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Prick Up Your Ears (Oberon Modern Plays)
by Simon BentA new play by Simon Bent. Inspired by John Lahr's biography and the diaries of Joe Orton. 1962. Kenneth Halliwell and Joe Orton - RADA graduates, aspiring playwrights, and sometime lovers - plot their rightful place at the centre of London’s literary scene. But after a short interlude at Her Majesty’s pleasure, Joe is about to become the greatest, and most notorious comic playwright since Oscar Wilde, whilst Ken stays indoors re-decorating, reduced to sharing Joe’s success with their neighbour, Mrs Corden, over tea and a slice of battenburg.Prick Up Your Ears - a darkly funny and moving play imagines what really happened when, after years of creative collaboration, the door slammed shut and Kenneth was home alone. It tells the sensational story behind the domestic life of Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell, holed up in a tiny flat in Islington, trading well-trodden insults and hilarious put-downs like any old married couple.Prick Up Your Ears opened at the Comedy Theatre, London in September 2009, with a cast including Little Britain’s Matt Lucas and Chris New.
The Pride (Nhb Modern Plays Ser.)
by Alexi Kaye CampbellThe powerful debut play from Alexi Kaye Campbell, winner of an Olivier Award, the Critics' Circle Award for Most Promising Playwright, and the John Whiting Award for Best New Play. Alternating between 1958 and 2008, The Pride examines changing attitudes to sexuality, looking at intimacy, identity and the courage it takes to be who you really are. The 1958 Philip is in love with Oliver, but married to Sylvia. The 2008 Oliver is addicted to sex with strangers. Sylvia loves them both. The Pride was first performed at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in the Jerwood Theatre Upstairs in November 2008. This edition of the play was published alongside its revival at the Trafalgar Studios in the West End in 2013. 'Marvellous, sad and blisteringly funny… a brave and rewarding drama that speaks to us all' - Guardian 'Ingenious and imaginative' - Evening Standard 'A remarkable debut from a daring dramatist' - Telegraph 'Stylish, zippy and surprisingly funny… a probing, troubled and often brilliant play' - Time Out
The Pride of Parnell Street
by Sebastian BarrySee, love between a man and a woman, it's - private. It happens where you never do see it. In rooms.Italy 1 - Ireland 0...The score that marked Ireland's demoralizing exit from Italia '90 took its toll. No more so than for Janet and Joe Brady of Parnell Street who lost far more than the match that night. Some years on, Joe and Janet reveal the intimacies of their love and the rupture of their marriage, through interconnecting monologues that also evoke their life-long love affair with Dublin city itself. Sebastian Barry's explores with vivid tenderness the devastating effects of public and private acts of violence. This is an intimate, heroic tale of ordinary and extraordinary life on the streets of Dublin. Fishamble's world premiere of The Pride of Parnell Street opened at the Tricycle Theatre, London, and as part of the Dublin Theatre Festival at the Tivoli Theatre, Dublin, in September 2007.
Priestley: Plays One (Oberon Modern Playwrights)
by J. B. PriestleyIncludes the plays Laburnum Grove, When We Are Married and Mr Kettle and Mrs MoonWith an introduction by Tom Priestley and a foreword by Roy Hattersley.These three domestic comedies display J B Priestley's talent for the ordinary situation turned sharply on its head. In Laburnum Grove George Radfern's friends and relations want a share of his wealth - until they find out where it's come from. When We Are Married features three high-minded couples who gather to celebrate their silver wedding anniversaries, only to discover they were never properly married at all.And in Mr Kettle and Mrs Moon an unassuming bank manager turns rebel when a voice tells him to pack in his position and stay at home.In these mischievous depictions of respectability gone awry, the proud and the prejudiced battle against emerging truths and potential scandal. J B Priestley proves himself a skilled craftsman and presents his characters with rich humour, warmth and humanity.
Priestley: Plays Two (Oberon Modern Playwrights)
by J. B. PriestleyIncludes the plays They Came to a City, Summer Day's Dream and The Glass CageWith an introduction by Tom Priestley.All three dramas in this second volume of J B Priestley's plays investigate the question of an individual's responsibility towards his or her family and community. In They Came to a City, written at the height of the Second World War, a mixed bag of Britons mysteriously find themselves outside a strange city. What kind of 'New Jerusalem' is this, and will it suit everybody?Summer Day's Dream, first performed in 1949, is set in the future - 1975. In a Britain bombed back into pre-industrial past, three representatives of the new world order disturb the tranquil lives of three generations of an English family. The themes of hypocrisy and redemption are brought to the fore in The Glass Cage, when three black sheep of a respectable Toronto clan are grudgingly welcomed back into the family home.
Priestley Plays Four: The Thirty-first Of June; Jenny Villiers (Oberon Modern Playwrights)
by J. B. PriestleyTwo little known Priestley plays, which, while they are quite different, have important features in common. The 31st of June is a comedy set partly in an advertising agency and partly in a medieval castle; Jenny Villiers is a serious play set backstage in an old provincial theatre. But both exploit elements of Time. In the 31st of June scenes switch between modern times and the middle ages, while characters move between both. There are kings, company bosses, princesses, fashion models, dwarves and two rival magicians. causing confusion and romance. Jenny Villiers examines life in the Theatre. The doubts of the present are confronted by players from the past, and a jaded playwright recovers his faith in the Theatre. Both plays were performed on the stage, but later rewritten and published as novels.
Primetime: Young Writers Festival and Peckham Young Playwrights Project (Oberon Modern Plays)
by Various AuthorsPack your bags and hold on tight and you’re whisked away on a whirlwind of adventure. And get ready to meet a host of captivating characters, including a talking sausage roll, a troop of cocktail-loving monkeys and a long-nosed hippo called Gary, who will win you over with their charm whether you’re 8 or 80. The Primetime plays were developed during the Young Writers Festival and Peckham Young Playwrights project in 2012, with the help of Royal Court playwrights Nick Payne and Rachel De-lahay. The plays were performed in the Jerwood Theatre Downstairs in 2013, as part of a programme called Kids Court, where children took over the theatre. A selection of the plays were then performed for the Royal Court’s Primetime Schools Tour in London primary schools in 2014.
The Prince (Modern Plays)
by Abigail ThornAll the world's a stage.Have you ever been trapped in a bad relationship, playing a role that doesn't suit you? Jen and Sam are also trapped … in a multiverse of Shakepeare's complete works.On their quest to discover the doorway back to reality they notice something unusual about Henry 'Hotspur' Percy. Now Jen and Sam must decide; do they risk losing their way home to help someone who might be like them – someone who does not yet know who she truly is?The Prince is a sharp new play that weaves through Henry IV Part One and other of the Bard's works, providing fun for the audience whether they be Shakespeare scholars or verse virgins. With sword fighting, lesbianism, and disappointed parents, this thrilling new work was written by Abigail Thorn,celebrated creator of Philosophy Tube.This edition was published to coincide with the world premiere at London's Southwark Playhouse, in September 2022.
The Prince (Modern Plays)
by Abigail ThornAll the world's a stage.Have you ever been trapped in a bad relationship, playing a role that doesn't suit you? Jen and Sam are also trapped … in a multiverse of Shakepeare's complete works.On their quest to discover the doorway back to reality they notice something unusual about Henry 'Hotspur' Percy. Now Jen and Sam must decide; do they risk losing their way home to help someone who might be like them – someone who does not yet know who she truly is?The Prince is a sharp new play that weaves through Henry IV Part One and other of the Bard's works, providing fun for the audience whether they be Shakespeare scholars or verse virgins. With sword fighting, lesbianism, and disappointed parents, this thrilling new work was written by Abigail Thorn,celebrated creator of Philosophy Tube.This edition was published to coincide with the world premiere at London's Southwark Playhouse, in September 2022.
The Prince and the Pauper (Modern Plays)
by Jemma KennedyYou are a Prince, not a pauper. And before too long the whole of England will be in your hands...Jemma Kennedy's stage adaptation of The Prince and the Pauper is a dynamic and fast-paced adaptation of Mark Twain's 1881 classic novel of confused identities. Set in a gritty, vibrant Tudor London, the poverty-stricken Tom Canty has a chance meeting with the young heir to the throne, Prince Edward, and – by pure coincidence – they find they look almost identical.The Prince and the Pauper tells the story of what happens when one person is mistaken for the other and what happens to them in the long-term: Tom Canty is forced into the world of the court and power, while Edward is cast down into a world of poverty and thieves, from which he must fight his way back to the court.First produced at the Unicorn Theatre, the UK's leading theatre for young audiences aged 2 – 21 from the 25th November 2012 to the 13 January 2013.
The Prince and the Pauper (Modern Plays)
by Jemma KennedyYou are a Prince, not a pauper. And before too long the whole of England will be in your hands...Jemma Kennedy's stage adaptation of The Prince and the Pauper is a dynamic and fast-paced adaptation of Mark Twain's 1881 classic novel of confused identities. Set in a gritty, vibrant Tudor London, the poverty-stricken Tom Canty has a chance meeting with the young heir to the throne, Prince Edward, and – by pure coincidence – they find they look almost identical.The Prince and the Pauper tells the story of what happens when one person is mistaken for the other and what happens to them in the long-term: Tom Canty is forced into the world of the court and power, while Edward is cast down into a world of poverty and thieves, from which he must fight his way back to the court.First produced at the Unicorn Theatre, the UK's leading theatre for young audiences aged 2 – 21 from the 25th November 2012 to the 13 January 2013.
Prince of Homburg (Oberon Modern Plays)
by Dennis KellyHeroic commander of the Prussian cavalry, the Prince of Homburg dreams of victory, glory and fame. But reckless disobedience during a crucial military operation leads the Prince into his greatest battle yet. The creative team behind the Donmar’s critically acclaimed production of Life Is A Dream present Von Kleist’s poetic masterpiece, which is considered to be one of the most haunting and beautiful plays of the nineteenth century, exploring honour, courage, ambition and love. Adapted for stage by acclaimed British writer Dennis Kelly, this is an exciting new adaptation of a classic of European literature.
The Prince of Homburg (Absolute Classics Ser.)
by Heinrich Von Kleist Neil BartlettTell me, please - is this a dream?'The night before he leads his troops into battle, the prince of Homburg strips off his uniform and goes sleepwalking. Moonstruck, his mind races with a young man's fantasies - love, ambition and victory. But when the morning comes, a single reckless act of disobediance sets in motion a chain of events that leads inexorable to the one thing he never dreamt would happen; his own death.Heinrich von Kleist is one of the most enigmatic figures in theatre history. Driven to suicide at the age of 34, he left behind him seven extraordinary plays. Unperformed during his own lifetime, The Prince of Homburg is now regarded as von Kleist's masterpiece and is one of the most mysterious and beautiful plays of the nineteenth century.Neil Bartlett's production opened at the RSC Stratford in January 2002, and transferred to the Lyric Theatre.
Principles of Dramaturgy (Focus on Dramaturgy)
by Robert ScanlanIn Principles of Dramaturgy, Robert Scanlan explains the invariant principles behind the construction of stage and performance events of any style or modality. This book contains all that is essential for training a professional stage director and/or dramaturg, including the "plot-bead" technique for analyzing play scripts developed by Scanlan. It details all the steps for the full implementation of "Production Dramaturgy" as it is practiced in professional theatres, and treats form and action as foundational cornerstones of all performance, rather than "story" elements – a frequent and debilitating misprision in theatre practice. Scanlan’s unique approach offers practical training that is supported by detailed diagrams and contextualized instructions, making this the missing text for classes in dramaturgy. Serving stage directors, dramaturgs, actors, designers, and playwrights, Principles of Dramaturgy is a comprehensive guide that puts the training of capable practitioners above all else.
Principles of Dramaturgy (Focus on Dramaturgy)
by Robert ScanlanIn Principles of Dramaturgy, Robert Scanlan explains the invariant principles behind the construction of stage and performance events of any style or modality. This book contains all that is essential for training a professional stage director and/or dramaturg, including the "plot-bead" technique for analyzing play scripts developed by Scanlan. It details all the steps for the full implementation of "Production Dramaturgy" as it is practiced in professional theatres, and treats form and action as foundational cornerstones of all performance, rather than "story" elements – a frequent and debilitating misprision in theatre practice. Scanlan’s unique approach offers practical training that is supported by detailed diagrams and contextualized instructions, making this the missing text for classes in dramaturgy. Serving stage directors, dramaturgs, actors, designers, and playwrights, Principles of Dramaturgy is a comprehensive guide that puts the training of capable practitioners above all else.
The Priory
by Michael WynneA few friends. People we like. No craziness. The days of a big blow out are over.Kate is delighted when she finds a house in the country to escape to for New Year's Eve. Gathering together a select group of her closest friends, she is keen to start the coming year afresh. But successful, stressed-out thirtysomethings in search of a good time can make for one very fearsome party . . . and some surprising resolutions.Michael Wynne's The Priory premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in November 2009.
Prism and Ken (Modern Plays)
by Terry JohnsonThese two plays - by acclaimed playwright Terry Johnson - tell the inspiring, endearing and sometimes alarming stories of an Oscar-winning cinematographer and an aspiring playwright who receives a chance phone call.In Prism we see Legendary cinematic master Jack Cardiff retire to the sleepy village in Buckinghamshire. His days of hard work - and play – on some of the most famous sets in the world are now long behind him, as are his secret liaisons with some of the most famous women in the world... Surrounded by memorabilia from a lifetime of 'painting with light', the writing of an autobiography should be an easy matter - were it not that Jack would now rather live in the past than remember it.Ken, set in 1978, sees an aspiring young playwright wrestle with a play for the Royal Court. The phone rings. The man on the other end is called Ken and he's about to teach our hero the pleasures and perils of serendipity…These plays were published to coincide with a 2017 production of Prism at the Hampstead Theatre, London, by Hampstead Theatre/AKO Foundation initiative and with funding from NEXT DECADE.
Prism and Ken (Modern Plays)
by Terry JohnsonThese two plays - by acclaimed playwright Terry Johnson - tell the inspiring, endearing and sometimes alarming stories of an Oscar-winning cinematographer and an aspiring playwright who receives a chance phone call.In Prism we see Legendary cinematic master Jack Cardiff retire to the sleepy village in Buckinghamshire. His days of hard work - and play – on some of the most famous sets in the world are now long behind him, as are his secret liaisons with some of the most famous women in the world... Surrounded by memorabilia from a lifetime of 'painting with light', the writing of an autobiography should be an easy matter - were it not that Jack would now rather live in the past than remember it.Ken, set in 1978, sees an aspiring young playwright wrestle with a play for the Royal Court. The phone rings. The man on the other end is called Ken and he's about to teach our hero the pleasures and perils of serendipity…These plays were published to coincide with a 2017 production of Prism at the Hampstead Theatre, London, by Hampstead Theatre/AKO Foundation initiative and with funding from NEXT DECADE.
Prismatic Performances: Queer South Africa and the Fragmentation of the Rainbow Nation (Triangulations: Lesbian/Gay/Queer Theater/Drama/Performance)
by April Sizemore-BarberAt his 1994 inauguration, South African president Nelson Mandela announced the “Rainbow Nation, at peace with itself and the world.” This national rainbow notably extended beyond the bounds of racial coexistence and reconciliation to include “sexual orientation” as a protected category in the Bill of Rights. Yet despite the promise of equality and dignity, the new government’s alliance with neoliberal interests and the devastation of the AIDS epidemic left South Africa an increasingly unequal society. Prismatic Performances focuses on the queer embodiments that both reveal and animate the gaps between South Africa’s self-image and its lived realities. It argues that performance has become a key location where contradictions inherent to South Africa’s post-apartheid identity are negotiated. The book spans 30 years of cultural production and numerous social locations and includes: a team of black lesbian soccer players who reveal and redefine the gendered and sexed limitations of racialized “Africanness;” white gay performers who use drag and gender subversion to work through questions of racial and societal transformation; black artists across the arts who have developed aesthetics that place on display their audiences’ complicity in the problem of sexual violence; and a primarily heterosexual panAfrican online soap opera fandom community who, by combining new virtual spaces with old melodramatic tropes allow for extended deliberation and new paradigms through which African same-sex relationships are acceptable. Prismatic Performances contends that when explicitly queer bodies emerge onto public stages, audiences are made intimately aware of their own bodies’ identifications and desires. As the sheen of the New South Africa began to fade, these performances revealed the inadequacy and, indeed, the violence, of the Rainbow Nation as an aspirational metaphor. Simultaneously they created space for imagining new radical configurations of belonging.
Prison Cultures: Performance, Resistance, Desire
by Alwyn Walsh Aylwyn WalshPrison Cultures offers the first systematic examination of women in prison and performances in and of the institution. Using a feminist approach to reach beyond tropes of “bad girls” and simplistic inside vs. outside dynamics, it examines how cultural products can perpetuate or disrupt hegemonic understandings of the world of prisons.
Prison Shakespeare and the Purpose of Performance: Repentance Rituals And The Early Modern
by N. HeroldOver the last decade a number of prison theatre programs have developed to rehabilitate inmates by having them perform Shakespearean adaptations. This book focuses on how prison theatre today reveals certain elements of the early modern theatre that were themselves responses to cataclysmic changes in theological doctrine and religious practice.
Prison Theatre and the Global Crisis of Incarceration (Critical Companions)
by Ashley E. LucasObscured behind concrete and razor wire, the lives of the incarcerated remain hidden from public view. Inside the walls, imprisoned people all over the world stage theatrical productions that enable them to assert their humanity and capabilities. Prison Theatre and the Global Crisis in Incarceration examines performances within prisons across the globe, offering a uniquely international account and exploration of prison theatre. By discussing a range of performance practices tied to incarceration, this book looks at the ways in which arts practitioners and imprisoned people use theatre as a means to build communities, attain professional skills, create social change, and maintain hope. Ashley Lucas's writing offers a distinctive blend of storytelling, performance analysis, travelogue, and personal experience as the child of an incarcerated father.Distinct examples of theatre performed in prisons are explored throughout the main text and also in a section of Critical Perspectives by international scholars and practitioners considering the philosophical underpinnings of this work and its impact on audiences and actors. The vivid descriptions of performances make this volume a terrific resource for students, facilitators and teachers of prison theatre.
Prison Theatre and the Global Crisis of Incarceration: Performance And Incarceration (Critical Companions)
by Ashley E. LucasObscured behind concrete and razor wire, the lives of the incarcerated remain hidden from public view. Inside the walls, imprisoned people all over the world stage theatrical productions that enable them to assert their humanity and capabilities. Prison Theatre and the Global Crisis in Incarceration examines performances within prisons across the globe, offering a uniquely international account and exploration of prison theatre. By discussing a range of performance practices tied to incarceration, this book looks at the ways in which arts practitioners and imprisoned people use theatre as a means to build communities, attain professional skills, create social change, and maintain hope. Ashley Lucas's writing offers a distinctive blend of storytelling, performance analysis, travelogue, and personal experience as the child of an incarcerated father.Distinct examples of theatre performed in prisons are explored throughout the main text and also in a section of Critical Perspectives by international scholars and practitioners considering the philosophical underpinnings of this work and its impact on audiences and actors. The vivid descriptions of performances make this volume a terrific resource for students, facilitators and teachers of prison theatre.
Privacy, Playreading, And Women's Closet Drama, 1550-1700 (PDF)
by Marta StraznickyMarta Straznicky offers a detailed historical analysis of early modern women's closet plays: plays explicitly written for reading, rather than public performance. She reveals that such works were part of an alternative dramatic tradition, an elite and private literary culture, which was understood as intellectually superior to and politically more radical than commercial drama. Elizabeth Cary, Jane Lumley, Anne Finch and Margaret Cavendish wrote their plays in this conjunction of the public and the private at a time when male playwrights dominated the theatres. In her astute readings of the texts, their contexts and their physical appearance in print or manuscript, Straznicky has produced many fresh insights into the place of women's closet plays both in the history of women's writing and in the history of English drama.
Private Faces and Public Places: The Autobiographies
by Sian PhillipsSiân Phillips has a long and celebrated career on both stage and screen. For the first time, her two bestselling volumes of memoir Private Faces and Public Places will be available as a single volume with a brand new foreword by the author. With wonderful stories and unflinching candour, Private Faces and Public Places covers her life from its beginnings in the remote Welsh countryside, where life hadn't changed for centuries, to finding herself at the epicentre of the acting world at its most glamorous alongside husband Peter O'Toole, whose career was about to take off with the spellbinding Lawrence of Arabia. Siân describes the mad and wonderfully impulsive times with O'Toole alongside the tempestuous, insecure, and often lonely periods in their marriage. Incredibly, it endures over 20 years. When it ends, surprising even herself, she plunges straight into another marriage, with the much younger actor Robin Sachs. Emerging alone from her second marriage, triumphant and unrepentant, the story Siân tells ranks alongside the very best in show business.