The Best Plays of 2014

(Applause Books). Comical, offbeat, poignant, and fresh, The Best Plays of 2014 presents six of the most original plays of the year in a single volume selected by renowned editor Lawrence Harbison. * The Country House , a comedy about a deeply dramatic family, by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Donald Margulies. * Dinner with the Boys , an offbeat, dark comedy by Dan Lauria about some old-time wise guys who want to have a good Italian meal and a few laughs and tie up some loose ends before dessert. * Mala Hierba by Tanya Saracho, inspired by Latin American culture, which pits human yearnings against the power of culturally predetermined obligations. * Based on real events, Our Lady of Kibeho by Katori Hall was hailed as the "most important new play of the year!" by Terry Teachout of The Wall Street Journal . * When January Feels Like Summer by Cori Thomas presents five lives colliding as a feeling of change hums in the air during one strangely warm winter in Central Harlem. * Year of the Rooster ( New York Times Critics' Pick) by Eric Dufault a fiercely comic play about cockfighting, connections, and clawing your way to the top.

---

The Best American Short Plays 2013 2014

(Best American Short Plays). For more than 70 years, The Best American Short Plays has been the standard of excellence for one-act plays in America. From its inception, it has identified cutting-edge playwrights Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, and others who have gone on to establish award-winning careers. The Best American Short Plays 2013-2014 takes a look at our changing times. "Uncertain" seems to be the watchword of today's world, full of surprises, shocks, and even a few delights. Uncertainty brings with it fear and insecurity, as well as nostalgic longing for the good old days, but for some, uncertainty means opportunity and along with it the prospect of change for the better. This volume explores various experiences of uncertainty and includes a series of nine plays gathered by Daniel Gallant, entitled Nine Signs of the Times , as well as short plays by Neil LaBute, John Guare, Laura Shaine Cunningham, Daniel F. Levin, Quincy Long, Halley Feiffer, Caridad Svich, and Clay McLeod Chapman. This collection will be complemented by a range of plays from around the country by playwrights likewise observing and digesting the signs of the times. Together the plays of this volume work as a time capsule, capturing the fears and longings of a world on the verge and in the midst of big changes, hopefully for the better but quite possibly for the worse.

---

The Best Ten Minute Plays 2014

In this volume you will find fifty terrific new ten-minute plays, all successfully produced during the 2013-2014 theatrical season. They are written in a variety of styles. Some are realistic; some comic; and some are dramatic. Included in this volume is a comprehensive list of theatres which do ten-minute plays.

---

The Best Plays of the Old Dramatists

This Is A New Release Of The Original 1888 Edition.

---

The Best American Short Plays 2014 2015

"Contains fresh-voiced, cutting-edge works by twenty playwrights. This collection thematically explores the whimsical and romantic feelings that rouse even the coolest tempered and reflects the enormous diversity of American theater."--Page [4] of cover.

---

The Best Plays of 1945 46 and the Year Book of the Drama in America

---

The Best Plays of 1919 1920 and the Year Book of the Drama in America

Burns Mantle (1873-1948) was a drama critic and annalist, best know for the Best Plays series, which he edited from 1920 until 1947. In addition to declaring the past year's best plays, these volumes forecast the next season's likely best plays around the U.S., gives biographical data on prominent theater figures, and reviews the London and Paris seasons.

---

National Theatre Connections 2014

Drawing together the work of ten leading playwrights - a mixture of established and emerging writers - this National Theatre Connections anthology is published to coincide with the 2014 festival, which takes place across the UK and finishes up at the National Theatre in London. It offers young performers between the ages of thirteen and nineteen everywhere an engaging selection of plays to perform, read or study. Each play is specifically commissioned by the National Theatre's literary department with the young performer in mind. The plays are performed by approximately 200 schools and youth theatre companies across the UK and Ireland, in partnership with multiple professional regional theatres where the works are showcased. As with previous anthologies, the volume will feature an introduction by Anthony Banks, Associate Director of the National Theatre Discover Programme, and each play includes notes from the writer and director addressing the themes and ideas behind the play, as well as production notes and exercises. The National Theatre Connections series has been running for nineteen years and the anthology that accompanies it, published for the last three years by Methuen Drama, is gaining a greater profile by the year. Some iconic plays have grown out of the Connections programme including Citizenship by Mark Ravenhill, Burn by Deborah Gearing, Chatroom by Enda Walsh, Baby Girl by Roy Williams, DNA by Dennis Kelly, and The Miracle by Lin Coghlan. The series has a recognisable brand and the anthologies continue to be an extremely useful resource, their value extending well beyond their year of publication. This year's anthology includes plays by Sabrina Mahfouz, Simon Vinnicombe, Catherine Johnson, Pauline McLynn, Dafydd James, Luke Norris and Sam Holcroft.

---

The Open House

An inspired new comedy from one of theatre's most distinctive and celebrated writers.

---

A Study Guide for Amy Herzog s 4 000 Miles

A Study Guide for Amy Herzog's "4,000 Miles", excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Drama for Students.This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Drama for Students for all of your research needs.

---

All the Way

This Tony Award–winning, “jaw-dropping political drama” chronicles LBJ’s fight for the Civil Rights Act and includes an introduction by Bryan Cranston (Variety). Winner of the 2014 Tony Award for Best Play, as well as Best Play awards from the New York Drama Critics’ Circle, the Outer Critics Circle, the Drama League, and numerous other awards, All the Way is a masterful exploration of politics and power from the Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Robert Schenkkan. All the Way tells the story of the tumultuous first year of Lyndon Baines Johnson’s presidency. Thrust into power following the Kennedy assassination and facing an upcoming election, Johnson is nevertheless determined to end the legacy of racial injustice in America and rebuild it into the Great Society—by any means necessary. In order to pass the landmark 1964 Civil Rights bill, LBJ struggles to overpower an intransigent Congress while also attempting to forge a compromise with Martin Luther King, Jr., and navigate the increasingly fractious Civil Rights Movement. Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston played President Johnson in the play’s celebrated Broadway production, for which he was awarded the Tony Award for Best Actor. In this edition, Cranston provides an illuminating and personal introduction.

---

The Realistic Joneses

"[A] tender, funny, terrific new play. . . . Mr. Eno's voice, which teases out the poetry in the pedestrian and finds glinting humor in the static that infuses our faltering efforts to communicate, is as distinctive as any American playwright's today."The New York Times "Weird and wonderful . . . Eno's familiar sudden-shifting between profound and playful verbiage is delightfully disarming and sometimes awfully funny."Variety Plays as funny and moving, as wonderful and weird as The Realistic Joneses do not appear often on Broadway. Or ever, really. Mr. Eno's voice may be the most singular of his generation, but it's humane, literate and slyly hilarious. For all the sadness woven into its fabric, The Realistic Joneses brought me a pleasurable rush virtually unmatched by anything I've seen this season.”The New York Times As usual, Eno's dialogue is a marvel of compression and tonal control, trivial chitchat flipping into cosmic profundity with striking ease. There's much to savor: the dry but meaningful banter, the joy of humans sharing time and space, battling the darkness with a joke or silence. Life in Enoland isn't what you'd call realisticit's more real than that.”Time Out New York [An] elliptical, funny, dark and strangely moving new play. Eno is a writer with heart and compassion.”Chicago Tribune Eno's first-ever commercial foray ups the creative ante in a Broadway climate that can be resistant to new voices. [A] very fine play where laughter exists a heartbeat, or heartbreak, away from tears.”The Telegraph Meet Bob and Jennifer and their new neighbors John and Pony, two suburban couples who have more in common than their identical last names. Boasting the playwright's quintessential existential quirkiness, this new comedy finds poetry in the banal while humorously exploring our ever-floundering efforts at communication. Listed as one of New York Times's Best Plays of 2012,The Realistic Joneses received its Broadway premiere in spring 2014, starring Toni Collete, Michael C. Hall, Tracy Letts and Marisa Tomei, and opening to rave reviews. Will Eno is the author of Thom Pain (based on nothing), which ran for a year Off-Broadway and was a 2005 Pulitzer Prize finalist. Other works includeMiddletown, The Flu Season, Tragedy: a tragedy, Intermission, andGnit, an adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt. His many awards include the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theatre Award, the Horton Foote Prize, and the first-ever Marian Seldes/Garson Kanin Fellowship by the Theater Hall of Fame.

---

Constellations

"A singular astonishment." —John Lahr, The New Yorker One relationship. Infinite possibilities. In the beginning Marianne and Roland meet at a party. They go for a drink, or perhaps they don't. They fall madly in love and start dating, but eventually they break up. After a chance encounter in a supermarket they get back together, or maybe they run into each other and Marianne reveals that she's now engaged to someone else and that's that. Or perhaps Roland is engaged. Maybe they get married, or maybe their time together will be tragically short. Nick Payne's Constellations is a play about free will and friendship; it's also about quantum multiverse theory, love, and honey.

---

Maisy Plays Soccer

Wow, look at the crowd! Maisy and friends play a rousing game of soccer in a read-aloud sure to have aspiring little players cheering. Maisy and her friends can’t wait to play soccer! Maisy puts on her uniform, laces up her sneakers, and heads to the field. Charlie, Tallulah, and Dotty are on the blue team, while Maisy, Cyril, and Eddie are on the red. Let’s play! Soon enough the game heats up, with plenty of action, excitement, and suspense. Who will be the first team to make a goal? Whatever the score, it’s all in good fun, and everyone is still the best of friends at the end!

---

Shakespeare s History Plays

Shakespeare's history plays are central to his dramatic achievement. In recent years they have become more widely studied than ever, stimulating intensely contested interpretations, due to their relevance to central contemporary issues such as English, national identities and gender roles. Interpretations of the history plays have been transformed since the 1980s by new theoretically-informed critical approaches. Movements such as New Historicism and cultural materialism, as well as psychoanalytical and post-colonial approaches, have swept away the humanist consensus of the mid-twentieth century with its largely conservative view of the plays. The last decade has seen an emergence of feminist and gender-based readings of plays which were once thought overwhelmingly masculine in their concerns. This book provides an up-to-date critical anthology representing the best work from each of the modern theoretical perspectives. The introduction outlines the changing debate in an area which is now one of the liveliest in Shakespearean criticism.

---

The Whale A Bright New Boise

Acclaimed for his gentle, complex characterizations, Samuel D. Hunter's bighearted and funny plays explore the quiet desperation running through many American lives. The Whale tells the story of a six hundred-pound shut-in's last chance at redemption and of discovering beauty in the most unexpected places when he reaches out to his long-estranged—and severely unhappy—daughter. Hunter's second piece, the Obie Award-winning A Bright New Boise, is a philosophical investigation of faith and search for meaning in rural Idaho where a disgraced evangelical is forced to take a minimum-wage job at the local Hobby Lobby craft store in an effort to reunite with his estranged son.

---

The Theban Plays

The timeless Theban tragedies of Sophocles—Oedipus the Tyrant, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone—have fascinated and moved audiences and readers across the ages with their haunting plots and their unforgettable heroes and heroines. Now, following the best texts faithfully, and translating the key moral, religious, and political terminology of the plays accurately and consistently, Peter J. Ahrensdorf and Thomas L. Pangle allow contemporary readers to study the most literally exact reproductions of precisely what Sophocles wrote, rendered in readily comprehensible English. These translations enable readers to engage the Theban plays of Sophocles in their full, authentic complexity, and to study with precision the plays’ profound and enduring human questions. In the preface, notes to the plays, and introductions, Ahrensdorf and Pangle supply critical historical, mythic, and linguistic background information, and highlight the moral, religious, political, philosophic, and psychological questions at the heart of each of the plays. Even readers unfamiliar with Greek drama will find what they need to experience, reflect on, and enjoy these towering works of classical literature.

---

Text Presentation 2014

Text & Presentation gathers some of the best work presented at the 2014 Comparative Drama Conference in Baltimore. The subjects explored in this volume range from ancient to contemporary and encompass great cultural and intellectual diversity. The highlight of the conference was a presentation by award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang. A transcript of Hwang’s conversation is the lead piece, followed by twelve research papers, one review essay and ten book reviews. This volume accurately represents the diversity of the annual conference, and represents the latest research in the fields of comparative drama, performance and dramatic textual analysis.

---

Freak

A punchy and provocative new play by the Bruntwood Prize-winning author of Yen. Georgie is thirty with dirty secrets. She drinks in her bedroom and hides from the sun. Leah is fifteen with teenage dreams. She practices her cum face and Veets. A lot. All-meat, all-sex, all-vulnerable, all-powerful. There's a first time for everything... Isn't there? Freak premiered at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2014.

---

Desire Six One Act Plays

ATTACK OF THE GIANT TENT WORMS. Billy and Clara are nearing the end of their summer vacation on Cape Cod, as their cottage is being devoured by billions of tent-worms. Worse, Billy has just gotten word from his oncologist that there are no more treatment options for his brain cancer. A darkly humorous exploration of which is more terrifying: bugs or death? (1 man, 1 woman.) DESIRE QUENCHED BY TOUCH. In 1950s New Orleans, a black masseur must account for the disappearance of his favorite white customer. People don’t just vanish inside massage parlors… (3 men.) THE FIELD OF BLUE CHILDREN. Everything in Layley’s life is going according to plan. She belongs to the best sorority at her university and has a devoted boyfriend who could easily become a devoted husband. But Layley suspects that there is more to life than stifling conformity. So she signs up for a poetry class in the hopes of expressing herself. There she meets Dylan, a sensitive poet with whom she enjoys a night of passion that opens up a truly revolutionary prospect: living a life of her own. (3 men, 4 women.) ORIFLAMME. Oriflamme (noun): A red or scarlet banner; a knight’s standard; a rallying principle…Sickly Anna Kimball, on her final day, reaches out for, and becomes, all of these. (1 man, 1 woman.) YOU LIED TO ME ABOUT CENTRALIA. Jim, the Gentleman Caller, leaves the Wingfields’ disastrous dinner party to meet his fiancée Betty’s train. The evening won’t turn out the way either of them expected. (1 man, 1 woman.) THE RESEMBLANCE BETWEEN A VIOLIN CASE AND A COFFIN. Tom and his sister Roe’s childhood comes to a painful end when Richard Miles, who moves in light, arrives in town with his violin in a case. (2 men, 4 women.)

---