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A Raisin in the Sunby Lorraine Hansberry
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group 2011; US$ 6.99"Never before, the entire history of the American theater, has so much of the truth of black people's lives been seen on the stage," observed James Baldwin shortly before A Raisin in the Sun opened on Broadway in 1959. Indeed Lorraine Hansberry's award-winning drama about the hopes and aspirations of a struggling, working-class family living on the South Side of Chicago connected profoundly with the psyche of black America--and changed American theater forever. The play's title comes from a line in Langston Hughes's poem "Harlem," which warns that a dream deferred might "dry up/like a raisin in the sun." "The events of every passing year add resonance to A Raisin in the Sun ," said The... more...
Twelve Angry Menby Reginald Rose; David Mamet
Penguin Group Inc. 2006; US$ 10.99The Penguin Classics debut that inspired a classic film and a current Broadway revival Reginald Rose's landmark American drama was a critically acclaimed teleplay, and went on to become a cinematic masterpiece in 1957 starring Henry Fonda, for which Rose wrote the adaptation. A blistering character study and an examination of the American melting pot and the judicial system that keeps it in check, Twelve Angry Men holds at its core a deeply patriotic belief in the U.S. legal system. The story's focal point, known only as Juror Eight, is at first the sole holdout in an 11-1 guilty vote. Eight sets his sights not on proving the other jurors wrong but rather on getting them to look at the situation in a clear-eyed way not affected by their... more...
M. Butterflyby David Hwang
Penguin Group Inc. 1993; US$ 11.99Based on a true story that stunned the world, M. Butterfly opens in the cramped prison cell where diplomat Rene Gallimard is being held captive by the French government?and by his own illusions. In the darkness of his cell he recalls a time when desire seemed to give him wings. A time when Song Liling, the beautiful Chinese diva, touched him with a love as vivid, as seductive?and as elusive?as a butterfly. How could he have known, then, that his ideal woman was, in fact, a spy for the Chinese government?and a man disguised as a woman? In a series of flashbacks, the diplomat relives the twenty-year affair from the temptation to the seduction, from its consummation to the scandal that ultimately consumed them both. But in the end, there remains... more...
The Sunset Limitedby Cormac Mccarthy
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group 2010; US$ 13.99A startling encounter on a New York subway platform leads two strangers to a run-down tenement where a life or death decision must be made. In that small apartment, “Black” and “White,” as the two men are known, begin a conversation that leads each back through his own history, mining the origins of two fundamentally opposing world views. White is a professor whose seemingly enviable existence of relative ease has left him nonetheless in despair. Black, an ex-con and ex-addict, is the more hopeful of the men–though he is just as desperate to convince White of the power of faith as White is desperate to deny it. Their aim is no less than this: to discover the meaning of life. Deft, spare, and full of artful... more...
August: Osage Countyby Tracy Letts
Theatre Communications Group 2008; US$ 13.95"The most exciting new American play Broadway has seen in years."--The New York Times more...
Topdog/Underdogby Suzan-Lori Parks
Theatre Communications Group 2002; US$ 13.95The piercing work is an extraordinary new departure. more...
Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sunby Rosetta James
John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 1999; US$ 5.99The original CliffsNotes study guides offer expert commentary on major themes, plots, characters, literary devices, and historical background. The latest generation of titles in this series also feature glossaries and visual elements that complement the classic, familiar format. A Raisin in the Sun debuted in the spring of 1959 and has since been translated into more than 30 languages. It is the story of a poor black family struggling to become part of the middle class. Family hardships test the faith of all involved and the result is unexpected and filled with heartbreak. CliffsNotes on A Raisin in the Sun helps you explore this play by providing you with summaries and commentaries, chapter by chapter. You’ll also gain insight into... more...
Beginningsby Horton Foote
Simon & Schuster 2002; US$ 13.99Since 1939, Horton Foote, "the Chekhov of the small town," has chronicled with compassion and acuity the experience of American life both intimate and universal. His adaptation of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird and his original screenplay Tender Mercies earned him Academy Awards. He has won a Pulitzer Prize, the Gold Medal for Drama from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the PEN/Laura Pels Foundation Award for Drama, and the President's National Medal of Arts. Beginnings is the story of Foote's discovery of his own vocation. He didn't always want to write. When he left Wharton, Texas, at the age of sixteen to study at the Pasadena Playhouse, Foote aspired to be an actor. He remembers the terror and excitement of leaving... more...
The Cambridge Companion to Sam Shepardby Matthew Roudané
Cambridge University Press 2002; US$ 26.00Few American playwrights have exerted as much influence on the contemporary stage as Sam Shepard. Specially-commissioned essays in this Companion explore Shepard's career: his life, plays, poetry, music, fiction, acting, directing and film work. more...
Censorship of the American Theatre in the Twentieth Centuryby John H. Houchin; Don B. Wilmeth
Cambridge University Press 2003; US$ 38.00John Houchin explores the impact of censorship in twentieth-century American theatre, arguing that theatrical censorship coincided with significant challenges to religious, political and cultural systems. This study provides a summary of theatre censorship in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and then analyzes key episodes from 1900 to 2000. more...









