The Garden Party and Other Plays


Book Description

Gathered together here for the first time are seven plays that span Havel's career from his early days at the Theater of the Balustrade through the Prague Spring, Charter 77, and the repeated imprisonments that made Havel's name into a rallying cry and propelled him to the leadership of his country. They include The Garden Party, The Increased Difficulty of Concentration, Mistake, the Vanek trilogy of Audience, Unveiling, and Protest, and the first fully corrected English version of The Memorandum--the play that won Havel the Obie for Best Foreign Play in 1968.




The Garden Party


Book Description




The Garden Party


Book Description

A rehearsal dinner brings together two disparate families in this sparkling, witty novel “This vital novel offers delicious echoes of Virginia Woolf and E. M. Forster, and a touch of A Midsummer Night’s Dream—but its magic is unique. The Garden Party is beautiful and full of life.”—Claire Messud, author of The Burning Girl and The Woman Upstairs The Cohens are wildly impractical intellectuals—academics, activists, and artists. The Barlows are Wall Street Journal–reading lawyers steeped in trusts and copyrights, golf and tennis. The two families are reserved with and wary of each other, but tonight, the evening before the wedding that is supposed to unite them in marriage, they will attempt to set aside their differences over dinner in the garden. As Celia Cohen, the eminent literary critic, sets the table, her husband, Pindar, would much rather be translating ancient recipes for his Babylonian cookbook than hosting this rehearsal dinner. Meanwhile, their son, Adam, the poet (and nervous groom), wonders if there is still time to simply elope. One of Adam’s sisters, Naomi, a passionate but fragile social activist, refuses to leave her room, while Sara, scorpion biologist turned folklore writer, sits up on the roof mourning an imminent breakup. And Pindar’s elderly mother, Leah, witnesses everything, weaving old memories into the present. The lawyers are early: patriarch Stephen Barlow and his bespangled wife, Philippa, who specializes in estates, along with Philippa’s father, Nathan, hobbled by age and Lyme disease. Then come the Barlow sons William (war crimes), Cameron (intellectual property), and Barnes (the prosecutor), each with desperate wife and precocious offspring. How could their younger siblings—Eliza, the bride, an aspiring veterinarian, and her twin brother, Harry, recently expelled from divinity school—have issued from such a family? Up and down the dinner table, with its twenty-four (or is it twenty-five?) guests, unions are forming and dissolving while Pindar is trying to figure out whether time is really shaped like baklava, and off in the surrounding forest with its ancient pond different sorts of mischief will lead to a complicated series of fiascoes and miracles before the party is over. Set over the course of a single day and night, Grace Dane Mazur’s brilliantly observed novel weaves an irresistible portrayal of miscommunication, secrets, and the power of love. “Lyrical and charming, this comedy of errors is a delightful summer read.”—People




Václav Havel


Book Description

More than any other public figure, VOclav Havel has reflected on the opportunities and dilemmas facing humankind as a result of the collapse of Communism. In VOclav Havel: Civic Responsibility in the Postmodern Age, James F. Pontuso argues that Havel's life as a dissident and political leader, his political philosophy, and his plays must be understood as connected to one another. Pontuso skillfully explores these connections and explains Havel's prescriptions for political life.




The Tale of the Allergist's Wife, and Other Plays


Book Description

Psycho beach party: Cast gender - mixed; number - 5 males, 6 females (total 11); size - medium; length - 10 scenes. Parody of the 1960s beach party movies. Surfing teenagers go crazy in Malibu.




Frogs and Other Plays


Book Description

The master of ancient Greek comic drama, Aristophanes combined slapstick, humour and cheerful vulgarity with acute political observations. In The Frogs, written during the Peloponnesian War, Dionysus descends to the Underworld to bring back a poet who can help Athens in its darkest hour, and stages a great debate to help him decide between the traditional wisdom of Aeschylus and the brilliant modernity of Euripides. The clash of generations and values is also the object of Aristophanes’ satire in The Wasps, in which an old-fashioned father and his loose-living son come to blows and end up in court. And in The Poet and the Women, Euripides, accused of misogyny, persuades a relative to infiltrate an all-women festival to find out whether revenge is being plotted against him.







The Tragedy of Nan


Book Description

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.




Persians and Other Plays


Book Description

Classical Greek dramatic poetry and drama.




This and Other Plays


Book Description

The first collection from a major new voice in American theatre.