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The first collection from a major new voice in American theatre.
This volume of Lee Blessing's most recent and some of his best work, includes: Patient A - a rethinking of the Kimberly Bergalis AIDS case; Two Rooms - the strain on families of hostages in the Middle East; Down the Road - a tale of a serial killer concerned with image; Fortinbras - a hilarious reexamination of Hamlet in a contemporary political context; and Lake Street Extension - an exploration of the dark theme of child molestation. All of these plays resonate with Blessing's characteristic depth of human feeling and his insistence that the personal is the political.
This critically acclaimed play by Luis Valdez cracks open the depiction of Chicanos on stage, challenging viewers to revisit a troubled moment in our nationÕs history. From the moment the myth-infused character El Pachuco burst onto the stage, cutting his way through the drop curtain with a switchblade, Luis Valdez spurred a revolution in Chicano theater. Focusing on the events surrounding the Sleepy Lagoon Murder Trial of 1942 and the ensuing Zoot Suit Riots that turned Los Angeles into a bloody war zone, this is a gritty and vivid depiction of the horrifying violence and racism suffered by young Mexican Americans on the home front during World War II. ValdezÕs cadre of young urban characters struggle with the stereotypes and generalizations of AmericaÕs dominant culture, the questions of assimilation and patriotism, and a desire to rebel against the mainstream pressures that threaten to wipe them out. Experimenting with brash forms of narration, pop culture of the war era, and complex characterizations, this quintessential exploration of the Mexican-American experience in the United States during the 1940Õs was the first, and only, Chicano play to open on Broadway. This collection contains three of playwright and screenwriter Luis ValdezÕs most important and recognized plays: Zoot Suit, Bandido! and I DonÕt Have to Show You No Stinking Badges. The anthology also includes an introduction by noted theater critic Dr. Jorge Huerta of the University of California-San Diego. Luis Valdez, the most recognized and celebrated Hispanic playwright of our times, is the director of the famous farm-worker theater, El Teatro Campesino.
Nobel Prize winner Peter Handke's first full-length drama, hailed in Europe as "the play of the decade" and compared in importance to Waiting for Godot Kaspar is the story of an autistic adolescent who finds himself at a complete existential loss on the stage, with but a single sentence to call his own. Drilled by prompters who use terrifyingly funny logical and alogical language-sequences, Kaspar learns to speak "normally" and eventually becomes creative--"doing his own thing" with words; for this he is destroyed. In Offending the Audience and Self-Accusation, one-character "speak-ins," Handke further explores the relationship between public performance and personal identity, forcing us to reconsider our sense of who we are and what we know.
NOBEL PRIZE WINNER • Four seminal plays by one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. An existential portrayal of Hell in Sartre's best-known play, as well as three other brilliant, thought-provoking works: the reworking of the Electra-Orestes story, the conflict of a young intellectual torn between theory and conflict, and an arresting attack on American racism.
The main characters of these five plays by Christopher Bollas struggle to survive in a post-"Catastrophe" world. As they go about ordinary life, it is clear that something insidious has both preceded their existence, colored it, and is everywhere and nowhere. Like the existential universe of some plays of the 1950's-Ionescu, early Pinter, Beckett-human meaning is in meager supply, but Bollas's work-clearly following in this tradition-examines existence in the 21st century through a new lens. He explores a damaged self that strives to find a way to live in a world devoid of meaning. One lives to fulfill a function. The absurd context in which many of the characters live seems eerily premonitional, as if some rough new character formation is slouching towards us all. Theraplay and Other Plays includes pieces such as: a theatre company which has one day to change the life of a damaged man; a friendship that comes to an end on grounds so petty that causation is up for laughs; a dinner party that descends into madness; a man assigned the task of interviewing people for a job that has never been explained to him; and a farce about a rock collector who visits a psychoanalyst to sort out the rock's object relations. These plays are dark, oddly amusing, and deeply moving. Bollas finds redemption within human frailty. His characters' bewilderment in the face of absurd conditions becomes an embarkation point for recovery from social disaster.
“Nearly everything about David Adjmi’s Stunning has an original ring to it, from the setting . . . to the brassy bleat of the dialogue." –Time Out New York This volume of distinctive work includes Stunning, set in an insular Syrian Jewish community, where a teenage bride’s world is disrupted by her intellectual African American housekeeper; Evildoers, about the collapse of two privileged couples; and Elective Affinities, a post-9/11 monologue. David Adjmi’s work has been produced at Lincoln Center Theatre, Yale Repertory Theatre, Woolly Mammoth, and the Royal Court in London. He has received numerous commissions and is the recipient of a 2009 Kesselring Fellowship and a Bush Artist Fellowship.
"Beautifully conceived, confidently executed . . . not just her finest to date, but also the best new play to open Off Broadway this fall."—The New York Times A witty, melancholy comedy about a group of friends pushing against middle age, This is a major new work for Melissa James Gibson, best known for her boundary-challenging, linguistically delectable pieces. This volume also includes downtown cult favorites [sic] and Suitcase, and Brooklyn Bridge, a play for young audiences. Melissa James Gibson's plays include [sic] (winner of the OBIE Award for playwriting and the Kesselring Prize), Suitcase: or those that resemble flies from a distance, Brooklyn Bridge, Given Fish, and Current Nobody.
Rachilde was the pseudonym of Marguerite Eymery Vallette (1860-1953), a woman of powerful personality who made her place at the very center of the Symbolist movement in fin-de-siecle France. Though relatively unknown in America, Rachilde had a significant influence on the course of French and Western literature and theater. She was a pioneer of antirealistic drama and the first to use the term absurd to characterize the new kind of theater that would be "a pretext for a dream." Rachilde's sexual politics and sardonic humor make her plays more interesting - and more performable - today than many of those of her more famous contemporaries. Where male Symbolists were obsessed with death, Rachilde explores the fearful thrill of sexuality. Topical, challenging, and all but lost to contemporary audiences, her extraordinary work offers the shock of relevance and freshness of discovery.