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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...
Doubtby John Patrick Shanley
Theatre Communications Group 2008; US$ 12.95Now a major motion picture! Starring Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Amy Adams. Written and directed by John Patrick Shanley from his Pulitzer Prizewinning play. more...
The Miracle Workerby William Gibson
Simon & Schuster 2008; US$ 9.99NO ONE COULD REACH HER Twelve-year-old Helen Keller lived in a prison of silence and darkness. Born deaf, blind, and mute, with no way to express herself or comprehend those around her, she flew into primal rages against anyone who tried to help her, fighting tooth and nail with a strength born of furious, unknowing desperation. Then Annie Sullivan came. Half-blind herself, but possessing an almost fanatical determination, she would begin a frightening and incredibly moving struggle to tame the wild girl no one could reach, and bring Helen into the world at last.... 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...
Augustby Tracy Letts
Theatre Communications Group 2008; US$ 13.95Winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. One of the most bracing and critically acclaimed plays in recent Broadway history, August: Osage County is a portrait of the dysfunctional American family at its finestand absolute worst. When the patriarch of the Weston clan disappears one hot summer night, the family reunites at the Oklahoma homestead, where longheld secrets are unflinchingly and uproariously revealed. The threeact, threeandahalfhour mammoth of a play combines epic tragedy with black comedy, dramatizing three generations of unfulfilled dreams and leaving not one of its thirteen characters unscathed. After its soldout Chicago premiere, the play has electrified audiences in New York since its opening in November 2007. more...
The Clean House and Other Playsby Sarah Ruhl
Theatre Communications Group 2006; US$ 17.95This volume is the first publication of Sarah Ruhl, "a playwright with a unique comic voice, perspective, and sense of theater" (Variety), who is fast leaving her mark on the American stage. In the awardwinning Clean Housea play of uncommon romance and uncommon comedya maid who hates cleaning dreams about creating the perfect joke, while a doctor who treats cancer leaves his heart inside one of his patients. This volume also includes Eurydice, Ruhl's reinvention of the tragic Greek tale of love and loss, together with a third play still to be named. more...
Reasons to Be Prettyby Neil LaBute
Faber & Faber 2008; US$ 9.99In 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? Neil LaBute’s bristling new comic drama puts the final ferocious cap on a trilogy of plays that began with The Shape... 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...
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...