Book picks similar to
Clothes for a Summer Hotel by Tennessee Williams
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4.48 Psychosis
Sarah Kane - 2000
The struggle of the self to remain intact has moved in her work from civil war, into the family, into the couple, into the individual, and finally into the theatre of phychosis: the mind itself. This play was written in 1999 shortly before the playwright took her own life at age 28. On the page, the piece looks like a poem. No characters are named, and even their number is unspecified. It could be a journey through one person's mind, or an interview between a doctor and his patient.
A Doll's House
Frank McGuinness - 1996
But as her economic dependence becomes brutally clear, Nora's acceptance of the status quo undergoes a profound change. To the horror of the bewildered Torvald, himself caught in the tight web of a conservative society which demands that he exert strict control, Nora comes to see that only possible true course of action is to leave the family home.Frank McGuinness's version of A Doll's House received its London premiere in October 1996 and opened on Broadway in 1997, where the production won four Tony Awards.
Anna in the Tropics
Nilo Cruz - 2003
. . there are many kinds of light.The light of fires. The light of stars.The light that reflects off rivers.Light that penetrates through cracks.Then there’s the type of light that reflects off the skin.—Nilo Cruz, Anna in the TropicsThis lush romantic drama depicts a family of cigar makers whose loves and lives are played out against the backdrop of Depression-era America. Set in Ybor City (Tampa) in 1930, Cruz imagines the catalytic effect the arrival of a new "lector" (who reads Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina to the workers as they toil in the cigar factory) has on a Cuban-American family. Cruz celebrates the search for identity in a new land.Reviews: "The words of Nilo Cruz waft from the stage like a scented breeze. They sparkle and prickle and swirl, enveloping those who listen in both specific place and time . . . and in timeless passions that touch us all. In Anna in the Tropics, Cruz claims his place as a storyteller of intricate craftsmanship and poetic power."—Miami Herald“Deeply engrossing.” –Robert Hurwitt, San Francisco Chronicle“Earnestly poetic…Mr. Cruz has created a work as wistful and affectingly ambitious as its characters. Anna in the Tropics reaches for the artistic heavens -- specifically, that corner of eternity occupied by the plays of Anton Chekhov, where yearning is an existential condition.” –Ben Brantley, New York TimesNilo Cruz is a young Cuban-American playwright whose work has been produced widely around the United States, including the Public Theater (New York, NY), South Coast Repertory (Costa Mesa, CA), Magic Theatre (San Francisco, CA), Oregon Shakespeare Festival, McCarter Theater (Princeton, NJ) and New Theatre (Coral Gables, FL). His other plays include Night Train to Bolina, Two Sisters and a Piano, Hortensia and the Museum of Dreams, and Anna in the Tropics (Winner of 2003 Pulitzer Prize). Mr. Cruz teaches playwriting at Yale University and lives in New York City.
Ruined
Lynn Nottage - 2009
. . . Lynn Nottage’s beautiful, hideous and unpretentiously important play [is] a shattering, intimate journey into faraway news reports.”—Linda Winer, Newsday“An intense and gripping new drama . . . the kind of new play we desperately need: well-informed and unafraid of the world’s brutalities. Nottage is one of our finest playwrights, a smart, empathetic and daring storyteller who tells a story an audience won’t expect.”—David Cote, Time Out New YorkA rain forest bar and brothel in the brutally war-torn Congo is the setting for Lynn Nottage’s extraordinary new play. The establishment’s shrewd matriarch, Mama Nadi, keeps peace between customers from both sides of the civil war, as government soldiers and rebel forces alike choose from her inventory of women, many already “ruined” by rape and torture when they were pressed into prostitution. Inspired by interviews she conducted in Africa with Congo refugees, Nottage has crafted an engrossing and uncommonly human story with humor and song served alongside its postcolonial and feminist politics in the rich theatrical tradition of Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage.Lynn Nottage’s plays include Crumbs from the Table of Joy, Fabulation, and Intimate Apparel, winner of the American Theatre Critics’ Steinberg New Play Award and the Francesca Primus Prize. Her plays have been widely produced, with Intimate Apparel receiving more productions than any other play in America during the 2005-2006 season.
The Vagina Monologues
Eve Ensler - 1996
They were a little shy. But once they got going, you couldn't stop them. Women secretly love to talk about their vaginas. They get very excited, mainly because no one's ever asked them before.
Fallen Angels
Noël Coward - 1925
A farce with a hilarious drunk scene for two stylish comediennes.
The Diviners
Jim Leonard - 1983
platforms Winner of the American College Theatre Festival, this marvelously theatrical play is the story of a disturbed young man and his friendship with a disenchanted preacher in southern Indiana in the early 1930s. When the boy was young he almost drowned. This trauma and the loss of his mother in the same accident has left him deathly afraid of water. The preacher, set on breaking away from a long line of Kentucky family preachers, is determined not to do what h
A Thousand Clowns
Herb Gardner - 1962
Tired of writing cheap comedy gags for "Chipper the Chipmunk," a children's television star, Murray finds himself unemployed with plenty of free time with which to pursue his...pursuits. Lectured by his conventional brother Arnold and hounded by "the system," Murray is paid a visit by bickering, uptight social workers, Sandra and Albert, and finds himself solving their problems as well as most of his own."Would be a standout comedy in any season. Filled with laughter and warmth and sweetness and inspired daffiness. One of the quintessential New York comedies."-New York Daily News "An extraordinarily funny play with some brilliantly offbeat lines."-The New York Post
Dracula
Steven Dietz - 1996
Mysterious, gloomy castles and open graves at midnight are just two of the Gothic devices used to chilling effect in this 19th-century horror classic that turned an obscure figure from Eastern European folklore into a towering icon of film and literature.
Moon Over Buffalo
Ken Ludwig - 1995
This backstage farce by the author of Lend Me a Tenor brought Carol Burnett back to Broadway co-starring with Philip Bosco as her megalomanic, drunken husband and leading man. Fate has given these thespians one more shot at starring roles in The Scarlet Pimpernel epic and director Frank Capra himself is en route to Buffalo to catch their matinee performance. Will Charlotte appear or run off with their agent? Will George be sober enough to emote? Will Capra see Cyrano, Private Lives or a disturbing mixture of the two? Hilarious misunderstandings pile on madcap misadventures, in this valentine to Theatre Hams everywhere.
Stupid Fucking Bird
Aaron Posner - 2016
A nubile young actress wrestles with an aging Hollywood star for the affections of a renowned novelist. And everyone discovers just how disappointing love, art, and growing up can be. In this irreverent, contemporary, and very funny remix of Chekhov’s The Seagull, Aaron Posner stages a timeless battle between young and old, past and present, in search of the true meaning of it all. Original songs composed by James Sugg draw the famously subtextual inner thoughts of Chekhov’s characters explicitly to the surface. STUPID FUCKING BIRD will tickle, tantalize, and incite you to consider how art, love, and revolution fuel your own pursuit of happiness.
Last of the Red Hot Lovers
Neil Simon - 1970
Simon has created a great character here...it is extraordinarily funny and yet also charming...as witty as ever, perhaps wittier."-The New York Times "Delightfully hilarious and witty, as well as filled with wisdom about human nature...an uproariously funny author. But he is far more than that. He has a mellow and compassionate understanding of how weak and essentially well meaning mankind behaves...a genuinely brilliant play."-New York Post
The Tragedy of Mister Morn
Vladimir Nabokov - 2012
Secretly in love with Midia, the wife of a banished revolutionary, Morn finds himself facing renewed bloodshed and disaster when Midia's husband returns, provoking a duel and the return of chaos that Morn has fought so hard to prevent.The first major work and the only play of Vladimir Nabokov, author of Lolita and Pnin, The Tragedy of Mister Morn is translated and published in English here for the first time, and is a moving study of the elusiveness of happiness, the power of imagination and the eternal battle between truth and fantasy.