Sitewide Banner Message
Books for fall classes, thought-provoking, exhibition-related items and more... Visit in person or online to see all the exciting new offerings that we have in store for you!
Plays
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.
It is a very short list of 20th-century American plays that continue to have the same power and impact as when they first appeared--57 years after its Broadway premiere, Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire is one of those plays. The story famously recounts how the faded and promiscuous Blanche DuBois is pushed over the edge by her sexy and brutal brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski. Streetcar launched the careers of Marlon Brando, Jessica Tandy, Kim Hunter and Karl Malden, and solidified the position of Tennessee Williams as one of the most important young playwrights of his generation, as well as that of Elia Kazan as the greatest American stage director of the '40s and '50s.
Who better than America's elder statesman of the theater, Williams' contemporary Arthur Miller, to write as a witness to the lightning that struck American culture in the form of A Streetcar Named Desire? Miller's rich perspective on Williams' singular style of poetic dialogue, sensitive characters, and dramatic violence makes this a unique and valuable new edition of A Streetcar Named Desire. This definitive new edition will also include Williams' essay The World I Live In, and a brief chronology of the author's life.
Who better than America's elder statesman of the theater, Williams' contemporary Arthur Miller, to write as a witness to the lightning that struck American culture in the form of A Streetcar Named Desire? Miller's rich perspective on Williams' singular style of poetic dialogue, sensitive characters, and dramatic violence makes this a unique and valuable new edition of A Streetcar Named Desire. This definitive new edition will also include Williams' essay The World I Live In, and a brief chronology of the author's life.
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama
Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes includes Part One, Millennium Approaches and Part Two, Perestroika "Glorious. A monumental, subversive, altogether remarkable masterwork...Details of specific catastrophes may have changed since this Reagan-era AIDS epic won the Pulitzer and the Tony, but the real cosmic and human obsessions--power, religion, sex, responsibility, the future of the world--are as perilous, yet as falling-down funny, as ever." -Linda Winer, Newsday A vast, miraculous play... provocative, witty and deeply upsetting... a searching and radical rethinking of American political drama. - Frank Rich, New York Times A victory for theater, for the transforming power of the imagination to turn devastation into beauty. - John Lahr, New Yorker "An enormously impressive work of the imagination and intellect, a towering example of what theater stretched to its full potential can achieve." -Philadelphia Inquirer Angels in America is the finest drama of our time, speaking to us of an entire era of life and death as no other play within memory. It ranks as nothing less than one of the greatest plays of the twentieth century. - John Heilpern, New York Observer "Some playwrights want to change the world. Some want to revolutionize theater. Tony Kushner is that rarity of rarities: a writer who has the promise to do both." -New York Times This new edition of Tony Kushner's masterpiece is published with the author's recent changes and a new introduction in celebration of the twentieth anniversary of its original production. One of the most honored American plays in history, Angels in America was awarded two Tony Awards for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It was made into an Emmy Award-winning HBO film directed by Mike Nichols. This two-part epic, subtitled A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, has received hundreds of performances worldwide in more than twenty-six languages. Tony Kushner's plays include Angels in America; Hydriotaphia, or the Death of Dr. Brown; The Illusion, adapted from the play by Pierre Cornelle; Slavs!; A Bright Room Called Day; Homebody/Kabul; Caroline, or Change, a musical with composer Jeanine Tesori; and The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures. He wrote the screenplays for Mike Nichols's film of Angels in America and for Steven Spielberg's Munich and Lincoln. His books include The Art of Maurice Sendak: 1980 to the Present; Brundibar, with illustrations by Maurice Sendak; and Wrestling with Zion: Progressive Jewish-American Responses to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, co-edited with Alisa Solomon.
Among many honors, Kushner is the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize, two Tony Awards, three Obie Awards, two Evening Standard Awards, an Olivier Award, an Emmy Award, two Oscar nominations, and the Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2012, he was awarded a National Medal of Arts by President Barack Obama. He lives in Manhattan with his husband, Mark Harris.
Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes includes Part One, Millennium Approaches and Part Two, Perestroika "Glorious. A monumental, subversive, altogether remarkable masterwork...Details of specific catastrophes may have changed since this Reagan-era AIDS epic won the Pulitzer and the Tony, but the real cosmic and human obsessions--power, religion, sex, responsibility, the future of the world--are as perilous, yet as falling-down funny, as ever." -Linda Winer, Newsday A vast, miraculous play... provocative, witty and deeply upsetting... a searching and radical rethinking of American political drama. - Frank Rich, New York Times A victory for theater, for the transforming power of the imagination to turn devastation into beauty. - John Lahr, New Yorker "An enormously impressive work of the imagination and intellect, a towering example of what theater stretched to its full potential can achieve." -Philadelphia Inquirer Angels in America is the finest drama of our time, speaking to us of an entire era of life and death as no other play within memory. It ranks as nothing less than one of the greatest plays of the twentieth century. - John Heilpern, New York Observer "Some playwrights want to change the world. Some want to revolutionize theater. Tony Kushner is that rarity of rarities: a writer who has the promise to do both." -New York Times This new edition of Tony Kushner's masterpiece is published with the author's recent changes and a new introduction in celebration of the twentieth anniversary of its original production. One of the most honored American plays in history, Angels in America was awarded two Tony Awards for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It was made into an Emmy Award-winning HBO film directed by Mike Nichols. This two-part epic, subtitled A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, has received hundreds of performances worldwide in more than twenty-six languages. Tony Kushner's plays include Angels in America; Hydriotaphia, or the Death of Dr. Brown; The Illusion, adapted from the play by Pierre Cornelle; Slavs!; A Bright Room Called Day; Homebody/Kabul; Caroline, or Change, a musical with composer Jeanine Tesori; and The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures. He wrote the screenplays for Mike Nichols's film of Angels in America and for Steven Spielberg's Munich and Lincoln. His books include The Art of Maurice Sendak: 1980 to the Present; Brundibar, with illustrations by Maurice Sendak; and Wrestling with Zion: Progressive Jewish-American Responses to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, co-edited with Alisa Solomon.
Among many honors, Kushner is the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize, two Tony Awards, three Obie Awards, two Evening Standard Awards, an Olivier Award, an Emmy Award, two Oscar nominations, and the Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2012, he was awarded a National Medal of Arts by President Barack Obama. He lives in Manhattan with his husband, Mark Harris.
The Zoo Story. More than fifty years later, master playwright Edward Albee (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?) wrote a prequel to this classic. Home Story contains the events in Peter's life immediately preceding his encounter with Jerry on the park bench and is every bit as powerful as the original. We meet Ann, Peter's wife, and see the conversation that compelled Peter to go for that fateful walk in the park. For the first time collected in one volume, At Home at the Zoo is a must for any theater lover.
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.
Neil LaBute burst onto the American theater scene with the premiere of BASH at NYC's Douglas Fairbanks Theater in 1999 in a wildly praised production that featured Calista Flockhart, Paul Rudd, and Ron Eldard. It went on to play at the Almeida Theatre in London and since then has seen hundreds of productions across the U.S. and around the world. These three provocative one-act plays examine the complexities of evil in everyday life and thrillingly exhibit LaBute's signature raw lyrical intensity. Ablaze with the muscular dialogue and searing artistry that immediately established him as a major playwright, BASH is enduringly brilliant--classic and essential Neil LaBute. In Medea Redux, a young woman relates her complex and ultimately tragic relationship with her high school English teacher; in Iphigenia in Orem, a businessman confides to a stranger in a Las Vegal hotel room about a chilling crime; and in A Gaggle of Saints, a young couple separately recounts the violent events of an anniversary weekend in New York City.
From its powerful opening scene, of a naked King Henry II praying at the tomb of Thomas Becket, to the final wrenching act of ultimate self-sacrifice, Jean Anouih's "Becket" remains a towering achievement in the history of the theatre. Winner of the Antoinette Perry Award for Best Play of the Season (1960-61), Anouih's monumental work draws from historical events in the Norman conquest of England to create a profound portrait of a man's soul - and a transcendent vision of the human spirit...
Written by major international scholars, this Companion combines analysis of topics crucial to Renaissance tragedy with the interpretation of canonical and frequently taught texts. Part I introduces key topics, such as religion, revenge, and the family, and, uniquely, discusses modern performance traditions on stage and screen. Bridging this section with Part II is a chapter which engages with Shakespeare's generic distinctiveness as well as the difficulties our familiarity with Shakespearean tragedy engenders for our appreciation of the tragedies of his contemporaries. Individual essays in Part II introduce important critical conversations about specific canonical tragedies and provide their own contributions to those discussions. Topics include The Revenger's Tragedy and the theatrics of original sin, Arden of Faversham and the preternatural, and The Duchess of Malfi and the erotics of literary form. Providing fresh readings of key texts, the Companion is an essential guide for all students of Renaissance tragedy.
The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Race shows teachers and students how and why Shakespeare and race are inseparable. Moving well beyond Othello, the collection invites the reader to understand racialized discourses, rhetoric, and performances in all of Shakespeare's plays, including the comedies and histories. Race is presented through an intersectional approach with chapters that focus on the concepts of sexuality, lineage, nationality, and globalization. The collection helps students to grapple with the unique role performance plays in constructions of race by Shakespeare (and in Shakespearean performances), considering both historical and contemporary actors and directors. The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Race will be the first book that truly frames Shakespeare studies and early modern race studies for a non-specialist, student audience.
"Immensely haunting... The first of many great things about Martyna Majok's Cost of Living... is the way it slams the door on uplifting stereotypes... Ms. Majok has engineered her plot to lead naturally to moments of intense and complicated pungency... If you don't find yourself in someone in Cost of Living, you're not looking." --Jesse Green, New York Times
Winner of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Cost of Living deftly challenges the typical perceptions of those living with disabilities and delves deep into the ways class, race, nationality, and wealth can create gulfs between people, even as they long for the ability to connect. Eddie, an unemployed truck driver, and his estranged ex-wife, Ani, find themselves unexpectedly reunited after a terrible accident leaves her quadriplegic. John, a brilliant PhD student with cerebral palsy, hires Jess, a first-generation recent graduate who has fallen on desperate times, as his new aide.