Crafted around the stories of Achilles and Hector, in language that is by turns poetic and conversational, "An Iliad" brilliantly refreshes this world classic. What emerges is a powerful piece of theatrical storytelling that vividly drives home the timelessness of mankind's compulsion toward violence.

    A maverick English teacher at odds with the young and shrewd supply teacher. A headmaster obsessed with results; a history teacher who thinks he's a fool.In Alan Bennett's classic play, staff room rivalry and the anarchy of adolescence provoke insistent questions about history and how you teach it; about education and its purpose.The History Boys premiered at the National in May 2004.

    When the outside world comes calling, intent on manipulation for political and economic reasons, the islanders find their own world blown apart from the inside as well as beyond. Further Than The Furthest Thing is a beautifully drawn story evoking the sadness and beauty of a civilisation in crisis.Further Than The Furthest Thing premiered at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh in August, 2000.

    Fabulation is a darkly comic rags-to-riches-to-rags tale of falling down and reaching up to find the goodness within. A L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring: Daniel Breaker, Saidah Arrika Ekulona, Jon Matthews, Gary Perez, Melle Powers, Myra Lucretia Taylor, John Wesley and Charlayne Woodard.

    Denmark is changing, shaking off its medieval past. War with Norway is on the horizon. And Hamlet - son of the old king, nephew of the new - becomes increasingly entangled in a web of deception - and murder.Struggling to find his place in this strange new order Hamlet tries to rekindle his relationship with Ophelia - the daughter of Elsinore's cunning spy master, a man with plots of his own. Hamlet turns for advice and support to the one person he can trust -- Young Yorick, the slippery, unruly jester, whose father helped Hamlet through a difficult childhood. And all the while the armed forces of Fortinbras, prince of Norway, start to assemble, threatening to bring down Elsinore forever.Beautifully performed by actor Richard Armitage ("Thorin Oakenshield" in the Hobbit films), Hamlet, Prince of Denmark takes Shakespeare's original into unexpected realms, reinventing a story we thought we knew.

    His most celebrated work, Six Characters in Search of an Author, embodies the Nobel Prize-winning playwright's innovations by presenting an open-ended drama on a stage without sets.First performed in 1923, this intellectual comedy introduces six individuals to a stage where a company of actors has assembled for a rehearsal. Claiming to be the incomplete, unused creations of an author's imagination, they demand lines for a story that will explain the details of their lives. In ensuing scenes, these "real-life characters," all professing to be part of an extended family, produce a drama of sorts — punctuated by disagreements, interruptions, and arguments. In the end they are dismissed by the irate manager, their dilemma unsolved and the "truth" a matter of individual viewpoints.A tour de force exploring the many faces of reality, this classic is now available in an inexpensive edition that will be welcomed by amateur theatrical groups as well as by students of drama.

    Three plays from Pulitzer-Prize winning playwright August Wilson: Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, Fences, and Joe Turner's Come and Gone.

    We find in Beckett's masterful, exquisite prose, the familiar themes from his earlier works here expressed in the anguished murmurings of the solitary human consciousness.

    The playtext is reproduced here with footnotes which will be of no help to anyone and a letter from the authors to the Queen.

    But nothing one sees on a stage is the real thing, and some things are less real than others. Charlotte is an actress who has been appearing in a play about marriage written by her husband Henry. Max, her leading man, is also married to an actress, Annie. Both marriages are at the point of rupture because Henry and Annie have fallen in love. But is it the real thing?The Real Thing was first performed at the Strand Theatre, London, on 16 November 1982.

    Hairspray (978-1-5578-3514-7); Rent (978-1-5578-3737-0); Fiddler on the Roof (978-0-8791-0136-7)

    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.

    Through Margulies's flawless use of language and his ability to convey the truest of dialogue and characterization, we watch, as the two couples do, our closest friends going through a wrenching breakup. Not only does he create vivid detail of a marriage in decline, he also brilliantly depicts the couple's closest friends, and how this new mirror to their own marriage sends them through a whirlwind of raw emotion and self-reflection.Donald Margulies received the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Dinner with Friends. The play received numerous awards, including the American Theatre Critics Association New Play Award, the Dramatists Guild/Hull-Warriner Award, the Lucille Lortel Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award and a Drama Desk nomination, and has been produced all over the United States and around the world. In addition to his adaptation of God of Vengeance, his many plays include Collected Stories, The Country House, Sight Unseen, The Model Apartment, The Loman Family Picnic, What’s Wrong with This Picture? and Time Stands Still. Mr. Margulies currently lives with his wife and their son in New Haven, Connecticut, where he teaches playwriting at Yale University.

    But unlike the original, Farber breaks the cycle of violence, reflecting South Africa’s own transformation in the 1990s.

    R. Braunmiller, General Editors Amazon.com Exclusive The Pelican Shakespeare is available in hardcover for the first time in one complete collection only at Amazon.com. For anyone with an abiding love of the Bard and his to all of Shakepeares singular contributiOn to English literature, this complete library combines enduring beauty with the scholarship and authority demanded by modern readers. Easier to read and enjoy than massive, single-volume editions, these individual volumes feature authori tative text, essays on how the plays would have been performed in Shakespeare's day, and notes valuable for general readers, teachers, students, and theater professionals. Here, in 38 truly stunning heirloom volumes, are William Shakespeare's classic plays and sonnets in the only complete, individually-bound set of Shakespeare's works currently available. The tragedies, comedies, histories, and poetry, so beloved by millions of readers and theater-goers, are reproduced here in luxurious, linen-bound hardcovers, enhanced by silver stamping on the covers and spines, and sewn-in, satin ribbon markers. The distinguished Pelican Shakespeare editions have sold five million copies. Since the series debuted more than forty years ago, developments in scholarship have revolutionized our understanding of William Shakespeare, his time, and his works. The general editors of the Pelican Shakespeare, Stephen Orgel of Stanford University and A. R. Braunmiller of UCLA, have assembled a team of six eminent scholars who, along with the general editors themselves, have prepared new introductions and note * Authoritative and meticulously researched texts * Illuminating new introductions and notes by distinguished authors * Essays on Shakespeare's life, the theatrical world of his time, and the selection of texts * A handsome new design inside and out * Deluxe packaging, including a full-linen case with silver stamping, ribbon marker, printed endpapers, and acid-free paper * Line numbers marking every tenth line and footnote references * Both glossorial and explanatory notes appearing conveniently at the foot of the page Included are: Tragedies Antony and Cleopatra Coriolanus Hamlet Julius Caesar King Lear Macbeth Othello Romeo and Juliet Timon of Athens Titus Andronicus Histories Henry IV, Part I Henry IV, Part II Henry V Henry VI, Part I Henry VI, Part II Henry VI, Part III Henry VIII King John Richard II Richard III Comedies All's Well That Ends Well As You Like It The Comedy of Errors Cymbeline Love's Labor's Lost Measure for Measure The Merry Wives of Windsor The Merchant of Venice A Midsummer Night's Dream Much Ado About Nothing Pericles The Taming of the Shrew The Tempest Troilus and Cressida Twelfth Night Two Gentlemen of Verona The Winter's Tale Poetry The Sonnets