N.Y.) Dramatists Play Service (New York
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"Middle-aged siblings Vanya and Sonia share a home in Bucks County, PA, where they bicker and complain about the circumstances of their lives. Suddenly, their movie-star sister, Masha, swoops in with her new boy toy, Spike. Old resentments flare up, eventually leading to threats to sell the house. Also on the scene are sassy maid Cassandra, who can predict the future, and a lovely young aspiring actress named Nina, whose prettiness somewhat worries...
2) Pretty fire
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
In five autobiographical vignettes, Charlayne Woodard tells the moving tale of her African-American family through three generations of love, struggle, and triumph. This NAACP award-winning play is a one-woman tour de force. Chosen as a “Recommended Young Adult Audiobook” by the Young Adult Library Services Association, a division of the American Library Association. Pretty Fire is the first play of a trilogy that continued with Neat and ended...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Woven out of three monologues in what one reviewer called "a triple sonata of oppression and incomprehension" (The Sunday Times), Wallace Shawn's new play, The Designated Mourner, is a masterful drama about the pursuit of aesthetic subtleties in brutal times. The three characters include the eponymous designated mourner, Jack; his wife, Judy; and his erudite father-in-law, Howard. Although Judy is tied to her famous father by a passionate bond, she...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"The Vagina Monologues introduces a wildly divergent gathering of female voices, including a six-year-old girl, a septuagenarian New Yorker, a vagina workshop participant, a woman who witnesses the birth of her granddaughter, a Bosnian survivor of rape, and a feminist happy to have found a man who 'liked to look at it'"--
5) Rabbit hole
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"Becca and Howie Corbett have everything a family could want, until a life-shattering accident turns their world upside down and leaves the couple drifting perilously apart. 'Rabbit Hole' charts their bittersweet search for comfort in the darkest of places and for a path that will lead them back into the light of day."--
6) Eclipsed
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"Their lives set on a nightmarish detour by civil war, the captive wives of a Liberian rebel officer form a hardscrabble sisterhood. With the arrival of a new girl who can read--and the return of an old one who can kill--their possibilities are quickly transformed. Drawing on reserves of wit and compassion, these defiant survivors ask: When the fog of battle lifts, could a different destiny emerge? Eclipsed offers a chilling, humanizing and surprisingly...
7) Faustus
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Faustus has it all--fame, success, a loving family, but a careless wager with a beguiling magician threatens everything. In Mamet's retelling of the Faustus story, a famed philosopher in the prime of life claims to have reduced the secret of life to a mathematical equation. With the arrival of a mysterious magician, he agrees to wager the life of his family on the accuracy and authenticity of his discovery. This timeless retelling of a classic legend...
8) Venus
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Suzan-Lori Parks continues her examination of black people in history and stage through the life of the so-called "Hottentot Venus," an African woman displayed semi-nude throughout Europe due to her extraordinary physiognomy; in particular, her enormous buttocks. She was befriended, bought and bedded by a doctor who advanced his scientific career through his anatomical measurements of her after her premature death.
9) Gloria
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"This funny, trenchant, and powerful play follows an ambitious group of editorial assistants at a notorious Manhattan magazine, each of whom hopes for a starry life of letters and a book deal before they turn thirty. But when an ordinary humdrum workday becomes anything but, the stakes for who will get to tell their story become higher than ever"--Back cover.
10) Golden child
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
A new play by the author of M. Butterfly which premieres on Broadway in April. Golden Child travels across time and place from contemporary America to mainland China in 1918 and depicts the challenges of a culture in transition to the influences of western civilization.
11) Teddy Ferrara
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"It's Gabe's senior year of college and his future looks bright: He runs the Queer Students Group, he finally has a single room and he recently started dating a great guy. But when a campus tragedy occurs that makes national headlines it ignites a firestorm and throws Gabe's world into disorder. When new evidence surfaces, Gabe discovers that the events surrounding the tragedy aren't as straightforward as they seem, and he is forced to question popular...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Set just after the blood-soaked conclusion of that sensationally gruesome tale, the years of battles are over, the country has been stolen by madmen, and there are casualties everywhere. And two very lowly servants are charged with cleaning up the bodies. It's the year 400--but it feels like the end of the world.
13) Red
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
""There is only one thing I fear in life, my friend ... One day the black will swallow the red."" "Under the watchful gaze of his young assistant and the threatening presence of a new generation of artists, Mark Rothko takes on his greatest challenge yet: to create a definitive work for an extraordinary setting." "This play is a moving and compelling account of one of the greatest artists of the 20th century whose struggle to accept his growing riches...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"In the final scene of Ibsen's 1879 groundbreaking masterwork, Nora Helmer makes the shocking decision to leave her husband and children and begin a life on her own. This climactic event -- when Nora slams the door on everything in her life -- instantly propelled world drama into the modern age. In A doll's house, part 2, many years have passed since Nora's exit. Now, there's a knock on that same door. Nora has returned. But why? And what will it...
15) Becky Shaw
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
A newlywed couple fixes up two romantically challenged friends: wife's best friend, meet husband's sexy and strange new co-worker.
"A newlywed couple fixes up two romantically challenged friends: wife's best friend, meet husband's sexy and strange new co-worker. When an evening calculated to bring happiness takes a dark turn, crisis and comedy ensue in this wickedly funny play that asks what we owe the people we love and the strangers who land on...
16) Bump
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"A car mechanic on the verge of becoming a grandfather, a community of expectant mothers on a pregnancy message board, and a pregnant woman in colonial New England each question the mechanics of childbirth. Based on the true story of Jorge Odón and the birthing device he invented in his garage, BUMP spans time and space in an effort to grapple with the mystery and the miracle of maternity."--Back cover.
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Dennis-with a famous painter father and social activist mother-is a small-time drug dealer and total mess. His hero-worshipping friend Warren has just impulsively stolen $15,000 from his father, an abusive lingerie tycoon. When Jessica, a mixed-up prep school girl, shows up for a date, Warren pulls out a wad of bills and takes her off, awkwardly, for a night of seduction. A wildly funny, bittersweet, and moving story, This Is Our Youth is as trenchant...
18) Behind the sheet
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"In 1840s Alabama, Dr. George Barry is on the verge of a miraculous cure: treatment for fistulas, a common but painful complication of childbirth. To achieve his medical breakthrough, Dr. Barry performs experimental surgeries on a group of enslaved women afflicted with the condition. Based on the true story of Dr. J. Marion Sims, the 'father of modern gynecology,' Behind the sheet remembers the forgotten women who made his achievement possible, and...
19) The mountaintop
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"A gripping reimagination of events the night before the assassination of the civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. On April 3, 1968, after delivering one of his most memorable speeches, an exhausted Dr. King retires to his room at the Lorraine Motel while a storm rages outside. When a mysterious stranger arrives with some surprising news, King is forced to confront his destiny and his legacy to his people"--Publisher's description.
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
"A love story about the impossibility of love, Reasons to be Pretty introduces us to Greg, who really, truly adores his girlfriend, Steph. Unfortunately, he also thinks she has a few physical imperfections, and when he casually mentions them, all hell breaks loose. A hopelessly romantic drama about the hopelessness of romance, Reasons to be Pretty is a gorgeous play."--Publisher's description