The Normal Heart


Larry Kramer - 1985
    It tells the story of very private lives caught up in the heartrendering ordeal of suffering and doom - an ordeal that was largely ignored for reasons of politics and majority morality.Filled with power, anger, and intelligence, Larry Kramer's riveting play dramatizes what actualy happened from the time of the disease's discovery to the present, and points a moral j'accuse in many directions. His passionate indictment of government, the media, and the public for refusing to deal with a national plague is electrifying theater - a play that finally breaks through the conspiracy of silence with a shout of stunning impact. As Douglas Watt summed it up in his review for the New York Daily News,THE NORMAL HEART is "an angry, unremitting and gripping piece of political theater. You are bound to come away moved."

Master Harold...and the boys


Athol Fugard - 1982
    A white teen who has grown up in the affectionate company of the two black waiters who work in his mother's tea room in Port Elizabeth learns that his viciously racist alcoholic father is on his way home from the hospital. An ensuing rage unwittingly triggers his inevitable passage into the culture of hatred fostered by apartheid."One of those depth charge plays [that] has lasting relevance [and] can triumphantly survive any test of time...The story is simple, but the resonance that Fugard brings to it lets it reach beyond the narrative, to touch so many nerves connected to betrayal and guilt. An exhilarating play...It is a triumph of playmaking, and unforgettable."-New York Post"Fugard creates a blistering fusion of the personal and the political."-The New York Times"This revival brings out [the play's] considerable strengths."-New York Daily News

An Octoroon


Branden Jacobs-Jenkins - 2015
    Peyton’s handsome nephew George arrives as heir apparent and quickly falls in love with Zoe, a beautiful octoroon. But the evil overseer M’Closky has other plans—for both Terrebonne and Zoe. In 1859, a famous Irishman wrote this play about slavery in America. Now an American tries to write his own.

Stage Door


Edna Ferber - 1926
    The scene is Mrs. Orcutt's boarding house, where the hopes and ambitions of sixteen young women are revealed in scenes of entertaining comedy. Contrasted with this are the cases of the girl without talent and the elderly actress whose days are over. The central plot has to do with courageous Terry Randall, who fights against discouragement to a position in the theater where we are sure she will conquer. One of her fellow aspirants gives up in despair, one gets married, and one goes into pictures, but Terry, with the help of idealistic David Kingsley, sticks to her guns.

A Tempest


Aimé Césaire - 1969
    Césaire’s rich and insightful adaptation of The Tempest draws on contemporary Caribbean society, the African-American experience and African mythology to raise questions about colonialism, racism and their lasting effects.

You Can't Take it With You


Moss Hart - 1936
    At first the Sycamore family seems mad, but it is not long before we realize that if they are mad, the rest of the world is really verklempt.

The Flick


Annie Baker - 2014
    With keen insight and a ceaseless attention to detail, The Flick pays tribute to the power of movies and paints a heartbreaking portrait of three characters and their working lives. A critical hit when it premiered Off-Broadway, this comedy, by one of the country's most produced and highly regarded young playwrights, was awarded the coveted 2013 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, an Obie Award for Playwriting and the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Machinal


Sophie Treadwell - 1928
    Among her assignments was the sensational murder involving Ruth Snyder, who with her lover, Judd Gray, had murdered her husband and gone to the electric chair. Out of this came MACHINAL, a powerful expressionist drama about the dependent status of women and the living hell of a loveless marriage. Successfully premiered on Broadway in 1928 with Clark Gable as the lover, the play was seen in London two years later, provoked a sensation in Tairov's version in Moscow in 1933, and was then largely forgotten until revivals in New York and London in the 1990s.

The Beggar's Opera


John Gay - 1728
    

The Rover


Aphra Behn - 1681
    It is a revision of Thomas Killigrew's play "Thomaso", or "The Wanderer" (1664), and features multiple plot lines, dealing with the amorous adventures of a group of Englishmen and women in Naples at Carnival time. According to Restoration poet John Dryden, it "lacks the manly vitality of Killigrew's play, but shows greater refinement of expression." The play stood for three centuries as "Behn's most popular and most respected play."

The Cripple of Inishmaan


Martin McDonagh - 1997
    No one is more excited than Cripple Billy, an unloved boy whose chief occupation has been grazing at cows and yearning for a girl who wants no part of him. For Billy is determined to cross the sea and audition for the Yank. And as news of his audacity ripples through his rumor-starved community, The Cripple of Inishmaan becomes a merciless portrayal of a world so comically cramped and mean-spirited that hope is an affront to its order.

Uncle Vanya


Anton Chekhov - 1897
    His major plays are frequently revived in modern productions.

Arsenic and Old Lace


Joseph Kesselring - 1939
    

Stop Kiss


Diana Son - 1999
    Son's story is deceptively simple: two young women in New York meet, talk about their boyfriends, feel a growing, unspoken attraction for each other, and finally kiss. And that one innocent kiss sets off a savage gay-bashing. But even as Stop Kiss confronts the reality of physical violence, Son's imaginative, moving, and surprising comedy brings audiences -- and her principal characters -- to unexpected places.Callie is holding down a job as a radio traffic reporter when she meets Sara, a midwesterner who, against her parents' wishes, has moved to the city to teach third-grade students in the Bronx. Both have boyfriends, but as they get to know each other, their shared experiences and sense of humor create a strong bond. The tragic consequences of their kiss -- the center of this powerful drama -- serve as both an indictment of hatred and a moving study of the perils inherent in living life fully.

Equus


Peter Shaffer - 1973
    Through a psychiatrist's analysis of the events, Shaffer creates a chilling portrait of how materialism and convenience have killed our capacity for worship and passion and, consequently, our capacity for pain. Rarely has a playwrite created an atmosphere and situation that so harshly pinpoint the spiritual and mental decay of modern man.