Book picks similar to
Three Exposures: Plays by John Guare
plays
tbr-plays
today-s-haul
detroit
Heroes of the Fourth Turning
Will Arbery - 2019
They've returned home to toast their mentor Gina, newly inducted as president of a tiny Catholic college. But as their reunion spirals into spiritual chaos and clashing generational politics, it becomes less a celebration than a vicious fight to be understood. On a chilly night in the middle of America, Will Arbery's haunting play offers grace and disarming clarity, speaking to the heart of a country at war with itself.
The Flu Season and Other Plays
Will Eno - 2006
His work is inventive, disciplined and, at the same time, wild and evocative. His ear is splendid and his mind is agile.”—Edward Albee“An original, a maverick wordsmith whose weird, wry dramas gurgle with the grim humor and pain of life. Eno specializes in the connections of the unconnected, the apologetic murmurings of the disengaged.”—GuardianWinner of the 2004 Oppenheimer Award for best New York debut by an American playwright, The Flu Season is a reluctant love story, in spite of itself. Set in a hospital and a theater, it is a play that revels in ambivalence and derives a flailing energy from its doubts whether a love story is ever really a love story.Will Eno has been called “a Samuel Beckett for the Jon Stewart generation” (New York Times)—he is a playwright with an extraordinary voice and a singular theatrical vision. Also included in this volume are Tragedy: A Tragedy and Intermission.Will Eno is the author of Thom Pain (based on nothing), which ran for a year Off-Broadway and was a 2005 Pulitzer Prize finalist. Other works include Oh, the Humanity and other good intentions, The Flu Season, Tragedy: a tragedy, and Intermission.
What the Constitution Means to Me (Tcg Edition)
Heidi Schreck - 2021
Decades later, in What the Constitution Means to Me, she traces the effect that the Constitution has had on four generations of women in her family, deftly examining how the United States' founding principles are inextricably linked with our personal lives.
Freak
John Leguizamo - 1997
Set in various neighborhoods of Queens, New York, in the eras of disco and break-dancing, Freak recounts the turmoil and eccentricities within a Latino family struggling to make it. A domineering father, frustrated by his rocky quest for the American dream; a mother who finds feminism and the club scene when she tires of Pop's tight control; a pudgy, eager-to-please, easily manipulated younger brother; and John - who doesn't spare himself in telling the gory details of his teen years. Freak is the book adaptation of Leguizamo's comical and critically acclaimed one-man Broadway show. But Freak, the book, contains narrative that had to be cut from the show because of time restraints.
Anatomy of Gray
Jim Leonard - 2006
At first, the new doctor cures anything
Teechers
John Godber - 1989
Using the format of an end-of-term play, the new drama teacher's progress through two terms of recalcitrant classes, synical colleagues and obstructive caretakers is reviewed. Disillutioned, he departs for a safer private school.
Never the Sinner
John Logan - 1999
and Richard Loeb -- abducted and killed fourteen-year-old Bobby Franks, horrifying a nation. Never the Sinner is John Logan's brilliant documentary play about the infamous Leopold and Loeb case, known in its time as the "crime of the century" and still one of the most notorious.Leopold and Loeb were richer than most, and smarter. They knew every hot topic of the day, from Freud to Nietzsche; they were also lovers. Considering themselves Nietzsche's "supermen, " they decided to commit the "perfect murder, " just for the thrill of it. But they proved to be considerably less than supermen, and within a matter of hours police questioners cracked their alibis. In the ensuing sensational trial, they were defended by the legendary Clarence Darrow, who got them life sentences rather than the expected execution.
School Girls; or, the African Mean Girls Play
Jocelyn Bioh - 2018
But the arrival of Ericka, a new student with undeniable talent and beauty, captures the attention of the pageant recruiter – and Paulina's hive-minded friends. This buoyant and biting comedy explores the universal similarities (and glaring differences) facing teenage girls across the globe.
seven methods of killing kylie jenner
Jasmine Lee-Jones - 2019
When The Discourse turns on her, the line between internet personas and IRL relationships blurs, and the heightened scrutiny she comes under puts her real-life friendship under strain...seven methods of killing kylie jenner combines theatre with gifs, memes and emojis to explore stereotypes of Black womanhood, white capitalist exploitation, and the politics of social media activism.
The Vermont Plays
Annie Baker - 2012
(Theater Communications Group)"Baker may just have the subtlest way with exposition of anyone writing for the theater today ... There is something distinctly Chekhovian in the way her writing accrues weight and meaning simply through compassionate, truthful observation." --Charles Isherwood, New York Times"Baker has a soft spot for the abandoned, the discarded, the hard-luck case ... her heartbreaking works of staggering focus have actually rescued realism from the aesthetic scrap heap." --Helen Shaw, Timeout New York"Baker is a writer whose plays have a quiet, hypnotic charm a grace and humor. She's able to take ordinary, low-key situations--a small-town acting class, guys wasting time in an alley behind a café--and fill them with gentle comedy, generosity of spirit and an eye (and ear) for the foibles that make us all so hopelessly human." --Village Voice
Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman
Eric J. Sterling - 2008
The topics include feminism and the role of women in the drama, the American Dream, business and capitalism, the significance of technology, the legacy that Willy leaves to Biff, and Miller's use of symbolism. The authors of the essays include prominent Arthur Miller scholars such as Terry Otten and the late Steven Centola as well as young, emerging scholars. Some of the essays, particularly the ones written by the emerging scholars, tend to employ literary theory while the ones by the established scholars tend to illustrate the strengths of traditional criticism by interpreting the text closely. It is fascinating to see how scholars at different stages of their academic careers approach a given topic from distinct perspectives and sometimes diverse methodologies. The essays offer insightful and provocative readings of Death of a Salesman in a collection that will prove quite useful to scholars and students of Miller's most famous play.
Sons of the Prophet
Stephen Karam - 2012
But something more “global” appears to be at work, and in any case he is distracted from his dreary rounds of diagnosis-seeking when a more urgent tragedy befalls the family. Joseph’s father, a former steelworker, was driving home from his new maintenance job when he swerved to avoid a deer and crashed his car, landing in the hospital. A week later he died of a heart attack.The deer, it turns out, was a stuffed decoy placed there by a high school student as a prank. This enrages Joseph’s older and ailing uncle, Bill (Yusef Bulos), who is even more disgusted when it is learned that the culprit is the star of the local football team, Vin (Jonathan Louis Dent), a town hero who is given a dispensation by a judge to serve his sentence in juvenile detention after the football season has concluded. Joseph and his younger brother, Charles (Chris Perfetti) — who are both gay — are more sympathetic to Vin, an African-American boy who has grown up in a foster home, and whose chance at a professional career may be jeopardized.Gloria (Joanna Gleason), Joseph’s new boss and a book packaging expert, knows a little about career jeopardy herself. She was run out of the publishing business — and Manhattan — when she sold a memoir by a Holocaust survivor that turned out to be fictionalized. (Gloria’s story and Vin’s are inspired by actual events.)Now she latches on to the discovery that Joseph’s family, of Lebanese extraction, is distantly related to Kahlil Gibran, author of the perennial best-selling spiritual book “The Prophet.” In her hilariously addled mind — complaining about her fall from grace, she defensively remarks, “I wasn’t at the Holocaust” — she decides that a memoir by Joseph about his family’s journey will be her ticket back to the big time.Mr. Karam’s play, which runs a little less than two hours and is performed in one seamless act , may sound top-heavy with plot and character. (Did I mention that Gloria’s emotional frailty also stems from the suicide of her husband?) Some of the relationships would benefit from being fleshed out in greater detail: the integration of Gloria into the lives of Joseph and his family, for example. The play’s climax shoehorns all the elements of the story into a farcical scene that seems a little forced, funny though it is.But one of Mr. Karam’s themes is the indiscriminate nature of misfortune — one calamity does not immunize you from the next, worse one — so the multiplication of disasters roiling the characters’ lives is to the point. And he writes with such precision that even the more peripheral characters emerge as sharply drawn, multifaceted individuals.
Birdland
Simon Stephens - 2014
All worth can be quantified. Artistic worth. Human worth. Material worth. Everything. Some food is simply better than other food. Isn't it? Some clothes are better than other clothes. Aren't they?The last week of a massive international tour and rock star Paul is at the height of his fame. Everybody knows his name. Whatever he wants he can have. He can screw anybody he wants to. He can buy anything he desires. He can eat anything. Drink anything. Smoke anything. Go anywhere. As the inevitability of the end of the road looms closer and a return home becomes a reality, for Paul the music is starting to jar.Birdland received its world premiere at the Royal Court Theatre Downstairs on 3 April 2014.
Chatroom
Enda Walsh - 2007
Scenery: A bare stageThe six teenage characters communicate only via the internet. Conversations range in subject from Britney Spears to Willy Wonka to - suicide: Jim is depressed and talks of ending his life and Eva and William decide to do their utmost to persuade him to carry out his threat. From this chilling premise is forged a funny, compelling and uplifting play that tackles the issues of teenage life head-on and with great understanding.