The Man with No Borders


Richard C. Morais - 2019
    Nearing the end of a long and tumultuous life, he’s overcome by hallucinatory memories of the past. Among his most cherished memories are those of his boyhood in 1950s Franco-era Spain and the bucolic afternoons he spent salmon fishing on the Sella River with his father, uncle, and much-loved younger brother. But these fond reveries are soon eclipsed by something greater. José’s regrets and dark family secrets are flooding back, as is the devastating tragedy that drove José into exile and makes him bear the burden of a soul-deep guilt.Now, as his three estranged sons return to their father’s side, José hopes to outpace death long enough to finally put his house in order and exorcise its demons. Only in his quest for redemption can José begin to understand the meaning of his life—and what his legacy has meant to others.

The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda


Ishmael Reed - 2020
    today."   -Gerald Horne, author of The Counter-Revolution of 1776:  Slave Resistance and the Origins of the USA This powerful play, originally produced at the Nuyorican Poets Café, comprehensively dismantles the phenomenon of Lin-Manuel Miranda and Hamilton. Reed uses the musical’s crimes against history to insist on a radical, cleareyed way of looking at our past and our selves. Both durable and timely, this goes beyond mere corrective – it is a meticulously researched rebuttal, an absorbing drama, and brilliant rallying cry for justice. The perfect tie-in to both the success of and backlash to Hamilton, it is the major voice in contrast to the recent movie. It captures both the earnest engagement that fans of the musical desire, as well as the exhausted disbelief of those who can’t stand it. Teachers, students and fans of drama, literature, and history will find much to love. It is written by one of America’s most respected and original writers, who is eagerly promoting it, and who is long overdue for a renaissance.

Murder in the Cathedral


T.S. Eliot - 1936
    S. Eliot's verse dramatization of the murder of Thomas Becket at Canterbury, winner of the Nobel Prize for LiteratureThe Archbishop Thomas Becket speaks fatal words before he is martyred in T. S. Eliot's best-known drama, based on the murder of the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1170. Praised for its poetically masterful handling of issues of faith, politics, and the common good, T. S. Eliot's play bolstered his reputation as the most significant poet of his time.

All My Sons


Arthur Miller - 1947
    Deever was sent to prison while Keller escaped punishment and went on to make lots of money. In a work of tremendous power, a love affair between Keller's son, Chris, and Ann Deever, Herbert's daughter, the bitterness of George Keller, who returns from the war to find his father in prison and his father's partner free, and the reaction of a son to his father's guilt escalate toward a climax of electrifying intensity.Winner of the Drama Critics' Award for Best New Play in 1947, All My Sons established Arthur Miller as a leading voice in the American theater. All My Sons introduced themes that thread through Miller's work as a whole: the relationship between fathers and sons, and the conflict between business and personal ethics.

A Prairie Home Companion: English Majors


Garrison Keillor - 2008
     ENGLISH MAJORS. You know who you are and here is a double-CD celebrating the secret society of those who, though they may be chauffeuring kids to swim lessons or writing Unix programs or frying cheeseburgers, still could, if need be, write a term paper on the water imagery in "The Waste Land." Includes the "Six-Minute Hamlet," the "Ten-Minute MacBeth," tributes to Hawthorne and Kerouac and Emily Dickinson, a Guy Noir adventure that exposes an M.F.A. scam, the Ballad of John Henry ('John Henry was an English major and poetry was his line. He sat by the window with his yellow legal pad and he wrote one sentence at a time.'), and more. With guest appearances by Allen Ginsberg, Billy Collins, Roy Blount Jr., Robert Bly, Donald Hall, and Calvin Trillin.

Peter and Alice


John Logan - 2013
    Enchantment and reality collide at a 1932 meeting between Alice Liddell Hargreaves, the original Alice in Wonderland, and Peter Llewelyn Davies, the original Peter Pan. Peter and Alice, which opened on London's West End in March 2013, stars Judi Dench and Ben Whishaw.

Almost an Evening


Ethan Coen - 2009
    Now, one half of the duo, Ethan Coen, adds playwriting to his eclectic bio. In these three short plays that ran to sold-out audiences Off-Broadway in 2008, the theme is hell–both on earth and in the hereafter.In “Waiting,” a man faces an uncertain future in an uncertain location that seems to be some kind of waiting room. The anxiety and despair hark back to dramas of the fifties–Sartre, Beckett, Pinter.“Four Benches” depicts an unlikely meeting in a steam room between a straight-talking Texan and an uptight Brit. Both men learn from the encounter, though only one survives it.In “Debate,” the cantankerous god of the Old Testament roundly abuses the mealymouthed god of the New. His profanity and ill humor receive a startling comeuppance, and further reversals and changes of point of view lead to a denouement that is no more preposterous than anything else in the play.Clever, provocative, and as engaging as the best fiction, these plays showcase yet another talent of one of our most celebrated contemporary writers.

The Great Acting Teachers and Their Methods (Career Development Series) (Career Development Book)


Richard Brestoff - 1995
    Beginning with Quintilian and Delsarre he guides us to the present with an inside look at what is currently being taught in the major acting schools and private acting studios; The Actor's Studio, Yale University, NYU, Juillard and many more are visited. Great Acting Teachers and Their Methods will help you understand the most important ideas about acting, where they originated and how they are used in training programs today. Some of the teachers focused on are Stella Adler, Stanford Meisner, Lee Strasberg, Brecht, Stanislavsky, and Suzuki.

The Threepenny Opera


Bertolt Brecht - 1928
    Based on John Gay's eighteenth-century Beggar's Opera, the play is set in Victorian England's Soho but satirizes the bourgeois society of the Weimar Republic through its wry love story of Polly Peachum and "Mack the Knife" Macheath. With Kurt Weill's music, which was one of the earliest and most successful attempts to introduce jazz into the theater, it became a popular hit throughout the Western world.Commissioned and authorized by the Brecht estate, Arcade's definitive edition contains the acclaimed translation by Ralph Manheim and John Willett that was first staged at the York Theatre Royal and subsequently at Lincoln Center in New York. Willett and Manheim, the joint editors of Brecht's complete dramatic work in English, also provide Brecht's own notes and discarded songs, as well as extensive editorial commentary on the genesis of his play.

Other Side of the Game


Amanda Parris - 2019
    Some forty years later, in the Hip Hop Generation, Nicole reunites with her ex-boyfriend on a basketball court, wondering where he’s been, when a police officer stops them.In this striking debut, Amanda Parris turns the spotlight on the Black women who organize communities, support their incarcerated loved ones, and battle institutions, living each day by a ride-or-die philosophy, strengthening their voices and demanding to be heard.

The Visit


Friedrich Dürrenmatt - 1956
    Unlike an earlier version adapted for the English-language stage, this translation adheres faithfully to the author's original play as it was published and performed in German.The action of The Visit takes place in the small town of Guellen, "somewhere in Central Europe." An elderly millionairesse, Claire Zachanassian, returns to Guellen, her home town, after an absence of many years. Merely on the promise of her millions, she shortly turns what has been a depressed area into a boom town. But there is a condition attached to her largess, which the natives of Guellen realize only after they have become enmeshed in her vengeful plot: murder. Out of these elements, Durrenmatt has fashioned a many-leveled play which is at once a macabre parable, a deeply moving tragedy, and a scathing indictment of the power of greed.

Translations


Brian Friel - 1981
    The 'scholars' are a cross-section of the local community, from a semi-literate young farmer to and elderly polygot autodidact who reads and quotes Homer in the orginal.In a nearby field camps a recently arrived detachment of the Royal Engineers, engaged on behalf of the Britsh Army and Government in making the first Ordnance Survey. For the purposes ofr cartography, the local Gaelic place names have to be recorded and transliterated - or translated - into English, in examining the effects of this operation on the lives of a small group of people, Irish and English, Brian Friel skillfully reveals the unexperctedly far-reaching personal and cultural effects of an action which is at first sight purely administrative and harmless. While remaining faithful to the personalities and relationshiops of those people at that time he makes a richly suggestive statement about Irish - and English - history.

The Long And The Short And The Tall


Willis Hall - 1959
    Many have large casts and an equal mix of boy and girl parts. Set in the Malayan jungle in 1942, this play explores what happens when soldiers have to confront the reality of war.

The History Boys


Alan Bennett - 2004
    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.

The Elephant Man


Bernard Pomerance - 1979
    A horribly deformed young man, who has been a freak attraction in traveling side shows, is found abandoned and helpless and is admitted for observation to Whitechapel, a prestigious London hospital. Under the care of a famous young doctor, who educates him and introduces him to London society, Merrick changes from a sensational object of pity to the urbane and witty favorite of the aristocracy and literati. But his belief that he can become a man like any other is a dream never to be realized.