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The Black Monk and The Dog Problem: Two Plays
by David RabeThe Black Monk has been called a singular "collaboration" between two writers: Anton Chekhov and David Rabe. Based on Chekov's novella of the same name, Rabe's brilliant stage adaptation tells the story of Kovrin, the young philosophy student who returns from Moscow to the estate owned by Pesotsky, where he spent his youth. Kovrin and Pesotsky's daughter, Tanya, soon fall in love and plan to marry. But the appearance of an emissary from the unknown -- the black monk -- threatens to have a devastating effect on all of them. Trouble starts in when Teresa tells her brother Joey that this guy Ray did something to her with his dog in bed. Nobody seems to know exactly what happened, but they do know that somebody's got to pay. So what is The Dog Problem? It starts with being born into a world where the wrong thing said to the wrong person ignites a chain reaction of misplaced passions and galloping sentences that race to a deadly conclusion. The playful title is revealed to be a wry pun on the Cartesian mind/body problem, as Uncle Mal, the aging mobster, must face his turn to be the dog in this darkly funny play about men, women, sex, betrayal, and ghosts. Vastly different in their aesthetic, these two recent and highly praised plays embody all of the celebrated hallmarks of David Rabe's writing and art: unflinchingly honest and perceptive themes, starkly luminous dialogue, and the unsettling humor that have made him an icon of the American theater for more than forty years.
The Blacks: A Clown Show (Genet, Jean Ser.)
by Jean GenetGenet has strong claims to be considered the greatest living playwright. His plays constitute a body of work unmatched for poetic and theatrical power which reaches, in at least two of the plays The Balcony and The Blacks a pitch of inspiration and mastery.” Jack Kroll, Newsweek In form, it flows as freely as an improvisation, with fantasy, allegory and intimations of reality mingled into a weird, stirring unity. . . . Genet’s investigation of the color black begins where most plays of this burning theme leave off. . . . This vastly gifted Frenchman uses shocking words and images to cry out at the pretensions and injustices of our world. . . . One of the most original and stimulating evenings Broadway or Off Broadway has to offer.” Howard Taubman, The New York Times
The Blue Light
by Mieko OuchiLeni Riefenstahl, one hundred years old, is in the office of a young female Hollywood studio executive. Leni’s reason to be there is clear: to make one last desperate pitch to direct her first feature film in fifty years. A thought-provoking contemplation on art, politics, and the seduction of fascism, and a theatrical examination of a woman who danced one perfect dance with the devil and forever changed the way films are made.Leni Riefenstahl was one of the most remarkable and controversial women of the twentieth century. Dancer, actor, photographer, and filmmaker, Riefenstahl caught the eye of Adolf Hitler with her prodigious first film: The Blue Light. A cinematic innovator, her decision to direct Triumph of the Will, got her blacklisted as a filmmaker until her death in 2003 at 101, unrepentant and mostly forgotten.
The Blue Room: A Play in Ten Intimate Acts (Books That Changed the World)
by David HareThe Tony Award–winning playwright and screenwriter delivers &“a witty, contemporary reworking of Arthur Schnitzler&’s nineteenth-century shocker La Ronde&” (The Mail on Sunday, four stars). Arthur Schnitzler described Reigen, his loose series of sexual sketches, as &“completely unprintable,&” and indeed, its premiere in 1921 spurred an obscenity suit. It was only when Max Ophüls made his famous film in 1950 that the work became better known as La Ronde. Now David Hare has reset these circular scenes of love and betrayal in the present day, with a cast of two actors playing a succession of characters whose sexual lives enmesh like a daisy chain. The Blue Room is a brilliant meditation on men and women, sex and social class, actors and the theater. With deft insight about the gap between the sexes, it takes the treacherous Freudian subject of projection and desire and reinvents it in a bittersweet landscape that is both eternal and completely up to date. &“[Hare&’s] play slides up on one insidiously—always suggesting more than they first suggest, planting depth charges in the mind, subtly laying a minefield in the self-confidence of one&’s first impressions.&” —New York Post &“In the jungle of this city, sex is a driving force, a commodity and a need . . . This play could almost be a vividly illustrated Freudian textbook: the erotic drive in action, amoral and ruthless. Hare&’s version is, in the deepest and most essential sense, completely faithful to Schnitzler.&” —The Sunday Times &“Hare—buttressed by Freud and Proust—has turned sexual disappointment into something more interesting, the idea that what we are in love with is part illusion.&” —The Observer
The Blue Touch Paper: A Memoir
by David Hare"Frank, moving, and beguiling, The Blue Touch Paper is the fascinating story of becoming a writer in the 1960s and 70s when Britain was changing even faster than the author."--Joan Didion David Hare has long been one of Britain's best-known screenwriters and dramatists. He's the author of more than thirty acclaimed plays that have appeared on Broadway, in the West End, and at the National Theatre. He wrote the screenplays for the hugely successful films The Hours, Plenty, and The Reader. Most recently, his play Skylight won the 2015 Tony Award for Best Revival on Broadway. Now, in his debut work of autobiography, "Britain's leading contemporary playwright" (Sunday Times) offers a vibrant and affecting account of becoming a writer amid the enormous flux of postwar England. In his customarily dazzling prose and with great warmth and humor, he takes us from his university days at Cambridge to the swinging 1960s, when he cofounded the influential Portable Theatre in London and took a memorable road trip across America, to his breakthrough successes as a playwright amid the political ferment of the '70s and the moment when Margaret Thatcher came to power at the end of the decade. Through it all, Hare sets the progress of his own life against the dramatic changes in postwar England, in which faith in hierarchy, religion, empire, and the public good all withered away. Filled with indelible glimpses of such figures as Alfred Hitchcock, Laurence Olivier, Tennessee Williams, Helen Mirren, and Joseph Papp, The Blue Touch Paper is a powerful evocation of a society in transition and a writer in the making.
The Blunderer
by MolièreMolière was a French playwright who is considered to be one of the greatest comedians in all of Western literature. With classics such as Tartuffe, The School for Wives, and The Misanthrope, Molière is one of the most widely read playwrights in history. This edition of The Blunderer includes a table of contents.
The Blunt Playwright: An Introduction to Playwriting
by Clem MartiniThe Blunt Playwright won’t tell you everything there is to know about playwriting. It won’t even try. What it will do is examine process, structure, dialogue, and character; provide classic and contemporary scenes to study; outline clever exercises to strengthen writing skills; and so much more. Highly regarded and used in schools everywhere, this updated edition cements its place as one of the best resources for playwrights. From organizing the structure of a script to developing characters’ voices, from employing visual effects on stage to writing comedy, or from self-promotion to getting produced and published, this guide has something for everyone, no matter the stage of their career.
The Boar's Head Theatre: An Inn-yard Theatre of the Elizabethan Age (Routledge Revivals)
by C. J. SissonThe Boar’s Head Theatre, first published in 1972, provides an account of one of the Elizabethan inn-yard theatres. It is a reconstruction of considerable importance in our understanding of the performance conditions affecting Elizabethan drama, the mode of presentation and the nature of the audience. C. J. Sisson (1885-1966) was known especially for his research into Elizabethan court cases and the light they can throw on the literature and drama of the period. His discoveries included material on the Elizabethan inn-yard theatres which provides unquestionable evidence of great importance in relation to the evolution of the theatre in England. This book, which has been edited for publication by Stanley Wells, was to have been his major work on the subject. Historians of the theatre of this period will find this book indispensable, and those with a more general interest in the greatest age of English drama will be engrossed by the detailed and intimate glimpses of the theatre world which this story affords.
The Bodies That Were Not Ours: And Other Writings
by Coco FuscoInterdisciplinary artist and writer Coco Fusco is one of North America's leading interpreters of intercultural theory and practice. This volume gathers together her finest writings since 1995 and includes critical essays by Jean Fisher and Caroline Vercoe that interpret her work.Engaging and provocative, these essays, interviews, performance scripts and fotonovelas take readers on a tour of our current multicultural landscape. Fusco explores such issues as sex tourism in Cuba as a barometer of the island's entry into the global economy, Frantz Fanon's theorization of metropolitan blackness, and artistic and net activist responses to the effects of free trade on the Mexican populace. She interviews such postcolonial personnae as Isaac Julien, Hilton Als and Tracey Moffatt. Approaching the dynamics of cultural fusion from many angles, Fusco's satires, commentaries, and sociological inquiries collapse boundaries, and form a sustained meditation on how the forces of globalization impact upon the making of art.
The Bodies of Others: Drag Dances and Their Afterlives (Triangulations: Lesbian/Gay/Queer Theater/Drama/Performance)
by Selby Wynn SchwartzThe Bodies of Others explores the politics of gender in motion. From drag ballerinas to faux queens, and from butoh divas to the club mothers of modern dance, the book delves into four decades of drag dances on American stages. Drag dances take us beyond glittery one-liners and into the spaces between gender norms. In these backstage histories, dancers give their bodies over to other selves, opening up the category of realness. The book maps out a drag politics of embodiment, connecting drag dances to queer hope, memory, and mourning. There are aging étoiles, midnight shows, mystical séances, and all of the dust and velvet of divas in their dressing-rooms. But these forty years of drag dances are also a cultural history, including Mark Morris dancing the death of Dido in the shadow of AIDS, and the swans of Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo sketching an antiracist vision for ballet. Drawing on queer theory, dance history, and the embodied practices of dancers themselves, The Bodies of Others examines the ways in which drag dances undertake the work of a shared queer and trans politics.
The Body in Performance
by Patrick CampbellLively yet intriguing, The Body in Performance is a varied collection of essays about this much-discussed area. Posing the question "Why this current preoccupation with the performed body?" the collection of specially commissioned essays from both academics and practitioners - in some cases one and the same person - considers such cutting edge topics as the abject body and performance, censorship and live art, the presentation of violence on stage, carnal art, and the vexed issue of mimesis in the theatre. Drawing variously on the work of Franko B., Orlan, Annie Sprinkle, Karen Finley, and Forced Entertainment, it concludes with a creative piece about a 'Famous New York Performance Artist.' Contributors include Rebecca Schneider whose book The Explicit Body in Performance is a key text in this area, and Joan Lipkin, director and writer.
The Body in Sound, Music and Performance: Studies in Audio and Sonic Arts
by Linda O KeeffeThe Body in Sound, Music and Performance brings together cutting-edge contributions from women working on and researching contemporary sound practice. This highly interdisciplinary book features a host of international contributors and places emphasis on developments beyond the western world, including movements growing across Latin America. Within the book, the body is situated as both the site and centre for knowledge making and creative production. Chapters explore how insightful theoretical analysis, new methods, innovative practises, and sometimes within the socio-cultural conditions of racism, sexism and classicism, the body can rise above, reshape and deconstruct understood ideas about performance practices, composition, and listening/sensing. This book will be of interest to both practitioners and researchers in the fields of sonic arts, sound design, music, acoustics and performance.
The Bombay Plays
by Anosh IraniIn The Matka King—a story that pits human nature against love and chance—a landscape of betrayal and redemption comes to life in the red-light district of Bombay, India. One very powerful eunuch, Top Rani, operates an illicit lottery through his brothel, and when a gambler who is deeply in debt makes an unexpected wager, the stakes become life and death. Bombay Black—winner of the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Play—tells the story of Apsara, Bombay’s most infamous dancer, who lives with her iron-willed mother, Padma, in an apartment by the sea. Padma takes money from men so they can watch her daughter perform a mesmerizing dance. When a mysterious blind man named Kamal visits for a private dance, his secret link to their past threatens to change each of their lives forever. At turns lyrical and brutal, Bombay Black charts the seduction of Apsara by Kamal, and Padma’s violent enmity towards the blind man and the secret he holds.
The Book of Esther
by Leanna BrodieIt's June 1981. Farmers face a debt crisis with interest rates as high as 20 percent. More than three hundred men are arrested after police sweeps of Toronto bathhouses, yet Pride Toronto launches its first gay-pride parade. Everything's changing, including fifteen-year-old Esther, who escapes the family farm and runs away to the city. With the help of a brash young hustler and a gay activist who shelters street kids, she confronts her conservative-Christian parents-farmers on the brink of financial ruin-and begins to find her way home. Acclaimed playwright Leanna Brodie excels with this heartwarming coming-of-age, and coming-out, drama.The Book of Esther examines the seemingly irreconcilable positions of two groups: conservative rural Christians and militantly anti-religious urban queer activists. But Brodie doesn't take sides. Instead, it's like she's picked up a rock to discover what's scurrying around underneath, pointed it out to us, and said, "Isn't this interesting. Maybe we should all look at this for a while. Maybe we should talk about it, instead of just pretending that it isn't there."Cast of 2 women and 3 men.
The Book of Grace
by Suzan-Lori Parks"[Suzan-Lori Parks'] dislocating stage devices, stark but poetic language and fiercely idiosyncratic images transform her work into something haunting and marvelous."--Time "An original whose fierce intelligence and fearless approach to craft subvert theatrical convention and produce a mature and inimitable art that is as exciting as it is fresh."--August Wilson Named one of the "100 Innovators for the Next New Wave" by Time magazine, Suzan-Lori Parks is a truly original voice of the American theater. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a MacArthur "Genius" Award, Parks is renowned for her groundbreaking language, theatricality, and an aesthetic that continues to evolve in unexpected ways. Her first full-length play since her award-winning Topdog/Underdog, The Book of Grace is a scorching three-person drama in which a young man returns home to south Texas to confront his father, unearthing deep-seated passions and ambition. The play premiered in spring 2010 at the Public Theater, where Parks is in the midst of a three-year residency as the first recipient of the theater's master writer chair. Suzan-Lori Parks is a playwright, screenwriter, songwriter, and novelist. Her plays include Topdog/Underdog (winner of the 2002 Pulitzer Prize), In the Blood (a 2000 Pulitzer Prize finalist), Venus (OBIE Award winner) and Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom (OBIE Award, Best New American Play).
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting: A Novel (Perennial Classics Ser.)
by Milan Kundera"An absolutely dazzling entertainment. . . . Arousing on every level—political, erotic, intellectual, and above all, humorous." —Newsweek"The Book of Laughter and Forgetting calls itself a novel, although it is part fairy tale, part literary criticism, part political tract, part musicology, and part autobiography. It can call itself whatever it wants to, because the whole is genius." —New York TimesRich in its stories, characters, and imaginative range, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting is the novel that brought Milan Kundera his first big international success in the late 1970s. Like all his work, it is valuable for far more than its historical implications. In seven wonderfully integrated parts, different aspects of human existence are magnified and reduced, reordered and emphasized, newly examined, analyzed, and experienced.
The Boss's son
by Jennifer GreenMadrid 1959. Ignacio Gómez, son of Boss Fernando Gómez, the most feared man in the entire capital, has always lived in constant conflict with his father, who tried in every way to keep him out of his shady dealings, but the young thirty-year-old hungry for money and beautiful women he managed in a few years to build his empire and gradually outclass Fernando's business. After his father's death during an assassination attempt on the Álvarez family, Ignacio decides to avenge his death and gets close to his daughter, Helena Álvarez, and within a short time manages to win the woman's heart by making her believe he has feelings for her. Unaware of the young man's plans, the woman lets herself go completely. However, something does not go according to his plans and he is forced to close the game soon. But what if love struck Ignacio's heart and changed the tables? What if losing Helena meant losing himself too? Between hate and love, revenge and blood trails, what will be their fate?
The Boy Who Changed World
by Patricia MalangoHigh School \ Comedy \ 8m, 6f, optional extras \ 3 exteriors or 1 set. \ A prehistoric teenager has a problem: he is flunking fighting, hunting, and fishing and he faces the certain death of exile. To impress glamorous Dorothy, he invents painting, poetry, and music all humiliating failures. Just in time to save himself he invents the wheel and the villagers reward him with the status of manhood; it even looks as if his father will be elected mayor after all. Dorothy is available now, but George has learned the meaning of love and chooses another.
The Boy Who Killed Poncho Villa
by Jack FrakesLoosely based on THE PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLD . It's rodeo time in Tombstone, 1912. The girls admire local cowboys like Red Roberts, while feisty Peggy Fletcher longs for past romantic heroes. A rumor spreads that Pancho Villa, the notorious Mexican bandit, is in town. But Danny Jones, a shy young man, arrives to claim he killed Pancho Villa by hitting him over the head with his ukelele. Just as the townspeople accept Danny as a hero, Pancho Villa arrives with head bandaged and furiously looking for Danny. Helen Hunt, the town flirt gets rid of Pancho so Danny can take her to the barn dance. Meanwhile, citizens enter Danny in the donkey race, which he wins - becoming a more popular hero! As Peggy and Helen bicker over Danny's affections, Pancho Villa returns to get even. Again Danny clobbers Pancho with his ukelele. The townspeople now think Pancho is really dead! But since they saw "the killing" they prepare to lynch Danny. Again, Pancho returns to ask Danny to join his band in Mexico, and teach him to play the "guitarito." Danny agrees. As they leave as "amigos", Peggy follows in pursuit of the boy who almost killed Pancho Villa!
The Boy Who Would Be Shakespeare: A Tale of Forgery and Folly
by Doug StewartStewart, a freelance journalist who writes about history and the arts, tells the story of the falsification of documents by a 19-year old British clerk, William-Henry Ireland, in 1795, who tried to pass them off as Shakespeare's in an attempt to impress his father. Since nothing survived in Shakespeare's own hand, he was able to produce letters, deeds, poetry, drawings, and a play that he claimed were Shakespeare's, which was staged in 1796. Stewart describes Ireland's family and life, his father's obsession with collecting antiquities, the cult of Shakespeare that existed at the time, publication of the papers, the inquiry into the forgeries, and his confession. A few facsimiles of the forgeries are included. Annotation ©2010 Book News, Inc. , Portland, OR (booknews. com)
The Boys in the Band: Flashpoints of Cinema, History, and Queer Politics
by Matt BellThe Boys in the Band’s debut was revolutionary for its fictional but frank presentation of a male homosexual subculture in Manhattan. Based on Mart Crowley’s hit Off-Broadway play from 1968, the film’s two-hour running time approximates real time, unfolding at a birthday party attended by nine men whose language, clothing, and behavior evoke a range of urban gay “types.” Although various popular critics, historians, and film scholars over the years have offered cursory acknowledgment of the film’s importance, more substantive research and analysis have been woefully lacking. The film’s neglect among academics belies a rich and rewarding object of study. The Boys in the Band merits not only the close reading that should accompany such a well-made text but also recognition as a landmark almost ideally situated to orient us amid the highly complex, shifting cultural terrain it occupied upon its release—and has occupied since. The scholars assembled here bring an invigorating variety of methods to their considerations of this singular film. Coming from a wide range of academic disciplines, they pose and answer questions about the film in remarkably different ways. Cultural analysis, archival research, interviews, study of film traditions, and theoretical framing intensify their revelatory readings of the film. Many of the essays take inventive approaches to longstanding debates about identity politics, and together they engage with current academic work across a variety of fields that include queer theory, film theory, gender studies, race and ethnic studies, and Marxist theory. Addressing The Boys in the Band from multiple perspectives, these essays identify and draw out the film’s latent flashpoints—aspects of the film that express the historical, cinematic, and queer-political crises not only of its own time, but also of today. The Boys in the Band is an accessible touchstone text in both queer studies and film studies. Scholars and students working in the disciplines of film studies, queer studies, history, theater, and sociology will surely find the book invaluable and a shaping influence on these fields in the coming years.
The Bram Fischer Waltz: A play
by Harry KalmerAlthough widely known as the Afrikaner communist who saved Nelson Mandela from the gallows, very little is known about Bram Fischer the man. Fischer was a respected Senior Advocate at the Johannesburg Bar who chose to side with the oppressed and went underground to join the armed struggle. He was arrested on 5 November 1965 after almost ten months on the run. ‘I owed it to the political prisoners, to the banished, to the silenced and to those under house arrest not to remain a spectator, but to act.’ These words spoken by Bram Fischer in his statement from the dock during his treason trial were followed by a life sentence. Scion of a proudly Afrikaner family that included a prime minister and a judge president of the Orange Free State, he would seem to be an unlikely hero of the liberation movement. Uncompromising in his political beliefs and driven by an unshakeable integrity and a commitment to the dream of a non-racial democracy, Fischer was also humorous, fun-loving and a family man, devoted to his wife and children. The many facets of this remarkable man are reflected in The Bram Fischer Waltz, Harry Kalmer’s lyrical tribute. A brief and intense work, with the protagonist as narrator, this one person play takes the audience through a roller coaster of emotions as it tells Fischer’s story. The play won The Standard Bank Silver Ovation Award when it premiered in English at 2013 the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown and was awarded the Adelaide Tambo Award for Human Rights in the Arts in 2014. The text is supplemented by a foreword by George Bizos and an introduction by the playwright, reflecting on the path that led him to write the play, and an afterword by Yvonne Malan, entitled ‘The Power of Moral Courage’.
The Break of Noon: A Play
by Neil LaButeWhat if God told you to be a better person but the world wouldn’t allow it?Such is the dilemma facing Joe Smith, a run-of-the-mill white-collar businessman who survives an office shooting and is subsequently touched by what he believes to be a divine vision. His journey toward personal enlightenment-past greed and lust and the other deadly sins-is, by turns, tense, hilarious, profane, and heartbreaking.Exploring the narrow path to spiritual fulfillment and how strewn it is with the funny, frantic failings of humankind, The Break of Noon showcases Neil LaBute at his discomfiting best.
The Breathing Hole
by Colleen MurphyStories of the Canadian Arctic intersect in this epic five-hundred-year journey led by a one-eared polar bear. In 1535, Hummiktuq, an Inuk widow, has a strange dream about the future. The next day, she discovers a bear cub floating on ice near a breathing hole. Despite the concerns of her community, she adopts him and names him Angu’řuaq. In 1845, Angu’řuaq and his mate Ukuannuaq wander into a chance meeting between explorers from the Franklin Expedition and Inuit hunters. Later, when the explorers are starving, the bears meet them again. By 2035, entrepreneurs are assessing degrees of melting ice for future opportunities. Angu’řuaq encounters the passengers and crew of a luxury cruise ship as it slinks through the oily waters of the Northwest Passage. Humorous and dramatic, The Breathing Hole is a profound saga that traces the paths of colonialism and climate change to a deeply moving conclusion.