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adrenalin…heart (Oberon Modern Plays Ser.)
by Georgia FitchSomeone in a white coat said I was one of those who are addicted to the total all-embracing experience.' Leigh meets Angel and her life is turned upside town. Sex, race, drugs and verbals collide in this terrifyingly beautiful roller-coaster drama. The world premiere of Adrenalin Heart opened Naked Talent at The Bush Theatre in 2002, a season of three first full-length plays by some of the sharpest new voices in today's theatre.
Age Of Consent (Modern Plays)
by Peter MorrisCondemned by the mother of Jamie Bulger and acclaimed by the critics - for tackling the subject of child killers - this is the controversial new play from the winner of the Sunday Times Playwriting Prize 2001Few kids have a secret as chilling as Timmy's.Stephanie loves Raquel to death. Acutely topical, darkly satirical and brutally uncompromising - these two monologues explore the shattering of childhood innocence. "The play opens up a moral minefield. Who can, or should, consent to what? Can anyone consent to something on the behalf of another? What power can anyone, a person or a community, have over the mind and life of another? Morris's play sends you out in a state of moral turbulence." (John Peter, Sunday Times)"For once, the play at the eye of an Edinburgh storm is a good one" - Guardian"This 70-minute play would alone have been worth a trip to Edinburgh" - Sunday Times"If The Age of Consent had been written by the sainted Alan Bennett it would be acclaimed as a triumph" - Daily TelegraphThe Age of Consent is published to tie in with its London premiere at the Bush Theatre in January 2002
Alternative Shakespeares
by John DrakakisWhen critical theory met literary studies in the 1970s and '80s, some of the most radical and exciting theoretical work centred on the quasi-sacred figure of Shakespeare. In Alternative Shakespeares, John Drakakis brought together key essays by founding figures in this movement to remake Shakespeare studies. A new afterword by Robert Weimann outlines the extraordinary impact of Alternative Shakespeares on academic Shakespeare studies. But as yet, the Shakespeare myth continues to thrive both in Stratford and in our schools. These essays are as relevant and as powerful as they were upon publication and with a contributor list that reads like a 'who's who' of modern Shakespeare studies, Alternative Shakespeares demands to be read.
Alternative Shakespeares
by John DrakakisWhen critical theory met literary studies in the 1970s and '80s, some of the most radical and exciting theoretical work centred on the quasi-sacred figure of Shakespeare. In Alternative Shakespeares, John Drakakis brought together key essays by founding figures in this movement to remake Shakespeare studies. A new afterword by Robert Weimann outlines the extraordinary impact of Alternative Shakespeares on academic Shakespeare studies. But as yet, the Shakespeare myth continues to thrive both in Stratford and in our schools. These essays are as relevant and as powerful as they were upon publication and with a contributor list that reads like a 'who's who' of modern Shakespeare studies, Alternative Shakespeares demands to be read.
Arden Plays: The Workhouse Donkey, Armstrong's Last Goodnight, Left-Handed Liberty, The True History of Squire Jonathan and his Unfortunate Treasure, The Bagman (World Classics)
by John Arden"Arden is to me a writer a bit like Shakespeare in approach, in that the writing not only has to convey...the dialogue of characters speaking together, but also has to carry the sense of the social environment and the texture of people's lives."This second volume of John Arden's plays includes works from the 1960s. Armstrong's Last Goodnight, although set in 16th century Scotland, sheds new light on the experience of conscript soldiers at the tail end of colonialism in the 1960s; The Workhouse Donkey presents "not just a kaleidoscopic portrait of a living community; it also has the moral uncertainty of life itself" (Michael Billington The Guardian). Left-handed Liberty anatomises the disintegration of the feudal system under King John; while The True History of Squire Jonathan and his Unfortunate Treasure and the radio play The Bagman are based on real incidents, personal and political in Arden's own life."Arden is a giant of modern playwriting. He writes on an epic scale that few have attained since, the plays tumble into action, and with vivid human response." (Dominic Dromgoole)
Audition Success
by Don GreeneAudition Success presents a groundbreaking method that has already made Don Greene one of the country's leading audition trainers. Combining specially designed self-tests and real-life examples from the careers of two performers, Audition Success will help performers understand what prevents them from nailing an audition and give them the tools to reach their goals.
Audition Success
by Don GreeneAudition Success presents a groundbreaking method that has already made Don Greene one of the country's leading audition trainers. Combining specially designed self-tests and real-life examples from the careers of two performers, Audition Success will help performers understand what prevents them from nailing an audition and give them the tools to reach their goals.
Bacchai (Oberon Modern Plays)
by Colin TeevanDionysos, the God of wine and theatre has returned to his native land to take revenge on the puritanical Pentheus who refuses to recognise him of his rites. Remorselessly, savagely and with black humour, the God drives Pentheus and all the city to their shocking fate. Limelight after decades of anonymity. This version was specially commissioned by the National Theatre for a production in May 2002, directed by Sir Peter Hall and scored by Sir Harrison Birtwhistle.
A Beautiful Pageant: African American Theatre, Drama and Performance in the Harlem Renaissance
by D. KrasnerThe Harlem Renaissance was an unprecedented period of vitality in the American Arts. Defined as the years between 1910 and 1927, it was the time when Harlem came alive with theater, drama, sports, dance and politics. Looking at events as diverse as the prizefight between Jack Johnson and Jim 'White Hope' Jeffries, the choreography of Aida Walker and Ethel Waters, the writing of Zora Neale Hurston and the musicals of the period, Krasner paints a vibrant portrait of those years. This was the time when the residents of northern Manhattan were leading their downtown counterparts at the vanguard of artistic ferment while at the same time playing a pivotal role in the evolution of Black nationalism. This is a thrilling piece of work by an author who has been working towards this major opus for years now. It will become a classic that will stay on the American history and theater shelves for years to come.
Beautiful Thing: Screenplay (Modern Classics)
by Jonathan HarveyBeautiful Thing explores pre-teenage homo-erotic sensuality and the frictions and intimacies of living cheek by jowl on a Thamesmead housing estate.
Becoming Criminal: Transversal Performance and Cultural Dissidence in Early Modern England
by Bryan ReynoldsIn this book Bryan Reynolds argues that early modern England experienced a sociocultural phenomenon, unprecedented in English history, which has been largely overlooked by historians and critics. Beginning in the 1520s, a distinct "criminal culture" of beggars, vagabonds, confidence tricksters, prostitutes, and gypsies emerged and flourished. This community defined itself through its criminal conduct and dissident thought and was, in turn,officially defined by and against the dominant conceptions of English cultural normality.Examining plays, popular pamphlets, laws, poems, and scholarly work from the period, Reynolds demonstrates that this criminal culture, though diverse, was united by its own ideology, language, and aesthetic. Using his transversal theory, he shows how the enduring presence of this criminal culture markedly influenced the mainstream culture's aesthetic sensibilities, socioeconomic organization, and systems of belief. He maps the effects of the public theater's transformative force of transversality, such as through the criminality represented by Shakespeare, Jonson, Middleton, and Dekker, on both Elizabethan and Jacobean society and the scholarship devoted to it.
Beth Henley: A Casebook (Casebooks on Modern Dramatists)
by Julia A. FesmireFirst Published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Beth Henley: A Casebook (Casebooks on Modern Dramatists #33)
by Julia A. FesmireFirst Published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Blue / ...Touched... (Oberon Modern Plays Ser.)
by Ursula Rani SarmaIn Blue three childhood friends try to make the most of their last year together in the isolated sea-side town in which they live. They study for their leaving certificate, go clubbing in the city and, in an effort to console their sense of worthlessness, they devise a deadly daily ritual. Together they jump from a point where the cliffs are forty feet above the ocean. In those panicked seconds, plummeting at full force towards the sea, Joe, Des and Danny believe that anything is possible, and that their hopes and dreams may just come true. When one day a mysterious black package is washed up on the shore, it seems as if all of those dreams and hopes are within reaching distance. Until everything falls apart and the unthinkable happens. In Touched Cora and Mikey yearn for Dublin, for a life without darkness, without secrets, without despair. Ensnared in their uncle's dishevelled pub in the "crotch of the country", the young sister and brother make a pact to escape. Cora hides the darkest secret of all, one that dates back to the day of her tenth birthday, when the local doctor brought her to the beach alone for ice-cream.Their flight to Dublin leads them straight into the hands of the street wise, money-hungry Macca, to a horrific crime and to a city that was far from the paradise they had dreamt about.
Boris Godunov and the Little Tragedies (Oberon Modern Plays)
by Alexander Pushkin Stephen MulrineBoris Godunov recounts the tragic conflict between Tsar Boris and the pretender Dimitri. Following the death of Ivan the Terrible, Boris Godunov became regent for the feeble-minded Tsar Fyodor, the heir to whose throne, the boy-prince Dimitri, died mysteriously in 1591. It was widely rumoured that Boris had murdered him, and when a renegade monk later appeared claiming to be Dimitri, he rapidly became a focus for revolt. The four other plays in this volume belong to Pushkin's Little Tragedies. They are A Feast in Time of Plague, The Miserly Knight, Mozart and Salieri and The Stone Guest.
The Breath of Life
by David Hare'Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge.'Gauguin's aphorism serves as the motto for this morality tale of two women, both in their sixties, whose lives are interwoven in ways neither of them yet understand. Madeline Palmer is a retired curator, living alone on the Isle of Wight. One day to her door comes Angela Beale, a woman she has met only once, who is now enjoying sudden success, late in life, as a popular novelist. The progress of a single night comes fascinatingly to echo the hidden course of their lives.
The Cambridge Companion To Shakespeare On Stage (PDF)
by Stanley Wells Sarah StantonThis 2002 Companion is designed for readers interested in past and present productions of Shakespeare's plays, both in and beyond Britain. The first six chapters describe aspects of the British performing tradition in chronological sequence, from the early staging of Shakespeare's own time, through to the present day. Each relates Shakespearean developments to broader cultural concerns and adopts an individual approach and focus, on textual adaptation, acting, stages, scenery or theatre management. These are followed by three explorations of acting: tragic and comic actors and women performers of Shakespeare roles. A section on international performance includes chapters on interculturalism, on touring companies and on political theatre, with separate accounts of the performing traditions of North America, Asia and Africa. Over forty pictures illustrate peformers and productions of Shakespeare from around the world. An amalgamated list of items for further reading completes the book.
The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare's History Plays (PDF)
by Michael HattawayThis 2002 volume provides an accessible, wide-ranging and informed introduction to Shakespeare's history and Roman plays. It offers chapters on the individual plays as well as accounts of the genre of the history play and includes genealogical tables and a list of principal and recurrent characters.
Colin Teevan: Two Plays (Oberon Modern Playwrights)
by Colin TeevanIncludes the plays The Big Sea and Vinegar and Brown Paper.The Big Sea is based on the French Medieval Mardi Gras play Le Bataille de Charnau contre Caresme. Christophe, Caresme and Charnau are on a cancer ward. To pass the time they play games. The line between game and reality starts to blur and soon they find themselves on a journey into the unknown: Columbus's journey to the New World. In Vinegar and Brown Paper Jill is an artist recently returned to Dublin and Jack is her stand-up comedian boyfriend. As Jill tries to reconcile herself to her past through her work, Jack's career starts to take off. The play charts the collapse of a relationship through soap operas, football, the Dutch Masters and Christ's walk to Calvary. It was first produced by the Abbey Theatre, Dublin.
The Collected Plays (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics)
by Graham GreeneThe Living Room. The Potting Shed. The Complaisant Lover. Carving a Statue. The Return of A. J. Raffles. The Great Jowett. Yes and No. For Whom the Bell Chimes.In these eight plays Graham Greene, one of the great writers of the twentieth century, demonstrates his considerable skills as a dramatist. Each of them explores themes that were of fundamental importance to Greene, and together they exhibit a daring wit and an exhilarating sense of experiment.
Collins Drama: The Tulip Touch (PDF)
by Anne FineA stunning adaptation for schools by the Children's Laureate Anne Fine, of her much-loved children's novel. Why is Tulip always in trouble? And why does Natalie find Tulip's dangerous games so fascinating. A
The Country Doctor (Oberon Modern Plays Ser.)
by Ivan Turgenev Simon Paisley Day'I've come across some stories in my time. The things people tell you when they think they're on the brink...' A country doctor recounts a story to an aspiring Russian novelist. The tale is unexpected, short and bittersweet, rather like its subject: a love affair between the doctor and his dying patient, the beautiful and cultured Alexandra Andreyevna. Thrown together by her condition, they find a love imbued with an honesty and an urgency that most would find unbearable. But this young woman's life is particularly fragile and in his desperate bid to cure her the doctor unwittingly prescribes the most dangerous drug of all. The Country Doctor was first published in the Russian literary magazine The Contemporary in the late 1840s. It was one of many tales which would later comprise The Sportsman's Notebook. Simon Day dramatises this enchanting story of frustrated love, bringing the elegance of Turgenev's prose to life in a new way.
Damsels in Distress: Roleplay
by Alan AyckbournThis is a trilogy of plays by the most performed playwright in the world, all set in a flat in Docklands. Lynette's teenage daughter comes up with a surprising way to save the family finances. A night of passion takes a mysterious and dangerous turn. An important family occasion is thrown into chaos by the arrival of some uninvited guests.
The Dead Wait (Oberon Modern Plays)
by Paul HerzbergI've been running. All this time. But not from him. I've been running. Now I stop.'Based on a true story, The Dead Wait is an explosive journey through war, death and redemption told by three people caught in the insanity of conflict and haunted by its horrors. Rich in language and visceral in impact, the play follows the journey of Josh Gilmore, a young athlete turned soldier from darkness to light, from the Angolan War of 1982 to the present day and the creation of a new South Africa. First performed at Royal Exchange Theatre in October 2002, directed by Jacob Murray.
A Dream
by Felicja KruszewskaThe translation of Felicja Kruszewska's A Dream introduces a major play by a twentieth-century female playwright to the English-speaking world. On March 7, 1927 A Dream - a large-scale expressionistic drama by an unknown poet - burst on the Polish theatrical scene in a dazzling debut production by the young actor Edmund Wiercinski, who would become one of the outstanding directors of his time. The play's hallucinatory visions of the rise of fascism and the heroine's longing for a providential savior on a white horse spoke directly to Polish audiences about their deepest anxieties. During the next two years A Dream received three additional stagings and became the subject of lively debate and controversy. The play, which has been successfully revived in 1974, is an outstanding example of European expressionism. The volume also contains An Excursion to the Museum, by the contemporary Polish poet, playwright, and short-story writer Tadeusz Rozewicz. A disturbing account of an utterly mundane visit to Auschwitz, the tale is a brilliant example of the playwright's technique of poetic collage.