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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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SALE ITEMS
| Title: | The Actor's Audition Manual Vol I |
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| Author: | Dean Carey | |
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| Play Type: | Auditions/Monologues | |
| Price: | $20.20 | |
| 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.
RRP $26.95 - SALE PRICE $20.20 ON SALE UNTIL 31/8/08 OR WHILE STOCKS LAST |
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 ON SALE UNTIL 31/8/08 OR 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 ON SALE UNTIL 31/8/08 OR WHILE STOCKS LAST |
SALE ITEMS
| Title: | Cootie Shots |
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| Author: | Edited by Norma Bowles with Mark E. Rosenthal | |
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| 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 ON SALE UNTIL 31/8/08 OR 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 ON SALE UNTIL 31/8/08 OR 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 ON SALE UNTIL 31/8/08 OR 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 ON SALE UNTIL 31/8/08 OR WHILE STOCKS LAST |
SALE ITEMS
| Title: | The Day They Shot John Lennon |
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| Author: | James McLure | |
| Characters: | 2F 7M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Drama | |
| Price: | $13.45 | |
| Synopsis: | The action of the play takes place in the street in front of the Manhattan apartment house where John Lennon was shot to death. Deeply moved and shocked by this awful event, many New Yorkers spontaneously assembled there to pay tribute to their slain idol, and it is from the interwoven stories of a cross section of these people that the author builds his play. Included are a young advertising executive and a "women's libber" who had both been at Woodstock; a group of high school students preoccupied with romantic disputes and entanglements; a pair of Vietnam vets with larceny in mind; an elderly Jewish man from a neighboring building who mistakenly thinks that the murder victim was Jack Lemmon; and a hip young black would-be comic who, in turns out, is the son of the old Jewish gentleman's doorman. Through the interaction of these people, sometimes humorous, sometimes moving, sometimes menacing, the author points up the larger significance of the event which has brought them together the shock wave which was felt across the nation by this further evidence of the violence and ugliness lurking in our communal soul.
RRP $17.95 - SALE PRICE $13.45 ON SALE UNTIL 31/8/08 OR WHILE STOCKS LAST |
SALE ITEMS
| Title: | Master Class |
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| Author: | Terrence McNally | |
| Characters: | 3F 3M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Drama | |
| Price: | $13.45 | |
| 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.
RRP $17.95 - SALE PRICE $13.45 ON SALE UNTIL 31/8/08 OR WHILE STOCKS LAST |
SALE ITEMS
| Title: | 365 Days 365 Plays |
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| Author: | Suzan-Lori Parks | |
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| 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 ON SALE UNTIL 31/8/08 OR WHILE STOCKS LAST |
SALE ITEMS
| 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: | $44.95 | |
| 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. RRP $59.95 - SALE PRICE$44.95 ON SALE UNTIL 31/8/08 OR 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 ON SALE UNTIL 31/8/08 OR WHILE STOCKS LAST |
SALE ITEMS
| Title: | Riflemind |
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| Author: | Andrew Upton | |
| Characters: | 2F 5M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Play | |
| Price: | $11.20 | |
| 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. RRP $14.95 - SALE PRICE $11.20 ON SALE UNTIL 31/8/08 OR 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 ON SALE UNTIL 31/8/08 OR WHILE STOCKS LAST |
SALE ITEMS
| 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 ON SALE UNTIL 31/8/08 OR WHILE STOCKS LAST |
SALE ITEMS
| Title: | Babes in the Wood |
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| Author: | Tom Wright | |
| Characters: | 4F 3M | |
| Play Type: | Full Length Play with Music | |
| Price: | $14.20 | |
| 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.
RRP $18.95 - SALE PRICE $14.20 ON SALE UNTIL 31/8/08 OR WHILE STOCKS LAST |
NEW RELEASES
| Title: | Songket and This Territory: Two Plays |
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| Author: | Noelle Janaczewska | |
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| 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: | 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. |
NEW RELEASES
| 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) |
NEW RELEASES
| 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. |
NEW RELEASES
| 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. |
NEW RELEASES
| 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. |
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: | 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! |
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: | 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: | 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: | 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: | 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: | Run For Your Wife |
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| Author: | Ray Cooney | |
| Characters: | 2F 6M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Comedy | |
| Price: | $21.55 | |
| Synopsis: | John Smith is a London cabbie with his own taxi, a wife in Streatham, a wife in Wimbledon - and a knife-edge schedule! He has been a successful, if tired, bigamist for three years, but one day he is taken to hospital with mild concussion. In the ensuing complications, aided by an unwilling Stanley, John tries bravely to cope with a succession of well-meaning but prying policemen, two increasingly irate wives, and others, until he manfully confesses the truth - but no-one believes him! |
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: | 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: | 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: | 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: | 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 a |
