Book picks similar to
Chicago The Musical: Vocal Selections by John Kander
plays
theatre
music
musicals
Plays 1: Shopping and Fucking / Faust is Dead / Handbag / Some Explicit Polaroids
Mark Ravenhill - 2001
"Ravenhill has more to say, and says it more refreshingly and wittily, than any other playwright of his generation"—Time Out "There are few stage authors writing more interestingly than Mark Ravenhill … He is - it is now yet more evident - a searing, intelligent, disturbing sociologist with a talent for satirical dialogue and a flair for sexual sensationalism."—Financial Times Shopping and Fucking: "is a darkly humorous play for today's twenty-somethings … a real coup de theatre"—Nicholas de Jongh, Evening Standard Faust: "…an intelligent and witty reappropriation of the legend … alive, pertinent and disturbing"—Michael Coveney, Observer Handbag: "…combines urban grit with sly wit, and reveals Mark Ravenhill as a writer of real daring" —Daily Telegraph Some Explicit Polaroids: "laudably ambitious, pulsates with energy … very funny"—Financial Times
Butterflies Are Free
Leonard Gershe - 1969
Jill's a kooky, fun-loving actress who refuses to be tied down.Don's a lovable, happy-go-lucky singer who is trying to make it on his own.How they fall in love - almost lose each other - and then learn the real meaning of love - is a funny, touching story of today.
A Bright New Boise
Samuel D. Hunter - 2011
Hunter's A Bright New Boise is a earnest comedy about the meager profits of modern faith. In the bleak, corporate break room of a craft store in Idaho, someone is summoning The Rapture. Will, who has fled his rural hometown after a scandal at his Evangelical church, comes to the Hobby Lobby, not only f
Bad Jews
Joshua Harmon - 2014
When Daphna’s cousin Liam brings home his shiksa girlfriend Melody and declares ownership of their grandfather’s Chai necklace, a vicious and hilarious brawl over family, faith and legacy ensues.
Silent Sky
Lauren Gunderson - 2015
Instead, she joins a group of women “computers,” charting the stars for a renowned astronomer who calculates projects in “girl hours” and has no time for the women’s probing theories. As Henrietta, in her free time, attempts to measure the light and distance of stars, she must also take measure of her life on Earth, trying to balance her dedication to science with family obligations and the possibility of love. The true story of 20th-century astronomer Henrietta Leavitt explores a woman’s place in society during a time of immense scientific discoveries, when women’s ideas were dismissed until men claimed credit for them. Social progress, like scientific progress, can be hard to see when one is trapped among earthly complications; Henrietta Leavitt and her female peers believe in both, and their dedication changed the way we understand both the heavens and Earth.
The Miss Firecracker Contest
Beth Henley - 1995
Carnelle enlists half-blind seamstress Popeye to help her efforts. Meanwhile, Carnelle’s cousins, Elain and Delmont, are forced to come to terms with their late mother’s legacy, against their own desires. Beth Henley’s signature messy characters fit imperfectly into tragi-comic portraits of the American South.
Slave Play
Jeremy O. Harris - 2020
It's an antebellum fever-dream, where fear and desire entwine in the looming shadow of the Master's House. Jim trembles as Kaneisha handles melons in the cottage, Alana perspires in time with the plucking of Phillip's fiddle in the boudoir, while Dustin cowers at the heel of Gary's big, black boot in the barn. Nothing is as it seems, and yet everything is as it seems.
Shakespeare: The World as Stage
Bill Bryson - 2007
The author of 'The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid' isn't, after all, a Shakespeare scholar, a playwright, or even a biographer. Reading 'Shakespeare The World As Stage', however, one gets the sense that this eclectic Iowan is exactly the type of person the Bard himself would have selected for the task. The man who gave us 'The Mother Tongue' and 'A Walk in the Woods' approaches Shakespeare with the same freedom of spirit and curiosity that made those books such reader favorites. A refreshing take on an elusive literary master.
Animals Out of Paper
Rajiv Joseph - 2009
DramaFull Length2 men, 1 woman: 3 totalInteriorsTHE STORY: When a world-renowned origami artist opens her studio to a teenage prodigy and his school teacher, she discovers that life and love can t be arranged neatly in this drama about finding the perfect fold.
X
Alistair McDowall - 2016
This is where they send the new, the under-qualified, the old. And most of all the British. Mars is full of blonde Americans. It's like they're building the master race out there.Billions of miles from home, the lone research base on Pluto has lost contact with Earth. Unable to leave or send for help, the skeleton crew sit waiting.Waiting.Waiting long enough for time to start eating away at them.To lose all sense of it.To start seeing things in the dark outside.Alistair McDowall's play X premiered at the Royal Court on 30 March 2016 in the Jerwood Theatre Downstairs.
Cloud 9
Caryl Churchill - 1979
The same family appears in Act Two 25 years older and back in London, only now it’s 1979. Cloud 9 is about relationships between women and men, men and men, women and women. It is about sex, work, mothers, Africa, power, children, grandmothers, politics, money, Queen Victoria, and Sex. Cloud 9 premiered in London at the Royal Court Theatre in 1979 and has since been staged all over the world.
The Comedies
Terence
In English translations that achieve a lively readability without sacrificing the dramatic and comic impact of the original Latin, this volume presents all six comedies: The Girl from Andros (Andria), The Self-Tormentor (Heautontimorumenos), The Eunuch (Eunouchus), Phormios, The Brothers (Adelphoe), and Her Husband's Mother (Hecyra).
Madame Butterfly
Giacomo Puccini - 1904
Stationed in Nagasaki, Lieutenant Pinkerton acquires his wife as casually as his house -- both leased for 99 years, with the option to cancel at any time. After their honeymoon, Pinkerton departs, promising to return. But for three long years, Cho-Cho-San awaits, and when he finally does return, he brings his new American wife -- and finds he has a son by Cho-Cho-San. This picture book adaptation of the tragic libretto features haunting paintings that evoke the opera's exotic setting and emotional resonance, creating a captivating, cultured introduction for young readers.