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The Beaux' Stratagem: A Comedy; The Gamester (New Mermaids)
by George Farquhar Ann BlakeIt attests to Farquhar's stature as a man that he composed thiswarm-hearted and vibrant play while he was dying. Like The RecruitingOfficer, the play is set in a provincial town and its plot is slight:Aimwell and Archer, two impecunious London gentlemen, arrive inLichfield looking for an heiress to marry. Aimwell, posing as his elderbrother, falls in love with his 'prey' Dorinda and confesses hisimposture to her; his 'man-servant' Archer arouses the wistful interestof the unhappily married Mrs Sullen. The introduction to this editiondiscusses the play for its theatrical merits and argues that itdramatises the ills of marriage in early modern England, shown byFarquhar to be more injurious to the wife than to the husband, andcalls for a reform of the divorce laws.
The Beauty Queen of Leenane (Student Editions)
by Martin McDonaghThis Student Edition of Martin McDonagh's The Beauty Queen of Leenane features expert and helpful annotation, including a scene-by-scene summary, a detailed commentary on the dramatic, social and political context, and on the themes, characters, language and structure of the play, as well a list of suggested reading and questions for further study and a review of performance history.Set in the mountains of Connemara, County Galway, The Beauty Queen of Leenane tells the darkly comic tale of Maureen Folan, a plain and lonely spinster in her early forties, and Mag her devilishly manipulative ageing mother whose interference in Maureen's first and potentially last loving relationship sets in motion a train of events that is as gothically funny as it is horrific. Maureen might long for the romance that will spirit her away, but if she goes, who will stir the lumps out of Mag's Complan? The Beauty Queen of Leenane was first presented as a Druid Theatre/Royal Court Theatre co-production in January 1996. An instant classic from its first performance, The Beauty Queen of Leenane established Martin McDonagh as the natural successor to Oscar Wilde and Joe Orton. The Oscar and Bafta-winning writer's other films and plays include In Bruges and The Pillowman.
The Beauty Queen Of Leenane
by Martin McDonaghThe Beauty Queen of Leenane was first presented as a Druid Theatre/Royal Court Theatre co-production in January 1996. Set in the mountains of Connemara, County Galway, The Beauty Queen of Leenane tells the darkly comic tale of Maureen Folan, a plain and lonely woman in her early forties, and Mag her manipulative ageing mother whose interference in Maureen's first and potentially last loving relationship sets in motion a train of events that is as gothically funny as it is horrific.
The Beauty Queen of Leenane: Beauty Queen Of Leenane - A Skull Of Connemara - The Lonesome West (Student Editions)
by Martin McDonaghThis Student Edition of Martin McDonagh's The Beauty Queen of Leenane features expert and helpful annotation, including a scene-by-scene summary, a detailed commentary on the dramatic, social and political context, and on the themes, characters, language and structure of the play, as well a list of suggested reading and questions for further study and a review of performance history.Set in the mountains of Connemara, County Galway, The Beauty Queen of Leenane tells the darkly comic tale of Maureen Folan, a plain and lonely spinster in her early forties, and Mag her devilishly manipulative ageing mother whose interference in Maureen's first and potentially last loving relationship sets in motion a train of events that is as gothically funny as it is horrific. Maureen might long for the romance that will spirit her away, but if she goes, who will stir the lumps out of Mag's Complan? The Beauty Queen of Leenane was first presented as a Druid Theatre/Royal Court Theatre co-production in January 1996. An instant classic from its first performance, The Beauty Queen of Leenane established Martin McDonagh as the natural successor to Oscar Wilde and Joe Orton. The Oscar and Bafta-winning writer's other films and plays include In Bruges and The Pillowman.
The Beauty Queen Of Leenane: Beauty Queen Of Leenane - A Skull Of Connemara - The Lonesome West (Methuen Fast Track Playscripts Ser.)
by Martin McDonaghThe Beauty Queen of Leenane was first presented as a Druid Theatre/Royal Court Theatre co-production in January 1996. Set in the mountains of Connemara, County Galway, The Beauty Queen of Leenane tells the darkly comic tale of Maureen Folan, a plain and lonely woman in her early forties, and Mag her manipulative ageing mother whose interference in Maureen's first and potentially last loving relationship sets in motion a train of events that is as gothically funny as it is horrific.
Beautiful Thing (Modern Classics)
by Jonathan HarveyBeautiful Thing explores pre-teenage homo-erotic sensuality and the frictions and intimacies of living cheek by jowl on a Thamesmead housing estate.
Beautiful Thing: Screenplay (Modern Classics)
by Jonathan HarveyBeautiful Thing explores pre-teenage homo-erotic sensuality and the frictions and intimacies of living cheek by jowl on a Thamesmead housing estate.
Beautiful Thing: (PDF) (Modern Plays)
by Mr Jonathan HarveyTeenage boys Ste and Jamie are neighbours on a South London estate. Jamie is more knowledgeable about The Sound of Music than football, while classmate Ste never misses a sports day. Both are being bullied, Jamie at school and Ste at home by his violent father and brother. One night, when things get too much, Ste seeks refuge in Jamie's flat and, sharing a bed, the boys strike up a new relationship. Together they come to terms with their sexuality and explore their feelings alongside their Mama Cass loving, rebellious friend Leah and with the much-needed emotional support of Jamie's lioness mother, Sandra.Thirty years on from its initial publication, Jonathan Harvey's iconic, coming-out and coming-of-age story set in the nineties still resonates with ideas on community, friendship, rites of passage and what it is to be sixteen and in love. This edition is published to coincide with the revival at London's Stratford East theatre, in September, 2023.
Beautiful Thing: Screenplay (Modern Plays)
by Mr Jonathan HarveyTeenage boys Ste and Jamie are neighbours on a South London estate. Jamie is more knowledgeable about The Sound of Music than football, while classmate Ste never misses a sports day. Both are being bullied, Jamie at school and Ste at home by his violent father and brother. One night, when things get too much, Ste seeks refuge in Jamie's flat and, sharing a bed, the boys strike up a new relationship. Together they come to terms with their sexuality and explore their feelings alongside their Mama Cass loving, rebellious friend Leah and with the much-needed emotional support of Jamie's lioness mother, Sandra.Thirty years on from its initial publication, Jonathan Harvey's iconic, coming-out and coming-of-age story set in the nineties still resonates with ideas on community, friendship, rites of passage and what it is to be sixteen and in love. This edition is published to coincide with the revival at London's Stratford East theatre, in September, 2023.
A Beautiful Pageant: African American Theatre, Drama and Performance in the Harlem Renaissance
by D. KrasnerThe Harlem Renaissance was an unprecedented period of vitality in the American Arts. Defined as the years between 1910 and 1927, it was the time when Harlem came alive with theater, drama, sports, dance and politics. Looking at events as diverse as the prizefight between Jack Johnson and Jim 'White Hope' Jeffries, the choreography of Aida Walker and Ethel Waters, the writing of Zora Neale Hurston and the musicals of the period, Krasner paints a vibrant portrait of those years. This was the time when the residents of northern Manhattan were leading their downtown counterparts at the vanguard of artistic ferment while at the same time playing a pivotal role in the evolution of Black nationalism. This is a thrilling piece of work by an author who has been working towards this major opus for years now. It will become a classic that will stay on the American history and theater shelves for years to come.
Beautiful Mornin': The Broadway Musical in the 1940s
by Ethan Mordden"Music and girls are the soul of musical comedy," one critic wrote, early in the 1940s. But this was the age that wanted more than melody and kickline form its musical shows. The form had been running on empty for too long, as a formula for the assembly of spare parts--star comics, generic love songs, rumba dancers, Ethel Merman. If Rodgers and Hammerstein hadn't existed, Broadway would have had to invent them; and Oklahoma! and Carousel came along just in time to announce the New Formula for Writing Musicals: Don't have a formula. Instead, start with strong characters and atmosphere: Oklahoma!'s murderous romantic triangle set against a frontier society that has to learn what democracy is in order to deserve it; or Carousel's dysfunctional family seen in the context of class and gender war. With the vitality and occasionally outrageous humor that Ethan Mordden's readers take for granted, the author ranges through the decade's classics--Pal Joey, Lady in the Dark, On the Town, Annie Get Your Gun, Phinian's Rainbow, Brigadoon, Kiss Me, Kate, South Pacific. He also covers illuminating trivia--the spy thriller The Lady Comes Across, whose star got so into her role that she suffered paranoid hallucinations and had to be hospitalized; the smutty Follow the Girls, damned as "burlesque with a playbill" yet closing as the longest-run musical in Broadway history; Lute Song, in which Mary Martin and Nancy Reagan were Chinese; and the first "concept" musicals, Allegro and Love Life. Amid the fun, something revolutionary occurs. The 1920s created the musical and the 1930s gave it politics. In the 1940s, it found its soul.
Beautiful Burnout
by Bryony LaveryKeep your guard up. Protect yourself at all times. Protect your boy. Keep him safe. Keep him close. That is all that matters.Cameron is going places. He's going to see lights. He's going to make the world take notice and kneel at his feet. He's fighting for his club, his mum, his place in the world. And this boy is a natural. He has an affinity with the violence, the balance, the ritual, the grace and the power. He is indestructible.Beautiful Burnout is about the soul-sapping three-minutes when men become gods and gods, mere men. It's about the second when the guard drops, that moment when the eyes blink and miss the incoming hammer blow.Beautiful Burnout premiered at the Pleasance Forth as part of the Edinburgh International Festival in August 2010 before touring the UK in a co-production between Frantic Assembly and the National Theatre of Scotland.
Beautiful Boys/Outlaw Bodies: Devising Kabuki Female-Likeness
by K. MezurThis book is a feminist reading of gender performance and construction of the female role players, onnogata, of the Kabuki theatre. It is not limited to a 'theatre arts' focus, rather it is a mapping and close analysis of transformative genders through several historical periods in Japan (the seventeenth through the twentieth centuries).
Beau Brummel: an elegant madness (Oberon Modern Plays)
by Ron HutchinsonIt is the winter of 1819. The most famous wit and dandy of them all, the man who taught a generation of Englishmen how to dress, friend and confidant to lords, ladies and royalty, is preparing to receive the Prince of Wales. But this is not Bath or Brighton or any of the other fashionable watering holes where for years Beau Brummell held court to regency swells. The most stylish man of his day now lives in a madhouse in Calais with his valet, determined as ever to relive past glories. Beau Brummell had its world premiere at the Theatre Royal, Bath in February 2001, and starred Peter Bowles.
Beats and Elements: No Milk for the Foxes; DenMarked; High Rise eState of Mind
by Conrad MurrayThis collection of three hip hop plays by Conrad Murray and his Beats & Elements collaborators Paul Cree, David Bonnick Junior and Lakeisha Lynch-Stevens, is the first publication of the critically acclaimed theatre-maker's work. The three plays use hip hop to highlight the inequalities produced by the UK's class system, and weave lyricism, musicality and dialogue to offer authentic accounts of inner-city life written by working-class Londoners. The plays are accompanied by two introductory essays: The first gives a specific social and historical context that helps readers make sense of the plays, the second positions hip hop as a contemporary literary form and offers some ways to read hip hop texts as literature. The collection also includes a foreword by leading hip hop theatre practitioner Jonzi D, interviews with the Beats & Elements company, and a glossary of words for students and international readers.
Beats and Elements: No Milk for the Foxes; DenMarked; High Rise eState of Mind
by Conrad MurrayThis collection of three hip hop plays by Conrad Murray and his Beats & Elements collaborators Paul Cree, David Bonnick Junior and Lakeisha Lynch-Stevens, is the first publication of the critically acclaimed theatre-maker's work. The three plays use hip hop to highlight the inequalities produced by the UK's class system, and weave lyricism, musicality and dialogue to offer authentic accounts of inner-city life written by working-class Londoners. The plays are accompanied by two introductory essays: The first gives a specific social and historical context that helps readers make sense of the plays, the second positions hip hop as a contemporary literary form and offers some ways to read hip hop texts as literature. The collection also includes a foreword by leading hip hop theatre practitioner Jonzi D, interviews with the Beats & Elements company, and a glossary of words for students and international readers.
Beats (Oberon Modern Plays)
by Kieran HurleyIn 1994 the Criminal Justice Act effectively outlawed raves, banning public gatherings around amplified music characterised by ‘the emission of a succession of repetitive beats.’Featuring a soundtrack from a live DJ and psychedelic 90s-inspired visuals, Beats tells the story of Johnno McCreadie, a teenager living in a small suburban Scottish town at the time of the Act. Beats is an award-winning new play by Kieran Hurley; a coming-of-age story exploring rebellion, apathy, and the irresistible power of gathered youth.Beats was the winner of CATS Best New Play Award 2012
Beat the Devil: A Covid Monologue
by David HareCovid-19 seems to be a sort of dirty bomb, thrown into the body to cause havoc. On the same day that the UK government finally made the first of two decisive interventions that led to a conspicuously late lockdown, David Hare contracted Covid-19. Nobody seemed to know much about it then, and many doctors are not altogether sure they know much more today. Suffering a pageant of apparently random symptoms, Hare recalls the delirium of his illness, which mixed with fear, dream, honest medicine and dishonest politics to create a monologue of furious urgency and power.
Beat Drama: Playwrights and Performances of the 'Howl’ Generation (Methuen Drama Engage)
by Deborah Geis Enoch Brater Mark Taylor-BattyReaders and acolytes of the vital early 1950s-mid 1960s writers known as the Beat Generation tend to be familiar with the prose and poetry by the seminal authors of this period: Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Diane Di Prima, and many others. Yet all of these authors, as well as other less well-known Beat figures, also wrote plays-and these, together with their countercultural approaches to what could or should happen in the theatre-shaped the dramatic experiments of the playwrights who came after them, from Sam Shepard to Maria Irene Fornes, to the many vanguard performance artists of the seventies. This volume, the first of its kind, gathers essays about the exciting work in drama and performance by and about the Beat Generation, ranging from the well-known Beat figures such as Kerouac, Ginsberg and Burroughs, to the "Afro-Beats†? - LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka), Bob Kaufman, and others. It offers original studies of the women Beats - Di Prima, Bunny Lang - as well as groups like the Living Theater who in this era first challenged the literal and physical boundaries of the performance space itself.
Beat Drama: Playwrights and Performances of the 'Howl’ Generation (Methuen Drama Engage)
by Deborah Geis Enoch Brater Mark Taylor-BattyReaders and acolytes of the vital early 1950s-mid 1960s writers known as the Beat Generation tend to be familiar with the prose and poetry by the seminal authors of this period: Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Diane Di Prima, and many others. Yet all of these authors, as well as other less well-known Beat figures, also wrote plays-and these, together with their countercultural approaches to what could or should happen in the theatre-shaped the dramatic experiments of the playwrights who came after them, from Sam Shepard to Maria Irene Fornes, to the many vanguard performance artists of the seventies. This volume, the first of its kind, gathers essays about the exciting work in drama and performance by and about the Beat Generation, ranging from the well-known Beat figures such as Kerouac, Ginsberg and Burroughs, to the “Afro-Beats” - LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka), Bob Kaufman, and others. It offers original studies of the women Beats - Di Prima, Bunny Lang - as well as groups like the Living Theater who in this era first challenged the literal and physical boundaries of the performance space itself.
The Beanfield (Oberon Modern Plays)
by Breach Theatre‘It’s a very sore subject around here. There are raw wounds.’ 2015 saw thirty years since the ‘Battle of the Beanfield’ – a brutal crackdown on the annual Stonehenge Free Festival. Called away from policing the miners’ strike, officers enforced an injunction around the ancient stones with bloody violence and mass arrests. Determined to mark the anniversary, performance makers Breach set out to stage a historical re-enactment – armed with homemade riot gear, a map of Wiltshire and a video camera. In this acclaimed multimedia show, the footage is intercut with a live performance attempting to capture the 2015 summer solstice at Stonehenge: there are hot dog stands, Hare Krishnas and MDMA, as a group of young people try to connect – but it all feels a bit fake. Breach’s award-winning mashup of new writing and documentary film has been called ‘a new kind of fusion theatre’ (Matt Trueman).
Bean Plays One: Plays One (Oberon Modern Playwrights)
by Richard Bean‘The Mentalists confirms Richard Bean as a writer of beguiling originality with a gift for both laugh-out-loud dialogue and a sympathetic understanding of the darker recesses of the human heart.’ Charles Spencer, The Daily Telegraph on The Mentalists‘An instant modern classic.’ Kate Bassett, The Independent on Sunday on Under the Whaleback‘Richard Bean must have had a hell of a life.’ Michael Billington, The Guardian on The God Botherers
Bean Plays Four (Oberon Modern Playwrights)
by Richard BeanEngland People Very Nice‘A very funny but outrageous comedy…makes you laugh then wonder whether you should have.’ Financial TimesThe Big Fellah‘Bean’s play is very funny, full of sharp contrasts between grim hilarity and gut-wrenching reversals.’ The Stage(Shortlisted for the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain Best Theatre Play 2011)The Heretic‘delicious… Above all, though, it is Bean’s writing that scintillates. Pulsing with shrewd humour, it’s risqué and linguistically rich. There are some blissfully surreal touches… The Heretic is clever, imaginative and entertaining theatre.’ Evening StandardWinner of the 2011 Evening Standard Theatre Best Play Award.
Beachy Head: A Design Guide (Oberon Modern Plays)
by Hannah Barker Lewis Hetherington Liam JarvisIt has been a month since Stephen jumped. Amy collects her husband’s effects, the things he had with him gathered in a single box. There was no sign – no warning of what he would do. As fractured memories of their last night together rewind, replay and unravel, she is desperate to find out why.Joe and Matt are making a documentary. Whilst reviewing their footage they make a startling discovery that takes their film in an unexpected direction – the blurred image of a man jumping from the cliffs. Beachy Head is a powerful look at the ripple effects of one man’s decision to take his life.‘A quietly splendid production, magically well staged; it lingers long’ -The Observer‘Beachy Head treats its sombre core themes – mortality, grief and artistic responsibility – with a clever, caring and occasionally humorous theatrical intelligence. Well-researched and simply but fluidly staged, it is a skilful blend of text of technology. Analogue’s desire to probe the painful, mysterious emotions behind clinical facts is honourable.’ – Donald Hutera, The Times