Tartuffe


Molière - 1664
    Tartuffe worms his way into Orgon’s household, blinding the master of the house with his religious "devotion," and almost succeeds in his attempts to seduce his wife and disinherit his children before the final unmasking.

Jerusalem


Jez Butterworth - 2009
    . . . A tragic and hilarious vision of life in an English country community. Butterworth’s new work was the most talked about new work of the season."—The London Paper

Across a Hundred Mountains


Reyna Grande - 2006
    Finding each other -- in a Tijuana jail -- in desperate circumstances, they offer each other much needed material and spiritual support and ultimately become linked forever in the most unexpected way.The phenomenon of Mexican immigration to the United States is one of the most controversial issues of our time. While it is often discussed in terms of the political and economic implications, Grande, with this brilliant debut novel and her own profound insider's perspective, puts a human face on the subject. Who are the men, women, and children whose lives are affected by the forces that propel so many to risk life and limb, crossing the border in pursuit of a better life?Take the journey "Across a Hundred Mountains" and see.

Middlesex


Jeffrey Eugenides - 2002
    To understand why Calliope is not like other girls, she has to uncover a guilty family secret, and the astonishing genetic history that turns Callie into Cal, one of the most audacious and wondrous narrators in contemporary fiction. Lyrical and thrilling, Middlesex is an exhilarating reinvention of the American epic.

Cyrano de Bergerac


Edmond Rostand - 1897
    Set in Louis XIII's reign, it is the moving and exciting drama of one of the finest swordsmen in France, gallant soldier, brilliant wit, tragic poet-lover with the face of a clown. Rostand's extraordinary lyric powers gave birth to a universal hero--Cyrano De Bergerac--and ensured his own reputation as author of one of the best-loved plays in the literature of the stage.This translation, by the American poet Brian Hooker, is nearly as famous as the original play itself, and is generally considered to be one of the finest English verse translations ever written.

The Laramie Project


Moisés Kaufman - 2001
    But for the people of Laramie–both the friends of Matthew and those who hated him without knowing him–the tragedy was personal. In a chorus of voices that brings to mind Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, The Laramie Project allows those most deeply affected to speak, and the result is a brilliantly moving theatrical creation.

The Spanish Tragedy


Thomas Kyd
    Highly popular and influential in the development of Elizabethan drama, it established a new genre in English theatre; the revenge play.

Native Guard


Natasha Trethewey - 2006
    Trethewey's resonant and beguiling collection is a haunting conversation between personal experience and national history.

The Inspector General


Nikolai Gogol - 1835
    When it is announced that the Inspector General is coming to visit incognito, Anton, the chief of police, hastens to clean up the town before his arrival. Local officials scurry to hide evidence of bribe-taking and other misdeeds, setting the stage for the arrival from St. Petersburg of Ivan, a penurious gambler and rake who is promptly taken by the townspeople to be the dreaded Inspector General. Ivan, and his servant, Osip, soon take advantage of the situation with hilarious results. First performed in 1836, the play transcends regional and national boundaries to offer a biting, highly entertaining glimpse of universal human foibles and failings.

Steel Magnolias


Robert Harling - 1988
    Presents the script of a 1988 play about a group of women in Chinquapin, Louisiana, who learn to draw upon their underlying strength and love to meet the challenges of life.

Everybody


Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
    This modern riff on the fifteenth-century morality play Everyman follows Everybody (chosen from amongst the cast by lottery at each performance) as they journey through life’s greatest mystery—the meaning of living.

To Kill a Mockingbird


Harper Lee - 1960
    "To Kill A Mockingbird" became both an instant bestseller and a critical success when it was first published in 1960. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was later made into an Academy Award-winning film, also a classic.Compassionate, dramatic, and deeply moving, "To Kill A Mockingbird" takes readers to the roots of human behavior - to innocence and experience, kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, humor and pathos. Now with over 18 million copies in print and translated into forty languages, this regional story by a young Alabama woman claims universal appeal. Harper Lee always considered her book to be a simple love story. Today it is regarded as a masterpiece of American literature.

Lysistrata


Aristophanes
    Led by the title character, the women of the warring city-states of Greece agree to withhold sexual favours with their husbands until they agree to cease fighting. The war of the sexes that ensues makes Lysistrata a bawdy comedy without peer in the history of theatre.

Passing


Nella Larsen - 1929
    When she reconnects with her childhood friend Clare Kendry, who is similarly light-skinned, Irene discovers that Clare has been passing for a white woman after severing ties to her past--even hiding the truth from her racist husband.Clare finds herself drawn to Irene's sense of ease and security with her Black identity and longs for the community (and, increasingly, the woman) she lost. Irene is both riveted and repulsed by Clare and her dangerous secret, as Clare begins to insert herself--and her deception--into every part of Irene's stable existence. First published in 1929, Larsen's brilliant examination of the various ways in which we all seek to "pass," is as timely as ever.

Montana 1948


Larry Watson - 1993
    It is a tale of love and courage, of power abused, and of the terrible choice between family loyalty and justice.