By one of America's most talented playwrights, Marsha Norman's 'night, Mother won the Dramatists Guild's prestigious Hull-Warriner Award, four Tony nominations, the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, and the Pulitzer Prize in 1983.
'night, Mother had its world premiere at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in December 1982. It opened on Broadway in March 1983, directed by Tom Moore and starring Anne Pitoniak and Kathy Bates; a film, starring Anne Bancroft and Sissy Spacek, was released in 1986.
"Never before, in the entire history of the American theater, has so much of the truth of Black people's lives been seen on the stage," observed James Baldwin shortly before A Raisin in the Sun opened on Broadway in 1959. This edition presents the fully restored, uncut version of Hansberry's landmark work with an introduction by Robert Nemiroff. Lorraine Hansberry's award-winning drama about the hopes and aspirations of a struggling, working-class family living on the South Side of Chicago connected profoundly with the psyche of Black America--and changed American theater forever. The play's title comes from a line in Langston Hughes's poem "Harlem," which warns that a dream deferred might "dry up/like a raisin in the sun." "The events of every passing year add resonance to A Raisin in the Sun," said The New York Times. "It is as if history is conspiring to make the play a classic."
Winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the 2008 Tony Award for Best New Play. Now a major motion picture! A tremendous achievement in American playwriting: a tragicomic populist portrait of a tough land and a tougher people. --TimeOut New York Tracy Letts' August: Osage County is what O'Neill would be writing in 2007. Letts has recaptured the nobility of American drama's mid-century heyday while still creating something entirely original. --New York magazine "I don't care if August: Osage County is three-and-a-half hours long. I wanted more." -Howard Shapiro, Philadelphia Inquirer This original and corrosive black comedy deserves a seat at the table with the great American family plays.--Time One of the most bracing and critically acclaimed plays in recent history, August: Osage County is a portrait of the dysfunctional American family at its finest--and absolute worst. When the patriarch of the Weston clan disappears one hot summer night, the family reunites at the Oklahoma homestead, where long-held secrets are unflinchingly and uproariously revealed. The three-act, three-and-a-half-hour mammoth of a play combines epic tragedy with black comedy, dramatizing three generations of unfulfilled dreams and leaving not one of its thirteen characters unscathed.
August: Osage County has been produced in more than twenty countries worldwide and is now a major motion picture starring Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Chris Cooper, Dermot Mulroney, Sam Shepard, Juliette Lewis, and Ewan McGregor. Tracy Letts is the author of Killer Joe, Bug, and Man from Nebraska, which was a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. His plays have been performed throughout the country and internationally. A performer as well as a playwright, Letts is a member of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, where August: Osage County premiered.
August: Osage County has been produced in more than twenty countries worldwide and is now a major motion picture starring Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Chris Cooper, Dermot Mulroney, Sam Shepard, Juliette Lewis, and Ewan McGregor. Tracy Letts is the author of Killer Joe, Bug, and Man from Nebraska, which was a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. His plays have been performed throughout the country and internationally. A performer as well as a playwright, Letts is a member of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, where August: Osage County premiered.
A stand-alone edition of Euripides's The Bacchae taken from Chicago's renowned translations of the Greek tragedies.
Dionysus, son of Zeus, has journeyed to the land of his birth expecting to be received as a god. After being rejected by his kin, he turns to the women of Thebes, driving them into a delirious frenzy. Dressed in animal skins and crowned with leaves, they roam wild in the hills as the king tries to restore order--with horrifying results.
Written in the final years of Euripides's life and first staged posthumously, The Bacchae is presented here in William Arrowsmith's energetic translation, drawn from the authoritative third edition of the University of Chicago Press's Complete Greek Tragedies series. An introduction by Mark Griffith and Glenn W. Most provides essential information about The Bacchae's first production, plot, and reception in antiquity, and an appendix presents Arrowsmith's hypothetical reconstruction of fifty lines missing from the denouement of the play.
Comedy / Casting: 1m 4f / Scenery: Int. with inserts
This extraordinary new play by an exciting new voice in the American drama was runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize. After its acclaimed run at Yale Repertory Theatre it was done to equal acclaim at several major theatres coast to coast before winding up off Broadway at Lincoln Center where it had an extended run. The play takes place in what the author describes as "metaphysical Connecticut" mostly in the home of a married couple who are bo
A haunting examination of groupthink and mass hysteria in a rural community A Penguin Classic "I believe that the reader will discover here the essential nature of one of the strangest and most awful chapters in human history," Arthur Miller wrote in an introduction to The Crucible, his classic play about the witch-hunts and trials in seventeenth-century Salem, Massachusetts. Based on historical people and real events, Miller's drama is a searing portrait of a community engulfed by hysteria. In the rigid theocracy of Salem, rumors that women are practicing witchcraft galvanize the town's most basic fears and suspicions; and when a young girl accuses Elizabeth Proctor of being a witch, self-righteous church leaders and townspeople insist that Elizabeth be brought to trial. The ruthlessness of the prosecutors and the eagerness of neighbor to testify against neighbor brilliantly illuminate the destructive power of socially sanctioned violence. Written in 1953, The Crucible is a mirror Miller uses to reflect the anti-communist hysteria inspired by Senator Joseph McCarthy's "witch-hunts" in the United States. Within the text itself, Miller contemplates the parallels, writing: "Political opposition...is given an inhumane overlay, which then justifies the abrogation of all normally applied customs of civilized behavior. A political policy is equated with moral right, and opposition to it with diabolical malevolence." For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
The acclaimed Pelican Shakespeare series, now in a dazzling new series design Winner of the 2016 AIGA + Design Observer 50 Books 50 Covers competition Gold Medal Winner of the 3x3 Illustration Annual No. 14 This edition of Hamlet is edited with an introduction by series editor A. R. Braunmuller and was recently repackaged with cover art by Manuja Waldia. Waldia received a Gold Medal from the Society of Illustrators for the Pelican Shakespeare series. The legendary Pelican Shakespeare series features authoritative and meticulously researched texts paired with scholarship by renowned Shakespeareans. Each book includes an essay on the theatrical world of Shakespeare's time, an introduction to the individual play, and a detailed note on the text used. Updated by general editors Stephen Orgel and A. R. Braunmuller, these easy-to-read editions incorporate over thirty years of Shakespeare scholarship undertaken since the original series, edited by Alfred Harbage, appeared between 1956 and 1967. With stunning new covers, definitive texts, and illuminating essays, the Pelican Shakespeare will remain a valued resource for students, teachers, and theater professionals for many years to come. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Two plays providing mirror-images of coming of age in the 1960s. The Pulitzer Prize-winning How I Learned To Drive is a deceptively delicate tale of the sexual awakening of a young girl under the tutelage of her uncle. The Mineola Twins is a political satire examining women's experiences in post-World War II America through the eyes of identical twins living in suburban Long Island, New York. Both plays received multiple productions throughout the U.S., and How I Learned To Drive, one of the most acclaimed plays of 1997, has won 13 major awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, Obies, Lucille Lortel, Drama Desk, NY Drama Critics Circle and Outer Critics Circle awards and the coveted Susan Smith Blackburn Prize.
This is one of Shakespeare's darkest comedies, for the romantic story of a young man, Bassanio, who has squandered his fortune and must borrow money to woo the wealthy lady he loves is set against the more disturbing story of the Jewish moneylender Shylock and his demand for the "pound of flesh" owed him by the Venetian merchant, Antonio. Here pathos and farce combine with moral complexity and romantic entanglement to display the extraordinary power and range of Shakespeare at his best. Each Edition Includes:
- Comprehensive explanatory notes
- Vivid introductions and the most up-to-date scholarship
- Clear, modernized spelling and punctuation, enabling contemporary readers to understand the Elizabethan English
- Completely updated, detailed bibliographies and performance histories
- An interpretive essay on film adaptations of the play, along with an extensive filmography
- Comprehensive explanatory notes
- Vivid introductions and the most up-to-date scholarship
- Clear, modernized spelling and punctuation, enabling contemporary readers to understand the Elizabethan English
- Completely updated, detailed bibliographies and performance histories
- An interpretive essay on film adaptations of the play, along with an extensive filmography
The acclaimed Pelican Shakespeare series, now in a dazzling new series design Winner of the 2016 AIGA + Design Observer 50 Books 50 Covers competition Gold Medal Winner of the 3x3 Illustration Annual No. 14 This edition of A Midsummer Night's Dream is edited with an introduction by Russ McDonald and was recently repackaged with cover art by Manuja Waldia. Waldia received a Gold Medal from the Society of Illustrators for the Pelican Shakespeare series. The legendary Pelican Shakespeare series features authoritative and meticulously researched texts paired with scholarship by renowned Shakespeareans. Each book includes an essay on the theatrical world of Shakespeare's time, an introduction to the individual play, and a detailed note on the text used. Updated by general editors Stephen Orgel and A. R. Braunmuller, these easy-to-read editions incorporate over thirty years of Shakespeare scholarship undertaken since the original series, edited by Alfred Harbage, appeared between 1956 and 1967. With stunning new covers, definitive texts, and illuminating essays, the Pelican Shakespeare will remain a valued resource for students, teachers, and theater professionals for many years to come. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.