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The Crime of the Twenty-first Century (Modern Plays)
by Edward BondOne of Britain's greatest living contemporary dramatists, Edward Bond is widely studied by schools and colleges. The collection includes a commentary by the author.The twenty-first century. The past has been abolished and geography - even the sky - is changed. A woman lives in the vast desert of white rubble. A tiny group of people come to her seeking a hiding place but instead are exposed to the deepest uncertainties of their own condition.Edward Bond is "a great playwright - many, particularly in continental Europe, would say the greatest living English playwright" (Independent)
The Cosmonaut’s Last Message to the Woman He Once Loved in the Former Soviet Union (Modern Plays)
by David Greig"The most important playwright to have emerged north of the border in years." (Scotsman)Two Soviet cosmonauts, losing contact with the world they left behind; a Scottish civil servant in the throes of a midlife crisis; a Norwegian peace negotiator; a Russian erotic dancer; a French UFO researcher and an Edinburgh speech therapist in search of her missing husband are brought together through an extraordinary thread of connections, which bring us into contact with both the intimate and the epic.Space odyssey meets unrequited love story as The Cosmonaut's last message... explores the incessant search for harmony and peace within all of us.
Herons (Modern Plays)
by Simon Stephens"A major new voice in British theatre" (Scotsman)Set around Limehouse Cut and the Lee River in East London, Herons is the disturbing and moving story of fourteen-year-old Billy, whose life has been made a misery by his father's actions. As the teenagers that surround him on the estate step up their campaign of bullying, the play escalates to a violent climax.Commissioned by the Royal Court, Herons premiered there on 18 May 2001.
Motortown (Modern Plays)
by Simon StephensDanny returns from Basra to a foreign England and a different kind of battle. He visits an old flame, buys a gun and goes on a blistering road trip through the new home front. 'I don't blame the war. The war was alright. I miss it. It's just you come back to this.' Written during the London bombings of 2005, Motortown is a fierce, violent and controversial response to the anti-war movement - and to the war itself. Chaotic and complex, powerful and provocative, Simon Stephen's new play portrays a volatile and morally insecure world. Motortown premieres at the Royal Court Theatre on 21 April 2006. It follows the critically acclaimed On the Shore of the Wide World (Manchester Royal Exchange/National Theatre), winner of the Olivier Award for Best New Play (2005).
One Minute (Modern Plays)
by Simon StephensThe new play by the Royal Court's writer-in-residence"When you close your eyes and you think about your home, what do you think about?"Robert Evans is new to the police force, and his enthusiasm for the case is keener than that of his cynical colleague Gary Burroughs. They're both looking for a missing child. But as the mother, Dr Anne Schults, wants to know, when does "missing" become "presumed dead"? Simon Stephens' new play is a disquieting portrait of the many lives that are united in the single moment it takes for a child to disappear.Praise for Simon Stephens: "A major new voice in British Theatre" - Scotsman; "Herons is filled with a sense of life's miraculous potential. It deals with damaged characters yet is imbued with a poetic lyricism" - Guardian
Christmas (Modern Plays)
by Simon StephensSeasonal new play by London's most prolific and evocative playwrightPeople don't mourn out of love, they mourn out of fear and the fear makes them stop. Michael, Billy and Giuseppe are biding their time before Christmas away from their loved ones. When Charlie comes in with his cello, and a fear of stepping outside the door because he's been told today is the day that he'll die, they know that this'll be a long night. Set over the course of one night in a bar in East London, Simon Stephens' play is a slow-burning, evocative play about selling up, growing old and moving on.A major new voice in British theatre Scotsman
Brecht Collected Plays: Man Equals Man; Elephant Calf; Threepenny Opera; Mahagonny; Seven Deadly Sins (World Classics)
by Bertolt Brecht W. H. Auden Ralph Manheim Gerhard Nellhaus John Willett Chester KallmanPublished by Methuen Drama, the collected dramatic works of Bertolt Brecht are presented in the most comprehensive and authoritative editions of Brecht's plays in the English language.This second volume of Brecht's Collected Plays brings together some of his most glittering Berlin successes including The Threepenny Opera, The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, The Seven Deadly Sins, Man Equals Man and The Elephant Calf. The Threepenny Opera is the story of the mercurial beggar turned entrepeneur Peachum and his battles with the criminal Mac 'the Knife'; Mahagonny, an operatic satire on the search for an American capitalist utopia; The Seven Deadly Sins is a ballet with songs that predicts the downfall of the petty bourgeosie and was first performed as the Nazis planned their book burning exercise. Man equals Man is an exploration of the theory of equality and The Elephant Calf is a play within a play based on an Indian folk story.The translators include W H Auden and Chester Kallman, Ralph Manheim, Gerhard Nellhaus and John Willett. The translations are ideal for both study and performance. The volume is accompanied by a full introduction and notes by the series editor John Willett and includes Brecht's own notes and relevant texts as well as all the important textual variants.
Brecht Collected Plays: Lindbergh's Flight; The Baden-Baden Lesson on Consent; He Said Yes/He Said No; The Decision; The Mother; The Exception & the Rule; The Horatians & the Curiatians; St Joan of the Stockyards (World Classics)
by Bertolt Brecht John Willett Ralph Manheim Geoffrey Skelton H. R. Hays Arthur Waley Tom OsbornThe most comprehensive and authoritative editions of Brecht's plays in the English languageVolume Three of Brecht's Collected Plays includes St Joan of the Stockyards - a play which recasts St Joan as Joan Dark springing hope into the hearts of factory workers at the mercy of meatpacker king Pierpont Mauler threatening cuts in the Depression; and the Lehrstücke or short 'didactic' pieces written during the years 1929 to 1933, are some of his most experimental work. Lindbergh's Flight, The Baden-Baden Lesson on Consent, He Said Yes / He Said No, The Decision,The Exception and the Rule, and The Horatians and the Curiatians reject conventional theatre; they are spare and highly formalised, drawing on traditional Japanese and Chinese forms. They show Brecht in collaboration with the composers Hindemith, Weill and Eisler, influenced by the new techniques of montage in the visual arts and seeking new means of expression. Also included is The Mother, based on Gorky's novel about the progress of a factory strike in Tver and the journey of a peasant mother from illiteracy to card-carrying communism.The translators include H R Hays (The Horatians and the Curiatians), Ralph Manheim (St Joan of the Stockyards), Tom Osborn (The Exception and the Rule), Geoffrey Skelton (The Baden-Baden Lesson on Consent), John Willett (Lindbergh's Flight;The Decision;The Mother) and Arthur Waley (He Said Yes / He Said No). The translations are ideal for both study and performance. The volume is accompanied by a full introduction and notes by the series editor John Willett and includes Brecht's own notes and relevant texts as well as all the important textual variants.
Brecht Collected Plays: Round Heads & Pointed Heads; Fear & Misery of the Third Reich; Senora Carrar's Rifles; Trial of Lucullus; Dansen; How Much Is Your Iron? (World Classics)
by Bertolt Brecht Tom Kuhn John Willett Wolfgang Sauerlander H. R. Hays Martin Kastner Rose KastnerNow in paperback, the long-awaited volume of Brecht's classic plays from the 1930sVolume 4 of Brecht's Collected Plays contains works from the 1930s, straddling fateful years in German political and cultural history - as well as in Brecht's own life. Round Heads and Pointed Heads, based on Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, is a powerful political allegory on Nazi racial policy and conditions in the Germany Brecht had to leave in 1933. The Trial of Lucullus, a starkly pacifist text originally written in response to a commission from Swedish radio, portrays the Roman general tried by the Underworld for his military triumphs. Fear and Misery of the Third Reich, unique in Brecht's work, consists of some thirty short scenes of life under the Nazis between 1933 and 1938, designed for use by groups in exile. Señora Carrara's Rifles is based on J.M. Synge's Riders to the Sea, but relocated by Brecht in the Spanish Civil War. Also included are two one-act plays, Dansen and How Much is Your Iron?, minor works designed for amateurs in Scandinavia, where the Brechts lived till spring 1941.The volume includes an introduction and notes by Tom Kuhn and John Willett, as well as Brecht's own notes on the texts.
Brecht Collected Plays: Life of Galileo; Mother Courage and Her Children (World Classics)
by Bertolt Brecht John WillettPublished by Methuen Drama, the collected dramatic works of Bertolt Brecht are presented in the most comprehensive and authoritative editions of Brecht's plays in the English language.The fifth volume in the Brecht Collected Plays series brings together two of Brecht's best-known and most frequently performed and studied plays: Life of Galileo and Mother Courage and Her Children. Galileo, which examines the conflict between free inquiry and official ideology, contains one of Brecht's most human and complex central characters. Temporarily silenced by the Inquisition's threat of torture, and forced to abjure his theories publicly, Galileo continues to work in private, eventually smuggling his work out of the country. As an examination of the problems that face not only the scientist but also the whole spirit of free inquiry when brought into conflict with the requirements of government or official ideology, Life of Galileo has few equals. Mother Courage is usually seen as Brecht's greatest work. Remaining a powerful indictment of war and social injustice, it is an epic drama set in the seventeenth century during the Thirty Years' War. The plot follows the resilient Mother Courage who survives by running a commissary business that profits from all sides. As the war claims all of her children in turn, the play poignantly demonstrates that no one can profit from the war without being subject to its terrible cost also.The translations are ideal for both study and performance. The volume is accompanied by a full introduction and notes by the series editor John Willett and includes Brecht's own notes and relevant texts as well as all the important textual variants.
Brecht Plays 8: The Antigone of Sophocles; The Days of the Commune; Turandot or the Whitewasher's Congress (World Classics)
by Bertolt Brecht David Constantine Tom KuhnThe latest volume in Methuen's Collected Brecht includes two plays previously untranslated into EnglishVolume 8 of Brecht's collected plays contains his last completed plays, from the eight years between his return from America to Europe after the war and his death in 1956. Brecht's ANTIGONE (1948) is a bold adaptation of Holderlin's classic German translation of Sophocles' play. A reflection on resistance and dictatorship in the aftermath of Nazism, it was a radical new experiment in epic theatre. THE DAYS OF THE COMMUNE (1949) is a semi-documentary account of the Paris Commune, and Brecht's most serious and ambitious historical play. TURANDOT is Brecht's version of the classic Chinese story is a satire on the intelligentsia of the Weimar Republic, Nazi bureaucracy, and other targets.
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.
Fear and Misery of the Third Reich (Modern Classics)
by Bertolt Brecht John WillettAlso known as The Private Life of the Master Race, this is a sequence of twenty-four realistic sketches showing how "ordinary" life under the Nazis was subtly permeated by suspicion and anxiety. Written in exile in Denmark and first staged in 1938 it was inspired in part by his recent trip to Moscow where he had been researching tasks for the anti-Nazi effort.
Victor Hugo: Marion de Lorme; Hernani; Lucretia Borgia; Ruy Blas (World Classics)
by Victor Hugo William D. Howarth John Golder Richard HandFour previously untranslated plays for the World Classics series.Here are four characteristic and hugely important dramas by one of the most famous and influential European writers of the last two hundred years, translated into English for the first time, and in highly playable versions. An essential collection for students of both French and Drama
The Cripple Of Inishmaan (Modern Plays)
by Martin McDonagh"Mr McDonagh is destined to be one of the theatrical luminaries of the 21st century" (The New Republic)In 1934, the people of Inishmaan learn that the Hollywood director Robert Flaherty is coming to the neighbouring island to film his documentary Man of Aran. No one is more excited than Cripple Billy, an unloved boy whose chief occupation has been gazing at cows and yearning for a girl who wants no part of him. For Billy is determined to cross the sea and audition for the Yank. And as news of his audacity ripples thorugh his rumour-starved community, The Cripple of Inishmaan becomes a merciless portrayal of a world so comically cramped and mean-spirited that hope is an affront to its order. With this bleak yet uproariously funny play, Martin McDonagh fulfills the promise of his award-winning The Beauty Queen of Leenane while confirming his place in a tradition that extends from Synge to O'Casey and Brendan Behan.
A Skull in Connemara (Modern Plays)
by Martin McDonaghWinner 1996 Evening Standard Award for Most Promising Playwright; Winner 1996 George Devine Award for Most Promising PlaywrightFor one week each autumn, Mick Dowd is hired to disinter the bones in certain sections of his local cemetery, to make way for new arrivals. As the time approaches for him to dig up those of his own late wife, strange rumours regarding his involvement in her sudden death seven years ago gradually begin to resurface.
McDonagh Plays: The Beauty Queen of Leenane; A Skull in Connemara; The Lonesome West (Contemporary Dramatists)
by Martin McDonaghMartin McDonagh's plays have been produced in Galway, Dublin, London and New York. They have created excitement and have won numerous awards. In individual editions the plays have been among Methuen's most popular sellers. 'Martin McDonagh's The Leenane Trilogy, one of the great events of the contemporary Irish theatre' (Irish Times). This volume contains: The Beauty Queen of Leenane - 'McDonagh's writing is pitiless but compassionate: he casts a cold, hard, but understanding eye on relationships made of mistrust, hesitation, resentment and malevolence' (Sunday Times); A Skull in Connemara - 'Here, McDonagh's gift is at its most naked and infectious . . . it leaves you giddy with gruesome exhilaration' (Financial Times); The Lonesome West: 'The play combines manic energy and physical violence in a way that is both hilarious and viscerally exciting' (Daily Telegraph)"A star is born, bright and blazing, confident, individual and shockingly accomplished" (Sunday Times)
Best Man (Modern Plays)
by Carmel WintersThis bold new play from award-winning playwright Carmel Winters deals with the near-taboo topics of sex, power and parentage within modern relationships. Set in the intoxicating height of the boom and, finally, the sober fall of the bust, Best Man prompts a public reckoning of our most private struggles as questions of power within the family are examined with scorching insight.Following the nationwide success of the high-profile B for Baby tour by the Abbey Theatre, this world premiere is the second major work from one of Ireland's most exciting writers. Best Man will run at the Everyman, Cork from 21 – 29 June and then at the Project Arts Centre, Dublin, from 16 – 27 July.
Women Making Shakespeare: Text, Reception and Performance
by Gordon McMullan Lena Cowen Orlin Virginia Mason VaughanWomen Making Shakespeare presents a series of 20-25 short essays that draw on a variety of resources, including interviews with directors, actors, and other performance practitioners, to explore the place (or constitutive absence) of women in the Shakespearean text and in the history of Shakespearean reception - the many ways women, working individually or in communities, have shaped and transformed the reception, performance, and teaching of Shakespeare from the 17th century to the present. The book highlights the essential role Shakespeare's texts have played in the historical development of feminism. Rather than a traditional collection of essays, Women Making Shakespeare brings together materials from diverse resources and uses diverse research methods to create something new and transformative. Among the many women's interactions with Shakespeare to be considered are acting (whether on the professional stage, in film, on lecture tours, or in staged readings), editing, teaching, academic writing, and recycling through adaptations and appropriations (film, novels, poems, plays, visual arts).
Romeo and Juliet: Language and Writing (Arden Student Skills: Language and Writing)
by Catherine BelseyArden Student Skills: Language and Writing offer a new type of study aid which combines lively critical insight with practical guidance on the critical writing skills you need to develop in order to engage fully with Shakespeare's texts. The books' core focus is on language: both understanding and enjoying Shakespeare's complex dramatic language, and expanding your own critical vocabulary, as you respond to his plays. Key features include: • an introduction considering when and how the play was written, addressing the language with which Shakespeare created his work, as well as the generic, literary and theatrical conventions at his disposal • detailed examination and analysis of the individual text, focusing on its literary, technical and historical intricacies • discussion of performance history and the critical reception of the work • a 'Writing matters' section in every chapter, clearly linking the analysis of Shakespeare's language to your own writing strategies in coursework and examinations Written by world-class academics with both scholarly insight and outstanding teaching skills, each guide will empower you to read and write about Shakespeare with increased confidence and enthusiasm. How to find something new to say about this most familiar of Shakespeare's plays? Catherine Besley shows you how to build your understanding by starting with a focus on key speeches before looking at Shakespeare's sources and showing how his use of them can inform a critical appreciation of the play. She goes on to examine the exquisite poetry in the play and to unpick its complex rhetoric as well as examining key productions and adaptations such as the classic Baz Lurhmann film.
Welles, Kurosawa, Kozintsev, Zeffirelli: Great Shakespeareans: Volume XVII (Great Shakespeareans)
by Mark Thornton Burnett Courtney Lehmann Marguerite Rippy Ramona WrayGreat Shakespeareans offers a systematic account of those figures who have had the greatest influence on the interpretation, understanding and cultural reception of Shakespeare, both nationally and internationally.In this volume, leading scholars assess the contribution of Orson Welles, Akira Kurosawa, Grigori Kozintsev and Franco Zeffirelli to the afterlife and reception of Shakespeare and his plays. Each substantial contribution assesses the double impact of Shakespeare on the figure covered and of the figure on the understanding, interpretation and appreciation of Shakespeare, provide a sketch of their subject's intellectual and professional biography and an account of the wider cultural context, including comparison with other figures or works within the same field.
Poel, Granville Barker, Guthrie, Wanamaker: Great Shakespeareans: Volume XV (Great Shakespeareans)
by Cary M. MazerAll four figures in this volume have been canonized as central to 'stage-centred' Shakespearean scholarship and stage practice. From William Poel's reproductions of early modern stages in the late nineteenth century to Sam Wanamaker's reconstruction of the Globe on London's South Bank, they all viewed Shakespeare's plays as being enmeshed in the social and historical dynamics of theatremaking and theatregoing. The volume considers how their attempts to recapture early modern performance conditions can be considered progressive.
Hysteria (Modern Plays)
by Terry Johnson1938. Hampstead, London. Sigmund Freud has fled Nazi-occupied Austria and settled in leafy Swiss Cottage. At eighty-two-years-old, he aims to spend his final days in peace. However, when Salvador Dalí turns up to discover a less-than-fully dressed woman in the closet, peace becomes somewhat elusive . . .An acknowledged modern classic, Terry Johnson's hilarious farce explores the fall-out when two of the twentieth century's most brilliant and original minds collide. It touches on many themes including Nazi Germany, the Surrealist movement, Judaism, Freud's theories of the unconscious mind, family relationships, life and death, and love and loss.Johnson's celebrated play raises intriguing questions about Freud's radical revision of his theories of hysteria.
Shakespeare's Plants and Gardens: A Dictionary (Arden Shakespeare Dictionaries)
by Vivian Thomas Nicki FairclothShakespeare lived when knowledge of plants and their uses was a given, but also at a time of unique interest in plants and gardens.His lifetime saw the beginning of scientific interest in plants, the first large-scale plant introductions from outside the country since Roman times, and the beginning of gardening as a leisure activity. Shakespeare's works show that he engaged with this new world to illuminate so many facets of his plays and poems. This dictionary offers a complete companion to Shakespeare's references to landscape, plants and gardens, including both formal and rural settings.It covers plants and flowers, gardening terms, and the activities that Shakespeare included within both cultivated and uncultivated landscapes as well as encompassing garden imagery in relation to politics, the state and personal lives. Each alphabetical entry offers an definition and overview of the term discussed in its historical context, followed by a guided tour of its use in Shakespeare's works and finally an extensive bibliography, including primary and secondary sources, books and articles.
Brecht On Theatre: The Development Of An Aesthetic
by Bertolt Brecht Marc Silberman Steve Giles Tom KuhnBrecht on Theatre is a seminal work that has remained the classic text for readers and students wanting a rich appreciation of the development of Brecht's thinking on theatre and aesthetics. First published in 1964 and on reading lists ever since, it has now been wholly revised, re-edited and expanded with additional texts, illustrations and editorial material, and new translations. The resulting work is a far fuller and more accurate volume that will provide readers with a clearer and more rewarding understanding of Brecht's work and writings. This updated third edition features:* Clearer layout and organisation of the text to facilitate study * New translations of many of the Brechtian texts featured * Over 40 new, previously untranslated essays* Essay titles now correspond to the German originals * A revised selection of illustrationsThis selection of Bertolt Brecht's critical writing charts the development of his thinking on theatre and aesthetics over four decades. The volume demonstrates how the theories of Epic Theatre and Verfremdung evolved, and contains notes and essays on the staging of The Threepenny Opera, Mahagonny, Mother Courage, Puntila, Galileo and many others of his plays. Also included is 'Short Organon for the Theatre', Brecht's most complete statement of his revolutionary philosophy of the theatre.