Aliens with Extraordinary Skills


Book Description

A dark comed, about a clown who pins her hopes on a U.S. work visa. Based on true stories of immigration.




Saviana Stanescu: The New York Plays


Book Description

Three of US-based Romanian playwright Saviana Stanescu's most daring, comic plays are collected in this volume with an introduction by John Clinton Eisner. Waxing West, Lenin's Shoe and Aliens with Extraordinary Skills are exciting new plays for the US and world stage.




What I Thought I Knew


Book Description

"Darkly hilarious...an unexpected bundle of joy." -O, The Oprah Magazine Alice Cohen was happy for the first time in years. After a difficult divorce, she had a new love in her life, she was rais­ing a beloved adopted daughter, and her career was blossoming. Then she started experiencing mysterious symptoms. After months of tests, x-rays, and inconclusive diagnoses, Alice underwent a CAT scan that revealed the truth: she was six months pregnant. At age forty-four, with no prenatal care and no insurance coverage for a high-risk pregnancy, Alice was besieged by opinions from doctors and friends about what was ethical, what was loving, what was right. With the intimacy of a diary and the suspense of a thriller, What I Thought I Knew is a ruefully funny, wickedly candid tale; a story of hope and renewal that turns all of the "knowns" upside down.




Wheel With a Single Spoke


Book Description

Winner of the Herder Prize, Nichita Stanescu was one of Romania’s most celebrated contemporary poets. This dazzling collection of poems – the most extensive collection of his work to date – reveals a world in which heavenly and mysterious forces converse with the everyday and earthbound, where love and a quest for truth are central, and urgent questions flow. His startling images stretch the boundaries of thought. His poems, at once surreal and corporeal, lead us into new metaphysical and linguistic terrain.




Chinglish


Book Description

THE STORY: CHINGLISH is a hilarious comedy about the challenges of doing business in a country whose language--and underlying cultural assumptions--can be worlds apart from those of the West. The play tells the adventures of Daniel, an American busin




24 Gun Control Plays


Book Description

NoPassport theatre alliance and press in collaboration with force/collision, Theater J and Twinbiz NYC commissioned and presented an evening of short works in support of gun control on Janurary 26, 2013 at Georgetown University's Gonda Theatre in Washington D.C. directed by force/collision to coincide with Molly Smith and Suzanne Blue Star Boy's March on Washington for Gun Control.




Innovation in Five Acts


Book Description

An inspirational sourcebook of innovative techniques for creating theatre, with contributions from experienced playwrights, directors, performers, teachers, dramaturgs, artistic directors and founders. Editor Caridad Svich has gathered forty-one essays from admired theatre professionals in response to a call to write about 'artistic innovation'. Each of them shares the creative challenges and triumphs of developing original works for today's stages. 'With intelligence, thoughtfulness, rigor and wit, author after author offer their considered take on the subject, unlocking new perspectives, unearthing old ones, and in general, doing what artists do best when they are walking on ground they trust and among colleagues who are not sitting before them in continual and sometimes stultifying judgment--and that is, open our eyes, hearts and minds again.' Caridad Svich, from the Introduction Contributors include: Ayad Akhtar; Deborah Asiimwe; Elaine Avila; Arthur Bartow; Gary D. Beckman; John Biguenet; Daniel Brunet; Leila Buck; Maddy Costa; Dominic D'Andrea; Pedro de Senna; Julie Felise Dubiner; Daniel Gallant; Michael John Garces; Anne Garcia-Romero; Jim Hart; David Herskovits; Rachel Jendrzejewski; John Jesurun; Mariana Carreno King; Zac Kline; Aaron Landsman; E.M. Lewis; Catherine Love; Oliver Mayer; Jeff McMahon; Emily Mendelsohn; John Moletress; Kali Quinn; Katie Pearl; Jeremy Pickard; Duska Radosavljevic; Ian Rowlands; Lisa Schlesinger; Howard Shalwitz; August Schulenburg; Mark Schultz; Andy Smith; Octavio Solis; Saviana Stanescu; Caridad Svich; Chris Wells; Heather Woodbury; Stephen Wrentmore




Global Foreigners


Book Description

In Waxing West, Daniella, newly arrived in the US from Romania, is haunted by the ghosts of the deposed dictator Ceausescu and his wife Elena until she experiences 9/11. Thida San in Eyes of the Heart, cannot rid herself of the horrific memory of her daughter's execution during the reign of the Khmer Rouge. In My Political Israeli Play, Miriam Bloom, a young Israeli woman living in the US, is asked by her agent to write a political play. America Dreaming juxtaposes a professor discussing the policies governing American colonists with the experience of a young Japanese woman in the US during World War II. The Black Eyed skewers traditional views on sex, family and terrorism as four Arab women from different periods wait at the 'Gates of Martyrs.'




On the Royal Road


Book Description

Nobel Prize winner Elfriede Jelinek is known as a writer who works in response to contemporary crises and cultural phenomena. Perhaps none of her works display that quality as clearly as On the Royal Road. Three weeks after Donald Trump's election, Jelinek mailed her German editor the first draft of this monologue, which turns out to be a stunningly prescient response to Trump and what he represents. In this drama we discover that a 'king', blinded by himself, who has made a fortune with real estate, golf courses and casinos, suddenly rules the United States, and the rest of the people of the world rub their eyes in disbelief until no one sees anything anymore. On the Royal Road brings into focus the phenomenon of right-wing populism. Carefully perched somewhere between tragedy and grotesque, high-pitched and squeamish, Jelinek in this work questions her own position and forms of resistance. 'Ms. Jelinek's play is a screed of outrage at the political, economic and cultural forces that have brought us to an unprecedented — and for many, unimaginable — moment of crisis for modern democracy. Mr. Trump is never mentioned by name, but the narration sketches an undisciplined, uncouth monarch who has been propped up by obscene wealth, a nonstop media circus and a remarkable talent for self-aggrandizing...[On the Royal Road] is neither a polemic nor a historical dramatization but an of-the-moment allegory for our deeply troubling political, social and economic reality.' — A. J. Goldmann, New York Times 'Jelinek's work is brave, adventurous, witty, antagonistic and devastatingly right about the sorriness of human existence, and her contempt is expressed with surprising chirpiness: it's a wild ride.' — The Guardian




Ambiguous Transitions


Book Description

Focusing on youth, family, work, and consumption, Ambiguous Transitions analyzes the interplay between gender and citizenship postwar Romania. By juxtaposing official sources with oral histories and socialist policies with everyday practices, Jill Massino illuminates the gendered dimensions of socialist modernization and its complex effects on women’s roles, relationships, and identities. Analyzing women as subjects and agents, the book examines how they negotiated the challenges that arose as Romanian society modernized, even as it clung to traditional ideas about gender. Massino concludes by exploring the ambiguities of postsocialism, highlighting how the legacies of the past have shaped politics and women’s lived experiences since 1989.




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