Where Do We Live and Other Plays


Book Description

This anthology marks the emergence of one of the finest and most innovative new artists writing for the theater today. “The secret of Shinn’s success is in the way he exploits the dramatic gap between what is said and that which is left unsaid . . . writing like this is rare,” said the London Independent. Where Do We Live, the title play, was written shortly after 9/11 and though never referenced, it still haunts this chronicle of the struggles of several aspiring and gifted young New Yorkers on the Lower East Side. Like all his work, it is a deeply affecting story of how we define our lives and our place in the world. The Coming World “Shinn certainly looks like a shining prospect for the future.”—Daily Telegraph Four “Nothing is simple emotionally. The play keeps delivering small shocks and aches that end in a standoff, or maybe in that pause between despair, resignation and a twinge of hope. Haunting.”—Margo Jefferson, The New York Times Other People “Shinn writes with graceful compassion about people trapped inside their own skins unable to make sense of their lives.”—The Guardian What Didn’t Happen “. . . is about the distance between people, and the ways in which even friends, spouses and lovers are ultimately unknowable to one another . . . a playwright to cherish.”—The New York Times Christopher Shinn’s plays have been produced at Playwrights Horizons, Manhattan Theatre Club, the Vineyard Theatre in New York and often at London’s Royal Court Theatre. Where Do We Live received a 2003 Olivier Award nomination for most promising playwright. His next play, On the Mountain, premieres in New York City early in 2005.




Play to Live


Book Description




The Chairs Are Where the People Go


Book Description

Should neighborhoods change? Is wearing a suit a good way to quit smoking? Why do people think that if you do one thing, you're against something else? Is monogamy a trick? Why isn't making the city more fun for you and your friends a super-noble political goal? Why does a computer last only three years? How often should you see your parents? How should we behave at parties? Is marriage getting easier? What can spam tell us about the world? Misha Glouberman's friend and collaborator, Sheila Heti, wanted her next book to be a compilation of everything Misha knew. Together, they made a list of subjects. As Misha talked, Sheila typed. He talked about games, relationships, cities, negotiation, improvisation, Casablanca, conferences, and making friends. His subjects ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous. But sometimes what had seemed trivial began to seem important—and what had seemed important began to seem less so. The Chairs Are Where the People Go is refreshing, appealing, and kind of profound. It's a self-help book for people who don't feel they need help, and a how-to book that urges you to do things you don't really need to do.




A Life with No Joy in It, and Other Plays and Pieces


Book Description

THE STORIES: In ALMOST DONE, a young mother-to-be reflects on the stories she will pass down to her child. (1 woman.) In MONOLOGUE (FEBRUARY 1990), the speaker runs a gamut of thoughts leading up to the condemnation of self and questions over the p




The Mystery of Irma Vep and Other Plays


Book Description

“Ludlam’s is a dazzling and significant body of work, and it should be accorded a place of greatest regard and honor in the American dramatic literary canon. The plays are funny, erudite, poetic, transgressive, erotic, moving, and so theatrical they seem the Platonic ideal of everything we mean when we use that word. The plays are the sublime expressions of what Ludlam insisted was not an aesthetic, but a moral vision: anti-Puritan, unsentimentally utopian, sexually destabilizing—a transporting, a transcendence by means of deflation, a joyous and subversive, even dangerous revelry leading to revelation, a wise and ecstatic celebration of the world.” –Tony Kushner (from his Preface) Artistic director, playwright, director, designer and star of New York's acclaimed Ridiculous Theatrical Company, the late Charles Ludlam ransacked theatrical and literary history in an evolutionary quest for a modern art of stage comedy. His more than 30 plays are among the most thought-provoking entertainments in the modern repertoire. As Ludlam himself put it, "This is farce, not Sunday school." This collection includes an introduction by Tony Kushner alongside Ludlam's most famous and celebrated works for the stage: The Mystery of Irma Vep: Ludlam's most famous play, this is a hilarious send up of Daphne de Maurier, Jane Eyre and Victorian cross dressing. One of the most produced plays in the United States, The Mystery of Irma Vep is “the most perfect expression of Ludlam’s approach to theatre: a play that simultaneously provokes terror, laughter and a grotesque mockery of all gender, literary and special boundaries” (Village Voice). Camille: based on La Dame aux Camélias, this satirical take on the tubercular courtesan brings any audience “to unexpected heights of pathos and laughter” (San Francisco Chronicle). Galas: the life of opera singer Maria Callas imagined as a modern tragedy, in which Ludlam himself assayed the part of the diva. Stage Blood: Ludlam's take on Shakespeare, with actors putting on Hamlet both on stage and back stage; somehow, in this tragedy, everything comes out for the best. Bluebeard: somewhat based on H.G. Wells' Island of Dr. Moreau, Bluebeard tells the story of a mad vivisectionist in search of a third sex.




The Way of the World and Other Plays


Book Description

With piercing accuracy William ongreve depicted the shallow, brittle world of 'society' where the right artifice in manners, fashion and conversation--and money--eased the passage to success. Through sparkling, witty dialogue and brilliant characterisation--Lady Plyant, Valentine, Lady Touchwood, Mirabell and Millamant--Congreve exposed the follies and vanities of that world, and suggested that behind the glinting mirror lay something more brutal. 'The language is everywhere that of Men of Honour, but their Actions are those of Knaves; a proof that he was perfectly well acquainted with human Nature, and frequented what we call polite company.' --Voltaire 'Congreve quitted the stage in disdain, and comedy left it with him.' --A contemporary




Where We Live, Work and Play


Book Description

Numerous studies have revealed that the poor disproportionately bear the burden of environmental problems in America today. Issues range from higher levels of poisonous wastes, carbon dioxide, and ozone, to greater than normal incidences of asthma and lead poisoning. The environmental justice movement, which has emerged in working class and low-income African American and Latino communities since the early 1990s, is an effort that is reinterpreting the definition of the environment as where we live, work, and play to connect new constituencies traditionally outside of the postwar environmental movement. Novotny documents this expanding constituency through case studies of four community groups ranging from South Central Los Angeles to Louisiana. Environmental racism is understood as yet another type of discrimination which results in a high incidence of environmental concerns in poorer communities due to what many activists see as discriminatory land use practices, decisions by industry that intentionally locate hazardous wastes in these communities, and the uneven enforcement of environmental regulations by federal, state, and local officials. Community leaders have added environmental causes to their fight against unemployment, impoverishment, and substandard housing. This study explores various attempts to put a halt to illegal practices and to broaden public awareness of the issues involved.




Pulp and Other Plays


Book Description

First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.




Kuyanuka and other Plays


Book Description

Kuyanuka and other Plays by Gha-Makhulu Diniso is also a collection of three one person plays; Kuyanuka was first performed in 1991, Koropa in 2000 and Shoeville in 2005. As critic Darryl Accone observes: It is precisely because of his conscience and commitment to true freedom that Diniso remains an artist neglected in his own country. Not for him complacency about the much lip-serviced Rainbow Nation, a least not while the stench of inequality not only persists but grow fouler by the day. There is no extravagant escapism imported from abroad and peddled to the nouveaux riches and petite bourgeois of the New South Africa. Instead though the creation of multiple characters reflecting the harshness of life under the neo-liberal economic order, Diniso expresses the problematic of celebrating political freedom when most black people find their living standards under threat and soaring unemployment and casualization undermining much of the early liberation promise.




Finished from the Start and Other Plays


Book Description

The trilogy Funeral Drums for Lambs and Wolves includes Isabel Banished in Isabel, the monologue of a woman left to go mad alone; Without Apparent Motive, the monologue of a murderer lamenting the spread of violence; and The Guest, or Tranquility Is Priceless, a confrontational dialogue that speaks directly to the spectators, implicating them for their silent, passive tolerance of Pinochet. The title play, Radrigan's 1981 masterpiece, speaks directly to the specter of the disappeared."--Jacket.