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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: | Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? |
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| Author: | Edward Albee | |
| Characters: | 2F 2M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Play | |
| Price: | SALE PRICE $14.55 WHILE STOCKS LAST | |
| Synopsis: | 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 ITEMS
| Title: | Ruby Moon |
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| Author: | Matt Cameron | |
| Characters: | 4F 5M | |
| Play Type: | Full Drama | |
| Price: | SALE PRICE $17.75 WHILE STOCKS LAST | |
| 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. |
SALE ITEMS
| Title: | Zigzag Street |
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| Author: | Philip Dean | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Full length Play | |
| Price: | SALE PRICE $11.15 WHILE STOCKS LAST | |
| Synopsis: | 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.
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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: | Medea and Other Plays |
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| Author: | Euripides translated by Philip Vellacott | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Play Collection | |
| Price: | SALE PRICE $13.75 UNTIL STOCKS LAST | |
| 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. |
SALE ITEMS
| 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: | Sale Price $15.35 WHILE STOCKS LAST | |
| 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) |
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: | Much Ado About Nothing |
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| Author: | William Shakespeare | |
| Characters: | Large mixed cast | |
| Play Type: | Full length Comedy | |
| Price: | SALE PRICE $7.20 WHILE STOCKS LAST | |
| 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. |
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: | The Theban Plays |
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| Author: | Sophocles, translated by E F Watling | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Full Length Tragedy | |
| Price: | $11.55 | |
| Synopsis: | The legends surrounding the royal house of Thebes inspired Sophocles to create a powerful trilogy of mankind's struggle against fate. King Oedipus tells of a man who brings pestilence to Thebes for crimes he doesn't realise he has committed, and then inflicts a brutal punishment on himself. 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 authority. |
NEW RELEASES
| Title: | Julius Caesar |
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| Author: | Shakespeare | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Full Length Drama | |
| Price: | $7.15 | |
| Synopsis: | When it seems that Julius Caesar may assume supreme power, a plot to destroy him is hatched by those determined to preserve the threatened republic. But the different motives of the conspirators soon become apparent when high principles clash with malice and political realism. As the nation plunges into bloody civil war, this taut drama explores the violent consequences of betrayal and murder. |
NEW RELEASES
| Title: | The Comedy of Errors |
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| Author: | Shakespeare | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Full length Comedy | |
| Price: | $8.95 | |
| Synopsis: | Based on a pair of comic dramas from ancient Rome, The Comedy of Errors presents a spectacle of pure farce in the spirit of utmost fun and as the title suggests hilarious confusion. Two sets of identical twins provide the basis for ongoing incidents of mistaken identity, within a lively plot of quarrels, arrests, and a grand courtroom denouement. One of Shakespeare's earliest dramatic efforts, the play abounds in his trademark conceits, puns, and other forms of fanciful wordplay. It also foreshadows his later and greater comedies, offering students and scholars a valuable key to the playwright's development.
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NEW RELEASES
| Title: | Shakespeare's R & J |
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| Author: | Joe Calarco | |
| Characters: | 4M | |
| Play Type: | Full Length Drama | |
| Price: | $16.15 | |
| Synopsis: | Within the tedium of their New England boarding school, four young men steal away to read Shakespeare's ROMEO & JULIET (as well as skim over a few other of the Bard's plays). As these four men play all of the roles, something is sparked as Romeo and Juliet at first recite, and eventually embody, the story of the ill-fated lovers. |
NEW RELEASES
| Title: | Everyman |
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| Author: | Anon | |
| Characters: | 17 Cast Male or Female | |
| Play Type: | One Act Drama | |
| Price: | $12.55 | |
| Synopsis: | 2010 VCE Monologues List
The play starts with Death visiting Everyman. Naturally Everyman does not feel prepared for the day of reckoning and pleads for more time. Death denies the request; however, he allows Everyman a little time to find someone to speak in support of him. Everyman goes to Fellowship, Cousin, and Kindred asking for help and they all promise to help him with anything he needs. When he tells them what he desires they all understandably renege on their promise. He visits Goods who he has "loved the most", for surely he will go with him. Everyman pleads with Goods to come and says, "Money maketh all right that is wrong." Goods responds, "Nay, Everyman, I sing another song, I follow no man in such voyages. For and I went with thee, thou shouldst fare much the worse for me; for because on me thou did set thy mind, thy reckoning I have made blotted and blind." That's good stuff right there. Next he visits Good-Deeds who hardly knows him and who is weak due to lack of attention. Everyman says, "Therefore I come to you, my moan to make; I pray you, that you will go with me." Good-Deeds responds, "I would full fain, but I cannot stand verily." Everyman responds, "Why, is there anything on you fall?" Good-Deeds says, "Yea, sir, I may thank you of all; if ye had perfectly cheered me, your book of account now full ready had be. Look, the books of your works and deeds eke; oh, see how they lie under the feet, to your soul's heaviness." Finally Everyman meets Knowledge and Confession who introduce him to others that can help him such as Discretion, Five-Wits, Beauty, and Strength. In the end, it is only Good-Deeds that can go with him to plead his case. |
NEW RELEASES
| Title: | Antony and Cleopatra |
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| Author: | William Shakespeare | |
| Characters: | 4F 30M | |
| Play Type: | Full Length Drama | |
| Price: | $9.85 | |
| Synopsis: | 2010 VCE Monologues List
Mark Antony is supposed to be ruling the eastern Roman Empire. Cleopatra, however, has all of his attention as the two carry on a torrid affair in Egypt. The death of his wife, Fulvia, and the threat of a war by Pompey bring him back to Rome. There is tension between Octavius and Antony; Octavius feels that Antony has left Rome vulnerable while dallying with Cleopatra. As a gesture of goodwill, Antony agrees to marry Octavia, the sister of Octavius, but this only postpones what is to be a growing rift. As events transpire, Octavius (now Caesar) and Antony begin to clash with their armies. Octavia tries to repair the damage and get Octavius and Antony back together. To everyone's chagrin, however, Antony seizes the opportunity during Octavia's absence to flee back to Egypt - and Cleopatra. Octavius is now doubly enraged, vowing to punish Antony for dishonoring his sister as well as Caesar. In the battle to come, Cleopatra sways Antony's mind into accepting a challenge from Caesar to a battle at sea; his aides try to tell him that his army has a better chance on land, but Antony will not listen. He will rue the decision. At the height of the naval battle, Cleopatra orders her personal ship to leave the scene. Unfortunately, a lovestruck Antony orders his ship to follow her, and the battle at Actium becomes a Roman victory. Caesar rejects Antony's suit for peace, and instead attempts to split Antony and Cleopatra; Cleopatra, he decrees, will remain Queen of Egypt unmolested if she but kills Antony. Cleopatra refuses, and Caesar's army meets Antony's on land - resulting in a victory for Antony. The two armies withdraw to resume the fight the next day. When another Egyptian retreat decides the day for Caesar, Antony accuses Cleopatra of treachery and threatens her life. To save herself, she flees to her tomb and has her servants bring word that she has killed herself. This pushes Antony over the edge, and he falls on his own sword, mortally wounding himself. He lives long enough, however, for the servants to bring him to Cleopatra, and the two once again profess their love before Antony breathes his last. Caesar, upon hearing the news of Antony's death, grieves for the loss of his rival and onetime friend. To Cleopatra he promises mercy, although he intends on humiliating her as a war captive. Cleopatra, recognising his aims, secures an asp hidden in a fruit basket and uses its venomous bite to kill herself. Caesar decrees that Antony and Cleopatra be buried together as a posthumous act of kindness. |
NEW RELEASES
| Title: | Rockabye |
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| Author: | Joanna Murray-Smith | |
| Characters: | 4F 3M | |
| Play Type: | One Act Comedy | |
| Price: | $17.95 | |
| Synopsis: | 2010 VCE Monologues List
Sidney can feel her career slipping down the plughole. No one loves a pop star when she's forty - not if she isn't Madonna or Kylie. So unless she wants to join the ranks of the has-beens on the casino circuit, she better get herself a hit. But what if she regains the whole world and still feels that something's missing? Baby hunger. Returning to the feisty mood of her hit "The Female of the Species", Joanna Murray-Smith in Rockabye gives our self-involved, celebrity-obsessed culture a satirical duff-up. This title contains 1 act, featuring 3 male and 4 female. |
NEW RELEASES
| Title: | Huis Clos and Other Plays |
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| Author: | Jean-Paul Sartre (Author), Kitty Black (Translator), Stuart Gilbert (Translator) | |
| Characters: | ||
| Play Type: | Full Length Drama | |
| Price: | $22.45 | |
| Synopsis: | These three plays, diverse in subject but thematically coherent, illuminate one of Sartre's major philosophical concerns: the struggle to live and act freely in a complex and constricting world. Lucifer and the Lord, Sartre's favourite among his plays, explores this theme in depth, dealing in the process with fundamental questions of faith and disillusionment; in Huis Clos - arguably Sartre's most important play - he contends that 'Hell is other people', and details the afterlife of three souls trapped together in locked room and the torments that they inflict on each other; while The Respectable Prostitute, set in the Deep South of America, is concerned with racism, subjugation and the demands of conscience.
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PLAYS
| 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 |
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: | 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: | 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: | 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. |
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: | 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: | 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: | 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: | 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: | 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. |
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: | 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 |
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: | 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: | 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: | '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: | 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: | 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: | 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: | 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: | 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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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: | 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: | 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: | Girls' Night Out |
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| Author: | Dave Simpson | |
| Characters: | 4F 4M | |
| Play Type: | Full length Comedy | |
| Price: | $19.95 | |
| Synopsis: | Set London, the girl's gather at Aunty Ivy's for pre-hens night drinks where it is revealed that Jane's fianc�e 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. |
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: | 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: | 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. |
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: | 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: | 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. |
THEATRE 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 |
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: | 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. |
THEATRE TEXTS
| Title: | The Voice Book |
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| Author: | Michael McCallion | |
| Characters: | ||
| 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 | |
| Characters: | ||
| 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 |
|
| Author: | J. Clifford Turner | |
| Characters: | ||
| 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. |
