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Romeo and Juliet: The 30-Minute Shakespeare
By Nick Newlin. 2010
Planning a school or amateur Shakespeare production? The best way to experience the plays is to perform them, but getting…
started can be a challenge: The complete plays are too long and complex, while scene selections or simplified language are too limited."The 30-Minute Shakespeare" is a new series of abridgements that tell the "story" of each play from start to finish while keeping the beauty of Shakespeare's language intact. Specific stage directions and character suggestions give even inexperienced actors the tools to perform Shakespeare with confidence, understanding, and fun!This cutting of ROMEO AND JULIET is edited to four key scenes, starting with the lyrical prologue and the foreboding opening brawl, which is played out in slow motion to music. Also included are the timeless balcony scene; the harsh scolding of Juliet by her father; and the final moments at the tomb.The edition also includes an essay by editor Nick Newlin on how to produce a Shakespeare play with novice actors, and notes about the original production of this abridgement at the Folger Shakespeare Library's annual Student Shakespeare Festival.The Shoplifters
By Morris Panych. 2015
In this riotously funny new comedy from Morris Panych, we meet Alma, a seasoned career shoplifter who prefers the five-finger…
discount over some lousy seniors' day deal. But it's not just an empty wallet that leads Alma to a life of petty crime - it's also her strong convictions about social justice and economic inequality.Along for the ride is Phyllis, Alma's frazzled accomplice who lacks her mentor's cool demeanour and snappy comebacks. It's Alma who does the talking when the pair is apprehended at the grocery store by Dom, an overzealous rookie security guard. Guided by the strictness of his born-again Christian belief, Dom is ready to handcuff the culprits and call the police, but his affable senior partner, Otto, intervenes with a more sympathetic view of the crime: "It's just a couple a steaks." As Alma, Phyllis, Dom, and Otto share their wildly different takes on the situation, complex views on morality and ethics begin to emerge.With its cast of oddball characters, Panych's comedy offers biting observations about society's haves and have-nots and how much they might actually have in common.Cast of 2 women and 2 men.Romeo and Juliet
By William Shakespeare. 2005
Written in the mid-1590s, the play is regarded as one of the Bard’s earliest masterpieces. To make Romeo and Juliet…
more accessible for the modern reader, our Prestwick House Literary Touchstone Edition includes a glossary of the more difficult words, as well as convenient sidebar notes to enlighten the reader on aspects that may be confusing or overlooked. In doing this, it is our intention that the reader may more fully enjoy the beauty of the verse, the wisdom of the insights, and the impact of the drama.The St. Leonard Chronicles
By Steve Galluccio. 2015
From the award-winning author of stage hits Mambo Italiano and In Piazza San Domenico comes a delicious, saucy new comedy…
about Terry and Robert, a young couple with roots in the Italian neighbourhood of St. Leonard in Montreal. The couple's newly renovated duplex has barely a hint of gilded rococo - not just a cultural infraction, but also an ominous sign that all is not as it should be. Eager to break free of family ties that are bound too tight, Terry and Robert announce they're moving to the affluent anglophone suburb of Beaconsfield - tantamount to committing a mortal sin in the eyes of their more traditional Italian relatives. When they confess their plans to their parents over dinner one night, floodgates open to other unspoken desires and revelations, turning conservative St. Leonard values upside down.The St. Leonard Chronicles opened the 2013-14 season at Montreal's venerable Centaur Theatre and sold out before its run. The play was extended and went on to sell more than twenty thousand tickets. The French version of the Chronicles, translated by Galluccio himself, premieres at Theâtre Jean Duceppe in Montreal in December 2014 and then in 2015 embarks on a twenty-four-city tour.Cast of 4 women and 3 men.This is war
By Hannah Moscovitch. 2013
In this play, Master Corporal Tanya Young, Captain Stephen Hughes, Private Jonny Henderson, and Sergeant Chris Anders have lived through…
an atrocity while holding one of the most volatile regions in Afghanistan. As each of them is interviewed by an unseen broadcasting organization, they recount their version of events leading up to the horrific incident with painful, relenting replies. What begins to form is a picture of the effects of guilt and the psychological toll of violence in a war where the enemy is sometimes indiscernible. c2013.Reading Václav Havel
By David S. Danaher. 2015
As a playwright, a dissident, and a politician, Václav Havel was one of the most important intellectual figures of the…
late twentieth century. Working in an extraordinary range of genres - poetry, plays, public letters, philosophical essays, and political speeches - he left behind a range of texts so diverse that scholars have had difficulty grappling with his oeuvre as a whole.In Reading Václav Havel, David S. Danaher approaches Havel's remarkable body of work holistically, focusing on the language, images, and ideas which appear and reappear in the many genres in which Havel wrote. Carefully reading the original Czech texts alongside their English versions, he exposes what in Havel's thought has been lost in translation. A passionate argument for Havel's continuing relevance, Reading Václav Havel is the first book to capture the fundamental unity of his vast literary legacy.The Road To Mendocino
By Marion O. Hanna. 2015
In THE ROAD TO MENDOCINO, M. B. Wright, a feisty Southern lawyer, agrees to help a colleague whose daughter is…
missing, last seen with M. B. 's nemesis, the politically powerful Judge Augustine. The search takes her to Washington, D. C. where the sudden appearance of her abusive ex-husband plunges her back into the depths of the life she had worked so hard to escape, making her quest to find Caroline that much more difficult. To deal with her misgivings, she visits Duncan's other ex-wife via the treacherous and beautiful California Highway 1. Meanwhile, Judge Augustine puts pressure on M. B. 's staff to bring her back and face the music he has waiting for her.Venus
By Suzan-Lori Parks. 1997
Suzan-Lori Parks continues her examination of black people in history and stage through the life of the so-called "Hottentot Venus,"…
an African woman displayed semi-nude throughout Europe due to her extraordinary physiognomy; in particular, her enormous buttocks. She was befriended, bought and bedded by a doctor who advanced his scientific career through his anatomical measurements of her after her premature death.Bad Boy Nietzsche! and Other Plays
By Richard Foreman. 2007
Richard Foreman has been at the leading edge of the theatrical avant-garde in the United States and throughout the world…
since 1968. His legendary productions, written and directed by him at his Ontological-Hysteric Theatre have influenced two generations of theater artists. This new anthology collects plays written and performed over six years, including Now That Communism Is Dead My Life Feels Empty, Maria del Bosco, Panic (How to Be Happy!), Bad Boy Nietzsche!, Bad Behavior and King Cowboy Rufus Rules the Universe.Richard Foreman founded the Ontological-Hysteric Theatre in 1968. The theater is currently in the historic St. Marks Church, where he rehearses and produces one of his new plays each year, each play performing for 16 weeks every winter.Rodney's Wife
By Richard Nelson. 2006
"A full emotional geography of a family . . . Seemingly light conversation scrapes the skins of the characters in…
this sharply etched study of dislocation, loneliness and sexual betrayal."--Ben Brantley, The New York Times"Nelson is a master of the quiet detail, of the oblique rhythm that transforms emotional diffidence into fascinating character."--Linda Winer, Newsday"The early scenes proceed with the closely observed simplicity of Chekhov, whereas the later more wrenching moments evoke the eloquent bitterness of Albee."--David Cote, TimeOut New YorkA new work by leading American playwright Richard Nelson, who for more than 25 years has written prolifically, and with fine detail, on the perplexities of everyday living. In Rodney's Wife, a fading American actor in Rome for the filming of a 1960s spaghetti Western gathers with family and friends at a rented villa. Over the course of one booze-soaked summer night, jealousies and secrets are revealed that crumble the foundations of their relationships. Inspired by Euripides, the play is a tragedy of exiles who continue to need each other, even as they push away.Richard Nelson won Britain's Olivier Award for Best Play for Goodnight Children Everywhere, and the Tony Award for Best Book for his musical James Joyce's The Dead. His plays have been widely produced in the U.S. and Great Britain. He is an Honorary Associate Artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company, and Chair of the Playwriting Department at the Yale School of Drama.A Fair Country
By Jon Robin Baitz. 1997
"One of the most gratifying, even inspirational, things about the American theatre today is the very existence of Jon Robin…
Baitz. With A Fair Country his writing continues to push our theatre out of the parlor and into the political." - Linda Winer, Newsday"Baitz is occupying theatrical territory that once was the turf of Arthur Miller and Lillian Hellman, though he writes in his own idiosyncratic voice... He has a gift for familial confrontations that are vicious, funny, brutal, and bizarre." - Vincent Canby, New York Times (Broadway Production)"Few American playwrights have the ability to write such pointed dialogue, and fewer yet are able to marry their domestic drama with the larger political and social issues that concern Baitz." - Richard Christiansen, Chicago Tribune (Broadway Production)"A sizzling new play." - Howard Kissel, New York Daily News (Broadway Production)A subtle and powerful exploration of the personal impact of politics on an American family stationed in South Africa during the time of apartheid.Jon Robin Baitz is the author of Three Hotels, The Film Society, Other Desert Cities, The End of the Day, and The Substance of Fire, which he adapted into a major motion picture. He was the showrunner on ABC's Brothers & Sisters. He also wrote the screenplay for the upcoming film Stonewall directed by Roland Emmerich. He lives in New York.Frank's Home
By Richard Nelson. 2011
"A thoroughly invigorating, tightly focused piece of Chekhovian drama, wherein chatter about work and art . . . fail to…
mask deep vulnerability."-Chicago TribuneA play about Frank Lloyd Wright set in the summer of 1923, when the great architect has recently left Chicago for California, hoping to mend his relationship with his adult children. Richard Nelson brings to life two great architectural demigods, Wright and Louis Sullivan, only to show their all-too-human frailties.Richard Nelson's plays include Rodney's Wife, Goodnight Children Everywhere, Some Americans Abroad, Franny's Way, New England, and James Joyce's The Dead (with Shaun Davey), winner of the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical.Goodnight Children Everywhere and Other Plays
By Richard Nelson. 2004
Goodnight Children Everywhere "Richard Nelson's new play announces itself almost as if it were Chekhovian . . . the play,…
like all plays of discovery and purgation, has a translucency and a density that nag, hurt and heal."--London Sunday TimesNew England "Smart, sharp, acridly funny . . . in the sweetest of all ironies, it's an American writer at the peak of his form who has given London's RSC the major new play that has eluded them all year."--VarietySome Americans Abroad "A sequel to The Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain's caustic view of pretentious Americans abroad: both works indict the well-educated American middle-class for its supine and superficial relationship to Old World culture."--New York TimesTwo Shakespearean Actors "Nelson's provocative account of the deadly rivalry between two great 18th-century actors."--VarietyFranny's Way"Boundaries warp and melt in the dense urban heat that pervades Franny's Way, Richard Nelson's sensitively drawn portrait of love in the age of J.D. Salinger."--New York TimesA prolific and varied writer, Richard Nelson is also the author of a screenplay, a television play, the books for musicals and plays for young audiences, as well as a string of radio plays and powerful adaptations from the classic European repertory of Beaumarchais, Brecht, Chekhov, Goldoni, Molière and Strindberg, all of which have influenced the development of his own craft. Among his many awards include the London Time Out Award, two OBIEs, two Giles Cooper awards and numerous grants and fellowships. He is an honorary associate of the Royal Shakespeare Company.Gum
By Karen Hartman. 2003
In Karen Hartman's "juicyfruit tragedy," two young sisters discover new appetites within the walls of their father's garden. Gum explores…
the need to tame nature in a fictional fundamental country where the title candy is contraband and every desire has its price. "A brief, intense, beguiling, sensual, witty, impassioned, deeply moving and brightly burnished gem"--San Francisco Examiner. Also includes The Mother of Modern Censorship.Karen Hartman is the author of Girl Under Grain, Troy Women and Alice: Tales of a Curious Girl. She is a native of San Diego who lives in Brooklyn and is currently the playwright-in-residence at Princeton University.Dogeaters
By Jessica Hagedorn. 2003
Jessica Hagedorn has transformed her bestselling novel about the Philippines during the reign of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos into an…
equally powerful theatrical piece that is a multi-layered tour de force. As Harold Bloom writes, "Hagedorn expresses the conflicts experienced by Asian immigrants caught between cultures . . . she takes aim at racism in the U.S. and develops in her dramas the themes of displacement and the search for belonging."Jessica Hagedorn is a performance artist, poet, novelist and playwright, born and raised in the Philippines. Her novels include Dogeaters (Penguin 1990) which was nominated for a National Book Award and The Gangster of Love (Penguin 1996); a short story collection, Danger and Beauty (City Lights 2002).Re: Producing Women's Dramatic History
By D. A. Hadfield. 2007
Within the last generation, Canadian drama, like other literary forms, has seen the emergence of works by women that re-vision…
the role of women in history. However, in order to write themselves into theatre history, women have had to negotiate a complex journey through both pages and stages, a network of public production that is highly politically charged at every turn. This book examines the strategies employed by seven feminist productions that have managed to achieve a canonic place in the recorded history of Canadian theatre. All of the plays under consideration here exist (or have existed) in at least one published script form. However, Dorothy Hadfield’s purpose here is not to analyze these scripts for the definitive meaning of the narratives in these plays, nor is she trying to suggest how a reader or audience should inevitably read them. Instead, Hadfield is trying to account for how and why these scripts came to exist in published form, given the strong implicit connection between publication and a public assumption of good” or successful” theatre. In a system where textual visibility leads to opportunities for study, reproduction and validation for both play and playwright, the permanence of script publication can have real economic and ideological advantages. By analyzing publicity materials, photos, programs, reviews, box office and theatre records, it is possible to trace the process of creating a theatrical success,” as well as to assess what effect that critical verdict has on the shape of the script publications of these works. In effect, by placing the textual artifacts left behind by these performances in the context of their production and reception, in part through a carefully constructed ideological compatibility throughout the production process, it is possible to investigate how the politics of the theatrical process influences what we perceive as good” playwriting.Metropolitan Tragedy
By Marissa Greenberg. 2015
Breaking new ground in the study of tragedy, early modern theatre, and literary London, Metropolitan Tragedy demonstrates that early modern…
tragedy emerged from the juncture of radical changes in London's urban fabric and the city's judicial procedures. Marissa Greenberg argues that plays by Shakespeare, Milton, Massinger, and others rework classical conventions to represent the city as a locus of suffering and loss while they reflect on actual sources of injustice in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century London: structural upheaval, imperial ambition, and political tyranny.Drawing on a rich archive of printed and manuscript sources, including numerous images of England's capital, Greenberg reveals the competing ideas about the metropolis that mediated responses to theatrical tragedy. The first study of early modern tragedy as an urban genre, Metropolitan Tragedy advances our understanding of the intersections between genre and history.Billy Bishop Goes to War
By John Gray, Eric Peterson. 1981
One of Canada's most successful and enduring musical plays, Billy Bishop Goes to War was first published in 1982 and…
went on to win the Los Angeles Drama Critics' Award and the Governor General's Award for Drama. In 2010, the celebrated story of the World War I flying ace - credited with seventy-two victories and billed as the top pilot in the British Empire - was revised to frame the original play as a retrospective. It is the same play it always was - the difference is in the telling. Billy Bishop now appears in his later years, reflecting on his wartime exploits, and on the business of war and hero making. Bishop's reminiscence is not so much about the horror and death of war as it is about being young and intensely alive. "The prime of life / The best of men," Bishop sings, "It will never be / Like this again."A memory play about war, Billy Bishop has been going into battle onstage for more than thirty years. The Canadian classic is revisited in this second edition, where war is still a terrible thing, but some men say it was the greatest time of their lives. It's about the ironies and the price of survival.The play format is deceptively simple with a solo narrator who assumes multiple roles while his piano-playing sidekick offers sardonic musical comments.Cast of 2 men.Prometheus Bound
By Aeschylus, Joel Agee. 2014
Prometheus Bound is the starkest and strangest of the classic Greek tragedies, a play in which god and man are…
presented as radically, irreconcilably at odds. It begins with the shock of hammer blows as the Titan Prometheus is shackled to a rock in the Caucasus. This is his punishment for giving the gift of fire to humankind and for thwarting Zeus's decision to exterminate the human race. Prometheus's pain is unceasing, but he refuses to recant his commitment to humanity, to whom he has also brought the knowledge of writing, mathematics, medicine, and architecture. He hints that he knows how Zeus will be brought low in the future, but when Hermes demands that Prometheus divulge his secret, he refuses and is sent spinning into the abyss by a divine thunderbolt. To whom does humanity look for guidance: to the supreme deity or to the rebel Titan? What law controls the cosmos? Prometheus Bound, one of the great poetic achievements of the ancient world, appears here in a splendid new translation by Joel Agee that does full justice to the harsh and keening music of the original Greek.All Our Happy Days Are Stupid
By Sheila Heti. 2015
Two couples, each with a twelve-year-old child, travel to Paris; within a few moments of discovering each other in a…
crowd, one of their children disappears. A day later, one of the mothers disappears, too. The story that follows is a wonderfully strange, beautifully composed examination of happiness and desperation, complete with a man in a bear suit, a teen pop star, and eight really excellent songs.Sheila Heti's debut play was first commissioned in 2001, for a feminist theater company that never ended up staging it. Its turbulent creation became the backdrop of Heti's last novel, How Should a Person Be?, which was named a Best Book of the Year by the New York Times and the New Yorker-and now the play itself can be revealed at last. With new introductions by Sheila Heti and director Jordan Tannahill, All Our Happy Days Are Stupid offers a novel's worth of wisdom and humor, of wild hope and dreamlike confrontations, and page after page of unforgettable lines. Seen until now only by a lucky few, its publication is a cause for celebration.