Title search results
Showing 61 - 80 of 200 items
Love Runs Deep
By Karen D. Bradley. 2014
After Tyler Bradford has a run in with the Chameleon, she finds herself gunned down and bleeding in the snow…
next to her best friend, Lorrain. Her entire world changes when Lorrain dies. She becomes determined to make the Chameleon pay for his crimes. However, she isn't the only one on a mission. The Chameleon is hunting her down to finish what he started. Their paths will cross, yet only one of them will accomplish their goal. Tyler's love for Lorrain runs deep, but will it be the very thing that gets her killed?The Creation of the World and Other Business
By Arthur Miller. 1973
A master dramatist's humorous retelling of the biblical creation story as a parable for our time Breathing new life into…
timeless biblical tales, Arthur Miller charmingly reimagines the Book of Genesis from the temptation of Adam and Eve to the fraternal tragedy of Cain and Abel. In the beginning, God, generally satisfied with his creation, is nonetheless perplexed by Adam and Eve--why won't they multiply? It takes wily Lucifer to interest them in anything more than playing handball in the Garden of Eden, but their new knowledge comes at a price. The first family is exiled from paradise--just as Lucifer is banned from heaven--and a fallen, morally ambiguous state becomes the destiny of humankind. Though The Creation of the World and Other Business was Arthur Miller's first Broadway comedy, it is full of the searching insight and sparkling dialogue that distinguish his best dramas.Prince Friedrich of Homburg: A New Translation For The American Stage
By Frederick Peters. 1978
Prince Friedrich of Homburg is the indisputable dramatic masterpiece of Heinrich von Kleist 1777-1811 a leading figure…
along with Goethe and Schiller among early German Romantics Available until now only in verse translation it has been newly rendered for the American stage by Diana Stone Peters and Frederick G Peters A work of profound psychological insight Prince Friedrich of Homburg probes with passionate intensity questions fundamental to civilized behavior Prince Friedrich the hero of the historic battle of Fehrbellin 1675 against the invading Swedes receives not laurels for his victory but the sentence of death for disobeying orders in the field Faced with certain execution his mood swings from abject terror to high-minded exultation as first he challenges and then accepts the rule of law and subservience to the state The action moves relentlessly in the near-frenzied pace characteristic of Kleist Intended as a paean to a Prussia triumphant in the Napoleonic wars the play was ironically censured and never produced in Kleist s lifetime In our own day Prince Friedrich of Homburg has been both denounced as a protofascist work and lauded as a supreme metaphysical disquisition Whatever the merits of such intellectualization it remains one of the most moving and performable plays available for the modern stageCollected Stories
By Donald Margulies. 1998
In Collected Stories, playwright Donald Margulies explores the vexed emotional and legal question of a writer's right to create art…
from the biographical material of another person's life--particularly when that other person is also a writer. Meditating upon the recent, real-life conflict between poet Stephen Spender and novelist David Leavitt, Margulies has created two of the most vivid and moving fictional characters of his career: Ruth Steiner, an aging, highly regarded author who never wrote about her youthful affair with real-life poet Delmore Schwartz, and Debra Messing, a student of Steiner's who, after publishing a much-praised first short-story collection under Steiner's direction, follows up with a novel that draws upon the Schwartz affair.The Truth About Amelia
By Toscana Navas Mouton, Rony Fernando Gonzalez. 2015
She ran out of tears from the long mourning, retaining all of the pain inside of her, that same pain…
that oppressed her heart. Her swollen feet were bleeding after spending hours walking aimlessly. All of the tragedies that she experienced were revealed in a moment that lasted an eternity. In those moments, alone, vulnerable, and defeated, she watched the immense riverbed from the top of that bridge, watching it disappear between the soft hollows through the horizon. At that early summer morning, the forces of destiny brought her to that place. All that remained was to decide. The questions about how and why the suffered events occurred were not important anymore, they were gone. She watched the moon with that silver color, reflecting light in the calm waters; at the same time that she kissed the scapulary of the Chiquinquira's virgin that was hanging on her chest. After the recent events, lost in the nothingness, and without having any other alternative; she could end up thinking about end up for once with her own life. Nobody would care what she could do at that time. She was alone, deeply alone and helpless. Her last thoughts were about her apartment, the bed, and the body of her dead mother.The Man Who Had All the Luck
By Arthur Miller. 1989
A new Penguin Plays edition of the forgotten classic that launched the career of one of America's greatest playwrights It…
took more than fifty years for The Man Who Had All the Luck to be appreciated for what it truly is: the first stirrings of a genius that would go on to blossom in such masterpieces as Death of a Salesman and The Crucible. This striking new edition finally adds Miller's first major play to the Penguin Plays series--now in beautifully redesigned covers. Infused with the moral malaise of the Depression era, this parable-like drama centers on David Beeves, a man before whom every obstacle to personal and professional success seems to crumble with ease. But his good fortune merely serves to reveal the tragedies of those around him in greater relief, offering what David believes to be evidence of a capricious god or, worse, a godless, arbitrary universe. David's journey toward fulfillment becomes a nightmare of existential doubts, a desperate grasp for reason in a cosmos seemingly devoid of any, and a struggle that will take him to the brink of madness.From the Trade Paperback edition.The Magic Tower and Other One-Act Plays
By Terrence Mcnally, Tennessee Williams, Thomas Keith. 2011
A wonderful collection of never-before-collected one-acts: "The peak of my virtuosity was in the one- act plays. Some of which…
are like firecrackers in a rope" (Tennessee Williams). Here are portraits of American life during the Great Depression and after, populated by a hopelessly hopeful chorus girl, a munitions manufacturer ensnared in a love triangle, a rural family that deals "justice" on its children, an overconfident mob dandy, a poor couple who quarrel to vanquish despair, a young "spinster" enthralled by the impulse of rebellion, and, in "The Magic Tower," a passionate artist and his wife whose youth and optimism are not enough to protect their "dream marriage." This new volume gathers some of Williams's most exuberant early work and includes one-acts that he would later expand to powerful full-length dramas: "The Pretty Trap," a cheerful take on The Glass Menagerie, and "Interior: Panic," a stunning precursor to A Streetcar Named Desire. The plays include: * At Liberty * The Magic Tower * Me, Vashya * Curtains for the Gentleman * In Our Profession * Every Twenty Minutes * Honor the Living * The Case of the Crushed Petunias * Moony's Kid Don't Cry * The Dark Room * The Pretty Trap * Interior: Panic * Kingdom of Earth * I Never Get Dressed Till After Dark on Sundays * Some Problems for The Moose LodgeThe Two-Character Play
By Tennessee Williams. 1997
A classic play by Tennessee Williams in a definitive, author-approved edition. Reality and fantasy are interwoven with terrifying power as…
two actors on tour--brother and sister--find themselves deserted by the trope in a decrepit "state theatre in an unknown state." Faced (perhaps) by an audience expecting a performance, they enact "The Two-Character Play"--an illusions within an illusion, and "out cry" from isolation, panic and fear. "I think it is my most beautiful play since Streetcar," Tennessee Williams said, "and I've never stopped working on it....It is a cri de coeur, but then all creative work,all life, in a sense is a cri de coeur." In the course of its evolution, several earlier versions of The Two-Character Play have been produced. The first of them was presented in 1967 in London and Chicago and brought out in 1969 by New Directions in a signed limited edition. The next, staged in 1973 in New York under the title Out Cry, was published by New Directions in 1973 The third version (New York, 1975), again titled The Two-Character Play, is the one Tennessee Williams wished to include in New Directions' The Theatre of Tennessee Williams series. It is this version which is presented in this ND paperback.Stairs to the Roof
By Tennessee Williams, Allean Hale. 2000
A play produced only twice in the 1940s and now published for the first time reveals that Tennessee Williams anticipated…
the themes of Star Trek by decades. Sixty years ago a young Tennessee Williams wrote a play looking toward the year 2001. Stairs to the Roof is a rare and different Williams' work: a love story, a comedy, an experiment in meta-theater, with a touch of early science fiction. Tennessee Williams called Stairs to the Roof "a prayer for the wild of heart who are kept in cages" and dedicated it to "all the little wage earners of the world." It reflects the would-be poet's "season in hell" during the Depression when he had to quit college to type orders eight hours a day at the International Shoe Factory in St. Louis. Stairs is Williams' revenge, expressed through his alter ego, Benjamin Murphy, the clerk who stages a one-man rebellion against the clock, the monotony of his eight-to-five job, and all the dehumanizing forces of an increasingly mechanized and commercial society. Ben's swift-moving series of fantastic adventures culminate in an escape from the ordinary that is an endorsement of the American dream. In 1941 with the world at war and civilization in danger of collapse, Williams dared to imagine a utopian future as Ben leads us up his stairs towards the Millennium. Stairs to the Roof was produced only twice, once at the Playbox in Pasadena, California, in 1945, and subsequently at the Pasadena Playhouse in 1947. Now, in an edition meticulously prepared by noted Williams scholar Allean Hale, Williams fans can share this play of youthful optimism.Baby Doll & Tiger Tail: A screenplay and play by Tennessee Williams
By Tennessee Williams. 1991
A taut, vivid drama of a voluptuous child-bridge who refuses to consummate her marriage to an older, down-on-his-luck cotton-gin owner.…
In 1956, Time magazine called Tennessee Williams' Baby Doll "just possibly the dirtiest American-made motion picture that has ever been legally exhibited." The taut, vivid drama of a voluptuous child-bridge, who refuses to consummate her marriage to an older, down-on-his-luck cotton-gin owner in Tiger Tail County, Mississippi until she is "ready," has gained in humor and pathos over the years as society has caught up with the author's savagely honest view of bigotry and lust in the rural South. But Tennessee Williams was first and foremost a writer for the stage, and this reissue of his original screenplay for the Elia Kazan movie of Baby Doll is now accompanied by the script of the full-length stage play, Tiger Tail, developed from that screenplay during the '70s. The text, which incorporates the author's final revisions, records the play as it was produced at the Hippodrome Theatre Workshop in Gainesville, Florida, in 1979.My Family and Other Endangered Species
By Ellen Close, Braden Griffiths. 2016
Nine-year-old Phineas interprets the world through his encyclopedic knowledge of animals, but some human behaviour is just too puzzling. Take…
for example his mom, who insists he learn to fall asleep on his own, even though all young mammals sleep with their mothers; or his dad, who recently picked up and left the family, a behaviour quite unlike other mate-for-life animals. And then there’s the constant news from his favourite TV station, the Green Channel, about how humans are ruining the environment, a fact Phin is growing increasingly anxious about. So when his fourth-grade class gets a White’s tree frog as a pet, all of Phin’s anxieties come to a boil.Kindness
By Dennis Foon. 2009
Heartwarming and humorous, Kindness sensitively captures the reality of children's feelings as they navigate the small and large events in…
their world. From Hurricane Katrina to everyday encounters in the school hallway, the play offers an unforgettable lesson in compassion.Rick: The Rick Hansen Story
By Dennis Foon. 2011
Fifteen-year-old Rick Hansen is confident, outgoing, and the star of his high-school basketball team. He has his whole life planned…
out, until a tragic accident severs his spinal cord, leaving him in a wheelchair. Rick's accident forces him to adapt his positivity to deal with his new life, while helping to strengthen the relationship with his guilt-stricken best friend. Refusing to be put at a disadvantage, Rick conquers the challenges presented to him with a smile and changes the definition of what it means to be disabled. Based on the true story of the man who inspired millions with his Man In Motion World Tour, Rick is a triumphant play that showcases the importance of optimism and perseverance, encouraging audiences to make their own paths to change the world.Suburban Motel
By George F. Walker. 1999
Six plays, united only by the fact that they take place in one and the same suburban motel room: Problem…
Child, Criminal Genius, Risk Everything, Adult Entertainment, Featuring Loretta, and The End of Civilization. Transients, lovers, the haunted, the hunted, the desperate, the dumb, each "strut and fret their hour upon the stage and then are heard of no more.Suburbia (new version)
By Eric Bogosian. 2009
"Bogosian's script retains the playwright-performer's trademark vitriol and hammer wit."--Time OutThis new version of Eric Bogosian's best-selling play, set in…
a convenience store parking lot, premiered last season Off Broadway. His rewrites--for a world seeped in cell phones, hip-hop, and a new political context--render the piece "an American anyplace where everything, yet nothing, has changed" (The New York Times).Eric Bogosian's plays and solo shows include Talk Radio (Pulitzer Prize finalist); Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll; Pounding Nails in the Floor with My Forehead; and Drinking in America. He has received three OBIE awards and has toured throughout the country.Good People
By David Lindsay-Abaire. 2011
"A lyrical and understanding chronicler of people who somehow become displaced within their own lives. . . . Mr. Lindsay-Abaire…
has shown a special affinity for female characters suddenly forced to re-evaluate the roles by which they define themselves."--The New York Times With his latest play Good People, David Lindsay-Abaire returns to Manhattan Theatre Club where four of his previous works were produced, including his 2007 Pulitzer Prize-winning Rabbit Hole. The play premiered there in winter 2011 in a production directed by Daniel Sullivan (who also directed Rabbit Hole), and featuring Frances McDormand in the role of protagonist Margie Walsh. Good People is set in South Boston, the blue-collar neighborhood where Lindsay-Abaire himself grew up: Margie Walsh, let go from yet another job and facing eviction, decides to appeal to an old flame who has made good and left his Southie past behind. Lindsay-Abaire offers us both his "quiet three-dimensional depth" (Los Angeles Times) and his carefully observed humor in this exploration of life in America when you're on your last dollar. David Lindsay-Abaire is the author of Fuddy Meers, Kimberly Akimbo, A Devil Inside, Wonder of the World, and Rabbit Hole, in addition to the book for the musicals High Fidelity and Shrek. His plays have been produced throughout the United States and around the world.Not About Nightingales
By Tennessee Williams. 1999
This early full-length play put a young Tennessee Williams' passion for social justice in the spotlight. "Haunting, searing, unforgettable" —London…
Herald In early 1998, sixty years after it was written, one of Tennessee Williams' first full-length plays, Not About Nightingales, was premiered by Britain's Royal National Theatre and was immediately hailed as "one of the most remarkable theatrical discoveries of the last quarter century (London Evening Standard). Brought to the attention of the director Trevor Nunn by the actress Vanessa Redgrave (who has contributed a Foreword to this edition), "this early work...changed our perception of a major writer and still packs a hefty political punch" (London Independent). Written in 1938 and based on an actual newspaper story, the play follows the events of a prison atrocity which shocked the nation: convicts leading a hunger strike in a Pennsylvania prison were locked in a steam-heated cell and roasted to death. Williams later said: "I have never written anything since that could compete with it in violence and horror." Its sympathetic treatment of black and homosexual characters may have kept the play unproduced in its own time. But its flashes of lyricism and compelling dialogue presage the great plays Williams has yet to write. Not About Nightingales shows us the young playwright (for the first time using his signature "Tennessee") as a political writer, passionate about social injustice, and reflecting the plight of outcasts in Depression America. The stylistic influences of European Expressionism, radical American theatre of the 1930s, and popular film make it unique among the group of four early plays. Not About Nightingales has been edited by eminent Williams scholar Allean Hale, who has also provided an illuminating historical introduction.Candles to the Sun
By Tennessee Williams, William Jay Smith, Dan Isaac. 2004
This early play about coal miners struggling to improve their lives helped establish a young Tennessee Williams as a powerful…
new voice in American theater. The first full-length play by novice playwright Thomas Lanier Williams, Candles to the Sun opened on Thursday, March 18, 1937 and received rave reviews in the local press. The Mummers, a semi-professional and socially aware theater troupe in St. Louis, produced the play, and the combination of director Willard Holland's theater of social protest and the young Williams' talent for the dramatic depiction of poverty and its consequences proved irresistible to an audience eager for relevant social content. Set in the Red Hills coal mining section of Alabama, Candles to the Sun deals with both the attempts of the miners to unionize and the bleak lives of their families. Colvin McPherson of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch wrote that "Williams, a 25-year-old Washington University senior, is revealed not only as a writer of unusual promise but one of considerable technical skill right now . . . . His writing is rarely unsteady and his play has an emotional unity and robustness. It stands on its own feet. Its characters are genuine, its dialogue of a type that must have been uttered in the author's presence, its appeal in the theater widespread." As it turns out, Tom Williams had never met a miner in his young life. As he did for another early Williams play, Spring Storm, Dan Isaac uses his directorial skills to prepare a text of Candles to the Sun that is faithful to the 1937 production while providing readers (and actors) with a social and theatrical context. William Jay Smith, former Poet Laureate of the United States and St. Louis friend of the playwright, has contributed an illuminating foreword that touches not only on his memories of the young Tom Williams and the original production of Candles, but also on the poetic nature of Williams' writing as reflected in this play.Something Cloudy, Something Clear
By Tennessee Williams. 1996
Tennessee Williams returns to a pivotal moment in his stormy youth in Something Cloudy, Something Clear, which introducer Eve Adamson…
calls "a delicately woven tapestry of past and present, vulnerability and toughness, impetuous action and mature insight." Something Cloudy, Something Clear is, as Tennessee Williams stated, "one of the most personal plays I’ve ever written." Set in Provincetown, Cape Cod, in 1940, the play records Williams’ experiences during that "pivotal summer when I took sort of a crash course in growing up." On the brink of becoming a successful playwright, Williams was also to "come thoroughly out of the closet" and meet Kip, his first great love. Something Cloudy, Something Clearbrilliantly reimagines that long ago time, now recollected through the filter of all the playwright’s successes and failures, joys and regrets. Eve Adamson, director of the original 1981 production, provides an insightful introduction in which she captures the play’s heart-breaking appeal: "It is a delicately woven tapestry of past and present, vulnerability and toughness, impetuous action and mature insight. It seeks a reconciliation between love and art, life and death, and-to use two phrases which recur in the play––exigencies of desperation and negotiation of terms. The cloudy and the clear."The Traveling Companion & Other Plays
By Annette J. Saddik, Tennessee Williams. 2008
Twelve previously uncollected experimental shorter plays: The Chalky White Substance * The Day on Which a Man Dies (An Occidental…
Noh Play) * A Cavalier for Milady * The Pronoun "I" * The Remarkable Rooming House of Mme. LeMonde * Kirche, Küche, Kinder (An Outrage for the Stage) * Green Eyes * The Parade * The One Exception * Sunburst * Will Mr. Merriwether Return from Memphis? * The Traveling Companion Even with his great commercial success, Tennessee Williams always considered himself an experimental playwright. In the last 25 years of his life his explorations increased--especially in shorter forms and one-act plays--as Williams created performance pieces with elements of theater of the absurd, theater of cruelty, theater of the ridiculous, as well as motifs from Japanese forms such as Noh and Kabuki, high camp and satire, and with innovative visual and verbal styles that were entirely his own. Influenced by Beckett, Genet, and Pinter, among others, Williams worked hard to expand the boundaries of the lyric realism he was best known for. These plays were explicitly intended to be performed off-off Broadway or regionally. Sometimes disturbing, sometimes outrageous, quite often the tone of these plays is rough, bawdy or even cartoonish. While a number of these plays employ what could be termed bizarre "happy endings," others gaze unblinkingly into the darkness. Though several of Williams' lesser-known works from this period have already been published by New Directions, these twelve plays have never been collected. Most of these shorter plays are unknown to audiences and scholars--some are published here for the first time--yet all of them embrace, in one way or another, what Time magazine called "the four major concerns that have spurred Williams' dramatic imagination: loneliness, love, the violated heart and the valiancy of survival."