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Losing It: Staging the Cultural Conundrum of Dementia and Decline in American Theatre

This monograph is a study of American (U.S.) stage representations of dementia mounted between 1913 and 2019. Its imbricated strands are playtexts; audiences as both the targets of the productions (artifacts in the marketplace) and as anticipated determinants of legibility; and medical science, both as has been (and is) known to researchers and, more importantly, as it has been (and is) known to educated general audiences. As the Baby Boom generation finds itself solidly in the category of “Senior,” interest in plays that address personal and social issues around cognitive decline as a potentially frightening and expensive experience, no two iterations of which are identical, have, understandably, burgeoned. This study shines a spotlight on eleven dementia plays that have been produced in the United States over the past century, and seeks, in the words of medical humanities scholar Anne Whitehead, to “open up, and to hold open, central ethical questions of responsiveness, interpretation, responsibility, complicity and care.”

Loss and the Literary Culture of Shakespeare’s Time (Early Modern Literature in History)

As early modernists with an interest in the literary culture of Shakespeare’s time, we work in a field that contains many significant losses: of texts, of contextual information, of other forms of cultural activity. No account of early modern literary culture is complete without acknowledgment of these lacunae, and although lost drama has become a topic of increasing interest in Shakespeare studies, it is important to recognize that loss is not restricted to play-texts alone. Loss and the Literary Culture of Shakespeare’s Time broadens the scope of the scholarly conversation about loss beyond drama and beyond London. It aims to develop further models and techniques for thinking about lost plays, but also of other kinds of lost early modern works, and even lost persons associated with literary and theatrical circles. Chapters examine textual corruption, oral preservation, quantitative analysis, translation, and experiments in “verbatim theater”, plus much more.

The Loss of Small White Clouds: Dementia in Contemporary Performance (Routledge Series in Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Theatre and Performance)

This volume seeks to instigate a discussion about dementia in theatre. The discussions in this book borrow from the literature on dementia’s representation in other artforms, while reflecting on theatre’s unique capacity to incorporate multiple artforms in a live context (hypermediacy). The author examines constructions of diegesis and the use of various performance tools, including physical theatre, puppetry, and postdramatic performance. She discusses stage representations of interior experiences of dementia; selfhood in dementia; the demarcation of those with dementia from those without; endings, erasure, and the pursuit of catharsis; placelessness and disruptions of traditional dramatic constructions of time; and ultimately, performances creatively led by people with dementia. The book traces patterns of narrativisation on the stage—including common dramaturgical forms, settings, and character relationships—as well as examples that transcend mainstream representation. This book is important reading for theatre and performance students, scholars, and practitioners, as well as cultural studies writers engaged in research about narratives of dementia.

The Lost Colony

In 1937, The Lost Colony, Paul Green's dramatic retelling of the founding and mysterious disappearance of the Roanoke Island colony, opened to standing-room-only audiences and rave reviews. Since then, the beloved outdoor drama has played to more than 3 million people, and it is still going strong. Produced by the Roanoke Island Historical Association at the Waterside Theater near Manteo, North Carolina, The Lost Colony has run for more than sixty summers almost without interruption. (Production was suspended during World War II, when the threat of German submarines prowling the coast made an extended blackout necessary.)The model for modern outdoor theater, The Lost Colony combines song, dance, drama, special effects, and music to breathe life into shadowy legend. This rendering of the play's text, edited and with an introduction by Laurence Avery, brings this pioneering work back into print.

Lost In Yonkers

"Neil Simon has done it again, with a craftmanship and skill probably unmatched in the contemporary English-speaking theater." --Clive Barnes, New York Post <P><P>What happens to children in the absence of love? That is the question that lies at the heart of this funny and heartrending play by one of America's most acclaimed and beloved playwrights. Winner of four Tony Awards, including Best Play, and the Pulitzer Prize, Lost in Yonkers is Neil Simon's moving drama about the cruelties and painful memories that scar a family. It is New York, 1942. After the death of their mother, two young brothers are sent to stay with their formidable grandmother for the longest ten months of their lives. <P><P>For Grandmother Kurnitz is a one-woman German front--a refugee and a widow who has steeled her heart against the world. Her coldness and intolerance have crippled her own children: the boys' father has no self-esteem . . . their Aunt Gert has an embarrassing speech impediment . . . their Uncle Louie is a small-time gangster . . . and their Aunt Bella has the mentality of a child. But it is Bella's hunger for affection and her refusal to be denied love that saves the boys--and that leads to an unforgettable, wrenching confrontation with her mother. Filled with laughter, tears, and insight, Lost in Yonkers is yet another heartwarming testament to Neil Simon's talent.

Lost Plays in Shakespeare’s England

Lost Plays in Shakespeare's England examines assumptions about what a lost play is and how it can be talked about; how lost plays can be reconstructed, particularly when they use narratives already familiar to playgoers; and how lost plays can force us to reassess extant plays, particularly through ideas of repertory studies.

The Lost Summers of Newport: A Novel

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER"An engrossing and sumptuous tale, this novel is a fantastic spring read." — Good Morning AmericaFrom the New York Times bestselling team of Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, and Karen White—a novel of money and secrets set among the famous summer mansions of Newport, Rhode Island, spanning over a century from the Gilded Age to the present day.“Three stories elegantly intertwine in this clever and stylish tale of murder and family lies…This crackerjack novel offers three mysteries for the price of one.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)2019: Andie Figuero has just landed her dream job as a producer of Mansion Makeover, a popular reality show about restoring America’s most lavish historic houses. Andie has high hopes for her latest project: the once glorious but gently crumbling Sprague Hall in Newport, Rhode Island, summer resort of America’s gilded class—famous for the lavish “summer cottages” of Vanderbilts and Belmonts. But Andie runs into trouble: the reclusive heiress who still lives in the mansion, Lucia “Lucky” Sprague, will only allow the show to go forward on two conditions: One, nobody speaks to her. Two, nobody touches the mansion’s ruined boathouse.1899: Ellen Daniels has been hired to give singing lessons to Miss Maybelle Sprague, a naive young Colorado mining heiress whose stepbrother John has poured their new money into buying a place among Newport’s elite. John is determined to see Maybelle married off to a fortune-hunting Italian prince, and Ellen is supposed to polish up the girl for her launch into society. But the deceptively demure Ellen has her own checkered past, and she’s hiding in plain sight at Sprague Hall.1958: Lucia “Lucky” Sprague has always felt like an outsider at Sprague Hall. When she and her grandmother—the American-born Princess di Conti—fled Mussolini’s Italy, it seemed natural to go back to the imposing Newport house Nana owned but hadn’t seen since her marriage in 1899. Over the years, Lucky's lost her Italian accent and found a place for herself among the yachting set by marrying Stuyvesant Sprague, the alcoholic scion of her Sprague stepfamily. But one fateful night in the mansion’s old boathouse will uncover a devastating truth...and change everything she thought she knew about her past.As the cameras roll on Mansion Makeover, the house begins to yield up the dark secrets the Spragues thought would stay hidden forever….

Lot Six: A Memoir

“David Adjmi has written one of the great American memoirs, a heartbreaking, hilarious story of what it means to make things up, including yourself. A wild tale of lack and lies, galling humiliations and majestic reinventions, this touching, coruscating joy of a book is an answer to that perennial question: how should a person be?” — Olivia Laing, author of Crudo and The Lonely CityIn a world where everyone is inventing a self, curating a feed and performing a fantasy of life, what does it mean to be a person? In his grandly entertaining debut memoir, playwright David Adjmi explores how human beings create themselves, and how artists make their lives into art. Brooklyn, 1970s. Born into the ruins of a Syrian Jewish family that once had it all, David is painfully displaced. Trapped in an insular religious community that excludes him and a family coming apart at the seams, he is plunged into suicidal depression. Through adolescence, David tries to suppress his homosexual feelings and fit in, but when pushed to the breaking point, he makes the bold decision to cut off his family, erase his past, and leave everything he knows behind. There's only one problem: who should he be? Bouncing between identities he steals from the pages of fashion magazines, tomes of philosophy, sitcoms and foreign films, and practically everyone he meets—from Rastafarians to French preppies—David begins to piece together an entirely new adult self. But is this the foundation for a life, or just a kind of quicksand? Moving from the glamour and dysfunction of 1970s Brooklyn, to the sybaritic materialism of Reagan’s 1980s to post-9/11 New York, Lot Six offers a quintessentially American tale of an outsider striving to reshape himself in the funhouse mirror of American culture. Adjmi’s memoir is a genre bending Künstlerroman in the spirit of Charles Dickens and Alison Bechdel, a portrait of the artist in the throes of a life and death crisis of identity. Raw and lyrical, and written in gleaming prose that veers effortlessly between hilarity and heartbreak, Lot Six charts Adjmi’s search for belonging, identity, and what it takes to be an artist in America.

Lothario's Corpse: Libertine Drama and the Long-Running Restoration, 1700-1832 (Transits: Literature, Thought & Culture 1650-1850)

Lothario’s Corpse unearths a performance history, on and off the stage, of Restoration libertine drama in Britain’s eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. While standard theater histories emphasize libertine drama’s gradual disappearance from the nation’s acting repertory following the dispersal of Stuart rule in 1688, Daniel Gustafson traces its persistent appeal for writers and performers wrestling with the powers of the emergent liberal subject and the tensions of that subject with sovereign absolutism. With its radical, absolutist characters and its scenarios of aristocratic license, Restoration libertine drama became a critical force with which to engage in debates about the liberty-loving British subject’s relation to key forms of liberal power and about the troubling allure of lawless sovereign power that lingers at the heart of the liberal imagination. Weaving together readings of a set of literary texts, theater anecdotes, political writings, and performances, Gustafson illustrates how the corpse of the Restoration stage libertine is revived in the period’s debates about liberty, sovereign desire, and the subject’s relation to modern forms of social control. Ultimately, Lothario’s Corpse suggests the “long-running” nature of Restoration theatrical culture, its revived and revised performances vital to what makes post-1688 Britain modern. Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.

Lou Andrea Salomé: Mere, amante, vierge

Lou Andrea Salomé est une femme qui a toujours intriguée de par sa capacité à inspirer trois grands hommes: Nietzsche, Rilke et Freud. Lou a été l'amante de Rilke, l'amie intime de Nietzsche et l'élève et la confidente de Freud. Une femme super-muse qui a inspiré ces hommes, relativement méconnus au moment de la relation. Cette fiction dramatique présente les relations de cette femme extraordinaire avec ces trois hommes extraordinaires afin de pouvoir réfléchir sur la nature de la femme et les mécanismes qu’elle utilise, la plupart du temps sans le vouloir ou sans s’en rendre compte, dans le but d’inspirer les hommes avec qui elle entre en contact.

LOU ANDREAS SALOMÉ

Dramatic fiction illustrating an extraordinary woman's rapport with three extraordinary men: Nietzsche, Rilke and Freud. Lou Andreas-Salomé had a love affair with Rilke, an intimate friendship with Nietzsche and a pupil, confidant propinquity with Freud. A muse of a woman who without a doubt had a vast influence on these, at the time, relatively unknown men.

Lou Andreas Salomé: La Musa di Nietzsche, Rilke, e Freud

Lou Andreas Salomé è una donna che ha sempre attratto per il suo ascendente su tre grandi uomini: Nietzsche, Rilke e Freud. Lou fu amante di Rilke, amica intima di Nietzsche e allieva e confidente di Freud. Una supermusa che ispirò questi uomini relativamente sconosciuti al momento della relazione. Quest'opera drammatica presenta le relazioni tra questa straordinaria donna e questi tre uomini fuori dal comune per poter riflettere sulla natura della donna e i meccanismi che utilizza, molte volte senza volerlo o senza rendersene conto, per ispirare gli uomini con i quali entra in contatto.

Louis Sébastien Mercier: Revolution and Reform in Eighteenth-Century Paris (Transits: Literature, Thought & Culture, 1650-1850)

French playwright, novelist, activist, and journalist Louis Sébastien Mercier (1740–1814) passionately captured scenes of social injustice in pre-Revolutionary Paris in his prolific oeuvre but today remains an understudied writer. In this penetrating study—the first in English devoted to Mercier in decades—Michael Mulryan explores his unpublished writings and urban chronicles, Tableau de Paris (1781–88) and Le Nouveau Paris (1798), in which he identified the city as a microcosm of national societal problems, detailed the conditions of the laboring poor, encouraged educational reform, and confronted universal social ills. Mercier’s rich writings speak powerfully to the sociopolitical problems that continue to afflict us as political leaders manipulate public debate and encourage absolutist thinking, deepening social divides. An outcast for his polemical views during his lifetime, Mercier has been called the founder of modern urban discourse, and his work a precursor to investigative journalism. This sensitive study returns him to his rightful place among Enlightenment thinkers.

A Louisiana Gentleman

Full Length, Southern ComedyCharacters: 1 male, 3 female. Unit Set. Blaine Ashton, a medical student in his mid-twenties from a prominent New Orleans family, has fallen in love with a middle-aged actress and is getting married, much to the chagrin of his mentally disturbed sister and his eccentric, alcoholic old Aunt. His Aunt forces him to take care of his sister after he's married and all the southern belles in the household are almost too much to bear. The histrionics never stop as the women compete for Malter's love and attention. Ultimately, an uneasy truce is called once a baby is born and Christmas rolls around, but continued craziness is undoubtedly in their future. Especially powerful roles for women. . Also available in A Louisiana Gentleman and other New Orleans Comedies

A Love Affair

Full length, comedy / 2m, 3f / Interior / This award winning romantic comedy is brimming with hilarious as well as moving moments captured from a 38 year marriage. As Jimmy and Alice Diamond clear out the attic of their Malibu home because a turn of finances is forcing them to move into a cramped condo, they find themselves reliving the flawed masterpiece that is their marriage. Two pairs of actors play the Diamonds, one young and one mature. Throughout, they observe and comment on each other. In one delightful scene, the four confront each other to negotiate the transition into middle age. The fifth cast member plays six different women who influence the Diamond marriage, offering a tour de force for an actress.

Love Always

Short plays / These short plays, most no more than ten minutes, are by the authors of Lovers and Other Strangers, , Bedrooms and It Had to Be You. About the foibles and follies of love and lovers, some are excellent for college and high school performers and others are suited to older actors.

Love and Human Remains

David McMillan is a former actor, current waiter on the verge of turning thirty. Together with his book-reviewing roommate, Candy, and his best friend, Bernie, David encounters a number of seductive strangers in their search for love and sex. But the games turn ugly when it appears one of their number might be a serial killer. A compelling study of young adults groping for meaning in a senseless world. Love and Human Remains was immediately controversial for its violence, nudity, frank dialogue, and sexual explicitness. It was quickly acclaimed by critics and audiences alike and was named one of the ten best plays of the year by Time Magazine. The play has been produced worldwide, translated into multiple languages, and received many awards.

The Love Bomb: And Other Musical Pieces

Three Libretti—Ranging In Setting From Ancient Jerusalem To Pre-Apocalyptic London—From An Acclaimed PoetThis volume of libretti marks new work—and new terrain—for James Fenton. Commissioned by companies in New York and England, these musical pieces make the most of the poet's poignant, witty, and characteristically lyrical verse. Whether evoking modern-day London on the edge of apocalypse in The Love Bomb, a timeless land beyond the moon in this version of Salman Rushdie's children's novel Haroun and the Sea of Stories, or ancient Jerusalem in his stirring oratorio The Fall of Jerusalem, which was composed to mark the millennium, Fenton's lucid storytelling and stylish wordplay bring these pieces vividly to life—with equal power in performance or on the page.Haroun and the Sea of Stories was commissioned by the New York City Opera and had its premiere at Lincoln Center in September 2003."[James Fenton] writes as no one else dares to--with clarity, wit, and the simplest of rhymes."--Voice Literary Supplement

Love by the Numbers

Comic romance \ Ernest Joselovitz with Harry Michael Bagdasian \ 5 m., 4 f. \ Int. \ Todd Dobson, computer honcho from New York City, is in the small town of Willowdale to install a computer system in Hiram Paige's library. He falls head over heels in love with the library assistant. Todd proposes right then and there and, to her own surprise, Harriet invites him home to face her family. Confronted with Harriet's boyfriend Mitch, sister Judith Ann's casseroles, grandmother Hortense who has her eye on Hiram, and a mother who never smiles, Todd realizes this isn't going to be easy. This lighthearted comedy about love in the computer age reminds us that laughter makes love sweet, that there are still large pleasure in small town life, and that a loving family can still make the most important word in the world "home."

The Love-Chase

The Love Curse of Melody McIntyre

Perfect for fans of Becky Albertalli and Nina LaCour, this #ownvoices romantic comedy from New York Times bestselling author Robin Talley has something for everyone: backstage rendezvous, deadly props, and a seemingly insurmountable obstacle to True Love.Melody McIntyre, stage manager extraordinaire, has a plan for everything. What she doesn’t have? Success with love. Every time she falls for someone during a school performance, both the romance and the show end in catastrophe. So, Mel swears off any entanglements until their upcoming production of Les Mis is over. Of course, Mel didn’t count on Odile Rose, rising star in the acting world, auditioning for the spring performance. And she definitely didn’t expect Odile to be sweet and funny, and care as much about the play’s success as Mel. Which means that Melody McIntyre’s only plan now is trying desperately not to fall in love.

Love Falls: A Novel

The highly praised author of Hideous Kinky, returns with a searing and sensuous tale young love set amid the heat and beauty of a Tuscan summerThe Independent calls Esther Freud “the best writer on childhood we have.” In Love Falls this brilliant novelist proves her power once again with an utterly charming and irresistible tale of adolescent love and self-discovery set in a foreign land.When 17-year-old Lara accepts her father’s invitation to accompany him to Tuscany for the summer, she’s excited and trepidatious. But, her fears prove groundless, for the villa’s closest neighbors are the contagiously adventurous Willoughbys, the teenaged brood of a wealthy British lord. Caught up in their torrential good humor—and snared particularly by Kip Willoughby’s dark, flirtatious eyes—Lara sets off on a summer adventure full of danger, first love, and untold consequences that will change her life.

Love Is Love Is Love: Broadway Musicals and LGBTQ Politics, 2010-2020

The politics of Broadway musicals matter a great deal more to U.S. American culture than they appear to mean, and they are especially important to mainstream politics surrounding sex, gender, and sexuality. Love Is Love Is Love looks to the Broadway musicals of the past decade for help understanding the current state of LGBTQ politics in the United States. Through analyses of Promises, Promises, Newsies, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, The Color Purple, and Frozen, this book attempts to move past the question of representational politics and asks us instead to think in more complex ways about LGBTQ identity, what LGBTQ politics are, and the politics of Broadway musicals themselves. Producing new, complex readings of all five of these musicals, author Aaron C. Thomas places each of them within the context of the LGBTQ politics of their day. Some of the issues the book treats are controversies of casting, the closetedness and openness of musical theatre, LGBTQ identities, adaptation from movies into musicals, and the special power of the musical form by examining how these shows differ from the books and movies on which they’re based. Love Is Love Is Love places contemporary LGBTQ political tensions and conversations in a new light, making this an essential companion for students and scholars of contemporary theatre, musical theatre, cultural studies, Queer studies, and gender studies.

Love-Lies-Bleeding

Love-Lies-Bleeding, Don DeLillo's third play, is a daring, profoundly compassionate story about life, death, art and human connection. Three people gather to determine the fate of the man who sits in a straight-backed chair saying nothing. He is Alex Macklin, who gave up easel painting to do land art in the southwestern desert, and he is seventy now, helpless in the wake of a second stroke. The people around him are the bearers of a complicated love, his son, his young wife, the older woman -- his wife of years past -- who feels the emotional tenacity of a love long-ended. It is their question to answer. When does life end, and when should it end? In this remote setting, without seeking medical or legal guidance, they move unsteadily toward last things. Luminous, spare, unnervingly comic and always deeply moving, Love-Lies-Bleeding explores a number of perilous questions about the value of life and how we measure it.

Love Me Like No Other

Two Can Play at This Game!Lincoln can’t believe it—that beautiful babe who owes his casino $5,000 is Jade. He’s never stopped thinking about her since that one hot night years ago. Now she’s in his debt! Of course, he doesn’t want her money….At first, Jade’s outraged—pose as his fiancée for one week or he’ll call the police! But then…how about some sweet revenge? So while he’s playing Mr. Seducer, she’ll be Miss Tease. Before the week is up, she’ll have him on his knees—just before she walks away! That is, if she can convince her heart she’s not still in love….