Featured stage plays on this page:
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Click above to read more about our featured stage plays, or below to browse!
I Am My Own Wife
by Doug Wright
From the Obie Award-winning author of Quills comes this acclaimed one-man show, which explores the astonishing true story of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf. A transvestite and celebrated antiques dealer who successfully navigated the two most oppressive regimes of the past century — the Nazis and the Communists — while openly gay and defiantly in drag, von Mahlsdorf was both hailed as a cultural hero and accused of colluding with the Stasi.
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Imaginary Friends
by Nora Ephron
Although Lillian Hellman and Mary McCarthy probably only met once in their lives, their names will be linked forever in the history of American literary feuds: they were legendary enemies, especially after McCarthy famously announced to the world that every word Hellman wrote was a lie, “including ‘and’ and ‘the.'” In Imaginary Friends, Nora Ephron brilliantly and hilariously resuscitates these two bigger-than-life women to give them a post-mortem second act, and
the chance to really air their differences.
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Incognito
by Nick Payne
Three interwoven stories exploring the nature of identity and how we are defined by what we remember, Incognito is an exhilarating exploration of what it means to be human.
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Indecent
by Paula Vogel
When Sholem Asch wrote God of Vengeance in 1907, he didn’t imagine the height of controversy the play would eventually reach. Performing at first in Yiddish and German, the play’s subject matter wasn’t deemed contentious until it was produced in English, when the American audiences were scandalized by the onstage depiction of an amorous affair between two women. Paula Vogel’s newest work traces the trajectory of the show’s success through its tour in Europe to its abrupt and explosive demise on Broadway in 1923—including the arrest of the entire production’s cast and crew. “Revelatory…As intimate and immediate as a whispered secret. Vogel’s play thrums with music, desire, and fear, and it’s shrewd about the ways in which America isn’t free, and about how art does and doesn’t transcend the perilous winds of history.” — New Yorker
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In Extremis
by Howard Brenton
One night, a society palm-reader agreed to see Oscar Wilde in her London flat. Wilde’s lover was urging him to sue the Marquis of Queensberry for criminal libel. But Wilde’s friends were warning him to leave town. In Extremis reveals the strange turmoil of that night, as a man at the height of his fame turns to a complete stranger for advice about a potentially life-changing decision.
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In the Heart of America and Other Plays
by Naomi Wallace
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The Inheritance
by Matthew Lopez
Inspired by E. M. Forster’s novel Howards End, and set in New York three decades after the height of the AIDS epidemic, The Inheritance wrestles with what it means to be a gay man today, exploring relationships and connections across age and social class and asking what one generation’s responsibilities may be to the next. “Matthew Lopez’s rhapsodic deep dive into the ties that bind the gay community to its past asks how to love, how to live and how to do those well, despite a legacy of damage. It’s captivating.” — The Times
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In the Wake
by Lisa Kron
On Thanksgiving Day, after the controversial 2000 election, political junkie Ellen gathers with family and friends in her cramped New York City apartment. Soon after, she experience an unexpected passionate encounter, and discovers that ideas about America and our own selves are not as fixed as they once seemed.
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Intimate Apparel
by Lynn Nottage
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In Real Life
by Charlayne Woodard
In the final play of her autobiographical trilogy that began with Pretty Fire and continued with Neat, In Real Life finds Charlayne Woodard pursuing her dreams in New York City. From her early days as a struggling actor to her nomination for a Tony Award, the harsh realities of Broadway are balanced by the unusual and comforting characters that touched her life.
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Inside Out
by Tanika Gupta
Teenage sisters Affy and Di look out for each other. Dying to escape their violent family life, they move from dreams to betrayal – with devastating results. Inside Out is commissioned by Clean Break, a women’s theatre company working with women in prison, women ex-offenders and women who have been sectioned under the Mental Health Act. The play is the provocative and funny story of how the sisters fight for a better future.
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Inside/Outside: Six Plays from Palestine and the Diaspora
by Ismail Khalidi (Editor), Naomi Wallace (Editor), Nathalie Handal (Introduction)
The first collection of its kind, Inside/Outside: Six Plays from Palestine and the Diaspora brings together work by six dynamic Palestinian playwrights from both occupied Palestine and the Diaspora.
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Instant Applause: 26 Very Short Complete Plays
by Playwrights Canada Press
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In the Heights: The Complete Book and Lyrics of the Broadway Musical
by Quiara Alegria Hudes (Author), Lin-Manuel Miranda (Author)
Conceived by Lin-Manuel Miranda, In the Heights is an exciting musical about life in Washington Heights, a tight-knit community where the coffee from the corner bodega is light and sweet, the windows are always open, and the breeze carries the rhythm of three generations of music. An authentic and exhilarating journey into one of Manhattans most vibrant communities.
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In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play)
by Sarah Ruhl
Sarah Ruhl made her Broadway debut with this effervescent comedy: a play about sex, intimacy, and equality, set in the 1880s, when enthusiasm for the electric light bulb gave rise to a handy new instrument to treat female hysteria. The story revolves around the medical office and home of Dr. Givings, who regularly induces “paroxysm” in his once high-strung patient Sabrina, allowing her to happily return to playing piano. Soon, Sabrina falls in love with the doctor’s assistant Annie, and also befriends his wife Catherine, who is dealing with her own neurotic misgivings about not being able to breast-feed her baby. With this new work, Ruhl once again uses playful symbolism and lyrical language as she makes seemingly effortless thematic leaps — crafting a play with tremendous critical and audience appeal, in her singular theatrical voice. “A fascinating, funny and evocative play. . . . Ruhl develops the story with the enticing blend of irreverent humor and skewed realism. . . . It’s beautiful.” –San Francisco Chronicle
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Israel Horovitz’s New Shorts
by Israel Horovitz
This brilliant collection of Horovitz’s newest one-act plays can be mixed and matched to form several “theme” evenings.
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The Jacksonian
by Beth Henley
Beth Henley returns to the Southern Gothic storytelling that made her reputation with both critics and audiences. Set in a seedy motel in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1964, the play centers around Rosy, a troubled teenager, and Bill, her dentist father who has been living at the motel for several months as his wife, Susan, considers the disgrace of divorce. “Ms. Henley isn’t flirting with the clichés of Southern Gothic and pulp fiction. She’s embracing them with such ardor that she squeezes new life out of them. The result is her most entertaining work since she won the Pulitzer Prize and the Tony Award for Crimes of the Heart three decades ago.” — Ben Brantley, New York Times
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Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol
by Tom Mula
Based on a one-man show written and performed by author Tom Mula, Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol offers a unique and entertaining new twist on the familiar holiday tale. Readers follow Marley as he works behind the scenes to save Scrooge’s soul. Funny, irreverent, and moving, this beautifully illustrated gift book promises to become a holiday favorite.
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The James Plays
by Rona Munro
An epic exploration of the history and shaping of Scotland, from one of the country’s most successful playwrights. This vividly imagined trilogy depicts three generations of Stewart kings who ruled Scotland in the tumultuous fifteenth century. Each play stands as a unique vision of a country tussling with its past and future; together, they form a complex narrative on Scottish nationhood.
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Jerusalem
by Jez Butterworth
One of London and New York’s most highly acclaimed plays of the season, Jez Butterworth’s “wild, blissfully funny drug-and-booze-fueled comedy and tragedy” (The New York Times) is a rousing exploration of national identity, living on the margins, and the necessity of rebellion. Jez Butterworth won the 1995 Evening Standard Award for most promising playwright and was awarded the E.M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2007. “One of the most exciting new plays in ages.” –The New York Times
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Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train
by Stephen Adly Guirgis
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John
by Annie Baker (Author)
The week after Thanksgiving. A Bed & Breakfast in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. A cheerful innkeeper. A young couple struggling to stay together. Thousands of inanimate objects, watching. Baker’s hyper-realism bleeds into the eerily super-natural in this quiet tale, where actors and audiences alike delve into ideas of self, mortality, and the solitude of human experience. “Annie Baker’s John is so good on so many levels that it casts a unique and brilliant light.” – The New Yorker
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Journey to the West: A Play
by Mary Zimmerman
This adaptation of a sixteenth-century Chinese comic novel is based on the true story of a seventh-century monk and his fabled sixteen-year pilgrimage from China to India in search of sacred texts. Mixing whimsy with spiritual weight, Zimmerman’s script delivers a delightful and thought-provoking combination of comedy, adventure, satire, and allegories of human perseverance.
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Jubilee
by Peter Barnes
A mischievous satire on the foundation of the Shakespeare industry. The author’s ironic and irreverent comedy dissects the cult of the theatrical personality, with guest appearances from the Bard himself, Ben Johnson, David Garrick, Samuel Johnson, Sir Peter Hall and Peter Barnes.
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Juniper’s Whitening / Victimese
by Helen Oyeyemi
Two plays exploring the pain of living and the difficulty of dying by a new teenage sensation. Helen Oyeyemi was born in Nigeria in 1984 and moved to London when she was four. She is an undergraduate at Cambridge University. Her first novel, The Icarus Girl, is published by Nan A. Talese in June 2005. This is the first publication of her plays.
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Kennedy Center Presents: Award-winning Plays from the American College Theater Festival
by Gary Garrison
Entertaining, challenging, and sometimes startling, these plays introduce readers to the emerging playwrights who are sure to be the theater giants of tomorrow. Gary Garrison is the national chair for playwriting at the Kennedy Center. He is also a professor at New York University, a well-regarded playwright, and the author of several books, including Take Ten.
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Kill Me Now
by Brad Fraser
Jake is a widower whose life is devoted to his son, a severely disabled seventeen-year-old boy. However, when Jake suddenly develops a serious medical condition, he becomes the one to rely on the people around him. As Jake’s condition worsens, an ethical dilemma troubles the household as everyone is forced to consider the possibility of saying goodbye too early.
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Killer Joe
by Tracy Letts
The Smith family hatch a plan to murder their estranged matriarch for her insurance money. They hire Killer Joe Cooper, a police detective and part-time contract killer, to do the job.
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King Charles III
by Mike Bartlett
Queen Elizabeth II is dead. After a lifetime of waiting, her son ascends the throne. A future of power. But how to rule? Mike Bartlett’s controversial “future history play” explores the people beneath the crowns, the unwritten rules of our democracy, and the conscience of Britain’s most famous family. “Dazzling… The most engrossing, entertaining and insightful new history play in decades.” – New York Times
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Kosher Harry
by Nick Grosso
Gathered in a kosher bar in North London are a foulmouthed cabbie, who can’t stop blubbing, an old woman in a wheelchair, who hears only what she chooses to, and the world’s worst waitress, wearing nothing but her smalls. Joining them is a man with no name who takes them on at their own game. Combining the restraint of Beckett’s dialogue with the grotesque world of Berkoff, this black comedy aims to push stereotypes to the limit, and then bring them back to reality again.
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Kwei-Armah Plays: 1: Elmina’s Kitchen; Fix Up; Statement of Regret; Let There Be Love
by Kwame Kwei-Armah
This collection highlights the work of critically-acclaimed playwright Kwame Kwei-Armah who has brought a distinctive new voice and examination of multiculturalism to the London stage. Included are a trilogy of plays commissioned and produced by the National Theatre in London between 2003 and 2008, and “Let There Be Love,” first produced at the Tricycle Theatre, London, in 2008. The volume is introduced by the author and features a chronology of his work.
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La Bete and Wrong Mountain: Two Plays by David Hirson
by David Hirson
Written in rhyming iambic-pentameter couplets, La Bete recounts the arrival of a vulgar street performer, Valere, into an elite company of veteran actors. The battles between Elomire, the troupe’s leader, and Valere provides the basis for an antic comedy questioning the divide between art and entertainment. In Wrong Mountain, popular acclaim eludes Henry Dennett, an aging poet, until he makes a bet with a successful playwright, Guy Halperin, that he can write a play and have it produced. Dennett triumphs, but he is left wondering whether he has spent his entire life climbing the “wrong mountain.”
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Lanford Wilson: Collected Plays
by Lanford Wilson
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The Last Days of Judas Iscariot: A Play
by Stephen Adly Guirgis (Introduction)
Set in a time-bending, seriocomically imagined world between Heaven and Hell, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot is a philosophical meditation on the conflict between divine mercy and human free will that takes a close look at the eternal damnation of the Bible’s most notorious sinner.
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The Late Henry Moss / Eyes for Consuela / When the World Was Green: Three Plays
by Sam Shepard
by Sam Shepard
These three plays by Pulitzer Prize winner Sam Shepard are bold, explosive, and ultimately redemptive dramas propelled by family secrets and illuminated by a searching intelligence. In The Late Henry Moss two estranged brothers confront the past as they piece together the drunken fishing expedition that preceded their father’s death. In Eyes for Consuela, based on Octavio Paz’s classic story “The Blue Bouquet,”” a vacationing American encounters a knife-toting Mexican bandit on a gruesome quest. And in When the World Was Green, cowritten with Joseph Chaikin, a journalist in search of her father interviews an old man who resolved a generations-old vendetta by murdering the wrong man. Together, these plays form a powerful trio from an enduring force in American theater.
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Leopoldstadt
by Tom Stoppard
At the beginning of the twentieth century, Leopoldstadt was the old, crowded Jewish quarter of Vienna, a city humming with artistic and intellectual excitement. Stoppard’s epic yet intimate drama centers on Hermann Merz, a manufacturer and baptized Jew married to Catholic Gretl, whose extended family convene at their fashionable apartment on Christmas Day in 1899. Yet by the time the play closes, Austria has passed through the convulsions of war, revolution, impoverishment, annexation by Nazi Germany, and the Holocaust, which stole the lives of 65,000 Austrian Jews alone. From one of today’s most acclaimed playwrights, Leopoldstadt is a human and heartbreaking drama of literary brilliance, historical verisimilitude, and powerful emotion. “The fulfillment of a lifetime’s theatrical journey.” ― Michael Billington, Guardian
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Letters from Cuba and Other Plays
by Maria Irene Fornes
Based on three decades of letters Maria Irene Fornes received from her brother in Havana, Letters from Cuba moves back and forth in time and place and spirit, linking a young dancer and her relatives in Cuba. Also includes Terra Incognita and Manual for a Desperate Crossing.
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Letters in Wartime
by Kenneth Brown, Stephen Scriver
During World War II, Allan, a young RCAF pilot, and Moira, an auxiliary worker at the Blatchford Field in Edmonton, try desperately to maintain their long-distance relationship. But is the printed word enough to keep love alive in a world turned upside down?
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Let’s Have Sex!
by Valentin Krasnogorov
A play structured as a rondo — a scene between the Husband and the Wife leads to a scene between the Wife and the Professor, etc., each one introduced by the recurring theme: “Let’s have sex!” But for Krasnogorov’s characters, consummation — however devoutly desired — remains distressingly elusive.
Available to read online from ProPlay
The Lieutenant of Inishmore
by Martin McDonagh
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Life X 3
by Yasmina Reza, Christopher Hampton
From the celebrated writer of Art, a scathingly hilarious commentary on vanity, professional insecurity, and the vicissitudes of marriage. Life X 3 presents three versions of two couples (and an offstage six-year-old) trying to make a success of one evening despite the fact that they neither like nor respect one another.
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Life After God: The Play
by Douglas Coupland, Michael Lewis MacLennan (Adapter)
Life After God is a lively, penetrating look at the first generation raised without religion. The play centers on the eccentric, sensitive Scout and six friends who went to school together, and how their lives unravel fifteen years later as they face the challenges and disillusionment of adulthood.
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The Line
by Timberlake Wertenbaker
From unexpected quarters in nineteenth century France, a bright new talent emerges: confident, penniless, and a woman. But circumstance is no obstacle to Suzanne Valadon. For the great Edgar Degas, his ambitious protegee proves the biggest challenge of his life.
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Living Out
by Lisa Loomer
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Liselotte in May
by Zsolt Pozsgai
When a lonely woman in her thirties realizes that the years are passing her by without a partner, she desperately tries to get herself a man by various means. Through no fault of her own, each of her prospective partners dies on the first date. Widely produced in Europe and now available in this superb English transalation, Liselotte in May is a bittersweet absurdist comedy about a gentle, lonely heart.
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Lizzy, Darcy and Jane
by Joanna Alexandra Norland
Does the author direct her characters’ destinies . . . or is it the other way around? When Elizabeth Bennet, Mr. Darcy, and Lady Catherine take the stage, all bets are off. Uncovering the fiery side of a not-so-gentle Jane Austen, Lizzy, Darcy and Jane explores the interplay between Jane Austen’s life and work, and probes her crackling relationship with the uncompromising heroine of Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet.
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Lobby Hero
by Kenneth Lonergan
With his acclaimed plays This Is Our Youth and The Waverly Gallery and his Oscar-nominated film You Can Count on Me, Kenneth Lonergan has been called “the new golden boy of stage and screen” by The New York Times. Now he returns to the stage with Lobby Hero, which has been praised as “smart, funny … [a] drama that derives its strength from Lonergan’s keen ear for dialogue. One powerful tale” (New York Daily News).
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The Long Christmas Ride Home
by Paula Vogel
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Love and Information
by Caryl Churchill
Someone sneezes. Someone can’t get a signal. Someone shares a secret. In this fast moving kaleidoscope, more than a hundred characters try to make sense of what they know. Declared “the greatest living English playwright” by Tony Kushner, Caryl Churchill premiered this latest work at London’s Royal Court in fall 2012, followed by its acclaimed US premiere at New York Theatre Workshop in early 2014. “[A] thought-churning, deeply poignant new play… Leave it to Ms. Churchill to come up with a work that so ingeniously and exhaustively mirrors our age of the splintered attention span… This British playwright has proved herself without peer in creating expressly topical works in which form and function are one…. Sharp-minded [and] tender-hearted.” – Ben Brantley, New York Times
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Luna Gale
by Rebecca Gilman
Caroline Cox has been working in the Department of Human Services for twenty-five years. She thinks troubled teenagers Peter and Karlie, the parents of newborn Luna Gale, are a typical case. But she discovers an array of unspoken motives amongst all the parties with an interest in Luna’s future. Everybody believes they offer the best solution, but their positions are diametrically opposed… and Caroline has responsibility for determining the outcome. With events accelerating and Caroline uncovering more of the truth, her conclusions begin to look startlingly unconventional — even to her.
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Lunacy
by Sandra Perlman
The year is 1827; the place, a theater in Philadelphia where young Shakespearean actor Edwin Forrest is rehearsing for his role as King Lear. His loud, over-the-top emoting is interrupted by a young Quaker woman, Cornelia Lamb, whom the arrogant Edwin mistakenly assumes is the newspaper reporter he is expecting to interview him. But Cornelia’s purpose is far different.
Available to read online from ProPlay
Lydie Breeze: Bullfinch’s Mythology / The Sacredness of the Next Task
by John Guare
An extensive reworking of two earlier (1981) plays by John Guare about a nineteenth-century commune in Nantucket, Lydie Breeze is a two-play, six-hour cycle about four seekers who come to the island to create a special model for a better world in the ashes of the Civil War and end up as a model for the corruption of twentieth-century idealism. The result is an almost surreal saga of American life, with allegorical meditations on the contradictions and interconnectedness of all things and the chaotic nature of the universe.
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The Lyons
by Nicky Silver
Nicky Silver, that “strange progeny of a coupling between Neil Simon and Edward Albee” (The New York Times), has cornered the market on deliciously savage family comedies. This intimate and frightening examination of how we cope with loneliness and disappointment delighted audiences on Broadway, earning a Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Play. “Comedy nirvana . . . satisfyingly mean and funny.”?The New York Post
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Making Progress: America’s Queer History in 12 Plays
by Michael D. Jackson
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Marigraph: Gauging the Tides of Contemporary Drama in the Maritimes
by Bruce Barton (Editor)
This collection of nine contemporary plays from Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island features prize-winning works that have been produced across the country, as well as regionally staged plays that deserve national attention. The list of authors includes many of Canada’s most celebrated playwrights as well as new writers whose works continue to define the form and potential of drama on Canada’s East Coast.
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Masterpieces
by Sarah Daniels
Masterpieces is a powerful issue-play, a vehement statement against pornography that has set theatre audiences on edge since its first production in the 1980s. Written in response to excessive and graphically violent films, Masterpieces is a play written in anger that still holds relevance today.
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Mauritius
by Theresa Rebeck
Stamp collecting is far more risky than you think. After their mother’s death, two estranged half-sisters discover a book of rare stamps that may include the crown jewel for collectors. One sister tries to collect on the windfall, while the other resists for sentimental reasons. In this gripping tale, a seemingly simple sale becomes dangerous when three seedy, high-stakes collectors enter the sisters’ world, willing to do anything to claim the rare find as their own. “One wouldn’t think that the subject of rare stamps would make for gripping, entertaining theater, but Theresa Rebeck’s Mauritius, being given its Broadway premiere by the Manhattan Theatre Club, proves otherwise . . . The sort of well-made, engrossing and unpretentious play rarely encountered on Broadway these days, ‘Mauritius’ is a welcome introduction to the fall season.” –The Hollywood Reporter
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Matt & Ben
by Mindy Kaling, Brenda Withers
It’s the story Hollywood has glamorized, publicized, and bombarded us with — how it all began for the two young men, now famous for their on-again-off-again romances and their big-budget smashes and flops.It Started with a script for Good Will Hunting , slaved over by the bright young dreamers (portrayed in this play’s premiere by the female playwrights) in their run-down apartment in 1996. Or was it? This hilarious, scathing play takes us back to the pivotal moment when the finished script that would change their lives…fell from the ceiling while they were working on something else. The laughs come at a manic pace in this delightfully venomous play that has taken off Broadway by storm.
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Matter of Intent
by Gary Earl Ross
It is 1960. Kennedy and Nixon are vying for the White House as lunch counter sit-ins spread throughout the South. Buffalo, New York, has so few black women lawyers they can be counted on a single hand. In this stirring legal drama, one of them, Temple Scott, is locked in the courtroom fight of her life. There is no doubt the young woman the press calls “the Negro Lizzie Borden” murdered her employer. To keep Mae Lou McKitchen out of the electric chair, however, Temple must uncover the truth behind the crime. Murder, you see, is always a matter of intent. Winner of the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award.
Available to read online from ProPlay
The Metal Children
By Adam Rapp
In small-town America, a young adult novel about teen pregnancy is banned by the local school board, igniting a fierce and violent debate over abortion, religious beliefs, and modern feminism. Its directionless New York City author arrives in town to defend the book and finds that it has inspired a group of local teens to rebel in strange and unexpected ways.
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Metamorphoses: A Play
by Mary Zimmerman
Time Magazine: “…Zimmerman’s lovely, deeply affecting work…shows that theater can provide not just escape but sometimes a glimpse of the divine.”
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The Methuen Drama Anthology of Modern Asian Plays
Kevin J. Wetmore Jr. (Editor), Siyuan Liu (Editor)
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The Methuen Drama Book of New American Plays
Sarah Benson (Editor)
An anthology of six outstanding plays from some of the most exciting playwrights currently receiving critical acclaim in the States. It will be invaluable not only to readers and theatergoers in the U.S., but to those around the world seeking out new American plays and an insight into how U.S. playwrights are engaging with their current social and political environment. Playwrights include: Suzan-Lori Parks, Christopher Shinn, Katori Hall, David Adjmi, Marcus Gardley, and Annie Baker.
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The Methuen Drama Book of Post-black Plays
Douglas A. Jones Jr. (Editor), Harry J. Elam Jr. (Editor)
“Post-black” refers to an emerging trend within black arts to find new and multiple expressions of blackness, unburdened by the social and cultural expectations of blackness of the past and moving beyond the conventional binary of black and white. Reflecting this multiplicity of perspectives, the plays in this collection explode the traditional ways of representing black families on the American stage, and create new means to consider the interplay of race, with questions of class, gender, and sexuality.
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The Methuen Drama Book of Royal Court Plays 2000-2010: Under the Blue Sky; Fallout; Motortown; My Child; Enron
An essential anthology of five plays originally staged by what the New York Times described as “the most important theater in Europe.” The Royal Court.
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Mieko Ouchi: Two Plays: The Red Priest and the Blue Light
by Mieko Ouchi
Includes The Red Priest and Mieko Ouchi’s new play, The Blue Light, in which Leni Riefenstahl, one hundred-years-old, is in the office of a young female Hollywood studio executive to make one last desperate pitch to direct her first feature film in fifty years. A thought-provoking contemplation on art, politics, and the seduction of fascism.
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Mistero Buffo: The Collected Plays of Dario Fo, Volume 2
by Dario Fo (Author), Ron Jenkins (Author)
Mistero Buffo is Dario Fo’s one-man tour de force, in which he creates his own subversive version of Biblical stories. Infused with the rhythmic drive of a jazz improvisation, the immediacy of a newspaper headline, and the epic scope of a historical novel, Fo and his wife/collaborator Franca Rame have performed Mistero Buffo throughout the world to over 10 million people.
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Misty
by Arinzé Kene
An epic, lyrical journey through the pulsating heart and underground soul of inner-city London. Arinzé Kene’s Misty is an inventive blend of gig theatre, spoken word, live art and direct address, confronting the assumptions and expectations underpinning the act of telling a story.
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Modern Jewish Plays
by Jason Sherman (Editor)
Includes Masada by Arthur Milner, The Murder of Isaac by Motti Lerner, The Trials of John Demjanjuk: A Holocaust Cabaret by Jonathan Garfinkel, Hand in Hand by Simon Block, Shooting Magda (The Palestinian Girl) by Joshua Sobol, and Reading Hebron by Jason Sherman.
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Monologues from the Plays of Christopher Durang
by Eric Kraus (Editor), Christopher Durang
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The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told
by Paul Rudnick
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The Mother and The Father
by Florian Zeller (Author), Christopher Hampton
The Mother: Anne loved the time in her life when she prepared breakfast each morning for her two young children. Years later, spending hours alone, Anne convinces herself that her husband is having an affair. If only her son were to break-up with his girlfriend. He would return home and come down for breakfast. She would put on her new red dress and they would go out.
The Father: “A wonderfully peculiar, quietly stunning depiction of dementia … A controlled, unforgettable portrait of losing your memory.” Times
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The Motherfucker With the Hat
by Stephen Adly Guirgis
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Motherhouse
by David Fennario
This powerful drama gives a voice to the disillusioned working-class women employed at the British Munitions Factory in Verdun, Quebec, during World War I. Despite tension over conscription, dedicated mothers, wives, sisters, and sweethearts assemble artillery shells to support the war effort. Meanwhile, their beloved soldiers die abroad and their children starve at home because of war profiteers. “When a final analysis is made of twentieth-century Canadian theater, the most significant political playwright will undoubtedly be David Fennario.” — Canadian Book Review
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The Mountaintop
by Katori Hall
Winner of the Olivier Award and produced on Broadway starring Samuel L. Jackson, The Mountaintop is set at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis in 1968, on the night before Martin Luther King is assassinated and on the day he delivered a speech in which he foretold his own fate: “I may not get there with you, but I want you to know that tonight, we as a people will get to the Promised Land.” Playwright Katori Hall takes this historic date with destiny and weaves a powerful surrealistic fantasy about a conversation between King and a mysterious hotel maid. Hall’s insight, light touch and lively mood depicts King as a real man with very human foibles who was nonetheless capable of inspiring millions to hope and move toward a momentous societal shift for equality and justice.
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Mr. Burns
by Anne Washburn
Washburn’s play is pretty out there in many respects, but each scenario is beautifully realised, and it presents a compelling query: faced with uncertainty, would we salvage what’s “important” for the human race? Or what comforts us? And is there really a difference?
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Mrs. Bob Cratchit’s Wild Christmas Binge
by Christopher Durang
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Mrs. Pat
by Pam Gems
At the turn of the century, Mrs. Patrick Campbell was England’s most celebrated and notorious actress. An acclaimed beauty, loved by many, she is remembered for her wit, for bad behavior, and her close friendship with George Bernard Shaw. This new play is about the art of acting and the turmoil of being a woman who was meant to please but couldn’t resist using her mind.
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Mummified Deer And Other Plays
by Luis Valdez
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My City
by Stephen Poliakoff
Heralding a return to the stage for renowned dramatist Stephen Poliakoff, My City is a lyrical exploration of storytelling, interwoven personal and political histories, memory and the ties of the past. Two former school friends are reunited with their erstwhile teacher, the glamorous, gracious Miss Lambert who is now engaged in nightly pilgrimages on foot across London as an antidote to her chronic insomnia. In the course of these nocturnal journeys, she witnesses a paradigmatic range of incidents reflecting today’s society: the kindness and the violence, the glut of discarded rubbish and the sanctity of that which is carefully preserved, as well as the ghostly vestiges of the past. My City contains all the hallmarks of Poliakoff’s best writing: high in style and sustained mood, the play tells stories of the past with melodic descriptions, cinematic scope and aesthetic preciseness.
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My Friend Hitler
by Yukio Mishima, Hiroaki Sato (Translator)
Though best known for his novels, Yukio Mishima published more than sixty plays, almost all of which were produced during his lifetime. Among them are kabuki plays and others inspired by No dramas -two types used in classical Japanese theater. Of play-writing Mishima once observed, “I started writing dramas just as water flows toward a lower place. In me, the topography of dramas seems to be situated far below that of novels. It seems to be in a place which is more instinctive, closer to child’s play.” For English readers, these plays have been one of Japan’s best-kept secrets – until now.
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My Name Is Rachel Corrie
by Rachel Corrie
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My Zinc Bed
by David Hare
A darkly comic look at love and addiction by the author of Amy’s View. When struggling poet, reformed alcoholic, and devout Alcoholics Anonymous adherent Paul Peplow interviews the wildly successful, reclusive, and notoriously prickly entrepreneur Victor Quinn, he is in no way prepared for what is to follow.
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National Theatre Connections: Plays for Young People 2018
by Various Authors
Drawing together the work of nine leading playwrights, National Theatre Connections 2018 features work by some of the most exciting contemporary playwrights. Gathered together in one volume, the plays offer young performers an engaging selection of material to perform, read or study.
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Natural Breaks & Rhythms
by Julius Ayodeji
Beats and Cold, two ambitious DJs, are gaining reputation in the music industry. They have found a new sound — jungle — and it’s going to be massive! At first the chemistry between them produces gold. But as Beats turns into a producer, and Cold fights for the space to be a true artist, the tension builds beat by beat. Julius Ayodeji is a Lecturer in Multimedia at Nottingham Trent University. Formerly he was a freelance film-maker. Julius’s credits include: The Bath; Lift, part of BBC Radio’s ‘Brief Encounters’ series and The Times Grow Worthy of Our Voice. He has been chosen as one of fifty writers nationwide to take part in ‘The 50’.
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Neat
by Charlayne Woodard
This one-woman performance piece offers a sensitive portrait of a black girl growing up in a Northern city during the 1950s. She attends every Bat Mitzvah and starts learning Hebrew before she begins searching for her own African roots, is caught up in a high school “race riot,” and is singled out by the bad-boy Romeo. But, most importantly, we see her interacting with a retarded aunt, first as a young child delighted with this taller playmate, then as a teenager whose whole status in the world seems threatened when Neat comes to live with her family.
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Necessary Targets: A Story of Women and War
by Eve Ensler
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Next Fall
by Geoffrey Nauffts
Luke is devoutly religious and Adam is an atheist, but they make their relationship work despite their differences. However, when an accident changes everything, Adam must turn to Luke’s family for support and answers.
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The Night Alive
by Conor McPherson
“Superb, vivid and violent . . . a brilliantly fused improvisation on Harold Pinter and David Mamet.” – Whatsonstage.com
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Nine Night
by Natasha Gordon
Gloria is gravely sick. When her time comes, the celebration begins; the traditional Jamaican Nine Night wake. But for Gloria’s children and grandchildren, marking her death with a party that lasts over a week is a test. Nine nights of music, food, sharing stories – and an endless parade of mourners. Natasha Gordon’s debut play Nine Night is a touching and very funny exploration of the rituals of family. “A remarkable debut… Gordon has a finely tuned ear for the humour of everyday life… an eloquent vision of what it means to be haunted by the past.”–Evening Standard
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Nocturne
by Adam Rapp
Nocturne is a beautiful, moody work about a man reflecting on a life marred by the accidental killing of his sister.
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No More Cherry Blossoms
by Philip Kan Gotanda
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Now You Know
by Michael Frayn
From the author of the acclaimed novel The Trick of It and the creator of the stage/screen hit Noises Off comes the hilarious story of an unscrupulous, womanizing London politician who meets his match in the person of a woman who despises everything he stands for.
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A Number
by Caryl Churchill
Caryl Churchill, hailed by Tony Kushner as “the greatest living English language playwright,” has turned her extraordinary dramatic gifts to the subject of human cloning — how might a man feel to discover that he is only one in a number of identical copies. And which one of him is the original. . . ?
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The Odyssey: A Play
by Mary Zimmerman
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Once: The Musical
by Enda Walsh (Author), Glen Hansard (Author), Marketa Irglova (Author)
Retaining the film’s popular music and lyrics, acclaimed Irish playwright Enda Walsh adapts this charming tale of a complicated romance between an Irish street musician and a young Czech immigrant for the stage. A hit musical Off-Broadway, Once premiered on Broadway in spring 2012 to rave reviews.
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One Man, Two Guvnors: U.S. Edition
by Richard Bean
This hilarious adaptation of Carlo Goldoni’s classic play The Servant of Two Masters was hailed as the funniest comedy to grace London’s West End in years, earning a bevy of five-star reviews. In Richard Bean’s side-splitting take on Goldoni’s comic gem, falling trousers, flying fish heads, star-crossed lovers, cross-dressing mobsters and a fantastic onstage band are just a few of delights that await at the most “deliriously funny” (Daily Telegraph) play to cross the pond in decades. “The most criminally funny theatre I’ve ever seen. If you’re not having a good time at this show, you may be on the wrong medication.” – The Hollywood Reporter
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On the Shore of the Wide World
by Simon Stephens
Set over the course of nine months, On the Shore of the Wide World is an epic play about love, family, Roy Keane, and the size of the galaxy.
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Other Desert Cities
by Jon Robin Baitz
In “Other Desert Cities,” Brooke Wyeth returns home to Palm Springs to visit her parents after a six-year absence. A once-promising novelist, she announces to her family the imminent publication of a memoir dredging up a pivotal and tragic event in the family’s history — a wound that her parents don’t want reopened. In this family, secrets are currency and everyone is rich. “In his most fully realized play to date, Mr. Baitz makes sure our sympathies keep shifting among the members of the wounded family portrayed here. Every one of them emerges as selfish, loving, cruel, compassionate, irritating, charming and just possibly heroic.” — Ben Brantley, The New York Times
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Our House
Theresa Rebeck
Are news and entertainment interchangeable? A cocksure TV bigshot faced with dwindling ratings installs America’s favorite news anchor as host of a popular reality show. Meanwhile, in Middle America, a houseful of roommates bickers over high-stakes real-world conflicts: Merv doesn’t clean the bathroom. Someone ate Alice’s yogurt. And the rent is long past due. When reality collides with reality TV, we find ourselves front and center in a drama that holds the nation riveted. Our House is a deliciously scathing new comedy that takes on a media-obsessed culture intent on turning even the most sobering crisis into sexy entertainment.
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Our Lady of 121st Street
by Stephen Adly Guirgis
“Guirgis has a hilarious, sympathetic, terrific ear . . . he heightens the rhythms of the street until there is a brilliant, buoyant cacophony.” – Donald Lyons, New York Post
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Our Late Night and a Thought in Three Parts: Two Plays
by Wallace Shawn
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Out in the Open
by Jonathan Harvey
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Outside Mullingar
by John Patrick Shanley
Anthony and Rosemary, neighbors in rural Ireland, are nearing their middle years. Anthony is an introverted farmer and Rosemary is the woman who vows to have him at all costs. Outside Mullingar is by turns poetic, uplifting, dark and funny as hell.
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An Oxford Anthology of Contemporary Chinese Drama
Martha Cheung, Jane Lai (Editors)
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Over There
by Mark Ravenhill
Award-winning playwright Mark Ravenhill examines the hungers releases when two countries separated by a common language, meet again. In the story when Franz’s mother escaped Germany to the West with one of her identical twin boys, she left the other behind. Now, 25 years later, Karl crosses the border in search of his other half. As history takes an unexpected turn, the brothers must struggle to reconnect.
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Oxygen
by Carl Djerassi, Roald Hoffmann
What motivates a scientist? One key factor is the pressure from the competition to be the first to discover something new. The moral consequences of this are the subject of the play “Oxygen,” dealing with the discovery of this all-important element.
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Patrick Marber Plays 1: Closer / Dealer’s Choice / After Miss Julie
by Patrick Marber
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Paul
by Howard Brenton
The most famous conversion in history – when Saul became Paul – was a trick. It was actually Jesus appearing to him. Jesus did not die on the cross but was rescued and sheltered by James, Peter, and Mary Magdalene. But they prefer to keep Paul in the dark. Now imprisoned by Nero, Peter finally tells Paul the truth before their deaths.
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Penhall Plays: 2: Blue/Orange; Dumb Show; Wild Turkey
by Joe Penhall
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Penny Plain
by Ronnie Burkett
A new play from one of the world’s most acclaimed and inventive puppeteers. Humanity is facing extinction, and Penny Plain, elderly and blind, can only sit and wait. An unexpected cast of characters pay her visits, struggling to escape from the hostile world outside, in this strange and spellbinding play. “In Penny Plain, by the brilliant Ronnie Burkett, the slam of emotion these little wooden puppets evoke will surprise you.”
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People
by Alan Bennett
There’s a kind of emancipation to selling your wonderful treasures — a setting them free to range the world. Dorothy wonders if an attic sale could be a solution . . .
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Perfectly Abnormal: Seven Gay Plays
by Sky Gilbert (Editor)
Includes The Convergence of Luke by Harry Rintoul, Sir Richard Wadd, Pornographer by Shawn Postoff, Getting Lucky by Christian Lloyd, Cancun by Greg Kearney, The Rise and Fall of Peter Galveston by Greg MacArthur, The Bathhouse Suite by Ken Brand, and Nazi/Jew/Queer by Michael Achtman.
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Peter and Alice
by John Logan
Enchantment and reality collide at a 1932 meeting between Alice Liddell Hargreaves, the original Alice in Wonderland, and Peter Llewelyn Davies, the original Peter Pan.
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Peter and the Starcatcher: The Annotated Script of the Broadway Play
by Rick Elice
The hilarious script for the Broadway play is presented along with commentary by the playwright, the directors, the composer, the set designer, and authors Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson. Filled with behind-the-scenes information and photos of the cast and crew, this annotated script will enchant and entertain fans of the book and the play alike.
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Piano/Forte
by Terry Johnson
Piano/Forte is a bold new comedy following the events on the eve of Clifford’s wedding to the glamorous Dawn, when his plans for a joyous celebration are thrown into turmoil by the return home of his estranged daughter Louise. Her plans to exact revenge prove to have explosive consequences. Terry Johnson is an award-winning playwright whose previous plays have included Hitchcock Blonde, Hysteria and Insignificance. His other works include adaptations of The Graduate and Dead Funny.
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Picture Perfect
by Gary Earl Ross
Criminal psychology professor Marcus Micheaux and his mystery writer wife Beverly Hatcher have the perfect life — until condemned serial killer Gunther Creel, whom Marcus interviewed extensively for his research, paints a portrait of them. After Creel’s execution the painting gradually begins to change — and so do Marcus and Beverly.
Available to read online from ProPlay
The Pillowman
by Martin McDonagh
While still in his twenties, the Anglo-Irish playwright Martin McDonagh has filled houses in New York and London, been showered with the theatre world’s most prestigious accolades, and electrified audiences with his cunningly crafted and outrageous tragicomedies. With echoes of Stoppard and Kafka, his latest drama, The Pillowman, is the viciously funny and seriously disturbing tale of a writer in an unnamed totalitarian state who is interrogated about the gruesome content of his short stories and their similarities to a number of child-murders occurring in his town.
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The Play About the Baby
by Edward Albee
Ben Brantley, The New York Times: “Funny, harrowing dramatic fable … as explicit and concise a statement of what Mr. Albee believes as he is ever likely to deliver.”
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Playing With Fire
by David Edgar
What begins as a metro-versus-retro comedy of misunderstanding soon becomes a chilling drama about multicultural Britain. Racial tensions soar and good intentions have fatal consequences.
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The Plays of Josefina Niggli: Recovered Landmarks of Latino Literature
by Josefina Niggli (Editor), William Orchard (Editor)
Josefina Niggli (1910-1983) was one of the most successful Mexican American writers of the early twentieth century. Born of European parents and raised in Mexico, she spent most of her adult life in the United States, and in her plays and novels she aimed to portray authentic Mexican experiences for English-speaking audiences. Niggli crossed borders, cultures, and genres, and her life and work prompt interesting questions about race, class, gender, modernity, ethnic and national identity, and the formation of literary canons.
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Plays for Young People: Citizenship; Scenes from Family Life; Totally Over You
by Mark Ravenhill
Originally commissioned as part of the National Theatre Connections programme, these three plays were specifically written for teenagers and are ideal for young performers aged 13-25 years old. Written with greater warmth and humanity than you might expect from the author of such controversial works as Shopping and F***ing, Ravenhill’s plays for teenagers are compassionate, intelligent and not at all patronising.
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Playz From the Boom Box Galaxy: An Anthology from the Hip Hop Generation
by Robert Alexander (Editor), Kim Euell (Editor)
Plays from the Boom Box Galaxy collects works by many of the most exciting and influential hip-hop theater artists performing today. Robert Alexander is the author of 23 plays, including I Ain’t Yo’ Uncle, and is the co-editor of The Fire This Time anthology. Kim Euell is a well-known dramaturg who has worked at many theaters across the country on the development of new plays.
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The Play That Goes Wrong
by Various Authors
The Play That Goes Wrong is a farcical murder mystery, a play within a play, conceived and performed by award-winning company Theatre Mischief.
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Poliakoff Plays: 3: Caught on a Train; Coming in to Land; Close My Eyes
by Stephen Poliakoff
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Polish Joke and Other Plays
by David Ives
This collection brings together four full-length plays from the same dazzling pen that produced the one-act comic masterpieces of All in the Timing: Polish Joke, a young Polish-American’s trip through ethnic stereotypes; Don Juan in Chicago, in which a Renaissance innocent makes a deal with the devil, only to become a reluctant Latin lover; Ancient History, a comedy-drama about the holy war that breaks out when two people from two very different cultures fall in love; and The Red Address, the searing portrait of a man with a secret who is forced by tragedy into self-revelation.
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The Plum Tree
by Mitch Miyagawa
“[Japanese-Canadian internment] is still a painful and shameful subject for many people. But playwright Mitch Miyagawa revisits these issues with compassion in his eloquently written play…a few scenes are devastating, but The Plum Tree is ultimately a very hopeful and inspiring story.” — The Calgary Sun
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Poor Super Man: A Play With Captions
by Brad Fraser
Fraser’s “spiritual sequel” to his play “Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love.”
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Port Authority
by Conor McPherson
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Pounding Nails in the Floor With My Forehead
by Eric Bogosian
Booklist: Introducing the published version of his latest solo show, Bogosian laments that, thanks to TV, “we float in a matrix of billions of image fragments, sound bites, plot-line, news reports and ad copy.” Pounding Nails is his attempt to make sense of this flotsam.
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Pretty Fire
by Charlayne Woodard
Winner of the Los Angeles Critics Circle Award, Pretty Fire consists of five autobiographical vignettes that begin with Woodard’s premature birth and end with her first solo performance in her church’s junior choir, the event that set her career as a performer in motion.
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The Prisoner’s Dilemma
by David Edgar
Starting with international peace brokers playing simulation games on a univeristy campus, David Edgar’s intensely politcal new play spirals upwards and outward to present a situation of real conflict over bloodily unresolvable life-and-death issues.
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Proof
by David Auburn
Bruce Weber, The New York Times: “An exhilarating and assured new play . . . as accessible and compelling as a detective story.” John Simon, New York Magazine: “. . . Proof is what Copenhagen ought to be: a play about scientists whose science matters less than their humanity.”
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The ProPlay Monologues
Edited by Conor Moher and Frank Moher
Hand-picked from over 150 scripts on E-script’s sister site ProPlay, the premier site on the web for free-to-read, professionally produced stage plays, these monologues offer a wealth of fresh material to actors looking for audition pieces, teachers and students needing material for class or competitions, and theatre-lovers looking to discover new plays and writers.
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Purple Heart and The Infidel: Two Plays
by Bruce Norris
In Purple Heart, Carla, a Vietnam War widow deep in drink and depression, is living with a troubled son and her controlling mother. One day a stranger arrives at the door, a soldier with one hand who is seemingly connected to her late husband and comes to offer condolences to the grieving family. The soldier’s mysterious visit is solved in graphic and bloody detail at the end of the play. Loosely based on a true story, The Infidel tells of a charismatic and well-respected state Supreme Court justice who is faced with disciplinary action after his out-of-control affair with a young Latina junior staffer. He confers with his friend and attorney as he examines the consequences of his behavior and tries to judge the most difficult case of his life-his own.
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QED: A Play
by Peter Parnell, Richard Phillips Feynman
With a moving and powerful introduction from Alan Alda. Who knew that quantum electrodynamics could make for a dramatic read? In the hands of the late, great physicist Richard Feynman, it does. Feynman’s theory of QED is just one of the many topics the playwright Peter Parnell explores in this nearly-one-man show, a recent Broadway triumph for star Alda as Feynman.
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Quills and Other Plays
by Doug Wright
Gathered here are three of Wright’s early plays, including Interrogating the Nude, a tongue-in-cheek reimagining of the uproar surrounding the debut of Marcel Duchamp’s work in America; Watbanaland, a satiric dissection of yuppie desire and a haunting look at family and faith; and the Obie Award-winning Quills, which explores the boundaries of artistic expression and the dangers of censorship as they played out in the Marquis de Sade’s final days at Charenton Asylum.
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Rabbit Hole
by David Lindsay-Abaire
A story of loss, heartbreak, and forgiveness — told through daily moments and emotional hurdles — as a family moves on after the accidental death of their four-year-old. With a critically acclaimed Broadway premiere, featuring Cynthia Nixon and Tyne Daly, Rabbit Hole has been hailed as an artistic breakthrough for the highly regarded David Lindsay-Abaire. A drama of what comes after tragedy, it captures “the awkwardness and pain of thinking people faced with an unthinkable situation-and eventually, their capacity for survival.” (USA Today).
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Race
by David Mamet
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Radio Golf
by August Wilson
Radio Golf is August Wilson’s final play. Set in 1990 Pittsburgh, it is the conclusion of his Century Cycle-Wilson’s ten-play chronicle of the African American experience throughout the twentieth century-and is the last play he completed before his death. With Radio Golf Wilson’s lifework comes full circle as Aunt Ester’s onetime home at 1839 Wylie Avenue (the setting of the cycle’s first play) is slated for demolition to make way for a slick new real estate venture aimed to boost both the depressed Hill District and Harmond Wilks’ chance of becoming the city’s first black mayor.
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Ravenhill Plays: 3: Shoot/Get Treasure/Repeat; Over There; A Life in Three Acts; Ten Plagues; Ghost Story; The Experiment
Ravenhill has more to say, and says it more refreshingly and wittily, than any other playwright of his generation — Time Out
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Reading the Apocalypse in Bed: Six Radical Plays
by Tadeusz Rozewicz
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The Realistic Joneses
by Will Eno
Meet Bob and Jennifer and their new neighbors John and Pony, two suburban couples who have more in common than their identical last names. Boasting the playwright’s quintessential existential quirkiness, this new comedy finds poetry in the banal while humorously exploring our ever-floundering efforts at communication. “Weird and wonderful . . . Eno’s familiar sudden-shifting between profound and playful verbiage is delightfully disarming and sometimes awfully funny.” — Variety
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Reasons to be Happy
by Neil LaBute
The companion piece to Neil LaBute’s widely praised, 2009 Tony-nominated reasons to be pretty (see below). Reasons to Be Happy features the same four characters — Greg, Steph, Carly, and Kent — picking up their lives three years later, but in different romantic pairings as they each search desperately for that elusive object of desire: happiness.
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Reasons to be Pretty
By Neil LaBute
In Reasons to Be Pretty, Greg’s tight-knit social circle is thrown into turmoil when his offhand remarks about a female coworker’s pretty face and his own girlfriend Steph’s lack thereof get back to Steph. But that’s just the beginning. Greg’s best buddy, Kent, and Kent’s wife, Carly, also enter into the picture, and the emotional equation becomes exponentially more complicated. As their relationships crumble, the four friends are forced to confront a sea of deceit, infidelity, and betrayed trust in their journey to answer that oh-so-American question: How much is pretty worth?
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Red
John Logan
A moving and compelling account of one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century, Mark Rothko, whose struggle to accept his growing riches and praise became his ultimate undoing.
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Red Light Winter
by Adam Rapp
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Reporter
by Nicholas Wright
An enthralling detective story based on the true life story of BBC reporter James Mossman during his last years, from 1963 to 1971. The Reporter searches for the truth behind his bewildering suicide. What lies beneath the surface? Or is the surface ultimately all there is?
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Resident Alien: Quentin Crisp Explains It All
by Tim Fountain
A new edition of the “Tour-de force” (Time Out) based on the life of Quentin Crisp. “The great majority of this absorbing monologue consists of Crisp’s own words…wisely Fountain doesn’t attempt any trudge through the life story…Instead, Crisp treats us to his views on television, oral sex, the nature of style and the secret of happiness” — Daily Telegraph
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Restoration
by Edward Bond
A new edition with program notes of Edward Bond’s play set in eighteenth-century England, published to tie in with the tour by Oxford Stage Company.
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Resurrection Blues
by Arthur Miller
Arthur Miller’s penultimate play, Resurrection Blues, is a darkly comic satirical allegory that poses the question: What would happen if Christ were to appear in the world today? An allegory that asserts the interconnectedness of our actions and each person’s culpability in world events, Resurrection Blues is a comedic and tragic satire of precarious morals in our media-saturated age.
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The Retreat from Moscow: A Play About a Family
by William Nicholson
In The Retreat from Moscow, William Nicholson, the celebrated author of Shadowlands, tells the powerful story of a husband who decides to be truthful in his marriage, and of the wife and son whose lives will never be the same again. “The best new play in twenty years . . . This perfectly written masterwork shimmers with delicacy and precision.” –The Journal News
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Return to the Caffe Cino
by Steve Susoyev (Editor), George Birimisa (Editor)
An anthology of over twenty off-off-Broadway plays originally produced at the legendary Greenwich Village coffeehouse during the 1960s. In place of a traditional introduction, readers will find memoir-style essays by such pioneers as Edward Albee, Robert Patrick and Phoebe Wray, plus over fifty archival photographs.
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Rice Boy
by Sunil Kuruvilla
In front of a house in India, sixteen-year-old Tina learns the ancient arts of kolam, the creation of elaborate patterns with rice powder, from her great-grandmother, in preparation for her marriage to a man she has never met. Meanwhile, in front of a house in Canada, Tina’s cousin, Tommy, sits in a tree, trying to make sense of his heritage.
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The River
by Jez Butterworth
On a moonless night in August when the sea trout are ready to run, a man brings his new girlfriend to the remote family cabin where he has come for the fly-fishing since he was a boy. But she’s not the only woman he has brought here — or indeed the last… “A delicately unfolding puzzle… all of it is wrapped in marvelous language… extraordinary.” The Times
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Rockets and Blue Lights
by Winsome Pinnock
Amid the gloom of Victorian England, a black sailor, Thomas, prepares to take one last voyage, while an ageing painter, J.M.W. Turner, seeks artistic inspiration in a half-remembered story. In twenty-first-century London, an actress finds herself handcuffed by history — two centuries after abolitionists won her ancestors their freedom. Winsome Pinnock’s astonishing play retells British history through the prism of the slave trade. Fusing fact with fiction, past with present, the powerfully personal with the fiercely political, Rockets and Blue Lights asks who owns our past — and who has the right to tell its stories?
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Rock ‘n’ Roll
by Tom Stoppard
Rock ‘n’ Roll is an electrifying collision of the romantic and the revolutionary. It is 1968 and the world is ablaze with rebellion, accompanied by a sound track of the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan. Clutching his prized collection of rock albums, Jan, a Cambridge graduate student, returns to his homeland of Czechoslovakia just as Soviet tanks roll into Prague.
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Rodney’s Wife
by Richard Nelson
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.
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Romance
by David Mamet
It’s hay fever season, and in a courtroom a judge is popping antihistamines. He listens to the testimony of a Jewish chiropractor, who’s a liar, according to his anti-Semitic defense attorney. The prosecutor, a homosexual, is having a domestic squabble with his lover, who shows up in court in a leopard-print thong. And all the while, a Middle East peace conference is taking place. Masterfully wielding the argot of the courtroom, David Mamet creates a world in microcosm in which shameless fawning, petty prejudices, and sheer caprice hold sway, and the noble apparatus of law and order degenerates into riotous profanity.
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Romania After 2000: Five New Romanian Plays
by Saviana Stanescu (Editor), Daniel Charles Gerould (Editor)
The first anthology of new Romanian Drama published in the United States, Romania after 2000 introduces American readers to compelling playwrights and plays that address resonant issues of a post-totalitarian society on its way toward democracy and a new European identity. Includes Stop the Tempo, Romania. Kiss Me, Vitamins, Romania 21, and Waxing West.
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Ruined
By Lynn Nottage
Winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. A rain forest bar and brothel in the brutally war-torn Congo is the setting for Lynn Nottage’s extraordinary new play. The establishment’s shrewd matriarch, Mama Nadi, keeps peace between customers from both sides of the civil war, as government soldiers and rebel forces alike choose from her inventory of women, many already “ruined” by rape and torture when they were pressed into prostitution. “Nottage is one of our finest playwrights, a smart, empathetic and daring storyteller who tells a story an audience won’t expect.” — David Cote, Time Out New York
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