Book picks similar to
Corpus Christi by Terrence McNally
plays
lgbt
drama
theater
Elizabeth Rex
Timothy Findley - 2000
In this daring and original production of Timothy Findley's Governor-General Award winning play, William Shakespeare and the formidable Virgin Queen, Elizabeth I, are brought together in a remarkable encounter on the night of April 22, 1616. The night the Queen's Lover will be executed, by the Queen's decree.
The Complete Poems and Plays, 1909-1950
T.S. Eliot - 1952
This omnibus collection includes all of the author’s early poetry as well as the Four Quartets, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, and the plays Murder in the Cathedral, The Family Reunion, and The Cocktail Party.
Spike Heels
Theresa Rebeck - 1991
The combatants are a sexy, volatile young woman and three Back Bay types a writer, a lawyer and a fiancee in sensible shoes. The setting is Boston, the ending is happy and laughter abounds."Stinging one liners." N.Y. Daily News."Places a superior wryly pleasing ... fashionable femin
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Stephen Sondheim - 1974
Dunstan's Church, just a few blocks away from the Royal Courts of Justice. On this site, they say, he robbed and murdered more than 150 customers. To dispose of their remains, he carried them through underground tunnels to the bakery of one Mrs. Lovett a few blocks away, where they supplied the stuffing for her meat pies, the favorite mid-day repast of the lawyers who worked nearby and got their shaves from Sweeney Todd. The man you lunched with yesterday could be your lunch today!The story first appeared in 1846 as a best-selling "penny dreadful", a sensational thriller published in installments. Before the final chapters even had a chance to hit the stands, the first stage version was packing them in at the Royal Britannia Saloon. Since then, there have been numerous stage and literary versions of the story.This script has been specially commissioned by Blackstone Audio, Inc., based on the original sources of the tale.
A Taste of Honey
Shelagh Delaney - 1956
Jo's greatest fear is that her illegitimate baby might be mentally deficient like her own father. To soothe, clean and cook for her is Geof, an effeminate art student, with whom she makes a temporary home. Bruised by insensitivity and rejection, the boy and girl find a very real comfort in each other.
Three Plays: Our Town, The Skin of Our Teeth, and The Matchmaker
Thornton Wilder - 1954
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1943.The Matchmaker—Wilder's brilliant 1954 farce about money and love starring that irrepressible busybody Dolly Gallagher Levi. This play inspired the Broadway musical Hello, Dolly!.
Gem of the Ocean
August Wilson - 2003
Theatergoers who have followed August Wilson’s career will find in Gem a touchstone for everything else he has written.”—Ben Brantley, The New York Times“Wilson’s juiciest material. The play holds the stage and its characters hammer home, strongly, the notion of newfound freedom.”—Michael Phillips, Chicago TribuneGem of the Ocean is the play that begins it all. Set in 1904 Pittsburgh, it is chronologically the first work in August Wilson’s decade-by-decade cycle dramatizing the African American experience during the 20th century—an unprecedented series that includes the Pulitzer Prize–winning plays Fences and The Piano Lesson. Aunt Esther, the drama’s 287-year-old fiery matriarch, welcomes into her Hill District home Solly Two Kings, who was born into slavery and scouted for the Union Army, and Citizen Barlow, a young man from Alabama searching for a new life. Gem of the Ocean recently played across the country and on Broadway, with Phylicia Rashad as Aunt Esther.Earlier in 2005, on the completion of the final work of his ten play cycle-surely the most ambitious American dramatic project undertaken in our history-August Wilson disclosed his bout with cancer, an illness of unusual ferocity that would eventually claim his life on October 2. Fittingly the Broadway theatre where his last play will be produced in 2006 has been renamed the August Wilson Theater in his honor. His legacy will animate the theatre and stir the human heart for decades to come.
The Mountaintop
Katori Hall - 2011
Winner of the Olivier Award and set to open on Broadway in September 2011, The Mountaintop is set at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis in 1968, on the night before Martin Luther King is assassinated and on the day he delivered a speech in which he foretold his own fate, “I may not get there with you, but I want you to know that tonight, we as a people will get to the Promised Land.”
Playwright Katori Hall takes this historic date with destiny and weaves a powerful surrealistic fantasy about a conversation between King and a mysterious hotel maid who brings him a cup of coffee and prompts him to confront his life, his past, his legacy and the plight and future of African-Americans. Hall's insight, light touch and lively mood depicts King as a real man with very human foibles who was nonetheless capable of inspiring millions to hope and move toward a momentous societal shift for equality and justice.
War of the Foxes
Richard Siken - 2015
In this restless, swerving book simple questions—such as, Why paint a bird?—are immediately complicated by concerns of morality, human capacity, and the ways we look to art for meaning and purpose while participating in its—and our own—invention.
Appropriate
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins - 2013
As his three adult children sort through a lifetime of hoarded mementos and junk, they collide over clutter, debt, and a contentious family history. But after a disturbing discovery surfaces among their father's possessions, the reunion takes a turn for the explosive, unleashing a series of crackling surprises and confrontations.Winner of the 2014–2015 Obie Award for Best New American Play.
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.