxuries that they require for their garden and their lives. Richard's realization that their newfound money is being earned by his wife's whoring comes almost simultaneously with the return of their fourteen-year-old son from school and a champagne cocktail party which they are giving to impress their country club friends. As a result, his horror, disgust and rage has to be kept under wraps in order to keep up essential appearances until tragedy strikes, and Richard realizes that the assembled wives are all involved and their husbands are aware and condoning." More than that, they are prepared not merely to justify but defend the ends through which their means are attained and the devastated Richard, left in agonized despair by the ironic events that charge the final moments of the play, must face the fact of his own share in their communal guilt.