Summer Of The Aliens


Louis Nowra - 1992
    He has also written fim scripts and for television.

A Feminine Ending


Sarah Treem - 2009
    But at the moment, she's living in New York City and writing advertising jingles to pay the rent while her fiancé, Jack, pursues his singing career. So when Amanda's mother, Kim, calls one evening from New Hampshire and asks for her help with something she can't discuss over the phone, Amanda is only too happy to leave New York. Once home, Kim reveals that she's leaving Amanda's father and needs help packing. Amanda balks and ends up (gently) hitting the postman, who happens to be her first boyfriend. They spend the night together in an apple orchard, where Amanda tries to tell Billy how her life got sidetracked. It has something to do with being a young woman in a profession that only recognizes famous men. Billy acts like he might have the answer, but doesn't. Neither does Amanda's mother. Or, for that matter, her father. A Feminine Ending is a gentle, bittersweet comedy about a girl who knows what she wants but not quite how to get it. Her parents are getting divorced, her fiancée is almost famous, her first love reappears, and there's a lot of noise in her head but none of it is music. Until the end. "Ending′ is a promising beginning...the playwright has a sense of humor that brings to mind a budding Wendy Wasserstein and a liberated sense of form that evokes a junior Paula Vogel."-Los Angeles Times "Darkly comic. FEMININE ENDING has undeniable wit." -New York Post. "Appealingly outlandish humor." -The New York Times. "Courageous. The 90-minute piece swerves with nerve and naivete. Sarah Treem has a voice all her own." -Newsday.

J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit


Patricia Gray - 1968
    By Patricia Gray. Based on the classic by J.R.R. Tolkien.Cast: approximately 26. Variable number of hobbits and other inhabitants of Middle Earth. It's unusual for a modern work to become a classic so quickly, but Tolkien's "ring" stories, which began with The Hobbit, clearly are in this very special category. They stir the imagination and intellect of everyone they touch. Bilbo, one of the most conservative of all Hobbits, is asked to leave his large, roomy and very dry home in the ground in order to set off as chief robber in an attempt to recover an important treasure. It's the last thing that any sensitive Hobbit would want to do, but great benefit eventually results—not only for Bilbo but for all of the Hobbits who inhabit Middle Earth—and the hearts of those children and adults who continue to enjoy this kind of magic. Multiple simple sets. Approximate running time: 120 minutes.

Fuddy Meers


David Lindsay-Abaire - 2000
    Writing in the New York Observer, John Heilpern called him some kind of comic genius. And after its sold-out run at MTC, the play moved downtown to the Minetta Lane Theatre for an open-ended commercial engagement. Fuddy Meers revolves around an amnesiac, Claire, who wakes up every morning as a blank slate, on which her family must imprint the facts of her life. On this particular day, the shenanigans begin with Claire being abducted by a limping man who claims to be her brother trying to save her from her evil husband. They drive to the home of her mother, who has had a stroke that left her aphasic (her attempt to say funny mirrors provides the play's title. The ensuing mayhem is both deliriously funny and oddly touching.

Everybody


Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
    This modern riff on the fifteenth-century morality play Everyman follows Everybody (chosen from amongst the cast by lottery at each performance) as they journey through life’s greatest mystery—the meaning of living.

The Shape of a Girl / Jewel


Joan Macleod - 2002
    MacLeod’s young protagonist enters all the bright open avenues of peer-group play and the dark blind alleys of individual and collective terror, as she discovers within herself both the capacity for and the conflict between impulses of good and evil. In thinking back on the history of her own tight-knit group of friends, she begins to see how in the excitement of belonging to a ritualized, secret collective, the self is created by the increasing dehumanization of the other—of both the bully and the victim. The Shape of a Girl goes far beyond a simple dramatization of the seemingly inexplicable code of silence and tacit complicity which surrounded the sensationalized Reena Virk murder in 1997 on which the play is based. It speaks eloquently and compassionately to a world increasingly dominated by all forms of collectivised and ritualized tribalist hatred, and offers the embrace of trust as the only way out of this circle of violence.Jewel is also based on a real-life catastrophe—the sinking of the Ocean Ranger, an oil rig off the coast of Newfoundland, on Valentine’s Day, 1982. Three years later, a widow, Marjorie Clifford, at home in her trailer in Fort St. John, British Columbia, begins to take the first step in understanding that the humanity of love, in all of its tentative frailty, uncertainty and promise, can free a life paralyzed and dominated by loss.

Faith Healer


Brian Friel - 1980
    From their different versions of the healer's performances and a terrible event at the centre of the drama, Friel creates a powerful and haunting work of art.

Harvey


Mary Chase - 1944
    Dowd starts to introduce his imaginary friend Harvey, a six and a half foot rabbit, to guests at a dinner party, his sister, Veta, has seen as much of his eccentric behavior as she can tolerate. She decides to have him committed to a sanitarium to spare her daughter, Myrtle Mae, and their family, from future embarrassment. Problems arise, however, when Veta herself is mistakenly assumed to be on the fringe of lunacy when she explains to doctors that years of living with Elwood's hallucination have caused her to see Harvey also! The doctors commit Veta instead of Elwood, but when the truth comes out, the search is on for Elwood and his invisible companion. When he shows up at the sanitarium looking for his lost friend Harvey it seems that the mild-mannered Elwood's delusion has had a strange influence on more than one of the doctors. Only at the end does Veta realize that maybe Harvey isn't so bad after all.

Cabaret: The Illustrated Book and Lyrics


Joe Masteroff - 1999
    Surely one of the most acclaimed and beloved plays of all time, this modern classic is honored for the first time in a lavishly illustrated book. Here is the complete musical book by Joe Masteroff and all the words of the songs written by John Kander and Fred Ebb. It is illustrated with more than 100 photographs and drawings (including 74 in full color) of the original cast of the Roundabout 's smash Broadway production by Joan Marcus, never-before- published backstage photographs by Rivka Katvan, and archival photos of past productions. The accompanying text explores the evolution of the play in all its incarnations, from the 1930 stories of Christopher Isherwood to two films and three stage adaptations. Here are all the fantastic artists who have brought this play to life: Julie Harris (the original Sally Bowles), Joel Grey, Liza Minnelli, Natasha Richardson, Alan Cumming, Ron Rifkin, and directors Hal Prince, Bob Fosse, Sam Mendes, and Rob Marshall. Also featured are original drawings by costume designer William Ivey Long and set designer Robert Brill. For theatre lovers and film fans, for those who've seen the play and those who haven't, this book is an exclusive insider's glimpse into a stage and film phenomenon, one of the most astonishing artistic achievements of our time.

Plays: One


Arthur Miller - 1988
    Formerly part of the World Dramatists series of play collections by classic and modern playwrights, including foreign works in workable and accurate translations, this title and seven others are reissued in a new format under the heading, World Classics.

Bent


Martin Sherman - 1979
    Martin Sherman's worldwide hit play Bent took London by storm in 1979 when it was first performed by the Royal Court Theatre, with Ian McKellen as Max (a character written with the actor in mind). The play itself caused an uproar. "It educated the world," Sherman explains. "People knew about how the Third Reich treated Jews and, to some extent, gypsies and political prisoners. But very little had come out about their treatment of homosexuals." Gays were arrested and interned at work camps prior to the genocide of Jews, gypsies, and handicapped, and continued to be imprisoned even after the fall of the Third Reich and liberation of the camps. The play Bent highlights the reason why - a largely ignored German law, Paragraph 175, making homosexuality a criminal offense, which Hitler reactivated and strengthened during his rise to power.

She Kills Monsters: Young Adventurers Edition


Qui Nguyen - 2012
    When Agnes finds Tilly's Dungeons & Dragons notebook, however, she stumbles into a journey of discovery and action-packed adventure in the imaginary world that was Tilly's refuge. In this high-octane dramatic comedy laden with homicidal fairies, nasty ogres, and 90s pop culture, acclaimed young playwright Qui Nguyen offers a heart-pounding homage to the geek and warrior within us all.

Lonely Planet - Acting Edition


Steven Dietz - 1994
    Jody is in his forties and runs a map store. Not one for the outside world, he stays in his store all the time. His friend, Carl is in his late thirties and has been bringing chairs of dead friends into Jody's store and leaving them there. When Jody needs to take an AIDS test, Carl tries to convince him it is not only okay to leave the store, but also that he must take responsibility for his life. If he doesn't, he will join the set of chairs that Carl has taken great pains to place in the right spots around the store. Jody finally leaves the map store to take his HIV test and return to find Carl sitting in a chair of his own. With this gesture, we know that Carl has joined the many of their friends who have died, but now Jody must take Carl's place as the caretaker.

Racing Demon


David Hare - 1990
    David Hare's play, which details the struggle of four clergymen to make sense of their mission in South London, opened to universal acclaim.

Matt & Ben


Mindy Kaling - 2004
    The laughs come at a manic pace, inthis delightfully venomous play that has taken off-Broadway by storm.