Book picks similar to
Rapture, Blister, Burn by Gina Gionfriddo
plays
drama
theatre
plays-read
Doubt, a Parable
John Patrick Shanley - 2005
It is an inspired study in moral uncertainty with the compellingly certain structure of an old-fashioned detective drama. Even as Doubt holds your conscious attention as an intelligently measured debate play, it sends off stealth charges that go deeper emotionally. One of the year’s ten best.”—Ben Brantley, The New York Times“[The] #1 show of the year. How splendid it feels to be trusted with such passionate, exquisite ambiguity unlike anything we have seen from this prolific playwright so far. Blunt yet subtle, manipulative but full of empathy for all sides, the play is set in 1964 but could not be more timely. Doubt is a lean, potent drama . . . passionate, exquisite, important, and engrossing.”—Linda Winer, NewsdayChosen as the best play of the year by over 10 newspapers and magazines, Doubt is set in a Bronx Catholic school in 1964, where a strong-minded woman wrestles with conscience and uncertainty as she is faced with concerns about one of her male colleagues. This play by John Patrick Shanley—the Bronx-born-and-bred playwright and Academy Award-winning author of Moonstruck—dramatizes issues straight from today’s headlines within a world re-created with knowing detail and a judicious eye. After a stunning, sold-out production at Manhattan Theatre Club, the play has transferred to Broadway.John Patrick Shanley is the author of numerous plays, including Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, Dirty Story, Four Dogs and a Bone, Psychopathia Sexualis, Sailor’s Song, Savage in Limbo, and Where’s My Money?. He has written extensively for TV and film, and his credits include the teleplay for Live from Baghdad and screenplays for Congo, Alive, Five Corners, Joe Versus the Volcano (which he also directed), and Moonstruck, for which he won an Academy Award for original screenplay.
Lysistrata
Aristophanes
Led by the title character, the women of the warring city-states of Greece agree to withhold sexual favours with their husbands until they agree to cease fighting. The war of the sexes that ensues makes Lysistrata a bawdy comedy without peer in the history of theatre.
The Rover
Aphra Behn - 1681
It is a revision of Thomas Killigrew's play "Thomaso", or "The Wanderer" (1664), and features multiple plot lines, dealing with the amorous adventures of a group of Englishmen and women in Naples at Carnival time. According to Restoration poet John Dryden, it "lacks the manly vitality of Killigrew's play, but shows greater refinement of expression." The play stood for three centuries as "Behn's most popular and most respected play."
The Musical Comedy Murders of 1940
John Bishop - 1998
As the composer, lyricist, actors and director prepare their performance, and a blizzard cuts off any possible retreat, bodies start to drop in plain sight, knives spring out of nowhere, masked figures drag their victims behind swiveling bookcases, and accusing fingers point in all directions. However, and with no thanks to the bumbling police inspector who snowshoes in to investigate, the mystery is solved in the nick of time and the "Slasher" unmasked-but not before the audience has been treated to a sidesplitting good time and a generous serving of the author's biting, satiric and refreshingly irreverent wit.
Pippin
Stephen Schwartz - 1975
The title character, here called Pippin, is a naive, inexperienced young man looking to make his mark in the world. He seeks glory and personal fulfillment first as a soldier, then as a lover, and finally as a revolutionary leader promoting progressive social ideas. After every attempt at success has left him disappointed and frustrated, until he is on the brink of utter despair, Pippin finds himself attracted to the widow Catherine and her young son. Ultimately, he is given a choice between either performing a single great deed that will bring him instant fame and glory but just as instantly cut short his young life, or settling for a long, comfortable, but mediocre existence as a domestic non-entity taking care of his sweet but completely unremarkable family.
Well
Lisa Kron - 2005
It explores the dynamics of health, family and community with the story of her mother’s extraordinary ability to heal a changing neighborhood, despite her inability to heal herself. In this solo show with other people in it, Kron asks the provocative question: Are we responsible for our own illness? But the answers she gets are much more complicated than she bargained for when the play spins dangerously out of control into riotously funny and unexpected territory.Lisa Kron has received numerous honors, including several OBIE Awards, the Cal Arts/Alpert Award, the Bessie Award and the GLAAD Media Award. Ms. Kron lives in New York City and Los Angeles.
Bfe
Julia Cho - 2006
Raised by an unbalanced mother who thinks the perfect birthday gift is plastic surgery, and a shy uncle who spends most of his time painting miniatures, Panny is afraid she s hopelessly different. Thanks to a fortuitous misdial, she strikes up a phone friendship that seems to be the connection she s been longing for. However, she soon finds that out in BFE, a.k.a. "the middle of nowhere," anything can happen and usually does.
A Doll's House, Part 2
Lucas Hnath - 2018
This climactic event—when Nora slams the door on everything in her life—instantly propelled world drama into the modern age. In A DOLL’S HOUSE, PART 2, many years have passed since Nora’s exit. Now, there’s a knock on that same door. Nora has returned. But why? And what will it mean for those she left behind?
Stage Door
Edna Ferber - 1926
The scene is Mrs. Orcutt's boarding house, where the hopes and ambitions of sixteen young women are revealed in scenes of entertaining comedy. Contrasted with this are the cases of the girl without talent and the elderly actress whose days are over. The central plot has to do with courageous Terry Randall, who fights against discouragement to a position in the theater where we are sure she will conquer. One of her fellow aspirants gives up in despair, one gets married, and one goes into pictures, but Terry, with the help of idealistic David Kingsley, sticks to her guns.
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.
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Tennessee Williams - 1955
The play also daringly showcased the burden of sexuality repressed in the agony of her husband, Brick Pollitt. In spite of the public controversy Cat stirred up, it was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the Drama Critics Circle Award for that year. Williams, as he so often did with his plays, rewrote Cat on a Hot Tin Roof for many years—the present version was originally produced at the American Shakespeare Festival in 1974 with all the changes that made Williams finally declare the text to be definitive, and was most recently produced on Broadway in the 2003–2004 season. This definitive edition also includes Williams&rsquoi; essay “Person-to-Person,” Williams’ notes on the various endings, and a short chronology of the author’s life. One of America’s greatest living playwrights, as well as a friend and colleague of Williams, Edward Albee has written a concise introduction to the play from a playwright’s perspective, examining the candor, sensuality, power, and impact of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof then and now.
Picasso at the Lapin Agile and Other Plays
Steve Martin - 1994
He is also an accomplished screenwriter who has in the past few years turned his hand to writing plays. The results, collected here, hilariously explore serious questions of love, happiness and the meaning of life; they are rich with equal parts of pain and slapstick humour, torment and wit.
The Taming of the Shrew
William Shakespeare
Lucentio falls in love with Bianca, the apparently ideal younger daughter of the wealthy Baptista Minola. But before they can marry, Bianca's formidable elder sister, Katherine, must be wed. Petruchio, interested only in the huge dowry, arranges to marry Katherine -against her will- and enters into a battle of the sexes that has endured as one of Shakespeare's most enjoyable works.