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Prayer for My Enemy
By Craig Lucas. 2009
"America the addicted. America the numb. America the war weary. America the lonely. All these countries compose the jagged terrain…
of this viscerally potent new play."--The Seattle Times "The very best we can hope for is to show the mess of life in such a way as to perhaps awaken our shared capacity for embracing it, in all its beauty and terror."--Craig LucasCraig Lucas "can masterfully distill a world of hurt and perplexity into complicated relations and single, pithy lines" (The Seattle Times), which is never more evident than in his latest play of public and private turmoil in today's America. Here we find the Noone family: son Billy returns from Iraq, his pregnant sister Marianne marries Billy's friend and former lover Tad, his mother Karen tries to keep her husband Austin from falling off the wagon--all while the Red Sox and Yankees battle for the 2004 pennant. With Prayer for My Enemy, Lucas returns to the dark territory he has explored with earlier works, "bringing light and craft to previously unlit corners," and illuminating the ways he is "one of the American theater's best writers" (Variety).Craig Lucas is a playwright, screenwriter, and director of both theater and film. His plays include Prelude to a Kiss, The Dying Gaul, Small Tragedy, Blue Window, God's Heart, The Singing Forest, and the book for the Tony Award-winning musical The Light in the Piazza. He is currently associate artistic director at the Intiman Theatre in Seattle.A Prelude to a Kiss and Other Plays
By Craig Lucas. 2002
This collection brings back into print one of Craig Lucas' best known and enduring works, A Prelude to a Kiss,…
which was both a hit on Broadway and a popular motion picture. Frank Rich in The New York Times wrote about Prelude, "It is rare to find a play so suffused with sorrow that sends one home so high." Also included are Missing Persons, "a truly intelligent play, one that is literary and heartfelt, beautifully written...a well-crafted, moving story, a dramatic rarity in these or any times "(New York Post), and Three Postcards, an offbeat and uniquely imaginative free form musical play.Craig Lucas is also the author of Reckless and Blue Window and What I Mean Was. He lives in Putnam Valley, New York.Title and Deed / Oh, the Humanity and other good intentions
By Will Eno. 2012
"A haunting and often fiercely funny meditation on life as a state of permanent exile... The marvel of Mr. Eno's…
voice is how naturally it combines a carefully sculptured lyricism with sly, poker-faced humor. Everyday phrases and familiar platitudes-'Don't ever change,' 'Who knows'-are turned inside out or twisted into blunt, unexpected punch lines punctuating long rhapsodic passages that leave you happily word-drunk." -Charles Isherwood, New York Times on Title and Deed"Title and Deed is daring within its masquerade of the mundane, spectacular within its minimalism and hilarious within its display of po-faced bewilderment. It is a clown play that capers at the edge of the abyss... Eno's voice is unique; his play is stage poetry of a high order. You can't see the ideas coming in Title and Deed. When they arrive-tiptoeing in with a quiet yet startling energy-you don't quite know how they got there. In this tale's brilliant telling, it is not the narrator who proves unreliable but life itself. The unspoken message of Eno's smart, bleak musings seems to be: enjoy the nothingness while you can." -John Lahr, New Yorker"Eno is a supreme monologist, using a distinctive, edgy blend of non sequiturs and provisional statements to explore the fragility of our existence... There are a lot of words, but they are always exquisitely chosen... Oh, the Humanity reveals that we are beautiful walking tragedies blinking with absurd optimism into the camera lens of history." -Lyn Gardner, GuardianKnown for his wry humor and deeply moving plays, Will Eno's "gift for articulating life's absurd beauty and its no less absurd horrors may be unmatched among writers of his generation" (New York Times). This new volume of the acclaimed playwright's work includes five short plays about being alive-Behold the Coach, in a Blazer, Uninsured; Ladies and Gentlemen, the Rain; Enter the Spokeswoman, Gently; The Bully Composition; and Oh, the Humanity-as well as Title and Deed, a haunting and severely funny solo rumination on life as everlasting exile.WILL ENO is a fellow of Residency Five at Signature Theatre Company in New York. His play The Open House premiered at Signature in 2014, and received an Obie Award, the Lucille Lortel Award for Best Play, and a Drama Desk Special Award. His play The Realistic Joneses premiered at Yale Repertory Theatre in 2012, and was produced on Broadway in 2014, for which he and the cast received a Drama Desk Special Award. His play Title and Deed premiered at Signature in 2012 and was presented at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2014. Both Title and Deed and The Realistic Joneses were included in the New York Times Best Plays List of 2012. Gnit, an adaption of Ibsen's Peer Gynt, premiered at Actors Theatre of Louisville in 2013. Middletown, winner of the Horton Foote Prize, premiered at the Vineyard Theatre in New York in 2010, and was then produced at Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago in 2011. Thom Pain (based on nothing) was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize and has been translated into many languages. The Flu Season premiered at the Gate Theatre in London in 2003, and later received the Oppenheimer Award for best New York debut production by an American writer. Tragedy: a tragedy premiered at the Gate Theatre in 2001, and was subsequently produced by Berkeley Repertory Theatre in 2008. Mr. Eno lives in Brooklyn with his wife Maria Dizzia and their daughter Albertine.Belleville
By Amy Herzog. 2014
"A quietly devastating play... Both a perceptive drama depicting the sudden fraying of a young marriage and a nail-biting psychological…
thriller... Belleville is among the most suspenseful plays I've seen in years." - Charles Isherwood, New York Times"Masterly... Among the new crop of young American playwrights, Herzog is in a class by herself." - Richard Zoglin, TimeAbby and Zack, young American newlyweds, have abandoned a comfortable postgraduate life in the states for Belleville, a bustling, bohemian, multicultural Parisian neighborhood. But as secrets both minor and monumental are revealed, their fraught relationship begins to unravel. Belleville examines the limits of trust and dependency in a world where love can turn pathological and our most intimate relationships may not be what they seem.AMY HERZOG's plays include 4,000 Miles (Pulitzer Prize finalist), After the Revolution and The Great God Pan. Ms. Herzog is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Whiting Writers' Award, an Obie Award and the Helen Merrill Award for Aspiring Playwrights.The Valley
By Joan Macleod. 2014
"MacLeod has a wonderful ear and eye for the everyday details."--Calgary HeraldInspired by the 2007 Tasering death of Robert Dziekanski…
at the Vancouver airport, The Valley dramatizes the volatile relationship between law enforcement and people in the grip of mental illness. The play connects both sides of this relationship by portraying two families embattled with depression, each guided by good intentions but challenged by their own flawed humanity.Joan MacLeod is the author of numerous award-winning plays. Her work has been translated into more than eight languages with productions throughout the world, including a sold-out run in New York.Oedipus Rex
By Sophocles. 1991
One of the greatest of the classic Greek tragedies and a masterpiece of dramatic construction. Catastrophe ensues when King Oedipus…
discovers he has inadvertently killed his father and married his mother. Masterly use of dramatic irony greatly intensifies impact of agonizing events. Sophocles' finest play, Oedipus Rex ranks as a towering landmark of Western drama. Explanatory footnotes. Translated by Sir George Young.Storefront Church
By John Patrick Shanley. 2014
"Some of Shanley's sharpest comic writing in years... His intense engagement with questions of religion and ethics remains distinctive and…
invigorating." - Charles Isherwood, New York Times"There's a deeper philosophical vein that the author mines, allowing his language to acquire the heft and timbre of a serious moral debate...We taste bitterness, but also much that is sweet." - David Cote, TimeOut New York"A postmodern morality play that's as funny as it is bracing." - Karen D'Souza, San Jose Mercury NewsConcluding the "Church and State" trilogy of plays that began with Doubt and Defiance, Storefront Church tells the story of a Bronx Borough President who is forced by the mortgage crisis into a confrontation with a local minister. Blending earthy humor and philosophical reflection, this compassionate morality tale is an exploration of the often thorny relationship between spiritual experience and social action.John Patrick Shanley is the author of Doubt: A Parable (Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Tony Award for Best Play), Outside Mullingar (Tony nomination for Best Play), Defiance, Danny and the Deep Blue Sea and Dirty Story, among many other plays. He wrote the teleplay for Live from Baghdad (Emmy nomination for Outstanding Writing of a Miniseries, Movie or Dramatic Special) and the screenplays for Congo, Alive, Five Corners, Joe Versus the Volcano, Doubt (Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay) and Moonstruck (Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay).Greek drama: tragedy and comedy (The modern scholar)
By Peter Meineck. 2005
In this course, New York University professor Peter Meineck discusses the historical, social, political and cultural context of ancient Greek…
drama, concentrating on the four playwrights Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripedes, and Aristophanes. 2005.Oedipus at Colonus
By David Mulroy. 2014
Oedipus at Colonus is the third in Sophocles' trilogy of plays about the famous king of Thebes and his unhappy…
family. It dramatizes the mysterious death of Oedipus, by which he is transformed into an immortal hero protecting Athens. This was Sophocles' final play, written in his mid-eighties and produced posthumously. Translator David Mulroy's introduction and notes deepen the reader's understanding of Oedipus' character and the real political tumult that was shaking Athens at the time that Sophocles wrote the play. Oedipus at Colonus is at once a complex study of a tragic character, an indictment of Athenian democracy, and a subtle endorsement of hope for personal immortality. As in his previous translations of Oedipus Rex and Antigone, Mulroy combines scrupulous scholarship and textual accuracy with a fresh poetic style. He uses iambic pentameter for spoken passages and short rhymed stanzas for choral songs, resulting in a text that is accessible and fun to read and perform.The Allegory of the Cave
By Plato. 2010
Plato's Allegory of the Cave is one of the most famous pieces of philosophical literature. This edition was translated by…
Benjamin Jowett and has been completely revised and updated. Proofreader's Note: There are some punctuation errors that were left intact because they were present in the print copy.Hosanna
By Michel Tremblay. 1984
Third Edition In Michel Tremblay's classic play about identity in crisis, Claude leaves the conformity of small-town Quebec to realize…
a new life and a new persona among the drag queens and prostitutes of Montreal's seedy "Main" - the boulevard that marks the division of the city's anglophone and francophone neighbourhoods. Claude's illusions about himself are shattered when, painstakingly remade as his idol Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra, he arrives at a costume party themed on "great women of history" and is mocked for his glamorous aspirations. Written during the social and political tumult of Quebec's Quiet Revolution, Tremblay's political allegory about the authenticity of self resonates ever more so today. Cast of 2 men. Translated by John Van Burek & Bill GlasscoThe Long Christmas Ride Home
By Paula Vogel. 2004
"Brilliant . . . even more ambitious than Vogel's How I Learned to Drive . . . it covers more…
ground and is bolder in its storytelling. Vogel's language is at its most poetic, eloquent and elegiac. In fact, its vivid imagery rivals the prose style of any great American short story writer. The play sounds like it might have been adapted from a beautiful, undiscovered novella."--New Haven Register"One of the most absorbing evenings of theatre to come along in some time."--VarietyPast and present collide on a snowy Christmas Eve for a troubled family of five. Humorous and heart-wrenching, this beautifully written play proves that magic can be found in the simplest breaths of life. Combining the elements of No theatre and Bunraku with contemporary Western sensibilities, Vogel's Ride is a mesmerizing homage to the works of Thornton Wilder, including Our Town. A moving and memorable study of the American family careening near the edge of oblivion.Paula Vogel's plays include The Baltimore Waltz, Mineola Twins, Hot 'n' Throbbing, Desdemona, And Baby Makes Seven, among others. Ms. Vogel will be the resident playwright during the Signature Theatre's 2004-05 season dedicated to her works. She has taught at Brown University in the MFA playwriting program since 1985.The Mammary Plays
By Paula Vogel. 1998
The Mineola Twins and How I Learned To Drive are mirror-image family plays about coming of age in the '60s.…
The Mineola Twins, primarily set on Long Island, New York, is the more fiercely comic and political of the two. How I Learned To Drive, set mostly in Maryland, is a more delicate tale of sexual awakening.The Kojiki
By Gustav Heldt. 2014
Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll
By Eric Bogosian. 1991
Thom Pain (based on nothing) [Trade Edition]
By Will Eno. 2004
"Astonishing in its impact. . . One of the treasured nights in the theatre that can leave you both breathless…
with exhilaration and, depending on your sensitivity to meditations on the bleak and beautiful mysteries of human experience, in a puddle of tears . . . Thom Pain is at bottom a surreal meditation on the empty promises life makes, the way experience never lives up to the weird and awesome fact of being. But it is also, in its odd, bewitching beauty, an affirmation of life's worth."--Charles Isherwood, The New York Times"Eno has emerged as one of the most original young playwrights on the scene. He is one of the few writers who can convert discomfort and outright agony into such pleasure."--David Cote, TimeOut New York"Will Eno is one of the finest younger playwrights I've come across in a number of years. His work is inventive, disciplined and, at the same time, wild and evocative."--Edward AlbeeWhen Will Eno's one-person play Thom Pain opened in New York in February 2005, it became something rare--an unqualified hit, which soon extended through July. Before that, the play was a critical success in London and received the coveted Fringe First Award at the Edinburgh Festival. Dubbed "stand-up existentialism" by The New York Times, it is lyrical and deadpan, both sardonic and sincere. It is Thom Pain--in the camouflage of the common man--fumbling with his heart, squinting into the light.Will Eno lives in Brooklyn, New York. His plays include The Flu Season, Tragedy: a tragedy, King: a problem play, and Intermission. His plays have been produced in London by the Gate Theatre and BBC Radio, and in the United States by Rude Mechanicals and Naked Angels. His play The Flu Season recently won the Oppenheimer Award, presented by NY Newsday for the previous year's best debut production in New York by an American playwright.Wake Up and Smell the Coffee
By Eric Bogosian. 2002
100% pure high octane Bogosian.Bogosian's latest and greatest monologue."His wit is as venomous as ever, his material even more devastating…
and polished than before."--New York Daily News"Bogosian hasn't simply crossed the line of good taste, he has snorted it."--The Daily TexanWake Up is Bogosian's meditation on making it to the top of the ladder, on falling off the ladder and on the exhilarating thrill of the ultimate crash and burn. Once again the author offers a blisteringly funny and dead-on take of the chaos and alienation of post-modern life in the U. S. of the year 2000. As Michael Feingold so ably offered in his Village Voice review--"Bogosian is there, watching out for the downtrodden, ridiculing the arrogant rich, defending battered wives and neo-hippie hitchhikers and never losing sight of his own capacity for being classed among the batters and bullies. But his 95 minutes is as fast and exciting a read as the theatre community offers. In our time, the stage has almost been what classical thinkers saw it as, a medium for criticizing life. How perfect that a solo performer should rediscover its roots, by choosing his own life as the object of his criticism."Eric Bogosian, born in Woburn, Massachusetts, has performed his plays and monologues at venues nationwide. Winner of Obie and Drama Desk Awards, he has made four films of his work, most notably Talk Radio and Suburbia. His novel Mall was recently published by Simon and Schuster.Pounding Nails in the Floor with My Forehead
By Eric Bogosian. 1994
In his brashest solo show, performer and playwright Eric Bogosian once again aims his searing social commentary at the contemporary…
urban and suburban scene. "Never miss Bogosian, because the sharp-tongued, sharp-shooting Bogosian never misses."--Clive Barnes, New York PostThe Essential Bogosian
By Eric Bogosian. 1994
"What Lenny Bruce was to the 1950s, Bob Dylan to the 1960s, Woody Allen to the 1970s--that's what Eric Bogosian…
is to this frightening moment of drift in our history."--Frank Rich, The New York TimesCaroline, or Change
By Tony Kushner, Jeanine Tesori. 2004
"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.