What Rebecca Gilman makes of this familiar scenario is something startlingly real and compelling, delving deeply into the small space that can divide a feeling of hope from one of hopelessness, as Curt and Sandy both try to get a foothold in the American dream of a house, a job, a life, a relationship with another human being.Gilman's previous play, Boy Gets Girl, was acclaimed by Time magazine as the best play of 2000, saying that "with Spinning into Butter, her play about race relations on campus, Rebecca Gilman gave notice that she was a playwright to watch. And with this intense drama of a woman's encounter with a stalker, she became one to hail . . . It's not just a gripping play but also an important one." Marked by Gilman's characteristically sharp delineation of character, pitch-perfect dialogue, and effortless use of humor that is both biting and silly, Blue Surge is a worthy successor to these plays--an intimate look at the class struggle in America today as well as a brilliant example of the dramatic craft from one of today's most accomplished practitioners. It will have its world premiere at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago in the spring of 2001.

    Unfortunately, her imaginary friend Mr. Marmalade doesn't have much time for her. Not to mention he beats up his personal assistant, has a cocaine addic-tion, and a penchant for pornography and very long dildos. Larry, her only real friend, is the youngest suicide attempt in the history of New Jersey. MR. MARMALADE is a savage black comedy about what it takes to grow up in these difficult times.

    The two begin to interlock as the characters make their exits from Nothing On only to find themselves making entrances into the even worse nightmare going on backstage. In the end, at the disastrous final performance, the two plots can be kept separate no longer, and coalesce into a single collective nervous breakdown.

    The subject matter is a prison scandal which shocked the nation in the mid-thirties when convicts leading a hunger strike in prison were locked in a steam-heated cell and roasted to death. "I have never written anything since that could compete with it in violence and horror",Williams said later about the full-length play he developed in 1938. It shows us the young Williams as a political writer in Depression America; its flashes of lyricism and compelling dialogue presage the great plays Williams was later to write.

    Now he presides over a congregation of thousands, with classrooms for Sunday School, a coffee shop in the lobby, and a baptismal font as big as a swimming pool. Today should be a day of celebration. But Paul is about to preach a sermon that will shake the foundations of his church’s belief. A big-little play about faith in America—and the trouble with changing your mind.- See more at: http://actorstheatre.org/shows/the-ch...

    It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. This moving play is about the poetic life and the inter relationship between two of the finest Great War poets: Owen who died and Siegfried Sasson who didn't. Told by means of letters and poetry, Not About Heroes paints a vivid picture of the war. It was staged to

    Lemon tells the audience about the overwhelming influence in her life of her parents' friend "Aunt Dan," an eccentric, passionate professor whose stories and seductive opinions enthrall Lemon from the time she is a young girl. The relationship that develops between Lemon and Aunt Dan and the conversations that went on in a small house on the bottom of an English garden form the focus of this play about political orientation and the allure of certain ideas-even if they lead to murder. A forceful play exposing the banality of society's evil, Aunt Dan & Lemon explores the ease with which good and bad become reconciled in the human mind.

    Hold tight as the ordinary turns extraordinary in Mark O’Rowe’s exhilarating new play. A blackly comic vision of Dublin infested with demons, from the author of Howie the Rookie.

    "The two rooms of the title are a windowless cubicle in Beirut where an American hostage is being held by Arab terrorists and a room in his home in the United States which his wife has stripped of furniture so that, at least symbolically, she can share his ordeal."Two Rooms received its world premiere at the La Jolla Playhouse in California on June 21, 1988. The cast is two men and two women.

    Inge has taken us back to the early 1920s and into the home of the Flood family in a small Oklahoma town. Here we find Rubin, a traveling salesman for a harness firm, Cora his sensitive and lovely wife, Sonny their little boy and Reenie their teen-age daughter The plot of Mr. Inge's comedy drama is less one story than a series of short stories the fight between a husband and wife; the fear of an overly shy young girl on going to a dance; the problems of an introverted little boy who feels that the whole world, including his family is against him; the outwardly peaceful and inwardly corroding marriage of Cora's rowdy sister; the tragedy of a military school cadet whose mother has never provided him with a home and who suffers from the stigma of being a Jew in an alien community. What Mr. Inge is saying, with a power and tenderness of speech, is that there is dark at the top of everyone's stairs, but that it can be dissipated by understanding, by tolerance, by compassion and by the brand of companionship that demands not conformity but love For Mr. Inge has made in his play a statement of faith for all people who, if they accepted it, would live in a far better world."

    Inspired by a series of master classes the great diva conducted at Juilliard toward the end of her career, this drama puts Maria Callas at center stage again as she coaxes, prods, and inspires students—"victims" as she calls them—into giving the performances of their lives while revealing her own. As she slips off into memories, we experience her days at La Scala, her marriage to Meneghini, and her great doomed love for Aristotle Onassis. But the dazzling theatricality comes from Callas's emotional explosions, her cutting wit, and the soaring music as each student sings an aria that exposes the Divina's vulnerabilities ... and her genius.

       The Beauty Queen of Leenane was first presented as a Druid Theatre/Royal Court Theatre co-production in January 1996.

    "What Lenny Bruce was to the 1950s, Bob Dylan to the 1960s, Woody Allen to the 1970s--that's what Eric Bogosian is to this frightening moment of drift in our history."--Frank Rich, The New York Times

    For each, the chaos of what has come before brings with it a painful legacy.“I have Stayed. I have Stayed – I have Stayed for as long as I possibly can.”

    The first major collection of plays by leading lesbian playwright Paula Vogel.