- Table View
- List View
Homebody/Kabul
by Tony Kushner"Tony Kushner's Homebody/Kabul is the most remarkable play in a decade . . . without a doubt the most important of our time."--John Heilpern, New York Observer"This compelling evening testifies that Mr. Kushner can still deliver his sterling brand of goods: a fusion of politics, poetry and boundless empathy transformed through language into passionate, juicy theater . . . a reminder of how essential and heartening Mr. Kushner's voice remains."--Ben Brantley, New York Times"Homebody/Kabul is a rich and intelligent piece."--Peter Brook"Searing . . . Kushner's use of language and ideas continues to make us think about the deeper questions . . . he makes the political personal . . . a masterful conglomerate of words, ideas and history."--Mary Houlihan, Chicago Sun TimesIn Homebody/Kabul, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner, author of Angels in America, has turned his penetrating gaze to the arena of global politics to create this suspenseful portrait of a dangerous collision between cultures. Written before 9-11, this play premiered in New York in December 2001 and has had subsequent highly successful productions in London, Providence, Seattle, Chicago and Los Angeles. This version incorporates all the playwright's changes over the past two years and is now the definitive version of the text.Tony Kushner's plays include A Bright Room Called Day and Slavs!; as well as adaptations of Corneille's The Illusion, Ansky's The Dybbuk, Brecht's The Good Person of Szecguan and Goethe's Stella. Current projects include: Henry Box Brown or The Mirror of Slavery; and two musical plays: St. Cecilia or The Power of Music and Caroline or Change. He recently collaborated with Maurice Sendak on an American version of the children's opera, Brundibar. He grew up in Lake Charles, Louisiana, and he lives in New York.
Caroline, or Change
by Tony Kushner Jeanine Tesori"There are moments in the history of theatre when stagecraft takes a new turn. I like to think that this happened for the American musical last week, when Tony Kushner's Caroline, or Change (at the Public), a collaboration with composer Jeanine Tesori and the director George C. Wolfe, bushwhacked a path beyond the narrative end of the deconstructed, overfreighted musicals of the past thirty years."--John Lahr, The New YorkerLouisiana, 1963: A nation reeling from the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement and the Kennedy assassination. Caroline, a black maid, and Noah, the son of the Jewish family she works for, struggle to find an identity for their friendship. Through their intimate story, this beautiful new musical portrays the changing rhythms of a nation. Tony Kushner and composer Jeanine Tesori have created a story that addresses contemporary questions of culture, community, race and class through the lens and musical pulse of the 1960s.Tony Kushner is best known for the two-part masterwork, Angels in America, recently produced by HBO as a six-hour television event, directed by Mike Nichols to universal acclaim. His other plays include Homebody/Kabul, A Bright Room Called Day and Slavs!; as well as adaptations of Corneille's The Illusion, Ansky's The Dybbuk, Brecht's The Good Person of Szechuan and Goethe's Stella. Current projects include: Henry Box Brown or The Mirror of Slavery and St. Cecilia or The Power of Music. He recently collaborated with Maurice Sendak on an American version of the children's opera, Brundibar. He grew up in Lake Charles, Louisiana, and he lives in New York.Jeanine Tesori wrote the score for Thoroughly Modern Millie, which won the 2002 Tony and Drama Desk Awards for Best Musical and the multiple-award-winning Violet.
Anna in the Tropics
by Nilo CruzWinner of the 2003 Pulitizer Prize for Drama. . . 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 America in the midst of the Depression. 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."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, the world premiere work he created for Coral Gables' intimate New Theatre, Cruz claims his place as a storyteller of intricate craftsmanship and poetic power."--Miami HeraldNilo 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, among others. Anna in the Tropics also won the Steinberg Award for Best New Play. Mr. Cruz teaches playwriting at Yale University and lives in New York City.
Two Sisters and a Piano and Other Plays
by Nilo CruzNilo Cruz is the most produced Cuban American playwright in the United States and was the first dramatist of Hispanic descent to receive the Pulitzer Prize. In his plays, Cruz almost always journeys back to Cuba, even when the play is not set there. Cruz is a sensualist, a conjurer of mysterious voyages and luxuriant landscapes. He is a poetic chronicler, a documentarian of the presence of Latin people in American life. He conveys the strength and persistence of the Cuban spirit through a wholly dramatic imagination.This volume also includes the one-act play, Capriccio.Two Sisters and a Piano "Cruz's tightly constructed study of incarcerated sisters provides the spine for an authentic study of oppression that bends but never breaks the human spirit."--VarietyBeauty of the Father "He is that rare American scribe who embraces the role of stage poet and the legacy of Tennessee Williams."--The Seattle TimesHortensia and the Museum of Dreams "Cruz explores all kinds of loss . . . lost childhood, lost freedom, lost innocence. Yet he infused Hortensia with joy, with desire, with humor and hope and healing."--The Miami HeraldLorca in a Green Dress "Like Lorca, Cruz is a lyrical writer in whom the surreal is grounded in the musical world of the senses . . . it is fresh, wonderful and dazzling."--Mail Tribune (Oregon)Nilo Cruz is the author of many plays, including A Park in Our House, A Bicycle Country, Dancing on Her Knees, Night Train to Bolina and other works. He is a recipient of numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Alton Jones Award and the Kesselring Prize. Mr. Cruz is a professor at the Yale School of Drama. He resides in New York City and is a New Dramatists alumnus.
The Fever Chart: Three Short Visions of the Middle East
by Naomi Wallace"Naomi Wallace commits the unpardonable sin of being partisan, and, the darkness and harshness of her work notwithstanding, outrageously optimistic. She seems to believe the world can change. She certainly writes as if she intends to set it on fire."--Tony KushnerNaomi Wallace, the rare writer who combines lyrical theatricality with political ferocity, turns her sight to the Middle East, with a new triptych for the stage. Vision One, A State of Innocence, is set--as the playwright describes, in "something like a small zoo, but more silent, empty, in Rafah, Palestine. Or a space that once dreamed it was a zoo"--and features a Palestinian woman, an Israeli architect, and an Israeli soldier. Vision Two, The Retreating World, is of an Iraqi bird keeper from Baghdad and his address before the International Pigeon Convention. Vision Three, Between this Breath and You, takes place after hours in the waiting room of a clinic in West Jerusalem, where a Palestinian father confronts the nurse's aide, a young Israeli woman, about the meaning of the loss of his son and the impact it had on her life. These multifaceted works explore the urgency and complexity of the Middle East's political landscape, through the voices and bodies of the people who inhabit it.Naomi Wallace is a poet and playwright from Kentucky, who currently resides in England. Her numerous awards include the MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship. Her plays, including One Flea Spare, In the Heart of America, and Trestle at Pope Lick Creek, are produced throughout the United States and around the world.
In the Heart of America and Other Plays
by Naomi WallaceNaomi Wallace's plays speak the underside of life. Her characters suffer and survive against the enormous weight of the times with a dignity that inspires. Her work challenges the audience and reader to reexamine the conflicts and meaning of our everyday lives through her singular, poetic imagery and language.Includes: One Flea SpareIn the Heart of AmericaSlaughter CityThe War BoysThe Trestle at Pope's Creek
Well
by Lisa KronThe acclaimed writer and performer Lisa Kron's newest work is all about her mom. 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.
The American Theatre Reader
by Staff of American Theatre MagazineIn celebration of American Theatre's twenty-fifth anniversary, the editors of the nation's leading theater magazine have chosen their best essays and interviews to provide an intimate look at the people, plays, and events that have shaped the American theater over the past quarter-century. Over two hundred artists, critics, and theater professionals are gathered in this one-of-a-kind collection, from the visionaries who conceived of a diverse and thriving national theater community, to the practitioners who have made that dream a reality. The American Theatre Reader captures their wide-ranging stories in a single compelling volume, essential reading for theater professionals and theatergoers alike.Partial contents include:Interviews with Edward Albee, Anne Bogart, Peter Brook, Lorraine Hansbury, Lillian Hellman, Jonathan Larson, David Mamet, Arthur Miller, Joseph Papp, Will Power, Bartlett Scher, Sam Shepard, Tom Stoppard, Luis Valdez, Paula Vogel, August Wilson, and others.Essays by Eric Bentley, Eric Bogosian, Robert Brustein, Christopher Durang, Oskar Eustis, Zelda Fichandler, Eva La Gallienne, Vaclav Havel, Danny Hoch, Tina Howe, David Henry Hwang, Naomi Iizuki, Adrienne Kennedy, Tony Kushner, Kristin Linklater, Todd London, Robert MacNeil, Des McAnuff, Conor McPherson, Marsha Norman, Suzan-Lori Parks, Hal Prince, Phylicia Rashad, Frank Rich, José Rivera, Alan Schneider, Marian Seldes, Wallace Shawn, Anna Deavere Smith, Molly Smith, Diana Son, Wole Soyinka, and many others.
Training of the American Actor
by Arthur BartowSuccessful acting must reflect a society's current beliefs. The men and women who developed each new technique were convinced that previous methods were not equal to the full challenges of their time and place, and the techniques in this book have been adapted to current needs in order to continue to be successful methods for training actors. The actor's journey is an individual one, and the actor seeks a form, or a variety of forms, of training that will assist in unlocking his own creative gifts of expression.--from the introductionThe first comprehensive survey and study of the major techniques developed by and for the American actor over the past 60 years. Each of the 10 disciplines included is described in detail by one of today's foremost practitioners.Presented in this volume are:* Lee Strasberg's Method by Anna Strasberg, Lee's former student, widow, and current director of The Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute * Stella Adler Technique by Tom Oppenheim, Stella's grandson and artistic director of the Stella Adler Institute in New York * Sanford Meisner Technique by Victoria Hart, director of the Meisner Extension at New York University * Michael Chekhov Technique and The Mask by Per Brahe, a Danish teacher inspired by Balinese dance and introduced to the Chekhov technique in Russia * Uta Hagen Technique by Carol Rosenfeld, who taught under Hagen's tutelage at the Herbert Berghof (HB) Studio * Physical Acting Inspired by Grotowski by Stephen Wangh, who studied with Jerzy Grotowski himself * The Viewpoints by Mary Overlie, the creator of Viewpoints theory * Practical Aesthetics by Robert Bella of the David Mamet-inspired Atlantic Theatre Company school * Interdisciplinary Training by Fritz Ertl, who teaches at the Playwrights Horizons Theatre School * Neoclassical Training by Louis Scheeder, director of the Classical Studio of New York UniversityArthur Bartow is the artistic director of the Department of Drama at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. A former associate director of Theatre Communications Group, he is the author of the landmark book The Director's Voice.
Grasses of a Thousand Colors
by Wallace Shawn"Among living American writers for the theater today, Wallace Shawn is among the most respected by his peers and championed by serious critics."--Don Shewey"The play is bound to delve further into the world that Shawn began to explore so precipitously nearly thirty-five years ago: one filled with ideas, wherein the action is the domestication of cruelty."--The New YorkerGrasses of a Thousand Colors is a poetic epic that tells the story of a scientist (Ben), his wife (Cerise), and his two mistresses (Robin and Rose), as they fend for their lives in a world much like ours, yet one savagely close to extinction. Due to the scientific manipulation of the world's crops, a destructive system for which Ben is partly responsible, there is very little nourishment left to be had, except for those most privileged and connected. Despite the dying off of most of the world, these characters manage to survive, at times tasting the good life, admiring the beauties of nature, feasting on animalistic sex, and finding love. The play raises issues of redemption, forgiveness, and responsibility as it recounts a somewhat passionate, erotic adventure story.Wallace Shawn is the author of Our Late Night (winner of the OBIE Award for Best Play), Marie and Bruce, Aunt Dan and Lemon, The Designated Mourner, The Fever, and the screenplay for My Dinner with Andre, in which he starred. Grasses of a Thousand Colors, Shawn's first full-length play in ten years, will be produced in the United Kingdom and the United States in 2009. Shawn is a well-known film and television actor. He resides in New York City.
Defiance
by John Patrick Shanley"Defiance is a necessary step in the life of an individual and in the life of a nation."--John Patrick Shanley"As thoughtful and probing as its predecessor, Defiance [is] filled with the provocative questions and bristling dialogue for which Mr. Shanley is known . . . as it wonders about its big, knotty subjects."--Ben Brantley, The New York Times Defiance is the "very rich and satisfying" (The Village Voice) second work in John Patrick Shanley's trilogy that began with Doubt. The play is set in 1971 at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, where Lt. Col. Morgan Littlefield and his reluctant protégé Capt. Lee King--a young African American officer--clash over issues of race and authority within the Marine Corps, even as the civil rights movement and Vietnam War divide the world outside. In this high-stakes struggle at the top of the ranks, witnessed by the base's inquisitive Chaplain White and Littlefield's irreproachable wife Margaret, Shanley has crafted another timely play exploring issues of power and morality within a hallowed institution. John Patrick Shanley's Doubt won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Play, and was chosen as best play of the year by over ten news-papers and magazines. His other plays include Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, Four Dogs and a Bone, Psychopathia Sexualis, and Savage Limbo. He has written extensively for TV and film, including Moonstruck, for which he won an Academy Award for best screenplay.
Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven and Other Plays
by Young Jean Lee"Bold, unguarded work . . . that resists pat definition. [Young Jean] Lee has penned profane lampoons of motivational bromides (Pullman, WA) and the Romantic poets (The Appeal). Now she piles her deconstructive scorn upon ethnic stereotypes in Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven, a sweet-and-sour parade of Asian minstrelsy."--Time Out New York"A perverse, provocative, and very funny festival of racism . . . Songs offers not only chauvinistic monologues and ass-slapping Korean dances, but also a rigorous exploration of art-making and its associated terrors."--The Village Voice"Have you ever noticed how most Asian Americans are slightly brain-damaged from having grown up with Asian parents?" begins the Korean American protagonist of Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven, the singular work of Young Jean Lee, whose plays are like nothing you have ever seen or read. This is the first collection by the downtown writer-director, whose explorations of stereotypes of race, gender, and religion are unflinching--and seat-squirming funny. Also includes Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals; The Appeal; Pullman, WA; Church; and Yaggoo.Young Jean Lee was born in Korea and moved to the United States at age two. She grew up in Pullman, Washington, and attended college at the University of California, Berkeley, where she also studied Shakespeare in the English PhD program before moving to New York. She is the founder of the Young Jean Lee's Theater Company, where she directs her own work, and has toured internationally in Vienna, Hanover, Berlin, Switzerland, Brussels, Norway, France, and Rotterdam; and across the United States in Portland, Seattle, Pittsburgh, and Minneapolis. She is the recipient of a 2007 Emerging Playwright OBIE Award.
Mrs. Packard
by Emily Mann"Emily Mann is one of our most urgently engaging, provocative and significant American playwrights."--Joyce Carol Oates"Elizabeth Packard emerges as a vibrant, passionate force of nature."--The New York TimesIllinois, 1861: Without proof of insanity, Elizabeth Packard is committed by her husband to an asylum. Based on historical events, Emily Mann's play tells of one woman's struggle to right a system gone wrong in this winner of the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays Award.Emily Mann is a playwright and director, now in her nineteenth season as artistic director of McCarter Theatre. Her award-winning plays have been produced throughout the world.
Spider Speculations
by Jo Carson"I've spent about 15 years plus some working with people's stories in a series of communities in this country. I write plays from oral histories for those communities. Just finished my 30th. I'm watching people's lives and communities literally change, sometimes drastically, for the work. Spider Speculations is the beginning of trying to understand the hows and whys of all the changes."--Author Jo CarsonJo Carson lays bare her personal investigation into her own creative process after a spider bite on her back begins a series of life-altering events. Spider Speculations applies cutting edge mind-body science, quantum physics and ancient shamanistic techniques to describe how stories work in our bodies and our lives, and what happens when real stories are used in a public way. Carson, whose ability to capture the spoken word hallmarks her community-based work, sets down this story in her own distinctive voice, interspersing the journey with examples of her performance work. This truly original American book will speak to anyone thinking about art and community or engaging with people's stories.Jo Carson is a writer and performer living in John City, Tennessee. She has published award-winning plays, short stories, children's books, essays, poems and other work. Her play Whispering to Horses and solo show If God Came Down...premiered at Seven Stages in Atlanta. She currently performs Liars, Thieves, and Other Sinners on the Bench, made up of selected stories from her oral history plays, which will be published by TCG in 2007.
Liars, Thieves and Other Sinners on the Bench
by Jo Carson"Haunting and funny, full of folk wisdom and unfl inching honesty."--Publishers Weekly, on the work of Jo Carson"She is a quintessential community artist with a true ear for the way people talk and what they really mean to say. Her work has inspired innumerable young artists to take up work with their own communities."--Linda Frye Burnham, Community Arts Network"Human experience is varied and astonishing," notes Jo Carson, "and this is a taste." A uniquely American writer and performer, Carson has spent fifteen years working with peoples' stories in communities across the country, crafting more than thirty plays from the oral histories she has collected. In performance, these works have illuminated and invigorated the communities in which they were forged, as the people see themselves onstage in a new light. This book collects Carson's favorite excerpts from the plays--stories that range from the homespun to the extraordinary and together create a portrait of America in an amazing diversity and authenticity of voices. They are slices of life, passed beyond the circle of family and neighbors.Jo Carson is a writer and performer living in John City, Tennessee. She has published award-winning plays, short stories, children's books, essays, poems, and other work, and for years was a commentator on National Public Radio's All Things Considered. Her play Whispering to Horses and solo show If God Came Down . . . premiered at Seven Stages Theatre in Atlanta, and her book of monologues and dialogues, Stories I Ain't Told Nobody Yet, made Booklist's editor's choice and the American Library Association's recommended list.
365 Days / 365 Plays
by Suzan-Lori Parks"Suzan-Lori Parks is one of the most important dramatists America has produced."-Tony Kushner "The plan was that no matter what I did, how busy I was, what other commitments I had, I would write a play a day, every single day for a year. It would be about being present and being committed to the artistic process every single day, regardless of the 'weather.' It became a daily meditation, a daily prayer celebrating the rich and strange process of a writing life."-Suzan-Lori Parks On November 13, 2002, the incomparable Suzan-Lori Parks got an idea to write a play every day for a year. She began that very day, finishing one year later. The result is an extraordinary testament to artistic commitment. This collection of 365 impeccably crafted pieces, each with its own distinctive characters and dramatic power, is a complete work by an artist responding to her world, each and every day. Parks is one of the American theater's most wily and innovative writers, and her "stark but poetic language and fiercely idiosyncratic images transform her work into something haunting and marvelous" (TIME).
Invitation to the Party
by Donna Walker-Kuhne George C. WolfeAcknowledged as the nation's foremost expert on audience development involving America's growing multicultural population by the Arts and Business Council, Donna Walker-Kuhne has now written the first book describing her strategies and methods to engage diverse communities as participants for arts and culture. By offering strategic collaborations and efforts to develop and sustain nontraditional audiences, this book will directly impact the stability and future of America's cultural and artistic landscape. Donna Walker-Kuhne has spent the last 20 years developing and refining these principles with such success as both the Broadway and national touring productions of Bring in 'Da Noise, Bring in 'Da Funk, as well as transforming the audiences at one of the U.S.'s most important and visible arts institutions, New York's Public Theater. This book is a practical and inspirational guide on ways to invite, engage and partner with culturally diverse communities, and how to enfranchise those communities into the fabric of arts and culture in the United States.Donna Walker-Kuhne is the president of Walker International Communications Group. From 1993 to 2002, she served as the marketing director for the Public Theater in New York, where she originated a range of audience-development activities for children, students and adults throughout New York City. Ms. Walker-Kuhne is an Adjunct Professor in marketing the arts at Fordham University, Brooklyn College and New York University. She was formerly marketing director for Dance Theatre of Harlem. Ms. Walker-Kuhne has given numerous workshops and presentations for arts groups throughout the U.S., including the Arts and Business Council, League of American Theaters and Producers, the Department of Cultural Affairs, and the National Endowment for Arts to name a few. She has been nominated for the Ford Foundation's 2001 Leadership for a Changing World Fellowship.
Swimming to Cambodia
by James Leverett Roger Rosenblatt Spalding Gray"It took courage to do what Spalding did--courage to make theatre so naked and unadorned, to expose himself in this way and fight the demons in public. In doing so, he entered our hearts--my heart--because he made his struggle my struggle. His life became my life."--Eric Bogosian"Virtuosic. A master writer, reporter, comic and playwright. Spalding Gray is a sit-down monologist with the soul of a stand-up comedian. A contemporary Gulliver, he travels the globe in search of experience and finds the ridiculous."--The New York TimesIn 2004, we mourned the loss of one of America's true theatrical innovators. Spalding Gray took his own life by jumping from the Staten Island ferry into the waters of New York Harbor, finally succumbing to the impossible notion that he could in fact swim to Cambodia. At a memorial gathering for family, friends and fans at Lincoln Center in New York, his widow expressed the need to honor Gray's legacy as an artist and writer for his children, as well as for future generations of fans and readers. Originally published in 1985, Swimming to Cambodia is reissued here 20 years later in a new edition as a tribute to Gray's singular artistry.Writer, actor and performer, Spalding Gray is the author of Sex and Death to the Age 14; Monster in a Box; It's a Slippery Slope; Gray's Anatomy and Morning, Noon and Night, among other works. His appearance in The Killing Fields was the inspiration for his Swimming to Cambodia, which was also filmed by Jonathan Demme.
Thinking About the Longstanding Problems of Virtue and Happiness
by Tony KushnerThe first collection of writings from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Angels in America. Includes Slavs!
Death and Taxes
by Tony KushnerTony Kushner: "This is an odd assemblage of plays, for which gathering-together there is no overarching thematic justification. Because several of the plays deal with death, and one of the death-plays deals as well with money, and the last play deals with taxation, we're calling the book Death & Taxes. But all plays, directly or indirectly, are about death and taxes, so this title explains little..."What is clear, is that all of the plays in this new collection by Kushner are poetic masterpieces. An exploration in form and style, from comedy to farce to what can easily be called hip-hop theatre, Kushner makes each style his own, writing with the mind of a great social reformer and the heart of a poet. This collection is proof that his masterwork, Angels in America was just the beginning.Includes:Reverse Transcription: Six Playwrights Bury a SeventhHydriotaphia or The Death of Doctor BrowneG. David Schine in HellNotes on AkibaTerminating or Sonnet LXXVEast Coast Ode to Howard Jarvis
2.5 Minute Ride and 101 Most Humiliating Stories
by Lisa KronThis book collects Lisa Kron's two extraordinary solo performance works. Best known for her ongoing work as a member of The Five Lesbian Brothers, Kron's solo pieces are very personal examinations of both herself and her family history. This is singularly clear in 2.5 Minute Ride, where her writing deftly maneuvers between the tragic drama of the Holocaust and the wry comedy of her family's attempts to pursue pleasure at the local amusement park. This critically acclaimed work played to sold out audience for over six months at New York's Public Theatre. Also included is the riotous 101 Most Humiliating Stories, which first premiered in 1993, and in fact only consists of seventeen tales but each, as the author observes, has several humiliations. It recounts the adventures and misadventures of a self-described Big Lesbian as she tests the boundaries of decorum in social and professional situations.
Five Plays
by Michael Weller"It's hard to think of a writer who knows his generation better than Michael Weller." -Frank Rich, New York Times Michael Weller's early work chronicled American culture as it was taken apart and reformed in the turbulent '60s. This volume collects his best-known plays of the '70s and '80s, including the now-classic Moonchildren, Fishing, At Home, Abroad and Loose Ends. Also includes a new introduction by the author.
By the Way, Meet Vera Stark
by Lynn Nottage"Nottage is one of our finest playwrights, a smart, empathetic, and daring storyteller who tells a story an audience won't expect." Time Out New York"Lynn Nottage's work explores depths of humanness, the overlapping complexities of race, gender, culture and history and the startling simplicity of desire with a clear tenderness, with humor, with compassion." Paula Vogel, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwrightIn her first new play since the critically acclaimed Ruined, Lynn Nottage examines the legacy of African Americans in Hollywood in a dramatic stylistic departure from her previous work. Fluidly incorporating film and video elements into her writing for the first time, Nottage's comedy tells the story of Vera Stark, an African American maid and budding actress who has a tangled relationship with her boss, a white Hollywood star desperately grasping to hold onto her career. Stirring audiences out of complacency by tackling racial stereotyping in the entertainment industry, Nottage highlights the paradox of black actors in 1930s Hollywood while jumping back and forward in time and location in this uniquely theatrical narrative. By the Way, Meet Vera Stark premiered in New York in 2011 and will receive productions at Los Angeles's Geffen Playhouse in fall 2012 and Chicago's Goodman Theatre and The Lyric Stage Company of Boston in spring 2013.Lynn Nottage's plays include the Pulitzer Prize winning Ruined; Intimate ApparelFabulation, or the Re-Education of Undine; Crumbs from the Table of Joy; Las Meninas; Mud, River, Stone; Por'Knockers; and POOF!
Race
by David Mamet"Gripping. . . . Deep in its gut, Mamet's new play argues, everything in America-and this play throws in sex, rape, the law, employment and relationships-is still about race."-Chicago Tribune"A dramatist celebrated for introducing expletives to the American theatre now tackles a truly taboo four-letter word. . . . Most concerned with the power and treachery of language, Mamet remains American theatre's most urgent five-letter word."-GuardianDavid Mamet, who took on the subject of sexual harassment with his 1992 drama Oleanna, has once again ignited controversy, hitting the hot-button issue of our so-called post-racial society. When a rich white man is accused of raping a younger African American woman, he looks to a multicultural law firm for his defense. But even as his lawyers-one of them white, another black-begin to strategize, they must confront their own biases and assumptions about race relations in America. Currently playing to acclaim on Broadway in a production directed by Mamet, audience members may be moved to self-scrutiny by his signature gritty yet finely tuned language.David Mamet is a playwright, director, author, essayist, screenwriter, and film director. He was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Glengarry Glen Ross, which also received a Tony Award nomination, along with Speed-the-Plow. Other of his plays include American Buffalo, Oleanna, and The Cryptogram.
The Director's Voice
by Arthur BartowForemost stage directors describe their working process: JoAnne Akalaitis, Arvin Brown, René Buch, Martha Clarke, Gordon Davidson, Robert Falls, Zelda Fichandler, Richard Foreman, Adrian Hall, John Hirsch, Mark Lamos, Marshall W. Mason, Des McAnuff, Gregory Mosher, Harold S. Prince, Lloyd Richards, Peter Sellars, Andrei Serban, Douglas Turner Ward, Robert Woodruff, and Garland Wright.