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THEATRE BOOKS
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Welcome to Theatrebooks, the Victorian Drama League's new theatre bookshop.
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VCE THEATRE STUDIES
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VCE THEATRE STUDIES MONOLOGUES
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SALE ITEMS
| Title: | Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? |
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| Author: | Edward Albee | |
| Characters: | 2F 2M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Play | |
| Price: | $16.15 | |
| Synopsis: | THIS TITLE IS ON THE VCE THEATRE STUDIES MONOLOGUES LIST FOR 2009.
George, a professor at a small college, and his wife, Martha, have just returned home, drunk from a Saturday night party. Martha announces, amidst general profanity, that she has invited a young couple - an opportunistic new professor at the college and his shatteringly naive new bride - to stop by for a nightcap. When they arrive the charade begins. The drinks flow and suddenly inhibitions melt. It becomes clear that Martha is determined to seduce the young professor, and George couldn't care less. But underneath the edgy banter, which is cross-fired between both couples, lurks an undercurrent of tragedy and despair. George and Martha's inhuman bitterness toward one another is provoked by the enormous personal sadness they have pledged to keep to themselves: a secret that has seemingly been the foundation for their relationship. In the end, the mystery in which the distressed George and Martha have taken refuge is exposed, once and for all revealing the degrading mess they have made of their lives. Sale Price $14.55 |
SALE ITEMS
| Title: | Strictly Murder |
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| Author: | Brian Clemens | |
| Characters: | 2F 3M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Mystery | |
| Price: | $17.95 | |
| Synopsis: | April 1939. An English couple, Peter and Suzy, are living in Provence in idyllic isolation, far, it seems, from the rumblings of the coming war. Their peace is shattered from within when Suzy discovers she has been betrayed: Peter is not the man he claims to be. Suzy's life is thrown into turmoil as the possibility arises that Peter may in fact be a ruthless killer on the run. Then a Scotland Yard detective arrives and events become even more complicated and frightening . Lies, subterfuge and murder make this fast-moving thriller a dark and disturbing rollercoaster of bluff and double bluff.
"what a play. It's certainly one of the best murder mysteries I've seen and grips you by the throat from start to finish - the plot is full of twists and turns" The Stage Josef: simple-minded; middle age Peter Meredith: kind but evasive; 30-49 Suzy Hinchcliffe: innocent; young Ross: domineering; 40s Miriam Miller: devious; 40s Male Voice and Radio Announcers RRP $21.95 - SALE PRICE $17.95 WHILE STOCKS LAST |
SALE ITEMS
| Title: | Hitler's Daughter |
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| Author: | Eva Di Cesare, Sandra Eldridge and Tim McGarry from the novel by Jackie French | |
| Characters: | 2F 2M with doubling | |
| Play Type: | Mid length 16 scenes Drama | |
| Price: | $15.25 | |
| Synopsis: | Did Hitler's daughter exist?
Four country children waiting in the rain for the school bus take turns telling stories. In an unusual twist, Anna's story takes the children to Nazi Germany. An intriguing tale about Heidi, a young girl caught in the turmoil of World War II, whose father was one of the most dreaded men in history. One of the children, Mark, becomes engrossed in Heidi's story. In his conversations with his friends, his teacher and with his parents, he explores the moral and ethical issues it raises. This intriguing play poses powerful questions about a frightening period in history and forces us to examine moral issues in relation to society's fears and prejudices in a fresh, compelling light. RRP $16.95 - SALE PRICE $12.70 WHILE STOCKS LAST |
SALE ITEMS
| Title: | Cootie Shots |
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| Author: | Edited by Norma Bowles with Mark E. Rosenthal | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Short Plays/Scenes Theatre in Education | |
| Price: | $23.90 | |
| Synopsis: | For two years, Fringe Benefits, a coalition of theatre artists, youth, educators and parents, have been working to concoct Cootie Shots, a unique assortment of plays, songs and poems that promote tolerance and celebrate diversity by presenting role models of people of many different races, cultures, classes, genders, abilities, sexual orientations, religions, ages, and appearances. In all, Cootie Shots is comprised of fifty 2 - 15 minute educational pieces for Elementary School audiences (Kindergarten - 6th grade). The lessons include: Love is what makes a family and Children should study whatever subjects interest them and choose career paths unhindered by gender stereotypes. The cast of characters includes: Mother Nature, Rapunzel, Rosa Parks, Cesar Chavez, Harvey Milk, Susan B. Anthony, The Statue of Liberty and more! Full color illustrations throughout.
RRP $31.90 - SALE PRICE $23.90 WHILE STOCKS LAST |
SALE ITEMS
| Title: | All Souls |
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| Author: | Daniel Keene | |
| Characters: | 4F (with doubling) 2M (with doubling) | |
| Play Type: | Full length Play | |
| Price: | $14.20 | |
| Synopsis: | All Soul's Day, or the Day of the Dead, is when the dead return to the world of the living. In the shadows of a crumbling urban landscape, three couples pass under the gaze of Phillippa, an ageing homeless visionary. The writing in this play is poetic and uncompromising.
RRP $18.95 - SALE PRICE $14.20 WHILE STOCKS LAST |
SALE ITEMS
| Title: | Audience With Murder |
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| Author: | Roger Leach and Colin Wakefield | |
| Characters: | 2F 2M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Thriller | |
| Price: | $17.95 | |
| Synopsis: | This intriguing and multi-layered, witty thriller is full of unexpected twists. A Russian doll of a play, it moves from a seemingly innocuous domestic playreading, through a murder mystery in the classic style, to a final terrifying and violent climax. It was first produced at the Edinburgh Festival in 2004 and subsequently presented to critical acclaim at the Jermyn Street Theatre, London, in 2006.
"It is no accident that the Jermyn Street playbill for this comedy thriller is free of all descriptive matter, save for a photograph of the playscript. To offer more could spoil the surprise that, with a string of startling denouements, utterly confounds audience expectations" John Thaxter, The Stage George: actor playing Gerald, Alan and Vernon; 55 Sally: actress playing Sue and Vivienne; 55 Kim: actress playing Hannah, Kelly and Simone; 25 Charles: actor playing Sebastian, Dean, McTavish and Matt; 25 Ken Wheelwright: theatre producer, voice only RRP $23.95 - SALE PRICE $17.95 WHILE STOCKS LAST |
SALE ITEMS
| Title: | Charity Begins |
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| Author: | Bettine Manktelow | |
| Characters: | 4F | |
| Play Type: | One-Act Play | |
| Price: | $11.95 | |
| Synopsis: | Teresa oversees a women's charity, smugly imagining that she dispenses invaluable advice to any with the temerity to walk through the door. So when dowdy, middle-aged Melanie turns up to volunteer, Teresa soon puts her straight. The arrival of patronizing Mrs Castle-Kettle, daughter of the charity's founder, ruffles even more feathers. And then along comes Angie: a quiet woman with a big secret.
Teresa Cowlls: smart, middle-class, self-satisfied, patronizing; middle age Melanie Maple: dowdy, put-upon, downtrodden, more of a loser; 45 Mrs Castle-Kettle: snobbish milady-type; elderly Angie: mousy. RRP $14.95 - SALE PRICE $11.95 WHILE STOCKS LAST |
SALE ITEMS
| Title: | 365 Days 365 Plays |
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| Author: | Suzan-Lori Parks | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Short plays Play Collection | |
| Price: | $20.65 | |
| Synopsis: | "Suzan-Lori Parks is one of the most important dramatists America has produced." - Tony Kushner
"The plan was that no matter what I did, how busy I was, what other commitments I had, I would write a play a day, every single day for a year. It would be about being present and being committed to the artistic process every single day, regardless of the 'weather.' It became a daily meditation, a daily prayer celebrating the rich and strange process of a writing life." - Suzan-Lori Parks On November 13, 2002, the incomparable Suzan-Lori Parks got an idea to write a play every day for a year. She began that very day, finishing one year later. The result is an extraordinary testament to artistic commitment. This collection of 365 impeccably crafted pieces, each with its own distinctive characters and dramatic power, is a complete work by an artist responding to her world, each and every day. Parks is one of the American theater's most wily and innovative writers, and her "stark but poetic language and fiercely idiosyncratic images transform her work into something haunting and marvelous" (TIME) RRP $30.50 - SALE PRICE $20.65 WHILE STOCKS LAST |
SALE ITEMS
| Title: | Girls' Night Out |
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| Author: | Dave Simpson | |
| Characters: | 4F 4M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Comedy | |
| Price: | $14.95 | |
| Synopsis: | Set London, the girl's gather at Aunty Ivy's for pre-hens night drinks where it is revealed that Jane's fiancée is not the father of her unborn child, so who is?
Tony has left to attend a Rod Stewart Concert, or has he? No, Tony has decided that his life is boring so he has answered an Ad in the local paper for Male Strippers- No Experience Necessary! to prove to himself that he can be Windswept and Interesting. An absolute feast of comedy ensues when Aunty Ivy surprises the Girls by taking them to a Club that turns out to be where Tony is making his Full Monty debut, and the unknown connections get more interesting as the night progresses. RRP $19.95 - SALE PRICE $14.95 WHILE STOCKS LAST |
SALE ITEMS
| Title: | I Am a Camera |
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| Author: | John van Druten | |
| Characters: | 4F 3M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Drama | |
| Price: | $13.45 | |
| Synopsis: | In the words of the Herald-Tribune, the play "looks at life in a tawdry Berlin rooming house of 1930 with a stringently photographic eye. For the most part, it concerns itself with the mercurial and irresponsible moods of a girl called Sally Bowles. When we first meet her, she is a creature of extravagant attitudes, given to parading her vices, enormously confident that she is going to take life in her stride. She is fond of describing herself as an 'extraordinary interesting person,' and she is vaguely disturbing. As we get to know her, as we watch her make frightened arrangements for an illegal operation, seize at the tinseled escape offered by a rich and worthless American playboy, attempt to rehabilitate herself and fail ludicrously, we are more and more moved, more and more caught up in the complete and almost unbearable reality of this girl. [The author has] placed a character named Mr. Isherwood on the stage. He serves both as narrator and as principal confidant to Sally Bowles. He is the camera eye of the title, attracted to Sally, yet dispassionate about her." Though Sally is the chief point of interest, the plight of the Jew in Germany in the early '30s is brought within focus in a few touching scenes.
RRP $17.95 - SALE PRICE $13.45 WHILE STOCKS LAST |
NEW RELEASES
| Title: | Songket and This Territory: Two Plays |
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| Author: | Noelle Janaczewska | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Full length Play Collection | |
| Price: | $22.45 | |
| Synopsis: | This Territory was developed in the wake of the 2005 Cronulla riots through a 6-month research and consultation process with young people across Sydney.
The play centres on a violent incident witnessed by a large group of young people, but they disagree about its details and their significance. In trying to get the story straight, the characters start to navigate relationships across the boundaries of ethnicity, gender, education and prejudice. They are Australia – a hotbed of cultures, and they are on fire. Songket: What happens when one person's culture is another's crime? Koua Neng Vang, a Hmong migrant is accused of raping Chan, a young textile designer. Was it sexual assault? Or did Koua recognise, in Chan's confused signals, the enduring rituals of courtship? Songket is about different cultural notions of love and how the law does, or doesn't, accommodate cultural diversity. 'A beautiful and thought-provoking new play . . . this is a major new work by one of our best writers.' The Australian 'A thoughtful, intelligent and superbly constructed new Australian play.' Steven Dunne, SMH |
NEW RELEASES
| Title: | The Farnsworth Invention |
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| Author: | Aaron Sorkin | |
| Characters: | 3F 15M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Drama | |
| Price: | $21.55 | |
| Synopsis: | It’s 1929. Two ambitious visionaries race against each other to invent a device called “television.” Separated by two thousand miles, each knows that if he stops working, even for a moment, the other will gain the edge. Who will unlock the key to the greatest innovation of the 20th century: the ruthless media mogul, or the self-taught Idaho farm boy?
The answer comes to compelling life in The Farnsworth Invention, the new play from Aaron Sorkin, creator of The West Wing. "…vintage Sorkin and crackling prime-time theater...breezy and shrewd, smart-alecky and idealistic." - Newsday "...a firecracker of a play in a fittingly snap, crackle and pop production under the direction of Des McAnuff, the drama has among its many virtues the ability to make you think at the same time that it breaks your heart." -Chicago Sun-Times "The most exciting new play on Broadway...a rousing theatrical experience." - MTV News |
NEW RELEASES
| Title: | When the Rain Stops Falling |
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| Author: | Andrew Bovell | |
| Characters: | 4F + musician 5M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Play | |
| Price: | $19.75 | |
| Synopsis: | If you believe that theatre should provoke, disturb and evoke unforgettable images then you must not miss When the Rain Stops Falling .’ Theatre Australia
It begins with a miracle. On a rainy day in Alice Springs in 2039 a fish falls like manna from heaven to bless the reunion of a father with his long lost son. Perhaps it’s a sign that the pattern of betrayal and abandonment that began on another rainy day in London in 1959 will come to an end. Who’ll stop the rain? Andrew Bovell’s award-winning When the Rain Stops Falling is powerful storytelling in which the voices of our past echo into our future. Winner 2008 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards Winner 2008 QLD Premier’s Literary Awards |
NEW RELEASES
| Title: | Poor Boy |
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| Author: | Matt Cameron and Tim Finn | |
| Characters: | 4F 4M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Play with music | |
| Price: | $17.05 | |
| Synopsis: | Jeremy Glass is an untroubled little boy until his seventh birthday, when he suddenly announces that he is really a grown man called Danny, who died some years before. How can his parents indulge his conviction that he must find his real family? And how can his eerie insistence on his true identity not resurrect painful memories for Danny’s widow?
With songs from Tim Finn adding expressionistic commentary on the action, Matt Cameron’s Poor Boy delivers a supernatural story steeped in loss, anguish and redemption. Also available for members to hire from the library. |
NEW RELEASES
| Title: | Ruby Moon |
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| Author: | Matt Cameron | |
| Characters: | 4F 5M | |
| Play Type: | Full Drama | |
| Price: | $19.75 | |
| Synopsis: | 'It had been one of those scorching summer days. Sprinklers swivelled to a hypnotic beat, cicadas pulsed to the shimmering heat, the concrete was caramel under your feet and the ice-cream van turned slow motion into our dead-end street Matt Cameron's arresting new play begins like a fairytale - but ends somewhere else entirely. |
NEW RELEASES
| Title: | Realism |
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| Author: | Paul Galloway | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Full length Comedy | |
| Price: | $17.05 | |
| Synopsis: | A fantastic farce about art in a cold climate
In the summer of 1939 in a small Moscow theatre a company of actors begins rehearsals of a new play to commemorate Stalin’s sixtieth birthday. It’s a tough gig, because for Soviet artists working towards the Radiant Future the old showbiz maxim ‘the show must go on’ is an order you can’t refuse. Another opening, another show trial! Realism is a comedy of nerves, a backstage farce set in a pressure cooker. It’s about the spirit that makes art live and the forces that want to crush it. |
NEW RELEASES
| Title: | Blackbird |
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| Author: | David Harrower | |
| Characters: | 1F 1M | |
| Play Type: | Full Drama | |
| Price: | $24.25 | |
| Synopsis: | Fifteen years ago Una and Ray had a relationship. They have not set eyes on each other since. Now, years later, she's found him again . . .Blackbird |
NEW RELEASES
| Title: | August: Osage County |
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| Author: | Tracy Letts | |
| Characters: | 7F 6M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Play | |
| Price: | $28.25 | |
| Synopsis: | Winner of the Pulitzer Prize.
One of the most bracing and critically acclaimed plays in recent Broadway history, August: Osage County 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. Also available for members to hire from library. |
NEW RELEASES
| Title: | Some Men |
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| Author: | Terrence McNally | |
| Characters: | 9M with doubling | |
| Play Type: | Full length Comedy/Drama | |
| Price: | $16.15 | |
| Synopsis: | SOME MEN is Tony Award–winner Terrence McNally at his best. Often funny and sometimes touching, SOME MEN looks at same-sex life and love against a background of some of the events that shaped the last century.
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NEW RELEASES
| Title: | Ninety |
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| Author: | Joanna Murray-Smith | |
| Characters: | 1F 1M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Play | |
| Price: | $19.75 | |
| Synopsis: | It is no use, but William gives Isobel ninety minutes anyway. They were once married, but something happened. Something broke deep down in the mechanism of their lives together and, seeing no way to repair it, they threw it away.
But perhaps they were too hasty. Perhaps there was something they could have done. Isabel just wants ninety minutes. Soon William will be married again, so ninety is all she has to make her case. Ninety to remember what they had. Ninety to regain what was lost. Just ninety to rediscover love or call it a day, forever. 'Smith writes plenty of whip-smart dialogue for these two accomplished actors... Gyngell is compelling' Herald Sun ‘The quality of her [Joanna Murray-Smith] work… transcends national boundaries in its acute exploration of the psychological states that determine social outcomes.’ The Age |
NEW RELEASES
| Title: | The Dirty Talk |
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| Author: | Michael Puzzo | |
| Characters: | 2M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Comedy | |
| Price: | $16.15 | |
| Synopsis: | In Michael Puzzo's comedy THE DIRTY TALK, Lino and Mitch, an outrageously mismatched pair of strangers, find themselves stranded in a hunting cabin—in the mountains of New Jersey—during a ferocious storm. Unable to leave (the phone's dead, the car's engine is flooded—its windshield wipers are gone) we gradually find out these men aren't exactly here by mere happenstance. During their tumultuous day together, the two explore what defines being a man, the value of emotional intimacy, the lies we tell each other and most devastatingly the lies we tell ourselves.
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NEW RELEASES
| Title: | Defiance |
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| Author: | John Patrick Shanley | |
| Characters: | 1F 5M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Drama | |
| Price: | $24.40 | |
| Synopsis: | Defiance is the "very rich and satisfying" (The Village Voice) second work in John Patrick Shanley's trilogy that began with Doubt. The play is set in 1971 at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, where Lt. Col. Morgan Littlefield and his reluctant protégé Capt. Lee King - a young African American officer - clash over issues of race and authority within the Marine Corps, even as the civil rights movement and Vietnam War divide the world outside. In this high-stakes struggle at the top of the ranks, witnessed by the base's inquisitive Chaplain White and Littlefield's irreproachable wife Margaret, Shanley has crafted another timely play exploring issues of power and morality within a hallowed institution. |
NEW RELEASES
| Title: | Dirty Story and Other Plays |
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| Author: | John Patrick Shanley | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Play Collection | |
| Price: | $26.00 | |
| Synopsis: | Three new works by Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Patrick Shanley, one of our country's most politically current and theatrically elastic playwrights. In Dirty Story, a couple of sadomasochistic writers fight over rights to their New York City loft. In this sexy satire of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that is "astonishing," says Tony Kushner, "the analysis of the Middle East in this play is dead on, exactly perfectly pitched."
In his dark comedy Where's My Money?, Shanley takes on marriage, infidelity, and divorce lawyers in a play that is "so harsh, it's funny - terrifying, but funny" (The New York Times). And in his Sailor's Song, love becomes an act of courage, in a seaside romance about the certainty of death, the brevity of youth, and the importance of now. |
NEW RELEASES
| Title: | Rock 'n' Roll |
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| Author: | Tom Stoppard | |
| Characters: | 5F 6M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Play | |
| Price: | $24.25 | |
| Synopsis: | Tom Stoppard's provocative new play spans the recent history of Czechoslovakia between the Prague Spring and the Velvet Revolution - but from the double perspective of Prague, where a rock 'n' roll band came to symbolise resistance to the regime, and the British left, represented by a Communist philosopher at Cambridge. |
NEW TEXTS
| Title: | How To Do Accents Bk/CD |
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| Author: | Edda Sharpe & Jan Haydn Rowles | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Accents & Dialects | |
| Price: | $40.50 | |
| Synopsis: | In this groundbreaking text-book, two of Britain's leading voice coaches set out a wholly new way of learning to do accents based on listening out for the ways in which accents are put together, then reconstructing them, thus producing a more natural and flexible sound. The principle of the method involves analysing your own voice and breaking it down into component sounds; then, listening along with the samples on the CD and adapting vowels and consonants to replicate new accents.
The book comes with a free CD to help guide the reader through the process, and to put together a wide range of accents. The book is accessible and comprehensive, and is sure to become the essential tool for drama students and amateurs alike. |
NEW TEXTS
| Title: | Different Every Night: Freeing the Actor |
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| Author: | Mike Alfreds | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Acting | |
| Price: | $41.85 | |
| Synopsis: | A top-ranking director sets out his rehearsal techniques in this invaluable handbook for actors and directors.
Different Every Night is the culmination of a lifetime of work in the theatre, the most complete rehearsal methodology in print since Stanislavsky. It offers a vital masterclass for actors and directors, full of sound practical advice and guidance, and is packed with techniques for bringing the text to life and keeping it alive - both in rehearsal and performance. Mike Alfreds has been directing plays for more than fifty years. In the 1970s he founded Shared Experience, and has since worked for the National Theatre, Shakespeare's Globe, the Royal Shakespeare Company and also extensively abroad. He is hugely respected within the profession. 'Most of what I am as an actress I owe to Mike Alfreds. He gave me the language and the tools I needed for my craft' Pam Ferris, from her Foreword 'If I was allowed to train again to be an actor, but I was only allowed one teacher, it would have to be Mike Alfreds. To me he is a genius when it comes to acting and storytelling' Mark Rylance 'an illuminating and inspiring book... based in rich experience and acute observation of actors at work (and play)... essential reading for actors and directors' Rogues & Vagabonds |
NEW TEXTS
| Title: | Pattern Cutting for Men's Costume |
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| Author: | Elizabeth Friendship | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Costume | |
| Price: | $49.50 | |
| Synopsis: | Paperback 224 pages. 246x189 mm.
150 colour illustrations and photographs. This is a practical guide to men's pattern cutting featuring every type of costume from 16th century onward: fashionable costume and ordinary clothes. Garments are illustrated with drawings and paintings from the period, with introductions to each section explaining the historical developments affecting each costume. Numerous line diagrams show each step of drafting the pattern. alongside useful shortcuts and tips. Includes detailed chapters on 16th century peasant costume, fashionable costume 1530-1660, fashionable costume 1660-1800 and 17th-19th century non-fashionable costume. |
NEW TEXTS
| Title: | Buzz Buzz! Playwrights, Actors and Directors at the National Theatre |
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| Author: | ed. Jonathan Croall | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Reference | |
| Price: | $40.50 | |
| Synopsis: | Containing over a hundred interviews conducted over the last fifteen years with leading directors, actors and playwrights at the National Theatre, London, Buzz Buzz! is a fantastic compendium that offers unrivalled insight into the work and practice of the best theatre talent.
The first section features interviews with twenty-six leading playwrights about their work, including Tom Stoppard, Alan Bennett, Michael Frayn and Pam Gems. The second section examines how writers and directors have adapted works for the National's stage, including recent hits War Horse and Coram Boy. The final section features actors and directors discussing their work on plays from across the international spectrum, including Simon Russell Beale on Hamlet, Diana Rigg on Brecht's Mother Courage, and Kenneth Branagh on Mamet's Edmond. Filled with behind-the-scenes accounts of National Theatre productions of the last 15 years, Buzz Buzz! is the perfect guide for students, teachers and anyone interested in the staging of classical and contemporary drama. |
NEW TEXTS
| Title: | Voices from the Wings: A Connoisseur's Collection of Great Theatrical & Showbiz Anecdotes |
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| Author: | Ned Sherrin | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Reference | |
| Price: | $49.60 | |
| Synopsis: | Which lyric writer perpetrated the immortal line "Every pedagogue goes to bed agog"? Which Hollywood actress was told by an even more famous British one that she was "so sane for a movie star"? Which Hollywood mogul, on reaching his 104th birthday, remarked "If I'd known I was going to live so long, I'd have taken better care of myself"? Answers within, and these are only a few among the thousands of anecdotal gems, witty or malicious putdowns, potted biographies and caustic one-liners collected and collated by the master of the revealing anecdote and connoisseur of theatrical lore in all its forms, Ned Sherrin.
"Voices from the Wings" is not only a definitive anthology, but also a very personal choice, saying much about its author's own tastes as well as his subjects' quirky and remarkable lives. Lovers of showbiz in all its forms, from theatre to television and musicals to operetta, will welcome this new edition of a much-admired work, now extensively revised and enlarged. Rogues, vagabonds, stage-door johnnies and ardent first-nighters, plunge in and enjoy! |
NEW TEXTS
| Title: | Vocal Arts Workbook and DVD |
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| Author: | David Carey and Rebecca Clark Carey | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Voice Production | |
| Price: | $44.95 | |
| Synopsis: | 'Refreshing and imaginative, this book teaches through enhanced awareness, and instructs through clear and specific exercises' Cicely Berry
This practical workbook and DVD helps actors to fully develop expressive voice skills to communicate thoughts and feelings with precision and power. At the heart of the book are practical projects, with examples supplied on the accompanying DVD, which enables you to: · connect your breath with your voice · meet the demands of your performance · use your voice expressively with pitch and range Each chapter consists of an introductory Framework; Explorations; Exercises; Follow Up work; Suggested Texts; and Further Reading: a unique, student-centred approach not found in other voice books. The Vocal Arts Workbook + DVD is a complete learning programme drawing on the work of a wide range of practitioners to be used at home, as a course text, or as a way to integrate 20-30 mins of voice work into an acting class. The DVD contains: 85 mins of video and 38 physical exercises. Download them to your ipod and copy the movements as you go along. |
PLAYS
| Title: | The Modern International Dead |
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| Author: | Damien Miller | |
| Characters: | 1F 2M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Play | |
| Price: | $17.05 | |
| Synopsis: | Every year, a tiny group of unique individuals give up a regular lifestyle to begin an extraordinary undertaking. Banding together, they are recruited to bring relief to the world’s trouble spots. Delivering humanitarian or medical aid, they offer hope to those living on the edge of human tolerance … well, at least, that’s what they signed up for.
Damien Millar explores the intentions, adversities and fears of Australians on the front line. Revealing personal stories with a compassionate eye and a gallows humour, he offers a compelling, practical perspective on international aid. |
PLAYS
| Title: | I Never Sang For My Father |
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| Author: | Robert Anderson | |
| Characters: | 4F 7M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Drama | |
| Price: | $16.15 | |
| Synopsis: | This is the story of Gene, a widower, with an elderly mother whom he loves and an eighty-year-old father, whom he has never loved, hard as he tried. The father has been mayor of a small town in Westchester County, self-made and highly respected. Beneath these trappings, however, he is a mean, unloving and ungenerous man, who has driven his daughter away because of her marriage to a Jew and has alienated his son through his possessiveness, his selfishness and his endless reminiscences. Suddenly the mother dies, and Gene is faced with the responsibility of having the father on his hands just at a time when he wants to remarry and move to California. There are a series of dramatic confrontations when Alice, the sister, who has defied her father, pleads with Gene not to take on the burden of the old man and ruin his life; when the penurious father and son have to pick out a coffin for the mother; and the final episode in which Gene tries once again to rouse in himself affection for his father and succeeds, but only for a moment. For it is still not possible for him to "sing" for his father, to understand and be understood, to give the love he so wants to give, and to feel it all will be accepted, and appreciated, by his father, who cannot love. |
PLAYS
| Title: | Proof |
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| Author: | David Auburn | |
| Characters: | 2F 2M | |
| Play Type: | Full Length Drama | |
| Price: | $16.15 | |
| Synopsis: | On the eve of her twenty-fifth birthday, Catherine, a troubled young woman, has spent years caring for her brilliant but unstable father, a famous mathematician. Now, following his death, she must deal with her own volatile emotions; the arrival of her estranged sister, Claire; and the attentions of Hal, a former student of her father's who hopes to find valuable work in the 103 notebooks that her father left behind. Over the long weekend that follows, a burgeoning romance and the discovery of a mysterious notebook draw Catherine into the most difficult problem of all: How much of her father's madness (or genius) will she inherit? |
PLAYS
| Title: | Improbable Fiction |
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| Author: | Alan Ayckbourn | |
| Characters: | 4F 3M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Comedy | |
| Price: | $21.55 | |
| Synopsis: | Six aspiring authors meet on a winter's evening to discuss their work. Among them are writers of historical romances and children's literature who are finding it difficult to start writing, and a crime writer who can't stop. A creator of extremely complicated science fiction, a librettist without a musical partner and the Writer's Circle chairman, who produces instruction booklets, make up the rest of the team. The chairman, Arnold, attempts to get the rest of the group out of a rut by suggesting that they collaborate on a piece of writing, an idea that is received without enthusiasm. However, as Arnold is clearing up after the meeting there is a clap of thunder, a black-out - and then the story that would have resulted from the collaboration takes place before his very eyes. Sharp comedy and affectionate satire characterize this zany, imaginative play.
Arnold Hassock: chairman, shop assistant (factual); late 40s Jess Bales: farmer (historical romance); 40s Grace Sims: housewife (children's fiction); 40s Vivvi Dickins: journalist (crime fiction); 30s Clem Pepp: council worker (science fiction); 30s Brevis Winterton: retired schoolteacher (musical adaptations); 60s Ilsa Wolby: shop assistant; about 18 |
PLAYS
| Title: | Waiting for Godot |
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| Author: | Samuel Beckett | |
| Characters: | 5M | |
| Play Type: | Full Tragicomedy | |
| Price: | $22.45 | |
| Synopsis: | 'Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it's awful.'
This line from the play was adopted by Jean Anouilh to characterise the first production of Waiting for Godot at the Theatre de Babylone in 1953. He went on to predict that the play would, in time, represent the most important premiere to be staged in Paris for forty years. Nobody acquainted with Beckett's masterly black comedy would now question this prescient recognition of a classic of twentieth-century literature. 'Go and see Waiting for Godot. At the worst you will discover a curiosity, a four-leaved clover, a black tulip; at the best, something that will securely lodge in the corner of your mind for as long as you live.' - Harold Hobson, Sunday Times, 1955 |
PLAYS
| Title: | Happy Days |
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| Author: | Samuel Beckett | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Full length Play | |
| Price: | $24.70 | |
| Synopsis: | In Happy Days, Samuel Beckett pursues his relentless search for the meaning of existence, probing the tenuous relationships that bind one person to another, and each to the universe, to time past and time present. Once again, stripping theater to its barest essentials, Happy Days offers only two characters: Winnie, a woman of about fifty, and Willie, a man of about sixty. In the first act Winnie is buried up to her waist in a mound of earth, but still has the use of her arms and a few earthly possessions—toothbrush, tube of toothpaste, small mirror, revolver, handkerchief, spectacles; in the second act she is embedded up to her neck and can move only her eyes. Willie lives and moves—on all fours—behind the mound, appearing intermittently and replying only occasionally to Winnie’s long monologue, but the knowledge of his presence is a source of comfort and inspiration to her, and doubtless the pre-requisite for all her “happy days.”
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PLAYS
| Title: | Tape |
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| Author: | Stephen Belber | |
| Characters: | 1F 2M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Drama | |
| Price: | $16.15 | |
| Synopsis: | Jon, an aspiring filmmaker on the verge of hitting it big, hooks up for the weekend with his best friend from high school, Vince, a volunteer fireman who makes his money selling dope. Jon's new film is being shown at a festival in Lansing, Michigan, and Vince has come from Oakland to see it. Over the course of the evening, Vince finally gets Jon to admit that ten years ago he date-raped Amy Randall, a girl whom they both dated in high school, only then to reveal that he's taped their entire conversation. And not only that, he's invited Amy to have dinner with them that night. Beneath its suspenseful, high-stakes surface, TAPE examines questions of motive, memory, truth and perception. |
PLAYS
| Title: | Talk Radio |
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| Author: | Eric Bogosian | |
| Characters: | 4F 8M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Play | |
| Price: | $18.35 | |
| Synopsis: | "More timely today than it was twenty years ago . . . Radio crackles with intensity." - Joe Dziemianowicz, New York Daily News
"The most lacerating portrait of a human meltdown this side of a Francis Bacon painting. . . . This revival, like the original production, allows its star to grab an audience by the lapels and shake it into submission."- Ben Brantley, The New York Times Eric Bogosian's Talk Radio, his breakthrough 1987 Public Theater hit that was made into a film by Oliver Stone, has been revived in a "mesmerizing" (Newsday) production on Broadway, with Liev Schreiber playing the role of the late-night shock jock that Bogosian himself originated. The drama is set in the studio of Cleveland's WTLK Radio over the course of Barry Champlain's two-hour broadcast, being scrutinized that night by producers with an interest in taking the show national, and fueled as always by coffee, cocaine, and Jack Daniel's. Barry's jousts with his unseen callers - ranging from a white supremacist to a woman obsessed with her garbage disposal - are peppered with insights into his character from his ex-deejay pal and his sometime girlfriend/producer, and punctuated with a transformative visit from an embodied voice. |
PLAYS
| Title: | Speaking in Tongues |
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| Author: | Andrew Bovell | |
| Characters: | 2F (with doubling) 2M (with doubling) | |
| Play Type: | Full length Drama | |
| Price: | $17.05 | |
| Synopsis: | A compelling and sophisticated drama exploring betrayal, lust and love between men and women in the 1990s, through the use of separate but interlinked stories. In unusual circumstances that draw strangers together while exposing chasms between partners, Speaking in Tongues unfolds as a complex mystery of infidelity and deceit.
This award-winning play has been widely produced both nationally and internationally, and was adapted for the screen as Lantana. |
PLAYS
| Title: | The Caucasian Chalk Circle |
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| Author: | Bertolt Brecht, in a new version by Frank McGuinness | |
| Characters: | 3F 6M with doubling | |
| Play Type: | Full length Drama | |
| Price: | $25.15 | |
| Synopsis: | A morality masterpiece, The Caucasian Chalk Circle powerfully demonstrates Brecht's pioneering theatrical techniques. This version by Frank McGuinness is published to coincide with the National Theatre's production touring the UK.
A servant girl sacrifices everything to protect a child abandoned in the heat of civil war. Order restored, she is made to confront the boy's biological mother in a legal contest over who deserves to keep him. The comical judge calls on an ancient tradition - the chalk circle - to resolve the dispute. Who wins? This version by Frank McGuinness was first presented by the National Theatre in 1997 and revived in 2007, opening at the Gulbenkian Theatre, Canterbury, on 8 January. |
PLAYS
| Title: | Mother Courage and Her Children |
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| Author: | Bertolt Brecht, translated by John Willett | |
| Characters: | F5 + extras 18M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Play | |
| Price: | $24.75 | |
| Synopsis: | THIS TITLE IS ON THE VCE THEATRE STUDIES MONOLOGUES LIST FOR 2009.
'In this chronicle of the Thirty Years War, Mother Courage follows the armies back and forth across Europe, selling provisions and liquor from her canteen wagon. One by one she loses her children to the war but will not part with her livelihood - the wagon. The Berlin production of 1949, with Helene Weigel as Mother Courage, marked the foundation of the Berliner Ensemble. This volume contains expert notes on the author''s life and work, historical and political background to the play, photographs from stage productions and a glossary of difficult words and phrases.' |
PLAYS
| Title: | The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui |
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| Author: | Bertolt Brecht, translated by Ralph Manheim | |
| Characters: | 5F 30M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Play | |
| Price: | $22.45 | |
| Synopsis: | THIS TITLE IS ON THE VCE THEATRE STUDIES MONOLOGUES LIST FOR 2009.
An annotated student edition of one of Brecht's most famous plays and a classic of modern literature/theatre. Described by Brecht as a gangster play that would recall certain events familiar to us all, Arturo Ui is a witty and savage satire of the rise of Hitler -- recast by Brecht into a small-time Chicago gangster's takeover of the city's greengrocery trade. Using a wide range of parody and pastiche - from Al Capone to Shakespeare's Richard III and Goethe's Faust - Brecht's compelling parable continues to have relevance wherever totalitarianism appears today. |
PLAYS
| Title: | Anton Chekhov: Plays |
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| Author: | Anton Chekhov translated by Peter Carson | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Play Collection | |
| Price: | $9.85 | |
| Synopsis: | Contains: Ivanov / The Seagull / Uncle Vanya / Three Sisters / The Cherry Orchard
Chekhov wrote that 'narrative is my legal wife and drama a flamboyant, rowdy, impudent, exhausting mistress'. As a playwright he was subversive, even revolutionary, breaking away from the prevailing fashions of contemporary theatre to create an exhilarating new form of drama. At a time when the Russian stage was dominated by farces, formulaic melodramas and vaudevilles, Chekhov created plays without heroes and villains, focused instead on the individual grappling with a moral dilemma. In place of the happy ending came ambiguity, in place of dramatic conflict came the solitary quest. He defied his audience's expectations, and the premiere of his first major play, Ivanov (1887), was met with bafflement, rage and scorn. With sensitive explorations of the themes of love, work and time, their complex characters and their blurred boundaries between sorrow and comedy, his plays remain as provocative and subtle today. |
PLAYS
| Title: | Plays |
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| Author: | Anton Chekhov translated by Michael Frayn | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Play Collection | |
| Price: | $31.50 | |
| Synopsis: | Contains four of Chekhov's major plays, plus four vaudevilles:
The Seagull Uncle Vanya Three Sisters The Cherry Orchard The Evils of Tobacco Swan Song The Bear The Proposal Translated and introduced by Michael Frayn. |
PLAYS
| Title: | 7 Short Farces |
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| Author: | Anton Chekhov, in a new translation by Paul Schmidt | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | One-Act Comedy | |
| Price: | $16.15 | |
| Synopsis: | SWAN SONG. An actor wakes up with a hangover, locked in the theater after the evening's performance. He is terrified when he thinks a ghost appears, but it is only the theater's prompter. The actor tells him stories of his life and also of his doubts about his career. Unburdened, he goes off cheered, reciting great speeches from Shakespeare. (2 men.) In THE BEAR a landowner comes to claim a debt from a young woman whose husband has just died. Out of grief, she refuses to see him, her attempt to prove to her faithless dead husband that women are more loyal than men. Eventually, the young widow and the landowner quarrel and decide to fight a duel, leaving the landowner so impressed that he falls madly in love and proposes. The widow accepts. (2 men, 1 woman.) THE PROPOSAL portrays a nervous young farmer who comes to propose to his neighbor's daughter. Instead of making the proposal, the two young people get involved in comic arguments. The young man leaves, the girl goes into hysterics until the father goes after the young man, who returns. He finally proposes, she accepts, and the two go on fighting. (2 men, 1 woman.) A RELUCTANT TRAGIC HERO. Our hero spends the summer in the country, but is driven to the brink of distraction by various demands to run errands in the city and bring back lots of odd items to the country with him. (2 men.) THE WEDDING RECEPTION. A daffy young couple, with equally daffy family and friends, desires an "important" wedding reception. To get it, they pay a friend to bring a general with him. The friend pockets the money and instead shows up with a retired sailor who drives the party crazy with his sea stories. (7 men, 3 women.) In THE FESTIVITIES a pompous, self-important bank manager prepares to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the branch office he manages. He arranges for a series of "spontaneous" tributes to his supposed expertise, but chaos ensues when his wife returns from a visit to her mother's, and a crazy woman comes looking for a job for her husband. (3 men, 2 women.) THE DANGERS OF TOBACCO portrays the shaky state of mind of a henpecked man whose wife runs a boarding school. At the end of this tragicomic piece, the man is saved from a breakdown by the sudden arrival of his wife. (1 man.) |
PLAYS
| Title: | OH WHAT A LOVELY WAR |
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| Author: | Chilton & Littlewood | |
| Characters: | 4F 11M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Play with Music | |
| Price: | $24.75 | |
| Synopsis: | THIS TITLE IS ON THE VCE THEATRE STUDIES MONOLOGUES LIST FOR 2009.
'Fully annotated student edition of a modern classic. Oh What a Lovely War is a theatrical chronicle of the First World War, told through the songs and documents of the period. First performed by Joan Littlewood''s Theatre Workshop at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East, London in 1963, it received the acclaim of London audiences and critics. It won the Grand Prix of the Theatre des Nations festival in Paris that year and has gone on to become a classic of the modern theatre. In 1969 a film version was made which extended the play''s popular success. The play is now on the standard reading list of schools and universities around the UK and was revived by the Royal National Theatre in 1998.' |
PLAYS
| Title: | Caryl Churchill: Plays Vol 2 |
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| Author: | Caryl Churchill | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Play collection | |
| Price: | $31.05 | |
| Synopsis: | Caryl Churchill is a 'dramatist who must surely be rated among the half-dozen best now writing' - New Statesman
Contents: Softcops Top Girls Fen Serious Money |
PLAYS
| Title: | Secret Bridesmaids' Business and It's My Party (And I'll Die If I Want To) 2 Plays |
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| Author: | Elizabeth Coleman | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Play Collection | |
| Price: | $22.45 | |
| Synopsis: | Secret Bridesmaids' Business is a seriously funny play that exposes the hysteria that can arise as the wedding juggernaut threatens to swerve out of control.
It's My Party...Ron Patterson has only 111 minutes left to live and he invites the kids around for sausage rolls, saladas and a bit of quality time. As he attempts to tie up the loose ends of his life, all the juicy neuroses of his very dysfunctional family come to the fore. |
PLAYS
| Title: | Zigzag Street |
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| Author: | Philip Dean | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Full length Play | |
| Price: | $17.05 | |
| Synopsis: | THIS TITLE IS ON THE VCE THEATRE STUDIES MONOLOGUES LIST FOR 2009.
Richard Derrington is twenty-eight and single. More single than he'd like to be. More single than he'd expected to be, and he’s not coping terribly well. Since Anna trashed him six months ago and moved to Melbourne, he's been trying to find his life again. This play adaptation of Nick Earl’s award-winning novel covers six weeks of Richard's life in the house his grandparents built; six weeks of rumination, chaos, poor judgement, interpersonal clumsiness and, eventually, hope as he stumbles from one incident to another. |
PLAYS
| Title: | Death and the Maiden |
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| Author: | Ariel Dorfman | |
| Characters: | 1F 2M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Play | |
| Price: | $24.25 | |
| Synopsis: | A classic of 20th-century theatre, Death and the Maiden ran for a year in the West End, was a hit on Broadway and was filmed by Roman Polanski starring Ben Kingsley and Sigourney Weaver.
Olivier Award for Best New Play A woman seeks revenge when the man she believes to have been her torturer happens to re-enter her life. 'A play for today, for the age of revenge, when dictatorships crumble right and left and the victims, the living dead, emerge from the shadows and present their accounts...' Sunday Times |
PLAYS
| Title: | Murder in the Cathedral |
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| Author: | TS Eliot | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Full length Play | |
| Price: | $19.75 | |
| Synopsis: | Murder in the Cathedral, written for the Canterbury Festival on 1935, was the first high point on T. S. Eliot's dramatic achievement. It remains one of the great plays of the century. Like Greek drama, its theme and form are rooted in religion and ritual purgation and renewal, and it was this return to the earliest sources of drama that brought poetry triumphantly back to the English stage. |
PLAYS
| Title: | Blackrock |
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| Author: | Nick Enright | |
| Characters: | 5F 6M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Drama | |
| Price: | $19.75 | |
| Synopsis: | It's Toby Ackland's birthday party down near the surf club, and that means grog, drugs and fun. But by the morning a young girl is dead, raped and bashed with a rock. Who is responsible? |
PLAYS
| Title: | Cloudstreet |
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| Author: | Adapted by Nick Enright and Justin Monjo from the novel by Tim Winton | |
| Characters: | 6F 8M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Play | |
| Price: | $17.05 | |
| Synopsis: | A sprawling stage adaptation of Tim Winton's award-winning novel. Cloudstreet follows the fluctuating fortunes of two families who inhabit a rambling old house in Perth. |
PLAYS
| Title: | Medea and Other Plays |
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| Author: | Euripides translated by Philip Vellacott | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Play Collection | |
| Price: | $15.25 | |
| Synopsis: | Contents: Medea; Hecabe; Electra; Heracles
The four tragedies collected in this volume all focus on a central character, once powerful, brought down by betrayal, jealousy, guilt and hatred. The first playwright to depict suffering without reference to the gods, Euripides (484-407 BC) made his characters speak in human terms and face the consequences of their actions. In Medea, a woman rejected by her lover takes hideous revenge by murdering the children they both love, and Hecabe depicts the former queen of Troy, driven mad by the prospect of her daughter's sacrifice to Achilles. Electra portrays a young woman planning to avenge the brutal death of her father at the hands of her mother, while in Heracles the hero seeks vengeance against the evil king who has caused bloodshed in his family. |
PLAYS
| Title: | The Bacchae & Other Plays: Ion, The Women of Troy, Helen, The Bacchae |
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| Author: | Euripides, translated by Philip Vellacott | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Full length Play Collection | |
| Price: | $15.25 | |
| Synopsis: | THIS TITLE (THE WOMEN OF TROY) IS ON THE VCE THEATRE STUDIES MONOLOGUES LIST FOR 2009.
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PLAYS
| Title: | Noises Off |
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| Author: | Michael Frayn | |
| Characters: | 4F 6M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Comedy | |
| Price: | $21.55 | |
| Synopsis: | This clever, smash-hit farce won numerous awards. 'The play opens with a touring company dress-rehearsing 'Nothing On', a convential farce. Mixing mockery and homage, Frayn heaps into this play-within-a-play an hilarious melee of stock characters and situations. Caricatures - cheeky char, outraged wife and squeaky blonde - stampede in and out of doors. Voices rise and trousers fall - a farce that makes you think as well as laugh .' Times Literary Supplement. |
PLAYS
| Title: | Brian Friel: Plays Vol 1 |
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| Author: | Brian Friel | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Play Collection | |
| Price: | $26.05 | |
| Synopsis: | With the production of Philadelphia, Here I Come! in 1964, Brian Friel established his claim to be the true heir of such distinguished predecessors as Yeats, Synge, O'Casey and Beckett. Since then his work has consistently demonstrated that his strength is an equal awareness of the conditions of individual lives and the historical and political forces affecting them. The plays in this first volume (Philadelphia, Here I Come!, The Freedom of the City, Living Quarters, Aristocrats, Faith Healer and Translations) are introduced by Professor Seamus Deane of University College, Dublin. |
PLAYS
| Title: | Brian Friel: Plays Vol 2 |
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| Author: | Brian Friel | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Play Collection | |
| Price: | $31.50 | |
| Synopsis: | This second collection of Brian Friel's plays includes some of his most acclaimed work for the stage. The plays included are Dancing at Lughnasa, Fathers and Sons, Making History, Wonderful Tennessee and Molly Sweeney. The collection is introduced by Christopher Murray. |
PLAYS
| Title: | When Shakespeare's Ladies Meet (With Apologies to the Bard) |
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| Author: | Charles George | |
| Characters: | 6F | |
| Play Type: | One Act Comedy | |
| Price: | $8.95 | |
| Synopsis: | Imagine the fun when six of Shakespeare's heroines get together to discuss the universal topic; love. That's what happens in this thirty-minute playlet. Juliet has just fallen in love with Romeo and the other ladies of the Bard's imagination convene to enlighten her on the best method of conducting a romance. |
PLAYS
| Title: | The Madwoman of Chaillot |
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| Author: | Jean Giraudoux, adapted by Maurice Valency | |
| Characters: | 8F 17M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Drama | |
| Price: | $16.15 | |
| Synopsis: | The play is a kind of poetic and comic fable set in the twilight zone of the not-quite-true. At the Cafe Chez Francis, a group of promoters plot to tear up Paris in order to unearth the oil which a prospector believes he has located in the neighborhood. These grandiose plans come to the attention of The Madwoman of Chaillot who is ostensibly not normal in her mind but who is soon shown to be the very essence of practical worldly goodness and common sense. She sees through the crookedness of the prospector and insists that the world is being turned into an unhappy place by the thieves and those who are greedy for worldly goods and power. At a tea party attended by other "mad" women of Paris, she has brought together representatives of the despoilers of the earth and wreckers of its happiness, and has them tried and condemned to extermination. In a scene which mounts into the realms of high poetic comedy, she sends the culprits one by one, lured by the scent of oil and undreamed-of riches, into a bottomless pit which opens out of her cellar. The exodus of the wicked is accompanied by another and more beautiful miracle: Joy, justice and love return to the world again. |
PLAYS
| Title: | Boy Overboard |
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| Author: | Morris Gleitzman - adapted for the stage by Patricia Cornelius | |
| Characters: | 6F 9M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Comedy/Drama | |
| Price: | $16.15 | |
| Synopsis: | A story of adventure, ball control and hope.
Jamal and Bibi have a dream. To lead Australia to soccer glory in the next World Cup. But first they must face landmines, pirates, storms and assassins. Can Jamal and his family survive their incredible journey and get to Australia? Adapted for the stage by Patricia Cornelius from Morris Gleitzman's best-selling novel, Boy Overboard depicts a deeply human side of the 'asylum seekers' issue by following the journey of Jamal and Bibi from Afghanistan to Australia. Based on real life events, this is a moving play about young people overcoming the confusion of war, politics and the search for a safe haven. |
PLAYS
| Title: | Bouncers and Shakers: 2 Plays |
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| Author: | John Godber and Jane Thornton | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Comedy | |
| Price: | $21.55 | |
| Synopsis: | BOUNCERS by John Godber: Bursting with imagination and wit and presented by just four actors, Bouncers is an outrageous and hilarious parody of the disco scene. The four brutish bouncers of the title portray over twenty different characters as we are invited for a night out on the town. We see them as giggly girls and lads on the make preparing for the big night out as we follow their progress to the disco floor. There, we also meet an entire cross-section of disco-goers, including Hooray Henrys, pogoing punks and drunken slobs! The evening's events are set against the tatty glitzy glamour, flashing lights and pulsating beat of the nightclub scene. An exhilarating night out for all concerned. `Consistently entertaining.' - Evening Standard. `Bouncers is brilliant.' - Daily Mail
4M (with doubling) SHAKERS by John Godber and Jane Thornton: Every town has its local trendy cocktail bar where everyone wants to be seen, from the local check-out girls to the chinless wonders, from the yuppies to the local lads tittering at the thought of a `long comfortable screw'. We are given a wickedly funny glimpse of this world by the four long-suffering waitresses who work there. Rushed off their feet, underpaid and overworked, they try to smile and help the difficult customers whilst coping with their own personal problems. A fascinating and often hilarious view of the reality which lurks behind the plastic palms and the pina coladas. `Another excellent piece of theatre which leaves the audience well entertained and also thinking. Highly entertaining.' - Edinburgh Festival Times. 4F (with doubling) |
PLAYS
| Title: | Murdered to Death |
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| Author: | Peter Gordon | |
| Characters: | 5F 5M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Comedy/Thriller | |
| Price: | $17.95 | |
| Synopsis: | From the author of Out of Focus comes this hilarious spoof of the best Agatha Christie traditions, with an assembled cast of characters guaranteed to delight: Bunting the butler, an English Colonel with the prerequisite stiff upper lip, a shady French art dealer and his moll, bumbling local inspectors and a well meaning local sleuth who seems to attract murder - they're all here, and all caught up in the side-splitting antics which follow the mysterious death of the owner of a country manor house. But will the murderer be unmasked before everyone else has met their doom, or will audiences die laughing first? |
PLAYS
| Title: | Away |
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| Author: | Michael Gow | |
| Characters: | 4F 4M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Play | |
| Price: | $19.75 | |
| Synopsis: | Commencing with a school performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream, the Shakespearean themes of suffering and reconciliation persist as three families on separate holidays are united during a fierce storm. |
PLAYS
| Title: | Toy Symphony |
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| Author: | Michael Gow | |
| Characters: | 2F 3M with doubling | |
| Play Type: | Full length Play | |
| Price: | $19.75 | |
| Synopsis: | Michael Gow's first full-length play in a decade is a dazzling tour-de-force of theatrical invention.
Roland Henning has writer's block. When he tries to explain the situation to a therapist, his story begins to tumble back and forth between his childhood in The Shire and his work as a playwright. At the root of it all is that extraordinary day in primary school which shattered his boyhood and plunged him headlong into the dizzy circus of life and art. His story is funny, fiercely eloquent and shockingly honest. Toy Symphony is a wrestle between the vicious bastardry of being an artist and the sheer exhilaration of the creative act. |
PLAYS
| Title: | Marie Antoinette: The Color of Flesh |
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| Author: | Joel Gross | |
| Characters: | 2F 1M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Play | |
| Price: | $16.15 | |
| Synopsis: | MARIE ANTOINETTE: THE COLOR OF FLESH is a dramatic love triangle set during the turbulent years around the French Revolution. Elisabeth Vigée le Brun, a beautiful, social-climbing portrait painter, uses her affair with Count Alexis de Ligne, a left-leaning philanderer, to get a commission to paint the naive young Queen Marie Antoinette. While Elisa uses the Queen to further her career and Alexis uses the Queen to further his political goals, both learn to love the woman they're exploiting. Elisa becomes the Queen's best friend, and Alexis becomes the Queen's lover. Elisa tries to end the scandalous affair between the Queen and Alexis, both out of concern for the Queen's political position and jealousy over Alexis' love, until the Revolution shatters all three of their lives.
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PLAYS
| Title: | Plays Vol. 1 |
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| Author: | Lee Hall | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Play Collection | |
| Price: | 31.50 | |
| Synopsis: | A collection of 8 plays by British black comedy writer Lee Hall. It includes: 'Spoonface Steinberg', a play on faith, love and the meaning of life; 'Cooking with Elvis', the story of a family of an Elvis impersonator now tied to a wheelchair; and 'Bollocks!', an examination of lives ruined by war.
Complete contents: Cooking With Elvis Spoonface Steinberg Bollocks Genie Two's Company Wittgenstein on Tyne Children of the Rain Child of Snow I Love You, Jimmy Spud |
PLAYS
| Title: | Stuff Happens |
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| Author: | David Hare | |
| Characters: | 5F 40+M (doubling possible) | |
| Play Type: | Full length Drama | |
| Price: | $24.25 | |
| Synopsis: | 'A totally compelling play that ruthlessly exposes the dubious premises on which the Iraq war was fought . . . One comes out enriched, informed and moved by Hare's ability to turn recent politics into historical drama.' Guardian
'A masterly piece of political theatre, offering a fascinating insight into the processes of high power in our ominous post-9/11 world . . . the must-see drama of the year.' Daily Telegraph 'Theatrical history is made with David Hare's riveting political documentary, a lucid scrutiny of flimsy moves and dodgy politicians.' Evening Standard |
PLAYS
| Title: | Steel Magnolias |
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| Author: | Robert Harling | |
| Characters: | 6F | |
| Play Type: | Full length Comedy/Drama | |
| Price: | $16.15 | |
| Synopsis: | The action is set in Truvy's beauty salon in Chinquapin, Louisiana, where all the ladies who are "anybody" come to have their hair done. Helped by her eager new assistant, Annelle (who is not sure whether or not she is still married), the outspoken, wise-cracking Truvy dispenses shampoos and free advice to the town's rich curmudgeon, Ouiser, ("I'm not crazy, I've just been in a bad mood for forty years"); an eccentric millionaire, Miss Clairee, who has a raging sweet tooth; and the local social leader, M'Lynn, whose daughter, Shelby (the prettiest girl in town), is about to marry a "good ole boy." Filled with hilarious repartee and not a few acerbic but humorously revealing verbal collisions, the play moves toward tragedy when, in the second act, the spunky Shelby (who is a diabetic) risks pregnancy and forfeits her life. The sudden realization of their mortality affects the others, but also draws on the underlying strength and love which give the play, and its characters, the special quality to make them truly touching, funny and marvelously amiable company in good times and bad. |
PLAYS
| Title: | Stepping Out |
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| Author: | Richard Harris | |
| Characters: | 9F 1M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Comedy | |
| Price: | $21.55 | |
| Synopsis: | 'Stepping Out', which enjoyed a hugely successful West End run and won Evening Standard Best Comedy Award for 1984, is a warm and very funny play about the lives of a group of women (and one man) attending a weekly tap-dance class in a dingy North London church hall. As the play progresses, the class's dancing improves to such an extent that by the climax, a grand charity show performance, they have been transformed into triumphant tappers, worthy of any chorus line. |
PLAYS
| Title: | The Little Foxes |
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| Author: | Lillian Hellman | |
| Characters: | 4F 6M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Drama | |
| Price: | $17.95 | |
| Synopsis: | Picture a traditionally graceful and charming house in the American deep South at the turn of the century. Into this peaceful scene bring the prosperous but grasping Hubbard family - Ben, possessive and scheming; Oscar, cruel and arrogant; Ben's son Leo, weak and unprincipled; and deadliest of all, his wickedly clever and predatory sister, Regina - each trying to outwit the other. In contrast, meet lonely intimidated Birdie, whom Oscar wed for her father's cotton fields; and wistful Alexandra, Regina's daughter, who despite her love for her ailing father Horace, is unable to shield him from the implacable and ultimately murderous hatred that his wife feels for him. The Little Foxes is acknowledged to be one of the best and most important American plays written in the last half-century. |
PLAYS
| Title: | Crimes of the Heart |
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| Author: | Beth Henley | |
| Characters: | 4F 2M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Drama | |
| Price: | $16.15 | |
| Synopsis: | The scene is Hazlehurst, Mississippi, where the three Magrath sisters have gathered to await news of the family patriarch, their grandfather, who is living out his last hours in the local hospital. Lenny, the oldest sister, is unmarried at thirty and facing diminishing marital prospects; Meg, the middle sister, who quickly outgrew Hazlehurst, is back after a failed singing career on the West Coast; while Babe, the youngest, is out on bail after having shot her husband in the stomach. Their troubles, grave and yet, somehow, hilarious, are highlighted by their priggish cousin, Chick, and by the awkward young lawyer who tries to keep Babe out of jail while helpless not to fall in love with her. In the end the play is the story of how its young characters escape the past to seize the future - but the telling is so true and touching and consistently hilarious that it will linger in the mind long after the curtain has descended. |
PLAYS
| Title: | The Blonde, the Brunette and the Vengeful Redhead |
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| Author: | Robert Hewett | |
| Characters: | 1F | |
| Play Type: | Play | |
| Price: | $11.65 | |
| Synopsis: | An adulterous husband, a meddlesome neighbour and a dropped ice-cream cone are among the circumstances that combine to shatter the life of suburban housewife Rhonda Russell.
Everyone has their own story to tell about the day that Rhonda went beserk in the shopping mall. And who's to know where the truth lies? With the best friend who might have egged her on? With the husband who denies responsibility? Or with the victim's family whose lives were changed forever? And then there's the story of the vengeful redhead herself, but she's probably the least likely to know what really happened. In this gripping adventure, the world is turned upside down in a disastrous and comic sequence of events. As the intrigue unfolds, seven different characters give a fresh twist of perspective, all played by one multifaceted performer. |
PLAYS
| Title: | Selected Plays |
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| Author: | Jack Hibberd | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Play Collection | |
| Price: | $29.65 | |
| Synopsis: | Three early plays from Jack Hibberd which continue to be performed, studied and read for pleaure.
White with Wire Wheels (1967) was the first play to examine the insecurity inherent in male cultural attitudes towards women and cars. Dimboola (1969) is a Rabelaisian account of a country wedding. A Stretch of the Imagination (1971) introduces the painfully lonely world of Monk O'Neill, one of the great comic creations of Australian dramatic literature. |
PLAYS
| Title: | Moonlight and Magnolias |
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| Author: | Ron Hutchinson | |
| Characters: | 1F 3M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Comedy | |
| Price: | $16.15 | |
| Synopsis: | 1939 Hollywood is abuzz. Legendary producer David O. Selznick has shut down produc-tion of his new epic, Gone with the Wind, a film adaptation of Margaret Mitchell's novel. The screenplay, you see, just doesn't work. So what's an all-powerful movie mogul to do? While fending off the film's stars, gossip columnists and his own father-in-law, Selznick sends a car for famed screenwriter Ben Hecht and pulls formidable director Victor Fleming from the set of The Wizard of Oz. Summoning both to his office, he locks the doors, closes the shades, and on a diet of bananas and peanuts, the three men labor over five days to fashion a screenplay that will become the blueprint for one of the most successful and beloved films of all time. |
PLAYS
| Title: | A Doll's House and Other Plays |
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| Author: | Henrik Ibsen translated by Peter Watts | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Play Collection | |
| Price: | $10.75 | |
| Synopsis: | Contents: A Doll's House / The League of Youth / The Lady from the Sea
The three plays in this volume, each written a decade apart, demonstrate different sides of Henrik Ibsen's genius, but all deal with themes of alienation from society and the breaking down of convention. A Doll's House (1879) portrays a woman questioning her duty to her husband and seeking to escape the stifling confines of her marriage - a theme that shocked contemporary audiences and established Ibsen's name outside Scandinavia. In The League of Youth (1869), his first prose drama, Ibsen created a vivid comedy about a hypocritical politician, and in The Lady from the Sea (1888), he depicts a woman who longs to return to the life she enjoyed before she was married.Peter Watts' lively modern translation is accompanied by an introduction examining Ibsen's life and times, with individual discussions of each of the three plays. |
PLAYS
| Title: | Rhinoceros, The Chairs and The Lesson |
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| Author: | Eugene Ionesco | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Play Collection | |
| Price: | $17.95 | |
| Synopsis: | These three great plays by one of the founding fathers of the theatre of the absurd, are alive and kicking with tragedy and humour, bleakness and farce. In Rhinoceros we are shown the innate brutality of people as everyone, except for Berenger, turns into clumsy, unthinking rhinoceroses. The Chairs depicts the futile struggle of two old people to convey the meaning of life to the rest of humanity, while The Lesson is a chilling, but anarchically funny drama of verbal domination. In these three 'antiplays' dream, nonsense and fantasy combine to create an unsettling, bizarre view of society. |
PLAYS
| Title: | Exit the King, The Killer & Macbett: Three Plays |
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| Author: | Eugene Ionesco | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Play Collection | |
| Price: | $28.20 | |
| Synopsis: | Exit the King is a highly stylized, ritualized death rite unfolding the final hours of the once-great king Berenger the First. As he dies, his kingdom also dies. His armies suffer defeat, the young emigrate, the seasons change overnight, and his kingdom’s borders shrink to the outline of his throne. At last, as the curtain falls, the king himself dissolves into a gray mist.
The Killer is a study of pure evil. Bérenger, a conscientious citizen, finds himself in a radiantly beautiful city marred only by the presence of a killer. Bérenger’s determination to find the murderer in the face of official indifference and his final defeat at the hands of an impersonal, pitiless cruelty speak with the universality of Kafka’s The Trial. Macbett, inspired by Shakespeare’s play, is “a grotesque joke . . . [and] a very funny play. . . . Ionecso maliciously undermines sources and traditions, spoofing Shakespeare along with tragedy.”—Mel Gussow, The New York Times |
PLAYS
| Title: | Carrying Shoes Into the Unknown & Dolly Stainer of Kew Cottages |
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| Author: | Rosemary Johns & Janet Brown | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Full length Play Collection | |
| Price: | $17.05 | |
| Synopsis: | Carrying Shoes Into the Unknown- A fictionalised account of a true story of a Western family living in Iran during the last days of the Shah and the rise of Ayotollah Khomeini. Both a love story and an illuminating exploration on how differing cultural, spiritual and emotional perceptions can affect rites of passage Carrying Shoes Into the Unknown is a timely and fascinating play.(15M - doubling possible, 6F) Dolly Stainer of Kew Cottages- Falsely labeled a lunatic upon her arrival as a neglected five-year-old in 1915, Dolly soon learns how things operate at the Idiot Asylum. It was to be her home for the next 75 years. How does Dolly develop her powerful, loving and complex personality in this institution? Dolly’s moving story illuminates her world of institutionalized care in twentieth century Australia.(1M, 2F with doubling) |
PLAYS
| Title: | Hitchcock Blonde |
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| Author: | Terry Johnson | |
| Characters: | 2F 3M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Drama | |
| Price: | $24.25 | |
| Synopsis: | First published to tie-in with the Royal Court Theatre's production in March 2003, with a cast including Alexander Delamere, Victoria Gay, Fiona Glascott and Rosamund Pike, this is the newly revised version of award-winning Terry Johnson's classic play.
A media lecturer and his female protégé find some deteriorated Hitchcock footage. It would appear they had discovered some early rushes but what film were they for and who is the mysterious blonde? Hitchcock Blonde is not a play about Alfred Hitchcock, though he may make a cameo appearance. Of the less familiar characters, one is likely to amuse, the other will behave appallingly in a theatrical film noir of genius, lust, death and voyeuristic obsession. |
PLAYS
| Title: | The Laramie Project |
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| Author: | Moises Kaufman and the Members of the Tectonic Theater Project | |
| Characters: | 4F (with doubling) 4M (with doubling) | |
| Play Type: | Full length Drama | |
| Price: | $16.15 | |
| Synopsis: | In October 1998 a twenty-one-year-old student at the University of Wyoming was kidnapped, severely beaten and left to die, tied to a fence in the middle of the prairie outside Laramie, Wyoming. His bloody, bruised and battered body was not discovered until the next day, and he died several days later in an area hospital. His name was Matthew Shepard, and he was the victim of this assault because he was gay. Moisés Kaufman and fellow members of the Tectonic Theater Project made six trips to Laramie over the course of a year and a half in the aftermath of the beating and during the trial of the two young men accused of killing Shepard. They conducted more than 200 interviews with the people of the town. Some people interviewed were directly connected to the case, and others were citizens of Laramie, and the breadth of their reactions to the crime is fascinating. Kaufman and Tectonic Theater members have constructed a deeply moving theatrical experience from these interviews and their own experiences. THE LARAMIE PROJECT is a breathtaking theatrical collage that explores the depths to which humanity can sink, and the heights of compassion we are also capable of. |
PLAYS
| Title: | Angels in America Part One: Millennium Approaches |
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| Author: | Tony Kushner | |
| Characters: | 3F 6M (with doubling) | |
| Play Type: | Full length Drama | |
| Price: | $26.95 | |
| Synopsis: | The two-part Angels in America is an epic drama set during the Reagan years in America - now recognised as one of the greatest plays of the twentieth century.
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize Winner of the Evening Standard Best Play Award Prior, visited by ghosts of his ancestors and abandoned by his lover after his diagnosis with AIDS, is wondering if he is still sane when the angels select him to be their prophet. Powerbroker Roy Cohn also has the virus - but he believes that only the powerless can have that particular illness, and so kicks back against his diagnosis. In the 'melting pot where nothing melted' of modern America, the nation's reaction to the sickness - and its sufferers - is laid bare. |
PLAYS
| Title: | Angels in America Part Two: Perestroika |
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| Author: | Tony Kushner | |
| Characters: | 3F 6M (with doubling) | |
| Play Type: | Full length Drama | |
| Price: | $26.95 | |
| Synopsis: | The two-part Angels in America is an epic drama set during the Reagan years in America - now recognised as one of the greatest plays of the twentieth century.
Part Two: Perestroika picks up the stories of Prior and Cohn from Part One. Prior, overwhelmed by the responsibilties of 'prophet' placed on him by the angels, wishes that they would leave him alone. Cohn, now dying from the virus, continues to manipulate the system from his hospital bed. But who is left to look after them now? And does anyone still care? With a climax as bittersweet as it is beautiful, we are left wondering who the real angels are in a disparate world. |
PLAYS
| Title: | Rabbit Hole |
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| Author: | David Lindsay-Abaire | |
| Characters: | 3F 2M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Drama | |
| Price: | $16.15 | |
| Synopsis: | Becca and Howie Corbett have everything a family could want, until a life-shattering accident turns their world upside down and leaves the couple drifting perilously apart. RABBIT HOLE charts their bittersweet search for comfort in the darkest of places and for a path that will lead them back into the light of day. |
PLAYS
| Title: | 'Allo 'Allo |
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| Author: | Jeremy Lloyd and David Croft | |
| Characters: | 5F 8M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Comedy | |
| Price: | $21.55 | |
| Synopsis: | The action of the play takes place in and around the Cafe Rene in occupied France, 2nd World War.
Based on the hugely popular TV comedy series, the stage version of 'Allo Allo' follows the adventures of Rene, the hapless cafe owner in war-torn occupied France, as he and his wife, Edith, struggle to keep for themselves a priceless portrait stolen by the Nazis and kept in a sausage in their cellar. Rene is hiding two British airmen and is endeavouring, with the help of the Resistance, to repatriate them. However, communications with London through a wireless disguised as a cockatoo add to the many embarrassments he endures in the company of his patrons. Matters come to a head with the news that the Fuhrer is to visit the town and the cafe becomes filled with tricksters intending to impersonate Hitler before the event. Rene will need all the wit he can muster to save his cafe and his life. |
PLAYS
| Title: | The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) |
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| Author: | Adam Long, Daniel Singer and Jess Winfield | |
| Characters: | 3M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Comedy | |
| Price: | $14.35 | |
| Synopsis: | "Shakespeare as written by Reader's Digest, acted by Monty Python, and performed at the speed of the minute waltz." L.A. Herald
Shakespeare may be turning in his grave, but the show that's become a cult classic contains all 37 plays (plus sonnets) in just 97 minutes. As the comedies aren't anywhere near as funny as the tragedies, all sixteen have been condensed into 'Four Weddings and a Transvestite', the history plays are transformed into a game of American football, Othello is performed in rap and Titus Androncius becomes a TV cookery programme. For the finale, Hamlet is staged first as a psychological exploration of Hamlet's Ego and Ophelia's Id, then performed in a matter of minutes and, for the finale, performed backwards. For lovers of Shakespeare everywhere. "What cheek! What nerve! What sheer, heavenly, unadulterated fun!" Sunday Express. |
PLAYS
| Title: | Three Plays translated by Dewell & Zapata |
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| Author: | Frederico Lorca | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Full length Play Collection | |
| Price: | $17.95 | |
| Synopsis: | The revolutionary genius of Spanish theatre, Lorca brought vivid and tragic poetry to the stage with these three powerful dramas. In The House of Bernarda Alba, a tyrannical matriarch rules over her house and five daughters, cruelly crushing their hopes and needs. The other plays here also portray female characters whose desires are tragically and violently frustrated: a woman's longing for a child in Yerma, and a bride's yearning for her lover in Blood Wedding. All appeal for freedom and sexual and social equality, and are also passionate defences of the imagination: in Christopher Maurer's words, 'poetic drama unsurpassed by any writer of our time'. |
PLAYS
| Title: | Oleanna |
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| Author: | David Mamet | |
| Characters: | 1F 1M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Drama | |
| Price: | $24.25 | |
| Synopsis: | Oleanna is Mamet's most celebrated and performed play, exploring male-female conflicts. |
PLAYS
| Title: | Oleanna |
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| Author: | David Mamet | |
| Characters: | 1F 1M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Drama | |
| Price: | $24.25 | |
| Synopsis: | METHUEN STUDENT EDITION
Oleanna is Mamet's most celebrated and performed play, exploring male-female conflicts. Considered to be Mamet's most controversial play, Oleanna has shocked and outraged audiences since its first performance in 1992. A confrontation between John, a college professor, and Carol, one of his students, quickly becomes an arena for a male-female power struggle that threatens both their careers. As Mamet's trademark dialogue crackles along, the mechanisms of power, censorship and abuse in our politically correct age are laid bare. This Student Edition is annotated, with a chronology of David Mamet's life and work, a discussion of various interpretations and notes on individual words and phrases in the text as well as questions for study. |
PLAYS
| Title: | Patrick Marber: Plays Vol 1 |
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| Author: | Patrick Marber | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Play Collection | |
| Price: | $40.50 | |
| Synopsis: | Contents: DEALER'S CHOICE, AFTER MISS JULIE and CLOSER
Firstly an enthralling close up of the demons which drive compulsive gambler Then one of his best plays of sexual politic Lastly a drama set in a country house outside London on the eve of Labour's historic landslide in 1945. Three plays by multi-award winning playwright, Patrick Marber. |
PLAYS
| Title: | Martin McDonagh: Plays Vol 1 |
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| Author: | Martin McDonagh | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Play Collection | |
| Price: | $31.50 | |
| Synopsis: | 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.
A SKILL IN CONNEMARA: The second in McDonagh's Connemara trilogy of plays. Mick Dowd is hired annually to disinter the bones in certain sections of his local cemetery, in order to make way for the new arrivals. As the time comes for him to dig up those of his own late wife, strange rumours also resurface. THE LONESOME WEST: The last of McDonagh's Connemara trilogy of plays. Two brothers living in their father's house after his recent death, find it practically impossible to exist without violent disputes over the most mundane and innocent of topics. Only Father Welsh, the young local priest, bids for reconciliation. |
PLAYS
| Title: | The Beauty Queen of Leenane |
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| Author: | Martin McDonagh | |
| Characters: | 2F 2M | |
| Play Type: | Full Length Drama | |
| Price: | $16.15 | |
| Synopsis: | 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 aging mother, whose interference in Maureen's first and possibly final chance of a loving relationship sets in motion a train of events that leads inexorably towards the play's terrifying dénouement. |
PLAYS
| Title: | My Heart's a Suitcase / Low Level Panic - 2 Plays |
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| Author: | Clare McIntyre | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Play Collection | |
| Price: | $26.95 | |
| Synopsis: | Two modern feminist classics.
MY HEART'S A SUITCASE (4f 2m) A fiercely modern parable of modern materialism set in a grand, empty seaside flat, where two friends are spending the weekend. LOW LEVEL PANIC (3f) ...is the constant fear that runs through women's lives like a cold underground stream, its source is male violence and it is fed by tributaries of pornography. Clare McIntyre's play looks at the repercussions this fear has on the lives of three women. |
PLAYS
| Title: | Lips Together, Teeth Apart |
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| Author: | Terrence McNally | |
| Characters: | 2F 2M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Drama | |
| Price: | $16.15 | |
| Synopsis: | A gay community in Fire Island provides an unlikely setting for two straight couples who are discovered lounging poolside, staring out to sea. Sally, married to Sam, a New Jersey contractor, has inherited the house from her brother who died of AIDS. Sam's hyperkinetic sister, Chloe, and her smug, aristocratic husband, John, have come out for the Fourth of July weekend. Amidst the seemingly mundane activities, it becomes apparent that the two men despise each other because John has had an affair with Sally; Sally is panicked and melancholy because she is pregnant and fears miscarriage; and Chloe seems determined to drive them all mad with her incessant babble and enthusiasm for musical comedies. Through monologues unheard by the others, the characters reveal a desperate sense of individual isolation. The only people these four characters find more alien are the gay men partying in the houses on either side of them. As they divert themselves from their own mortality with food, cocktails, the New York Times crossword puzzle, fireworks, charades, and biting jabs at each other and the boys next door, Sally and Sam and John and Chloe find little to celebrate about themselves or their country on its birthday. |
PLAYS
| Title: | Master Class |
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| Author: | Terrence McNally | |
| Characters: | 3F 3M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Drama | |
| Price: | $16.15 | |
| Synopsis: | Maria Callas is teaching a master class in front of an audience (us). She's glamorous, commanding, larger than life and drop-dead funny. An accompanist sits at the piano. Callas' first "victim" is Sophie, a ridiculous, overly-perky soprano, dressed all in pink. Sophie chooses to sing one of the most difficult arias, the sleepwalking scene from La Sonnambul an aria that Callas made famous. Before the girl sings a note, Callas stops her she clearly can't stand hearing music massacred. And now what has started out as a class has become a platform for Callas. She glories in her own career, dabbles in opera dish and flat-out seduces the audience. Callas gets on her knees and acts the entire aria in dumb show, eventually reducing the poor singer to tears. But with that there are plenty of laughs going on, especially between Callas and the audience. Callas pulls back and gives Sophie a chance to use what she's learned. As soon as Sophie starts singing, though, Callas mentally leaves the room and goes into a sprawling interior monologue about her own performance of that aria and the thunderous applause she received at La Scala. Callas wakes up and sends Sophie off with a pat. The next two sessions repeat the same dynamic, only the middle session is with a tenor who moves Callas to tears. She again enters her memories, and we learn about Callas' affair with Aristotle Onassis; an abortion she was forced to have; her first elderly husband whom she left; her early days as an ugly duckling; the fierce hatred of her rivals; and the unforgiving press that savaged her at first. Finally, we meet Sharon, another soprano, who arrives in a full ball gown. With Sharon singing, Callas is genuinely moved, for the young singer has talent, but Callas tells her to stick to flimsy roles. Sharon is devastated and spits back every nasty thing you've ever heard about Callas: She's old, washed up; she ruined her voice too early in her career; she only wants people to worship her, etc. Sharon rushes out of the hall, and Callas brings the class to a close with a beautiful speech about the sacrifices we must make in the name of art.
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PLAYS
| Title: | Dublin Carol |
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| Author: | Conor McPherson | |
| Characters: | 1F 2M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Play | |
| Price: | $26.95 | |
| Synopsis: | A magical, compelling play from the author of The Weir.
Present day Dublin. Christmas Eve. Undertaker John Plunkett is sharing memories of funerals over the years and dispensing advice to his young assistant. But the arrival of his daughter Mary - estranged, grown-up - shows him the time has come to face up to his own disastrous past. Otherwise, he will never be able to create some kind of truce with his fear of the future. 'a theatrical spellbinder' Daily Telegraph |
PLAYS
| Title: | The Seafarer |
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| Author: | Conor McPherson | |
| Characters: | 5M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Play | |
| Price: | $26.95 | |
| Synopsis: | It's Christmas Eve and Sharky has returned to Dublin to look after his irascible, ageing brother who's recently gone blind. Old drinking buddies Ivan and Nicky are holed up at the house too, hoping to play some cards. But with the arrival of a stranger from the distant past, the stakes are raised ever higher. In fact, Sharky may be playing for his very soul...
'a blistering emotional punch... The Seafarer first ambushes you and then haunts you for days afterwards' Time Out 'sparkling and suspenseful... McPherson is a born yarn-spinner' Guardian 'McPherson's new play is one of his most succinct and startling, and the funniest to date... what he creates is apparently simple, but daring and memorable. He sends his characters off on benders, and they bump into the infinite' Observer 'a realistic fantasy, a wide-awake nightmare. The writing is poetic, brutal, athletic, hilarious' Sunday Times |
PLAYS
| Title: | The Crucible |
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| Author: | Arthur Miller | |
| Characters: | 10F 10M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Drama | |
| Price: | $16.15 | |
| Synopsis: | The story focuses upon a young farmer, his wife, and a young servant-girl who maliciously causes the wife's arrest for witchcraft. The farmer brings the girl to court to admit the lie and it is here that the monstrous course of bigotry and deceit is terrifyingly depicted. The farmer, instead of saving his wife, finds himself also accused of witchcraft and ultimately condemned with a host of others. |
PLAYS
| Title: | Death of a Salesman |
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| Author: | Arthur Miller | |
| Characters: | 5F 8M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Drama | |
| Price: | $16.15 | |
| Synopsis: | The story revolves around the last days of Willy Loman, a failing salesman, who cannot understand how he failed to win success and happiness. Through a series of tragic soul-searching revelations of the life he has lived with his wife, his sons, and his business associates, we discover how his quest for the American Dream kept him blind to the people who truly loved him. A thrilling work of deep and revealing beauty that remains one of the most profound classic dramas of the American theatre. |
PLAYS
| Title: | A View From the Bridge / All My Sons - 2 Plays |
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| Author: | Arthur Miller | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Play Collection | |
| Price: | $17.95 | |
| Synopsis: | Powerful, passionate and frighteningly relevant, the drama of Arthur Miller deals in the hard currency of 'social' realism and tragedy.
All My Sons (1947), which brought Miller his first major success, is a merciless exposure of wartime profiteering and the capitalist ethic. The ideological conflict of father and son is a compelling one, and points to the way Miller develops his later drama, where social issues are tempered and tautened by the theme of personal disintegration. Eddie, the hero of A View from the Bridge (1955), is an illiterate longshoreman. His inexorable progress towards self-discovery stirs the emotions with the same painful intensity as the play jolts intellect. |
PLAYS
| Title: | Bombshells |
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| Author: | Joanna Murray-Smith | |
| Characters: | 1F (or 6) | |
| Play Type: | Play | |
| Price: | $19.75 | |
| Synopsis: | THIS TITLE IS ON THE VCE THEATRE STUDIES MONOLOGUES LIST FOR 2009.
Six monologues made famous by the diva Caroline O'Connor, exposing six women balancing their inner and outer lives with humour and often desperate cunning. They range in age from a feisty teenager to a 64-year-old widow yearning for the unexpected. |
PLAYS
| Title: | The Female of the Species |
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| Author: | Joanna Murray-Smith | |
| Characters: | 3F 2M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Comedy | |
| Price: | $19.75 | |
| Synopsis: | Thirty years ago Margot Mason, pioneer of the 1970s Women's Liberation movement and fearless academic, wrote her groundbreaking work and numerous best-sellers followed. Now she has writer's block. Molly, an unannounced visitor and committed fan of Margot and her work, offers a potential solution until Molly produces a gun and calmly informs Margot that she intends to kill her because she blames her for warping her mother's mind and ruining her life with her hit book The Cerebral Vagina.
Joanna Murray-Smith's deliciously wicked comedy deftly walks the tightrope between satire and farce proving the female of the species is not only deadlier, but funnier than the male. This latest gem from the pen of one of Australia's most outstanding playwrights was inspired by Germaine Greer's experience of being held captive in her country house in Essex in 2000. |
PLAYS
| Title: | Honour |
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| Author: | Joanna Murray-Smith | |
| Characters: | 3F 1M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Drama | |
| Price: | $19.75 | |
| Synopsis: | What happens when everything you have used to define yourself every quality, role and affiliation suddenly abandon you? What happens when a mature, intelligent, responsible and loving woman finds her life disappearing? A devestating play about infidelity and betrayal. After 32 years acclaimed journalist George leaves Honor, a poet, wife and mother. In the wake of his new passion for Claudia, a bright young journalist not much older than their 24-year-old daughter, Sophie, Honor must come to grips with the career she has willingly sacrificed for her husband and child, the evolution of a marriage, her abandonment and eventual resurrection. In a series of intense confrontations, the wife, husband, lover and daughter negotiate the forces of passion, lust, history, responsibility and honour. A familiar story is told in a distinctly original way, using language that is bitterly comic, poetic and uncompromisingly savage. |
PLAYS
| Title: | Cosi |
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| Author: | Louis Nowra | |
| Characters: | 3F 5M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Play | |
| Price: | $19.75 | |
| Synopsis: | The time is 1971. Cosi Fan Tutte is Roy's favourite opera so when Lewis arrives fresh from university to direct a play at his mental institution, Roy demands the Mozart work. His fellow inmates are neither opera singers nor Italian speakers and Lewis' problems don't end there. Ruth is troubled by the concept of a "real illusion", Zac insists on playing Wagner, Doug is committed to the closed ward and then there are the sexual advances of Julie and Cherry ... Lewis' world is no less complicated at home where he has to content with escaping pigs, exploding beer bottles and the pretensions of his "politically correct" friends. Cosi takes an affectionate look at madness and mayhem in a world where institutions can be less limiting than ideology. |
PLAYS
| Title: | Long Day's Journey Into Night |
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| Author: | Eugene O'Neill | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Full length Play | |
| Price: | $21.55 | |
| Synopsis: | An intensely autobiographical, magnificently tragic portrait of O'Neill's own family; a play so acutely personal that he insisted it was not published until after his death. Long Day's Journey into Night is a true modern classic from one of the twentieth century's most significant writers, and has been described as a dark side to the earlier play Ah! Wilderness.
One single day in the Tyrones' Connecticut home. James Tyrone Snr. is a miser, a talented actor who even squanders his talent in an undemanding role; eldest son Jamie is an affable, whoremongering alcoholic and confirmed ne'er-do well; youngest son Edmund is poetic, sensitive, suffering from a respiratory condition and deep-seated disillusionment; and their mother Mary, living in a haze of self-delusion and morphine addiction. Existing together under this roof, and the profound weight of the past, they subtly tear one another apart, shred by shred. |
PLAYS
| Title: | Animal Farm |
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| Author: | George Orwell adapted by Peter Hall | |
| Characters: | Large Mixed Cast | |
| Play Type: | Full length Play | |
| Price: | $29.05 | |
| Synopsis: | This is a powerful, fast-moving dramatisation of George Orwell's classic satire, Animal Farm. The script is fresh, funny and immensely enjoyable without in any way jeopardising the savagery of the original novel. |
PLAYS
| Title: | Dags |
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| Author: | Debra Oswald | |
| Characters: | 6F 4M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Comedy | |
| Price: | $16.15 | |
| Synopsis: | Gillian is sixteen, suffers from the occasional 'ack-attack', and is worried about not having a boyfriend. She loves chocolate and is infatuated with the best-looking boy in school. A funny and compassionate look at adolescence. |
PLAYS
| Title: | The Peach Season |
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| Author: | Debra Oswald | |
| Characters: | 4F 2M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Drama | |
| Price: | $19.75 | |
| Synopsis: | After the murder of her husband, Celia has shut herself and her 16-year-old daughter Zoë away, toiling on a peach farm in the middle of nowhere. The arrival of two young people to help during picking season heralds the beginning of the end for Celia's safe existence.
Her daughter falls in love with enigmatic, erratic Kieran, but when the relationship is threatened, they run away together. The safe, perhaps smothering, world that Celia has created unravels; her paranoia and insecurities amplified to full volume. Playing out alongside her fear, we see the increasingly degrading and dangerous lifestyle that the two elopers have fallen into. Peach Season is a powerful, salutary tale showing what it's like to be a young person desperate for independence, but also, crucially, what it's like to be a parent during the painful process of letting children fly the nest. |
PLAYS
| Title: | Sweet Road |
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| Author: | Debra Oswald | |
| Characters: | 3F 4M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Drama | |
| Price: | $17.05 | |
| Synopsis: | Jo's running from her husband, Yasmin's hitchhiking towards true love, Frank's longing for escape, Michael's grieving for his dead son, Andy and Carla are grappling with screaming kids... Disparate lives collide and connect on the open road. |
PLAYS
| Title: | One Last Card Trick |
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| Author: | Stewart Permutt | |
| Characters: | 4F | |
| Play Type: | Full length Comedy | |
| Price: | $21.55 | |
| Synopsis: | In a West End synagogue three septuagenarians, Sophie, Hetty and Magda meet every Tuesday to play the card game Kaluki. Loretta, a youthful forty-seven year-old, keeps the score. But all this is about to change when their synagogue is to be sold to a strip club owner. These intrepid ladies decide to take direct action and barricade themselves in their fated synagogue. Can they succeed or will their constant bickering put paid to their plan?
" the evening's punch and pleasure lies in Permutt's detailed portraits of four women" Jewish Chronicle Hetty: vibrant, slender, opinionated, bitter; late 70s Sophie: a robust matron, kind, placatory; late 70s Magda: elegant, charming, rich; slight German accent; early 70s Loretta: slim, dark, rather innocent, anxious; 47 |
PLAYS
| Title: | Six Characters in Search of an Author |
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| Author: | Luigi Pirandello | |
| Characters: | 8F + extras 12M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Play | |
| Price: | $24.25 | |
| Synopsis: | THIS TITLE IS ON THE VCE THEATRE STUDIES MONOLOGUES LIST FOR 2009.
'Six people arrive in a theatre during rehearsals for a play. But they are not ordinary people. They are the characters of a play that has not yet been written. Trapped inside a traumatic event from which they long to escape, they desperately need a writer to complete their story and release them. Intrigued by their situation, the director invites them to act out the key events of their lives ... Pirandello''s best-known play and one of the most extraordinary and mysterious plays of the 20th century, Six Characters speaks directly to an age of uncertainty: where do we come from, where are we going, how do we become what we want to be?' |
PLAYS
| Title: | Henna Night |
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| Author: | Amy Rosenthal | |
| Characters: | 2F | |
| Play Type: | One-Act Play | |
| Price: | $13.45 | |
| Synopsis: | Judith,leaves Jack,her ex-boyfriend,a desperate message on his answerphone informing him that she has bought a packet of henna and some razor blades in order to either slash her wrists or dye her hair. What's more,she says,she might be pregnant. But it is Ros,Jack's new partner,who hears the message and rushes to Judith's bedsit. An evening of emotion combined with subtle humour ensues,revealing how easily we betray each other when we want something for ourselves,and how fraternizing with the enemy can feel curiously like spending time with a friend. |
PLAYS
| Title: | Kindertransport |
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| Author: | Diane Samuels | |
| Characters: | 5F 1M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Drama | |
| Price: | $26.95 | |
| Synopsis: | A deeply moving play about one woman's struggle to come to terms with her past - brutally separated from her German Jewish parents at the age of 9 and brought to England on the kindertransport with the promise of a new life...
Winner of the 1992 Verity Bargate Award Between 1938 and the outbreak of War, almost 10,000 unaccompanied German children were sent by their parents to foster homes in Britain while the parents were despatched to the death camps. This is the story - told in flashback - of Eva, whose daughter remains unaware of her mother's true identity until a chance discovery in the attic forces Eva to confront her past. 'The best play about the pain and passion of mother/daughter relationships' Guardian 'desperately harrowing... searing theatre that cuts across a continuum of suffering to the very heart of what unifies us as human' Times This edition includes several personal memoirs by German-born children whose lives were saved, and transformed, by the kindertransport. |
PLAYS
| Title: | Spring Awakening: A New Musical libretto (book & lyrics) |
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| Author: | Steven Sater | |
| Characters: | 6F 7M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Musical | |
| Price: | $19.80 | |
| Synopsis: | "This brave new musical, haunting and electrifying by turns, restores the mystery, the thrill to that shattering transformation that stirs in all our souls." Charles Isherwood, The New York Times
Spring Awakening is an extraordinary new rock musical with book and lyrics by Steven Sater and music by Grammy Award-nominated recording artist Duncan Sheik. Inspired by Frank Wedekind's controversial 1891 play about teenage sexuality and society's efforts to control it, the piece seamlessly merges past and present, underscoring the timelessness of adolescent angst and the universality of human passion. |
PLAYS
| Title: | It Just Stopped / Myth, Propaganda and Disaster in Nazi Germany and Contemporary America
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| Author: | Stephen Sewell | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Full length Play Collection | |
| Price: | $22.45 | |
| Synopsis: | It Just Stopped
A savage comedy of manners, It Just Stopped explores our relationship to art, globalisation, death, technology, America, Campari, cardboard boxes and slavery. Sewell's play is funny and shocking in turn. It holds the mirror up to the things we value today and asks the questions: what will we value the day the world just stops, and what would we be willing to trade for our own survival? To describe Stephen Sewell's dark comedy as a cautionary tale does it scant justice, given the anger and apocalyptic vision driving its mayhem and fun. It Just Stopped is a whimsical, argumentative, satirical and deeply serious play - among Sewell's finest. Bryce Hallett, Sydney Morning Herald Myth, Propaganda and Disaster in Nazi Germany and Contemporary America Written with searing passion and dazzling momentum, Myth, Propaganda and Disaster in Nazi Germany and Contemporary America reverberates with the aftershocks of September 11. With compelling drive and theatrical daring, we are swept from cocktails at the Guggenheim to the hungry vacuum of Ground Zero. Stephen Sewell demands answers to some of the most urgent questions of our times. Where is the line between patriotism and nationalism? What happens when the Land of the Free makes such uncompromising statements as: 'You're either with us or against us'? |
PLAYS
| Title: | Doubt |
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| Author: | John Patrick Shanley | |
| Characters: | 3F 1M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Drama | |
| Price: | $16.15 | |
| Synopsis: | Chosen as the best play of the year by over 10 newspapers and magazines, Doubt is set in a Bronx Catholic school in 1964, where a strong-minded woman wrestles with conscience and uncertainty as she is faced with concerns about one of her male colleagues. This new play by John Patrick Shanley, the Bronx-born-and-bred playwright and Academy Award-winning author of Moonstruck, dramatizes issues straight from today's headlines, within a world recreated with knowing detail and a judicious eye. After a stunning, sold-out production at Manhattan Theatre Club, the play has transferred to Broadway.
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PLAYS
| Title: | Amadeus |
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| Author: | Peter Shaffer | |
| Characters: | 3F 12M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Play | |
| Price: | $21.55 | |
| Synopsis: | In old age, Salieri recalls his successful career as Court Composer, his hatred of Mozart, and how he contrived the brilliant young composer's demise. A musical genius, Mozart died neglected and impoverished while the mediocre Salieri lived in a blaze of fame and praise. Period 1823 Veinna and in recall, 1781-91. |
PLAYS
| Title: | Much Ado About Nothing |
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| Author: | William Shakespeare | |
| Characters: | Large mixed cast | |
| Play Type: | Full length Comedy | |
| Price: | $8.05 | |
| Synopsis: | A vivacious woman and a high-spirited man both claim that they are determined never to marry. But when their friends trick them into believing that each harbours secret feelings for the other, they begin to question whether their witty banter and sharp-tongued repartee conceals something deeper. Schemes abound, misunderstandings proliferate and matches are eventually made in this sparkling and irresistible comedy. |
PLAYS
| Title: | Henry V |
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| Author: | William Shakespeare | |
| Characters: | 4F + extras 38M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Play | |
| Price: | $7.05 | |
| Synopsis: | THIS TITLE IS ON THE VCE THEATRE STUDIES MONOLOGUES LIST FOR 2009.
As part of the Newly Revised Signet Classic Shakespeare series this edition of Henry V contains: an extensive overview of Shakespeare's life, world, and theatre by the general editor, Sylvan Barnet; a special introduction to the play by the editor, John Russell Brown; the source from which Henry V is derived; dramatic criticism from the past and present; a comprehensive stage and screen history of notable actors, directors and productions; text, notes and commentaries; and an up-to-date list of recommended readings. |
PLAYS
| Title: | The Taming of the Shrew |
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| Author: | William Shakespeare | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Full length Comedy | |
| Price: | $7.25 | |
| Synopsis: | The beautiful but sharp-tongued Katherina has sworn never to accept the demands of any would-be husband. But when she is pursued by the wily Petruchio, it seems that she has finally met her match. And as he meets her own caustic words with a feigned, capricious cruelty, Katherina quickly comes to understand the absurdity of her shrewish behaviour, in one of the greatest of all comic battles of the sexes.
Penguin edition. |
PLAYS
| Title: | Twelfth Night |
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| Author: | Shakespeare | |
| Characters: | 3F 15M | |
| Play Type: | Full Comedy | |
| Price: | $17.95 | |
| Synopsis: | Twelfth Night" is the story of Orsino, a nobleman in the kingdom if Illyria. Following a shipwreck Orsino employs Viola, who when abandoned by the shipwreck disguises herself as a man named Cesario. Soon Viola falls in love with Orsino, however Orsino is in love with Lady Olivia who has fallen for Viola, believing her to be a man. "Twelfth Night" is a classic Shakespearean comedy of mistaken identities. |
PLAYS
| Title: | Fool for Love and Other Plays |
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| Author: | Sam Shepard | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Play Collection | |
| Price: | $19.80 | |
| Synopsis: | Here are eight of Pulitzer-prizewinning Sam Shepard's most stunning plays. This brilliant American dramatist creates what The New Yorker dubbed "Shepard Country"--a landscape of the imagination, a unique theatrical experience that captures our culture and consciouness, our fears and fantasies.
FOOL FOR LOVE * ANGEL CITY * GEOGRAPHY OF A HORSE DREAMER * ACTION * COWBOY MOUTH * MELODRAMA PLAY * SEDUCED * SUICIDE IN Bb With an Introduction by Ross Wetzsteon "Sam Shepard is phenomenal...the best practicing American playwright." - The New Republic "Sam Shepard is the most exciting presence in the movie world and one of the most gifted writers ever to work on the American stage." - Marsha Norman |
PLAYS
| Title: | Fool for Love |
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| Author: | Sam Shepard | |
| Characters: | 1F 3M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Comedy/Drama | |
| Price: | $16.15 | |
| Synopsis: | The scene is a stark motel room at the edge of the Mojave Desert. May, a disheveled young woman, sits dejectedly on a rumpled bed while Eddie, a rough-spoken rodeo performer, crouches in a corner fiddling with his riding gear. When he attempts to console May, who is distressed by Eddie's frequent absences and love affairs, she seems, at first, to soften but then she suddenly attacks him. As the recriminations pour out, and the action becomes, at times, physically violent, the desperate nature of their relationship becomes apparent they cannot get along with, or without, one another, yet neither can subdue their burning passion. The poignancy of their situation (they are half-brother and half-sister as well as lovers) is pointed out by the play's two other characters: a hapless young man who stops by to take May to the movies and becomes the butt of Eddie's funniest yet most humiliating jokes; and a ghostly old man (perhaps their father) who sits in a rocking chair at the side of the stage, sipping whiskey and commenting wryly on what he observes. Eventually May and Eddie tire of their struggle and embrace but it is evident that the respite is temporary and that their love, the curse of the past which haunts them, will remain forever damned and hopeless. |
PLAYS
| Title: | The God of Hell |
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| Author: | Sam Shepard | |
| Characters: | 1F 3M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Dark Comedy | |
| Price: | $16.15 | |
| Synopsis: | An uproarious, brilliantly provocative farce that brings the gifts of a quintessentially American playwright to bear on the current American dilemma. Frank and Emma are a quiet, respectable couple who raise cows on their Wisconsin farm. Soon after they agree to put up Frank's old friend Haynes, who is on the lam from a secret government project involving plutonium, they're visited by Welch, an unctuous government bureaucrat from hell. His aggressive patriotism puts Frank, Emma and Haynes on the defensive, transforming a heartland American household into a scene of torture and promoting a radioactive brand of conformity with a dangerously low half life. |
PLAYS
| Title: | A Lie of the Mind |
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| Author: | Sam Shepard | |
| Characters: | 4F 4M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Drama | |
| Price: | $16.15 | |
| Synopsis: | Involves two desperate families connected by the marriage of the son of one (Jake) to the daughter of the other (Beth). As the play begins Beth, brain-damaged from a savage beating that Jake has given her, is being tended by her parents, Baylor and Meg. Jake sends his brother, Frankie, to Montana to see if she is dead or alive, but Beth's father, mistaking Frankie for a poacher, shoots him in the leg and takes him prisoner. Thereafter the tensions and enmities that motivate the two families grow increasingly disturbing and dangerous. Frankie falls in love with Beth, but her brother, Mike, is bitterly determined that she no longer have anything to do with her husband or his loathsome family. Meanwhile the distraught, hysterical Jake, back home in California, is nursed by his possessive mother, Lorraine, and his sister, Sally, to whom Lorraine is openly hostile. Having gotten Jake back from Beth, Lorraine is determined to keep him with her forever, but Jake soon recovers and sets out to regain his wife. In the end, however, his will fails, and he allows Beth to stay with Frankie; Lorraine burns down her house and departs for Ireland with Sally; and Jake, bereft and alone, seeks communication with his dead father by gently dispersing his ashes into the moonlight hoping to find order and meaning in the present by coming to terms with the haunting spectres of the past. |
PLAYS
| Title: | Heroes |
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| Author: | Gerald Sibleyras - translated by Tom Stoppard | |
| Characters: | 3M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Play | |
| Price: | $24.25 | |
| Synopsis: | One must strive a little for the epic, old boy.
It's 1959 and Philippe, Gustave and Henri, three veterans from the first world war, dream of making their escape from the soldiers' home, if not to Indochina then at least as far as the poplar trees on the hill. Gérald Sibleyras' Le Vent des Peupliers premiered at the Wyndham's Theatre in October 2005 as Heroes, an English-language version by Tom Stoppard. |
PLAYS
| Title: | The Odd Couple (Female Version) |
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| Author: | Neil Simon | |
| Characters: | 6F 2M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Comedy | |
| Price: | $17.95 | |
| Synopsis: | In this hilarious female version of 'The Odd Couple', Olive Madison, like her original male counterpart, is divorced and living in cheerful chaos in her New York apartment. At Olive's invitation, the suicidal Florence Ungar, newly separated from her husband, moves in and is soon finding comfort in cooking, cleaning and fussing until Olive is almost reduced to a nervous wreck. It becomes clear that the patterns of their disastrous marriages are already re-occurring. |
PLAYS
| Title: | The Odd Couple |
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| Author: | Neil Simon | |
| Characters: | 2F 6M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Comedy | |
| Price: | $17.95 | |
| Synopsis: | Divorced from his wife, Oscar lives in the cheerful chaos his carefree nature thrives on. Into the midst of his smoke-laden, beer-sodden weekly poker session, comes Felix, newly separated from his wife and, so he says, suicidal. At Oscar's invitation Felix moves in, and is soon finding comfort in performing, with the same thoroughness which lost him his wife, the cooking, cleaning, polishing and laundry until Oscar is almost reduced, by continuous nagging, to a nervous wreck. |
PLAYS
| Title: | The Theban Plays: King Oedipus, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone |
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| Author: | Sophocles, translated by EF Watling | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Full length Play Collection | |
| Price: | $11.65 | |
| Synopsis: | THIS TITLE (KING OEDIPUS) IS ON THE VCE THEATRE STUDIES MONOLOGUES LIST FOR 2009.
The legends surrounding the royal house of Thebes inspired Sophocles (496-46 BC) to create a powerful trilogy about mankind's struggle against fate. King Oedipus tells of a man who brings pestilence to Thebes for crimes he does not realise he has committed and then inflicts a brutal punishment upon himself. With profound insights into the human condition, it is a devastating portrayal of a ruler brought down by his own oath. Oedipus at Colonus provides a fitting conclusion to the life of the aged and blinded king, while, Antigone depicts the fall of the next generation, through the conflict between a young woman ruled by her conscience and a king too confident in his own ability. E. F. Watling's masterful translation is accompanied by an introduction, which examines the central themes of the plays, the role of the Chorus, and the traditions and staging of Greek tragedy. |
PLAYS
| Title: | Three Theban Plays translated by Fagles |
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| Author: | Sophocles | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Full length Play Collection | |
| Price: | $9.85 | |
| Synopsis: | Antigone, Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonus. |
PLAYS
| Title: | The Memory of Water / Five Kinds of Silence - 2 Plays |
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| Author: | Shelagh Stephenson | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Play Collection | |
| Price: | $24.25 | |
| Synopsis: | THE MEMORY OF WATER (4F 2M)
Three sisters meet on the eve of their mother's funeral. As the conflicts of the past converge, everyday lies and tensions reveal the particular patterns and strains of family relationships. FIVE KINDS OF SILENCE (3F 1M + extras) The story of a family in which control has become the driving force, where everything has its place, and where there are only rules, duties and punishments. |
PLAYS
| Title: | Plays: Volume 1 |
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| Author: | Tom Stoppard | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Full length Play Collection | |
| Price: | $31.50 | |
| Synopsis: | THIS TITLE (THE REAL INSPECTOR HOUND) IS ON THE VCE THEATRE STUDIES MONOLOGUES LIST FOR 2009.
The author rounds off his brief introduction, giving the genesis of each piece, with the comment: 'The role of the theatre is much debated (by almost nobody, of course), but the thing defines itself in practice first and foremost as a recreation. This seems satisfactory'. Leading off is The Real Inspector Hound, the ultimate country-house whodunnit; Dirty Linen moves a Whitehall farce to Parliament Square; Dogg's Hamlet, Cahoot's Macbeth subverts Shakespeare; and After Magritte explains the inexplicable. |
PLAYS
| Title: | A Dream Play |
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| Author: | August Strindberg, adapted by Caryl Churchill | |
| Characters: | 5F with doubling 5M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Play | |
| Price: | $26.95 | |
| Synopsis: | A young woman comes from another world to see if life is really as difficult as people make it out to be. Characters merge into each other, locations change in an instant and a locked door becomes an obsessive recurrent image. As Strindberg wrote in his preface, he wanted 'to imitate the disjointed yet seemingly logical shape of a dream. Everything can happen, everything is possible and probable. Time and place do not exist.'
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PLAYS
| Title: | On Golden Pond |
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| Author: | Ernest Thompson | |
| Characters: | 2F 3M + 1 boy | |
| Play Type: | Full length Comedy | |
| Price: | $16.15 | |
| Synopsis: | This is the love story of Ethel and Norman Thayer, who are returning to their summer home on Golden Pond for the forty-eighth year. He is a retired professor, nearing eighty, with heart palpitations and a failing memory but still as tart-tongued, observant and eager for life as ever. Ethel, ten years younger, and the perfect foil for Norman, delights in all the small things that have enriched and continue to enrich their long life together. They are visited by their divorced, middle-aged daughter and her dentist fiancé, who then go off to Europe, leaving his teenage son behind for the summer. The boy quickly becomes the "grandchild" the elderly couple have longed for, and as Norman revels in taking his ward fishing and thrusting good books at him, he also learns some lessons about modern teenage awareness and slang in return. In the end, as the summer wanes, so does their brief idyll, and in the final, deeply moving moments of the play, Norman and Ethel are brought even closer together by the incidence of a mild heart attack. Time, they know, is now against them, but the years have been good and, perhaps, another summer on Golden Pond still awaits. |
PLAYS
| Title: | King Tide |
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| Author: | Katherine Thomson | |
| Characters: | 3F 2M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Drama | |
| Price: | $13.45 | |
| Synopsis: | It is the calm and silent water that drowns a man.
Ashanti proverb Three years ago, Sal was an award-winning investigative journalist. Uncovering government corruption and public scandals she was forever on the front line. But her son's death robbed Sal of her willingness to engage. Increasingly reclusive, she opted out, choosing to live in a borrowed beach house as she struggles to come to terms with her loss. When her teenage daughter brings home a Japanese surfer to stay, Sal finds herself confronted with a sense of danger that was once so vital to her life. King Tide is a surprising story of hope, emerging out of the love and vulnerability of two very different people. |
PLAYS
| Title: | Riflemind |
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| Author: | Andrew Upton | |
| Characters: | 2F 5M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Play | |
| Price: | $13.45 | |
| Synopsis: | John was once the frontman in one of the world's biggest bands, Riflemind. Now John and his wife Lynn are safe from the world in their walled country house. Money and anonymity, however, won't protect them from themselves or their past.
As a comeback tour nears, a weekend of music-making is planned. As soon as the band and associated spouses, lovers and hangers-on arrive, it's a rock'n'roll circus. With their apparent affluence, preposterous egos and rock-god lifestyles, each of them struggles to find redemption. Over this weekend they will open old wounds, lose their way, play great music and, perhaps, stumble into a more certain future. |
PLAYS
| Title: | Parramatta Girls |
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| Author: | Alana Valentine | |
| Characters: | 8F | |
| Play Type: | Full length Drama | |
| Price: | $19.75 | |
| Synopsis: | The inmates of Girls Training School, Parramatta had about as hard an upbringing as you can get in Australia. But theirs is also one of the great untold stories of making good in tough times.
Based on the testimony of dozens of GTS old-girls, this vibrant new play is a joyous and harrowing dramatisation of the experiences of eight inmates and their reunion forty years later. Interspersed with song and storytelling, this is a tribute to mischief and humour in the face of hardship and inequality. My name's Gayle and I was here in the fifties. They set this place up in 1908 and they didn't close it til 1980. Well, my maths has never been very good but maths or no maths, 200 girls by eighty years is a lot to answer for. We've got somethin' in common, ladies, and we're gonna share it today. |
PLAYS
| Title: | Isn't it Romantic |
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| Author: | Wendy Wasserstein | |
| Characters: | 4F 4M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Comedy | |
| Price: | $16.15 | |
| Synopsis: | The play deals with the post-college careers (and dilemmas) of two former classmates, a short, slightly plump would-be writer named Janie Blumberg, and her tall, thin gorgeous WASP friend, Harriet Cornwall. Both are struggling to escape from lingering parental domination and to establish their own lives and identities. In Janie's case this leads to an inconclusive involvement with a young Jewish doctor who calls her "Monkey"; while Harriet assails the world of big business and has an affair with her hard-driving (and married) boss. Told in a fast-moving series of inventive, alternately hilarious and touchingly revealing scenes, the play explores their parallel stories with uncommon wit and wisdom resulting, ultimately, in a heightened awareness which, while not providing all the answers, goes a long way toward achieving the maturity and self-assuredness that both protagonists so desperately desire. |
PLAYS
| Title: | October |
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| Author: | Ian Wilding | |
| Characters: | 1F 3M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Drama | |
| Price: | $13.45 | |
| Synopsis: | Tim, an airline pilot and Angela, his young, beautiful wife, live the successful urban dream in a streamlined apartment in the inner city. One night a friend of Angela's, Dez, pays them a visit. There's just one problem: Angela flatly denies she's ever met him, and despite Dez's growing protestations, she wants him out. Rejected and humiliated, Dez leaves. But not before making some seemingly ominous threats. Now Angela and Tim are having trouble readjusting. Dez has thrown their comfortable lives out of kilter and fear of future incursions escalates.
Enter Dick, private eye - smarmy and menacing by turns, a Man who Makes Things Happen. Though he charges by the hour and his approach is definitely unconventional, Dick may be exactly what the situation requires... |
PLAYS
| Title: | Collected Plays Vol 2 |
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| Author: | David Williamson | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Play Collection | |
| Price: | $29.65 | |
| Synopsis: | This volume shows a consolidation and maturing of Williamson's style. Although he retains his satirical edge, there is a marked move from the domestic and personal dilemmas explored in the earlier plays to a focus on the public domain. Private desires and public issues are subtly compared and contrasted.
The plays in this volume are: The Department, A Handful of Friends, The Club and Travelling North. |
PLAYS
| Title: | Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Other Plays |
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| Author: | Tennessee Williams | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Play Collection | |
| Price: | $20.65 | |
| Synopsis: | As mirrors of his emotional and imaginative life, the plays of Tennessee Williams explore the darker side of human nature and are haunted by the pervasive theme of loneliness that is humanity's inescapable destiny.
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, one of his masterpieces, seethes with the family tensions, suppressed sexuality and the less-than-secret whisper of scandal that lie beneath the civilized veneer of the American South. The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore is a passionate examination of a woman's life as she recounts her memoirs in the face of death. In The Night of the Iguana a group of diverse people are thrown together in an isolated Mexican hotel, all imprisoned in their own way. |
PLAYS
| Title: | A Streetcar Named Desire |
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| Author: | Tennessee Williams | |
| Characters: | 6F 6M (+ extras) | |
| Play Type: | Full length Drama | |
| Price: | $16.15 | |
| Synopsis: | The play reveals to the very depths the character of Blanche du Bois, a woman whose life has been undermined by her romantic illusions, which lead her to reject so far as possible the realities of life with which she is faced and which she consistently ignores. The pressure brought to bear upon her by her sister, with whom she goes to live in New Orleans, intensified by the earthy and extremely "normal" young husband of the latter, leads to a revelation of her tragic self-delusion and, in the end, to madness. |
PLAYS
| Title: | Orange Flower Water |
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| Author: | Craig Wright | |
| Characters: | 2F 2M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Drama | |
| Price: | $13.45 | |
| Synopsis: | Married couples David and Cathy Larson and Brad and Beth Youngquist live with their children in the relatively peaceful town of Pine City, Minnesota. David and Beth, after years of maintaining a platonic friendship, begin an adulterous affair with disastrous consequences. Through a series of scenes which all take place on or around a single bed, we see the painfully intense real-time unraveling of both marriages and, eventually, the construction of a very fragile but authentic new beginning for everyone concerned.
RRP $17.95 - SALE PRICE $13.45 WHILE STOCKS LAST |
PLAYS
| Title: | Babes in the Wood |
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| Author: | Tom Wright | |
| Characters: | 4F 3M | |
| Play Type: | Full Length Play with Music | |
| Price: | $17.05 | |
| Synopsis: | Once upon a time, two children wander too far from home. They meet a colourful caravanserai of colonial pantomimics and are caught up in the hysterical performance of truculent and disreputable tales, tales to give a nation nightmares. Wright has hunted through our rich heritage of original Australian pantomimes to create this triumph of rhyme over reason. The result is part salute to a lost tradition, part banner to the future.
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PLAY COLLECTIONS
| Title: | Melbourne Stories: 3 Plays |
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| Author: | ||
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Play Collection | |
| Price: | $29.65 | |
| Synopsis: | Contents:
WHO'S AFRAID OF THE WORKING CLASS? By Andrew Bovell, Patricia Cornelius, Melissa Reeves, Christos Tsiolkas and Irine Vela. Five plays are intertwined in one in this story of fringe dwellers, living in an age of social, economic and moral deprivation. Mostly unemployed, and politically disengaged, they work at survival. Cast: 3F 3M (with doubling) POLLY BLUE By Belinda Bradley A bathrobe, a table, a bed, a clothes line. Amongst the floral dresses and underpants hangs George. Dead. Polly Blue is a peep show into suburbia, in which Belinda Bradley probes the apparent intimacy of a shared environment. Cast: 3F 3M FEATURES OF BLOWN YOUTH By Raimondo Cortese Cortese explores the milieu of young lives in the inner city today, with all its frustrations and demons, using dialogue that reflects the patterns and rhythms of everyday speech. His street-wise characters face a world of scarce and unsatisfying employment, drugs, loneliness, depression, sexual obsession, exploitation and hopeleness. Cast: 4F 4M |
CHILDREN'S PLAYS
| Title: | Charlie and the Chocolate Factory |
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| Author: | Roald Dahl adapted by Richard George | |
| Characters: | Large mixed cast | |
| Play Type: | 11 Scenes Children's | |
| Price: | $15.25 | |
| Synopsis: | Join Charlie Bucket in Willy Wonka's amazing chocolate factory. With tips about scenery, props and lighting, this play is easy to stage and there are lots of parts for everyone. |
CHILDREN'S PLAYS
| Title: | James and the Giant Peach |
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| Author: | Roald Dahl adapted by Richard George | |
| Characters: | Large mixed cast | |
| Play Type: | 8 Scenes Children's | |
| Price: | $15.25 | |
| Synopsis: | Who hasn't wanted to join James as he escaped from his fearful aunts and set off inside the peach on his wonderful adventures?
This dramatization of Roald Dahl's hugely popular book can be staged in school, acted out at home, or simply read together by a group of children. Age 9+ 96 pages |
CHILDREN'S PLAYS
| Title: | Collected Grimm Tales |
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| Author: | adapted by Carol Ann Duffy, dramatized by Tim Supple | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Short Play Collection Children's | |
| Price: | $26.95 | |
| Synopsis: | This volume contains Carol Ann Duffy's adaptation plus the dramatization by Tim Supple and the Young Vic Company. The plays were produced by the Young Vic, London, in 1994 and 1997.
'Great theatre is as fleeting as it is thrilling. It exists in the spaces between actors and audience and is as elusive and silvery as the paths that wind through dark woods of fairy tales. The great thing about Carol Ann Duffy's re-telling of these Grimm tales is the generous energy with which it enfolds each in its own style. Duffy and director Tim Supple go the whole journey with the brothers Grimm into the bright, warped world of a child's imagination.' Guardian Includes HANSEL AND GRETEL, THE GOLDEN GOOSE, ASHPUTTEL, A RIDDLING TALE, THE MOUSE THE BIRD AND THE SAUSAGE, IRON HANS, THE LADY AND THE LION, THE MAGIC TABLE THE GOLD-DONKEY AND THE DUGEL IN THE SACK. 'While a copy of this book would earn its place in the secondary school library, a set, for English or Drama departments, would provide a wealth of stimulating opportunities. Highly recommended.' School Librarian |
CHILDREN'S PLAYS
| Title: | The House That Sailed Away |
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| Author: | Pat Hutchins | |
| Characters: | 13 - flexible | |
| Play Type: | Full length Children's | |
| Price: | $24.25 | |
| Synopsis: | Grandma, Mother, Father, Morgan, the baby and Tailcat find themselves catapulted into the whackiest adventure ever when their house floats off down the street and out to sea! Blood-thirsty pirates, a kidnapping and buried treasure are just some of the hair-raisers in store in Pat Hutchins' own adaptation of her ever-popular children's novel. |
CHILDREN'S PLAYS
| Title: | Hating Alison Ashley |
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| Author: | Robin Klein adapted by Richard Tulloch | |
| Characters: | 5F 2M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Children's | |
| Price: | $16.15 | |
| Synopsis: | Erica Yurken knew she was destined for great things. Never in any doubt about her own genius, she felt superior to everyone at notorious Barringa East . . . that is, until Alison Ashley turned up.
Richard Tulloch has many plays to his credit and more than fifteen years experience in theatre, film and television. Here is his extremely funny play adapted from the highly successful novel. Larger cast can be used, without doubling and with extras. |
CHILDREN'S PLAYS
| Title: | Duck! |
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| Author: | Philip Osment | |
| Characters: | Large mixed cast | |
| Play Type: | Full length Children's Play | |
| Price: | $26.05 | |
| Synopsis: | Meet Ugly, he's no ordinary duck. In fact he might not even be a duck at all! An embarrassment to his brothers and sisters, Ugly eats snails, speaks funny and looks even funnier. Fed up with being the butt of all the pond jokes, he strikes out on his own…
Set on Hampstead Heath, Philip Osment's modern reimagining of Hans Christian Andersen's tale The Ugly Duckling is a wild adventure for anyone who wants to stand out from the crowd. Can be performed by children or adults. |
CHILDREN'S PLAYS
| Title: | Stories in the Dark |
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| Author: | Debra Oswald | |
| Characters: | 4F 6M with doubling | |
| Play Type: | Full length Drama | |
| Price: | $16.15 | |
| Synopsis: | A terrified 12-year-old boy finds himself separated from his family in the unfamiliar streets of a war torn city. He takes refuge in a bombed-out house and in the total blackness his bravado crumbles into tears.
Into his life steps Anna - older, street smart and scornful of his crying. As a way of shutting the boy up, she starts to tell him a story that she vaguely remembers from her own childhood. And so begins a journey into the shifting, shimmering world of ogres, princes, singing bones, foolish lads and wolf-mothers. Stories in the Dark explores the power of storytelling, mingling the magic and earthy wisdom of folk tales with the hard-edged story of violence, conflict and the struggle to survive. |
CHILDREN'S PLAYS
| Title: | Six Ensemble Plays for Young Actors |
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| Author: | ed. Paul Roseby | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | One-Act Play Collection | |
| Price: | $35.95 | |
| Synopsis: | Six Ensemble Plays for Young Actors, published to coincide with YPPT International Conference in Liverpool (Capital of Culture) July 2008, will appeal to a wide and varied audience for young people’s work within the age range 11—25 years old.
Hattie Naylor’s The Odyssey, is an ambitious adaptation that will challenge and appeal to young actors. Fin Kennedy’s East End Tales, offers a series of innovative and adaptable monologues portraying life in the east end of London. The Playground, by Kay Adshead, explores the innocent and imaginative world of a school playground. John Retallack’s Sweetpeter, deals with the issue of slavery in a lyrical, mythical way combining verse and music. Kevin Fegan’s Wan2tlk, is a fast-paced, lively and streetwise play that deals with many issues including split families, peer pressure, crime, love and communication. Mike Bartlett’s Stuff I Buried in a Small Town, is a traditional, naturalistic play that deals with a wide variety of issues in a convincing and authentic way. |
THEATRE TEXTS
| Title: | Drama Games & Improvs |
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| Author: | Justine Jones & Mary Ann Kelley | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Improvisation | |
| Price: | $36.80 | |
| Synopsis: | This drama text includes 137 drama games in a lesson play format. Everything you need to teach basic dramatic skills using improv games. A semester-long theatre curriculum guide; if used with Improv Ideas by the same authors, there are enough games for a year's work. Select from more than 134 drama games and improvs adaptable to all age groups. Within the theatre book's 30 units are 74 lessons covering all elements of drama. The lessons are structured sequentially with emphasis on group building. The drama guide helps you teach drama skills holistically. Students are unaware they are being taught many new skills with every lesson. This unique curriculum is the culmination of many years of evolution and testing. Clearly the most comprehensive and easy-to-use improv book available today.
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THEATRE TEXTS
| Title: | Accents: A Manual for Actors Bk/CDs |
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| Author: | Robert Blumenfeld | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Accents & Dialects | |
| Price: | $54.90 | |
| Synopsis: | This practical reference manual, with its precise, authentic instructions on how to speak in more than 100 dialects, has established itself as the most useful and comprehensive guide to accents available, now increased by a third in this revised printing. As before, the accents range from regional U.S. and British dialects to European accents that include, among others, the Germanic, Slavic and Romance Languages. Completing his around-the-world journey, the author then covers the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Includes two CDs. |
THEATRE TEXTS
| Title: | Speaking American Bk/CD |
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| Author: | Bruce Shapiro | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Accents & Dialects | |
| Price: | $29.65 | |
| Synopsis: | A simple and accurate guide to speaking in a General American (GenAm) dialect. Covers pronunciation, intonation, American lingo, phonetics and practical exercises, as well as phrases useful for improvisation work. Includes a CD.
Bruce Shapiro is the leading American dialogue coach in Australia, and has worked on over thirty productions. He was previously the Head of Performance and Acting at the Victorian College of Arts, School of Drama. He also taught and directed at the Aboriginal Centre for the Performing Arts in Brisbane, the Academy of the Arts at the Queensland University of Technology and was for eight years the Artist-in-Residence and Lecturer in Acting, Directing, and Dramatic Literature at Tufts University in Boston. |
THEATRE TEXTS
| Title: | The Actor and the Text |
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| Author: | Cicely Berry | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Acting | |
| Price: | $35.05 | |
| Synopsis: | These words of Cicely Berry, the voice director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, speak to anyone who needs to speak his or her piece – in any arena, at sales meetings or religious revivals. Berry's book will insure that the speaker and the text gets heard – accurately and with true emotional range. Never again will one be accused of simply “reading a prepared statement.” Berry's exercises to develop relaxation, breathing and muscular control will literally help everyone breathe easier when confronting the printed page.
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THEATRE TEXTS
| Title: | Actions: The Actors' Thesaurus |
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| Author: | Marina Caldarone & Maggie Lloyd-Williams | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Acting | |
| Price: | $26.95 | |
| Synopsis: | A vital companion for actors in rehearsal - a thesaurus of action-words to revitalise performance, with a foreword by Terry Johnson.
Finding the right action is an essential part of the process of preparation for the actor. Using this thesaurus of active verbs, the actor can refine the action-word until s/he hits exactly the right one to help make the action come alive. The method of 'actioning' is widely used in rehearsal rooms, but has never before been set down in a systematic and comprehensive way. 'If you want to act, or act better, Actions will take you a long way on the journey to excellence' Terry Johnson Marina Caldarone is a freelance theatre and radio drama director who has also been actively involved in actor training in Britain's leading drama schools for the last twenty years. Maggie Lloyd-Williams is an actor. She has performed at the National Theatre, Soho Theatre, Tricyle and Shakespeare's Globe, amongst other places. She has also appeared in several TV series. |
THEATRE TEXTS
| Title: | Racing Against Time: The Actor's Handbook for Film and Television |
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| Author: | Danielle Carter | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Acting | |
| Price: | $29.65 | |
| Synopsis: | Essential reading for all actors from newcomer to veteran.
How do actors find their marks without looking? What is an ECU, a CU and an MCU? What does it mean to 'cross the line' and how do you find your key light? Written by an actor for actors, Racing Against Time explains who does what and why, clarifies the jargon and reveals the hard-won tricks of the trade. With invaluable contributions from leading industry practitioners including Sigrid Thornton, Rebecca Gibney and Sue Masters, Racing Against Time shows how to act naturally amid the storm of technical demands. |
THEATRE TEXTS
| Title: | Don't Tell Me, Show Me: Directors Talk About Acting |
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| Author: | Adam Macaulay | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Acting | |
| Price: | $26.95 | |
| Synopsis: | A collection of 'informal' interviews with Australian directors of stage, film and TV about actors and acting. An intelligent and enlightening commentary on acting in Australia today, which strips away the layers of mythology surrounding the industry, revealing the energy, passion, humour and vision within.
The directors are: John Bell, Bruce Beresford, Di Drew, Gale Edwards, Michael Gow, Michael Jenkins and Nico Lathouris, Ros Horin, Barrie Kosky Aubrey Mellor, Simon Phillips and Kate Woods. |
THEATRE TEXTS
| Title: | An Actor Prepares |
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| Author: | Constantin Stanislavski | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Acting | |
| Price: | $26.95 | |
| Synopsis: | No-one has had greater influence on acting as we know it than Stanislavski. His 'system' or interpretations of it - has become the central force determining almost every performance we see on stage or screen. |
THEATRE TEXTS
| Title: | Solo: A Guidebook for Individual Performance |
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| Author: | Michael Anderson | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Auditions/Monologues | |
| Price: | $26.95 | |
| Synopsis: | In your final year of drama at school? Need to get an individual performance together? Then Solo is for you. At long last, a book designed especially to help you create a powerful and effective performance for your end of school exam.
Michael Anderson, a drama teacher with over 15 years' senior drama experience, starts by explaining what will make your individual performance work. He gives tips to help you choose a script and suggests exercises that will develop the skills you need to be successful. Along with a wealth of practical advice, Solo brings you a fresh, diverse range of Australian pieces that suit the format for your assessment. They come from a variety of genres and writers, some well-known, and others previously unpublished. From Patrick White writing in the 1940s to Kate Mulvany in 2005, there is something here for everybody. |
THEATRE TEXTS
| Title: | The Actor's Audition Manual Vol I |
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| Author: | Dean Carey | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Auditions/Monologues | |
| Price: | $24.25 | |
| Synopsis: | The first edition of The Actor's Audition Manual quickly became known as the 'red audition bible', making it the essential guide. Now revised, it brings together a wealth of practical advice and a fresh range of speeches from Australian plays that will help make any audition powerful and effective.
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THEATRE TEXTS
| Title: | Masterclass (Men): The Actor's Audition Manual Vol II |
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| Author: | Dean Carey | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Auditions/Monologues | |
| Price: | $29.65 | |
| Synopsis: | Over 100 monologues, from classics such as Chekhov to moderns including Berkoff and Williamson. Provides an arsenal of audition pieces for young actors. Outlines the essential acting components, illuminates the creative process and presents a stimulating array of rehearsal room exercises. |
THEATRE TEXTS
| Title: | Masterclass (Women): The Actor's Audition Manual Vol II |
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| Author: | Dean Carey | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Auditions/Monologues | |
| Price: | $24.25 | |
| Synopsis: | Over 100 monologues, from classics such as Chekhov to moderns including Berkoff and Williamson. Provides an arsenal of audition pieces for young actors. Outlines the essential acting components, illuminates the creative process and presents a stimulating array of rehearsal room exercises. |
THEATRE TEXTS
| Title: | Actors' Audition Speeches For All Ages and Accents |
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| Author: | ed. Jean Marlow | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Auditions/Monologues | |
| Price: | $26.95 | |
| Synopsis: | Finding good, interesting audition pieces is a demanding and difficult process for actors. Jean Marlow has brought together 50 selections, the majority of which have never appeared in an audition book before. The pieces, which include modern and classical, have been selected because most of them require or can be performed in a particular accent. Examples of the range of parts included are American, Asian, Jamaican, Irish, South African, Italian, Scottish, Welsh, Newcastle and Yorkshire, covering all ages. Actors can find a speech to suit their particular voice or can show their range by selecting a speech with a contrasting accent. There is an introductory section showing how to prepare and give your best performance at an audition. In addition there are comments from directors giving their advice on how to audition successfully.
Jean Marlow, with her co-director Eamonn Jones, has run The Actors' Theatre School in London for several years and is an experienced actress and teacher. All the selections in this book have been tried and tested by her students. |
THEATRE TEXTS
| Title: | Actresses' Audition Speeches |
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| Author: | Jean Marlow | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Auditions/Monologues | |
| Price: | $26.95 | |
| Synopsis: | Finding good, interesting audition pieces is a demanding and difficult process for actresses. This revised edition of Actresses' Audition Speeches contains over forty speeches and includes a wide selection of pieces taken from plays written or produced recently, such as Losing Louis, Whose Life is it Anyway? and His Dark Materials. There are speeches for a variety of accents and ages, taken from both classical and modern plays, to suit all audition requirements. An introductory section contains advice from directors and casting directors. |
THEATRE TEXTS
| Title: | Outstanding Men's Monologues 2001-2002 |
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| Author: | ed. Craig Pospisil | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Auditions/Monologues | |
| Price: | $16.15 | |
| Synopsis: | Editor Craig Pospisil has drawn exclusively from Dramatists Play Service publications to compile this collection, which features over fifty monologues. You will find an enormous range of voices and subject matter, characters from their teens to their seventies and authors from widely varied backgrounds, some well known, others less so, but all immensely talented. This selection represents some of the best writing in the American theatre today. |
THEATRE TEXTS
| Title: | The Methuen Book of Contemporary Monologues for Women |
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| Author: | Edited by Chrys Salt | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Auditions/Monologues | |
| Price: | $24.25 | |
| Synopsis: | A collection of both serious and comic monologues from the last three decades of contemporary playwriting, this title features pieces from Caryl Churchill, Michael Frayn, Martin McDonagh and Sarah Kane. It should be a useful resource for auditions, acting class and rehearsal. |
THEATRE TEXTS
| Title: | The Methuen Book of Modern Monologues for Men |
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| Author: | ed. Chrys Salt | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Auditions/Monologues | |
| Price: | $24.25 | |
| Synopsis: | This is a selection of speeches for men drawn from the great landmark plays of the 20th century. An appreciation of each speech is enhanced by the editor's introductions and commentaries, which set the plays and individual speeches in their dramatic and performance context. Includes monologues by Arthur Miller, Peter Shaffer, Alan Ayckbourn, Jean Anouilh, John Synge, Jean-Paul Sartre, Tom Stoppard, John Osborne, Arnold Wesker, Bertolt Brecht, Samuel Beckett, and many more. |
THEATRE TEXTS
| Title: | Creating Drama |
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| Author: | Bruce Burton | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Theatre in Education | |
| Price: | $31.45 | |
| Synopsis: | Contains eight units which comprehensively cover the essential drama learning's in all state syllabuses. Each unit is designed to be approximately a term in length.
Chapter outcomes reflect the outcomes-based nature of all syllabuses making it easy for students and teachers to identify exactly what knowledge and skills need to be developed. Key Terms - a running glossary - and Notes - additional information and practical tips - are included in the margin. Activities (Workshops) are integrated througout the text and are structured around the key headings of Forming, Performing and Reflecting. Assessment support in the form of a Core-Assessment Task at the end of each chapter, Model Assessment Forms and blank photocopiable Assessment Forms. Journal writing activities are clearly identified throughout. A broad range of play and script extracts are included as the basis for performance, improvisation and other drama activities, to provide a complete drama course. |
THEATRE TEXTS
| Title: | Making Drama |
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| Author: | Bruce Burton | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Theatre in Education | |
| Price: | $31.45 | |
| Synopsis: | Directly addresses recent changes in all state syllabuses which means it is completely up-to-date and can be used to teach Drama in any state.
Chapter outcomes reflect the outcomes-based nature of all syllabuses making it easy for students and teachers to identify exactly what knowledge and skills need to be developed. New text features - running glossary in the margin (Key Terms) and Notes also in the margin provide students with interesting additional information and practical tips. Try This sections in the margin provide suggestions for specific Drama activities designed to help students understand and apply the information in the text. Activities (Workshops) are integrated throughout the text and are organised around syllabus-related headings so that teachers can easily identify the activities they need for outcomes development and assessment. Information and Communication Technologies are addressed under the heading Using Technology offering practical approaches to using technology in the Drama classroom. Support for assessment in the form of a core assessment task at the end of each chapter, three model assessment forms and a blank assessment forms for copying, to make assessment more straightforward. Journal Writing activities are clearly identified throughout the text to address this major component of Drama learning. Improved design and layout make the text easier to use and more appealing for students. A broad range of play and script extracts are included as the basis for performance, improvisation and other drama activities, providing a complete drama resource. |
THEATRE TEXTS
| Title: | 101 Drama Games for Children |
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| Author: | Paul Rooyackers | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Improvisation Theatre in Education | |
| Price: | $25.75 | |
| Synopsis: | The first part of this book explains what is meant by the words drama, play and game; it explores the role of the leader and how drama games play a part in the social development of group members. Also covered are ways to select. games, and build an activity to a satisfying conclusion. The second part of the book contains drama games divided into ten sections, each based on a certain theme or use of materials. The games in each section gradually increase in difficulty. |
THEATRE TEXTS
| Title: | Theatre Games |
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| Author: | Clive Barker | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Improvisation | |
| Price: | $29.65 | |
| Synopsis: | The games decribed in this handbook are all designed to enable anyone involved in acting to develop their technique without inhibition or artificiality. Actor, director and drama teacher, Clive Barker has developed his 'theatre games' system over the years for teachers, students and actor.
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THEATRE TEXTS
| Title: | House of Games |
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| Author: | Chris Johnston | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Improvisation | |
| Price: | $35.95 | |
| Synopsis: | A treasure trove of drama games and exercises, House of Games has proved itself an immensely valuable resource for teachers, theatre directors and drama workshop leaders. Following on from Keith Johnstone's famous Impro and Augusto Boal's Games for Actors and Non-Actors, Chris Johnston's book provides ideas and guidance for drama groups of all kinds.
'This is an excellent resource book for anyone involved in participatory drama' Guild of Drama Adjudicators Newsletter 'It is friendly, accessible, well structured and full of good advice - much of it plain common sense... Reading it is like being in a room buzzing with relaxed and informed conversation about basic principles, and good ruses for realising both general and specific aims' Mick Wallis, Theatre Research International 'House of Games is a book I will return to and learn much from' Dorinda Hulton, Studies in Theatre Production |
THEATRE TEXTS
| Title: | 112 Acting Games |
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| Author: | Gavin Levy | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Improvisation | |
| Price: | $29.95 | |
| Synopsis: | This is a comprehensive collection of performance-tested theatre games for learning and acting skills. The games are designed to help develop a variety of performance skills, including: body awareness, memorization, improvisation, motor skills, trust, nonverbal communication and observation. This is a perfect resource for use in the classroom. Softcover, 237 pp. |
THEATRE TEXTS
| Title: | Audition Speeches for 6 to 16 Year Olds |
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| Author: | Jean Marlow | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Auditions/Monologues | |
| Price: | $26.95 | |
| Synopsis: | Intended for students and children taking part in speech and drama competitions and exams, this book contains a range of audition speeches. It includes female, male and unisex speeches selected from both plays and children's books. Where relevant the author has indicated how a speech could be shortened for younger children. There is also an introductory section with contributions from Alan Ayckbourn, Carol Schroder (teacher and examiner for the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art), Richard Carpenter (TV writer)and Margo Selby (actress in Grange Hill').' |
THEATRE TEXTS
| Title: | At This Theatre: 100 Years of Broadway Shows, Stories and Stars |
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| Author: | Louis Botto | |
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| Play Type: | Reference | |
| Price: | $53.95 | |
| Synopsis: | This is the ultimate backstage tour of Broadway! AT THIS THEATRE tells the complete history of Broadway in the 20th century, theatre by theatre. This gorgeous book is now updated, revised and with a larger format, covering 1900 to 2001.
PLAYBILL's columnist, Louis Botto, along with Robert Viagas, opens the doors and lets readers explore the 40 active Broadway theatres in New York. From the conception and design of the buildings, to their original creators, and on to the theatres' transformation, often under duress, from legitimate houses to vaudeville and Burlesque, to movie houses and then back to their original purpose, this book captures the magical world of Broadway. |
THEATRE TEXTS
| Title: | Wicked: The Grimmerie |
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| Author: | David Cote | |
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| Play Type: | Reference | |
| Price: | $70.00 | |
| Synopsis: | Wicked is based on the bestselling novel of the same name by Gregory Maguire. It tells the story of Elphaba, the headstrong Wicked Witch of the West, and Glinda, the good witch, growing up in the Land of Oz. The show has cast a spell on fans, many of whom return for second and third viewings.
This beautifully packaged, whimsical keepsake is designed to resemble the Grimmerie, an ancient book of spells that Elphaba uses in the show. Wicked: The Grimmerie, a Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Hit Broadway Musical offers fans a behind-the-curtains peek at the musical, profiles of the cast and creative team, and inside stories, with full-color photographs throughout. Special features include the show's libretto, an "Ozian" glossary, and a step-by-step look at how Elphaba gets green before each show -- everything fans need to relive the Broadway experience day after day. |
THEATRE TEXTS
| Title: | The Theatre Guide |
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| Author: | Trevor R. Griffiths | |
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| Play Type: | Reference | |
| Price: | $53.95 | |
| Synopsis: | A Comprehensive A-Z of the World's Best Plays and Playwrights
With over 500 entries on the most important plays and playwrights performed today, The Theatre Guide provides an authoritative A-Z of the contemporary theatre scene. From Aristophanes to Mark Ravenhill, The Alchemist to The Talking Cure, the guide is both biographically detailed and critically current, while an extensive cross-referencing system allows for wider perspectives and new discoveries. Stimulating, observant and informative, The Theatre Guide is an essential companion and reference tool for anyone with an active interest in drama. |
THEATRE TEXTS
| Title: | Sam Mendes at the Donmar Warehouse: Stepping Into Freedom |
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| Author: | Matt Wolf | |
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| Play Type: | Reference | |
| Price: | $40.50 | |
| Synopsis: | It was late in 1989 that Sam Mendes wandered by a then-boarded up Donmar Warehouse in London and wondered what was to become of the theatre. Three years later, Mendes was opening his first production at that very address: the European premiere of the Off-Broadway musical Assassins.
Matt Wolf's book chronicles ten amazing years for the Donmar and for Mendes, coupling discussion of numerous productions with extensive interviews with Mendes and his number two, Caro Newling, alongside more than sixty Donmar alumni: Stephen Sondheim, Nicole Kidman, Gwyneth Paltrow, Stephen Dillane, Alan Cumming, Helen Mirren, and Jennifer Ehle, to name but a few. This celebration of the Donmar's tenth anniversary - full of candid conversation and analysis, rarely seen pictures, and behind-the-scenes reporting - is a must for any admirer of the Donmar and theatre enthusiast. |
THEATRE TEXTS
| Title: | Stage Management: The Essential Handbook |
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| Author: | Gail Pallin | |
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| Play Type: | Technical | |
| Price: | $40.50 | |
| Synopsis: | The highly successful "Bible for any stage manager".
The Stage Manager is at the core of every successful theatre production. He/she organises, manages and runs the rehearsals and the performances; researches and procures the props and furniture; and provides a creative information flow between everyone involved in the production. This Essential Handbook is aimed at students, graduates and all aspiring stage managers, whether amateur or professional, whether the production is on a large or small scale. Complete with charts and helpful checklists, it takes the reader through a typical production week by week. Other useful topics covered are: * who does what within the production team * theatre unions * the job market * computerisation * a selection of blank report forms for photocopying 'The clearest and most practical comprehensive work on the subject that I have seen' The Stage |
THEATRE TEXTS
| Title: | The Voice Book |
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| Author: | Michael McCallion | |
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| Play Type: | Voice Production | |
| Price: | $25.15 | |
| Synopsis: | Babies have no problem in vocalising - they cry, loud and long. But as we learn how to speak language, a highly intellectual activity, we increasingly depend on speech and body language to express what we wish to communicate. This is fine for ordinary conversation but there are times for most of us when we need to be able to use our voices to present ourselves in a wider context. Most people are vocally better equipped than they know. Usually some unconscious habit gets in the way. The Voice Book shows you simply and practically what is going wrong - and how to put it right. Whether you are a professional or amateur actor, classical or popular singer, politician, public speaker, or need to present for business, church or college, The Voice Book will help you to discover how to use your voice freely, powerfully and with pleasure. |
THEATRE TEXTS
| Title: | The Actor Speaks |
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| Author: | Patsy Rodenburg | |
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| Play Type: | Voice Production | |
| Price: | $40.50 | |
| Synopsis: | From the best selling author of THE RIGHT TO SPEAK and THE NEED FOR WORDS comes this essential guide to voice work. Beginning with what every first-year acting student faces in class and ending with what leading professional actors must achieve every night on stage, Patsy Rodenburg's celebrated work as one of the world's foremost voice and acting coaches is fully revealed in this thoughtful and inspirational book about acting.
Patsy Rodenburg is Director of Voice at London's Royal National Theatre and Guildhall School of Music. In this book, she offers a complete voice workshop for every actor and singer, whether professional or beginner. Foreword by Judi Dench. |
THEATRE TEXTS
| Title: | Voice and Speech in the Theatre 6th Edition |
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| Author: | J. Clifford Turner | |
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| Play Type: | Voice Production | |
| Price: | $35.95 | |
| Synopsis: | A practical handbook to help the actor develop a clear and powerful voice. It explains the theory and recommends proven exercises to ensure improvement in voice and speech. This is a classic text regarded as essential reference for anyone in voice studies.
This new edition is edited by Jane Boston who examines the social and artistic context for Turner's teachings and demonstrates how they are still relevant today. There are also updated exercises taken from the Alexander Technique and contemporary Yoga practices. Format Paperback, Other book format or binding 176 pages. 216x135 mm. Illustrations approx 5 line drawings. |
