The Rope and Other Plays


Book Description

Brilliantly adapting Greek New Comedy for Roman audiences, the sublime comedies of Plautus (c. 254 -184 bc ) are the earliest surviving complete works of Latin literature. The four plays collected here reveal a playwright in his prime, exploring classic themes and developing standard characters that were to influence the comedies of Shakespeare, Molière and many others. In The Ghost, a dissolute son who has squandered his father's money is thrown into disarray when he returns from abroad, a theme that is explored further in the comedy of errors A Three-Dollar Day. In The Rope - regarded by many as the best of Plautus' plays - the shipwreck of a pimp and his slaves leads to the touching reunion of a father and his daughter, while Amphitryo, Plautus's only excursion into divine mythology, offers a cheerful account of how Jupiter became father to Hercules.




The Rope, and Other Plays


Book Description




A Rope and a Prayer


Book Description

The compelling and insightful account of a New York Times reporter's abduction by the Taliban, and his wife's struggle to free him. In November 2008, David Rohde, a Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent for The New York Times, was kidnapped by the Taliban and held captive for seven months in the tribal areas of Pakistan. In the process, Rohde became the first American to witness how Pakistan's powerful military turns a blind eye toward a Taliban ministate thriving inside its borders. In New York, David's wife Kristen Mulvihill, together with his family, kept the kidnapping secret for David's safety and struggled to navigate a labyrinth of conflicting agendas, misinformation, and lies. Part memoir, part work of journalism, A Rope and a Prayer is a story of duplicity, faith, resilience, and love.




This Is the Rope


Book Description

Jacqueline Woodson--New York Times Bestselling, National Book Award and Newbery Honor winning author--writes a rich story of a family adapting to change as they hold on to the past and embrace the future. With Coretta Scott King Award–winning illustrator James Ransome. During the time of the Great Migration, millions of African American families relocated from the South, seeking better opportunities. The story of one family’s journey north during the Great Migration starts with a little girl in South Carolina who finds a rope under a tree one summer. She has no idea the rope will become part of her family’s history. But for three generations, that rope is passed down, used for everything from jump rope games to tying suitcases onto a car for the big move north to New York City, and even for a family reunion where that first little girl is now a grandmother.




In the Heart of America, and Other Plays


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First major collection by the recent McArthur Grant Recipient.




Fool for Love and Other Plays


Book Description

Here are eight of Pulitzer-prizewinning Sam Shepard's most stunning plays. This brilliant American dramatist creates what The New Yorker dubbed "Shepard Country"--a landscape of the imagination, a unique theatrical experience that captures our culture and consciouness, our fears and fantasies. FOOL FOR LOVE * ANGEL CITY * GEOGRAPHY OF A HORSE DREAMER * ACTION * COWBOY MOUTH * MELODRAMA PLAY * SEDUCED * SUICIDE IN Bb With an Introduction by Ross Wetzsteon “Sam Shepard is phenomenal...the best practicing American playwright.” —The New Republic “Sam Shepard is the most exciting presence in the movie world and one of the most gifted writers ever to work on the American stage.” —Marsha Norman “The most ruthlessly experimental and uncompromising of today's young writers.” —John Lahr “Sam Shepard fills the role of professional playwright as a good ballet dancer or acrobat fulfills his role in performance. That is, he always delivers, he executes feats of dexterity and technical difficulty that an untrained person could not, and makes them seem easy.” —Michael Feingold, The Village Voice "One of the most original, prolific, and gifted dramatists at work today.” —The New Yorker “Increasingly recognized as one of the more significant dramatists in the English-speaking world.” —Charles R. Bachman, Modern Drama




Rope


Book Description

The brilliantly tense play that became Hitchcock's masterpiece, starring James Stewart. Believing themselves to be intellectually superior to their contemporaries, flatmates Brandon and Philip murder their friend David Kentley purely to see if they can get away with it. They then throw a cocktail party, serving food from the top of the trunk where they have hidden David's body. Their guests include both David's father and fiancée, as well as college lecturer Rupert Cadell, who becomes increasingly suspicious as the evening wears on.




The Duke of Palermo and Other Plays


Book Description

The Duke of Palermo is a comedy about American academic life which is an integral part of Edmund Wilson's work and will be enjoyed by the admirers of literary chronicles, as well as by those who know his fiction. Also included in this collection of plays is An Open Letter to Mike Nichols, which first appeared in the New York Review of Books.




The Birds and Other Plays


Book Description

The plays in this volume all contain Aristophanes' trademark bawdy comedy and dazzling verbal agility. In THE BIRDS, two frustrated Athenians join the birds to build the utopian city of 'Much Cuckoo in the Clouds'. THE KNIGHTS is a venomous satire on Cleon, a prominent Athenian demagogue, while THE ASSEMBLY WOMEN deals with the battle of the sexes as the women of Athens infiltrate the all-male Assembly in disguise. The lengthy conflict with Sparta is the subject of PEACE, inspired by the hope of a settlement in 421 BC, and WEALTH reflects on the economic catastrophe that hit Athens after the war.




I, Anatolia and Other Plays


Book Description

Since the middle of the twentieth century, Turkish playwriting has been notable for its verve and versatility. This two-volume anthology is the first major collection of modern Turkish plays in English—a selection dealing with ancient Anatolian mythology, Ottoman history, contemporary social issues, family dramas, and ribald comedy from Turkey’s cities and rural areas. It also includes several plays set outside Turkey. The second volume, "I, Anatolia” and Other Plays, includes eight major plays from the 1970s through the end of the millennium. Together, both volumes grant to English readers the pleasure of riveting drama in translations that are colloquial as well as faithful. For producers, directors, and actors they provide a wealth of fresh, new material, with characters ranging from Ottoman sultans to a Soviet cosmonaut, from the Byzantine Empress Theodora to a fisherman’s wife, from residents of an Istanbul neighborhood to King Midas, from Montezuma to a Turkish cabinet minister.