Bafana Republic And Other Satires is a selection of monologues from a series of one-person satirical revues. Using the 2010 FIFA World Cup as an entry point for satirical commentary, the sketches focus on various issues facing democratic South Africa: state 'vanity' projects, land issues, abuse of women and state capture.

In any deeply polarised society, satire provides an effective means for challenging audiences. Van Graan's potent mix of comedy, poetry and drama compels audiences to reflect on controversial topics in a non-alienating, thought-provoking and thoroughly entertaining way. The collection tackles themes of corruption, colonialism, violence against women, AIDS denialism, violent crime, racism and inequality head on. Readers or audience members cannot remain unaffected by the use of humour, exaggeration, irony and ridicule in the sketches to highlight social and political issues and human foibles. They will laugh and cringe and sometimes cry, but ultimately they will appreciate more deeply the beauty and humanity of their country, and perhaps feel recharged with hope.

The sketches in the collection come from six one-person revues:

• Bafana Republic (2007),
• Bafana Republic: Extra Time (2008),
• Bafana Republic: Penalty Shootout (2009),
• Pay Back the Curry (2016),
• State Fracture (2017)
• Land Acts (2018)

The compilation can be used as monologues for exam purposes or as acting exercises for drama students, or selections can be made from the sketches to make up one-person shows of varying lengths.

This volume uniquely draws together seven contemporary plays by a selection of the finest African women writers and practitioners from across the continent, offering a rich and diverse portrait of identity, politics, culture, gender issues and society in contemporary Africa.

Niqabi Ninja by Sara Shaarawi (Egypt) is set in Cairo during the chaotic time of the Egyptian uprising.

Not That Woman by Tosin Jobi-Tume (Nigeria) addresses issues of violence against women in Nigeria and its attendant conspiracy of silence. The play advocates zero-tolerance for violence against women and urges women to bury shame and speak out rather than suffer in silence.

I Want To Fly by Thembelihle Moyo (Zimbabwe) tells the story of an African girl who wants to be a pilot. It looks at how patriarchal society shapes the thinking of men regarding lobola (bride price), how women endure abusive men and the role society at large plays in these issues.

Silent Voices by Adong Judith (Uganda) is a one-act play based on interviews with people involved in the LRA and the effects of the civil war in Uganda. It critiques this, and by implication, other truth commissions.

Unsettled by JC Niala (Kenya) deals with gender violence, land issues and relations of both black and white Kenyans living in, and returning to, the country.

Mbuzeni by Koleka Putuma (South Africa) is a story of four female orphans, aged eight to twelve, their sisterhood and their fixation with death and burials. It explores the unseen force that governs and dictates the laws that the villagers live by.

Bonganyi by Sophia Kwachuh Mempuh (Cameroon) depicts the effects of colonialism as told through the story of a slave girl: a singer and dancer, who wants to win a competition to free her family.

Each play also includes a biography of the playwright, the writer's own artistic statement, a production history of the play and a critical contextualisation of the theatrical landscape from which each woman is writing.

When it was first produced in 1959, A Raisin in the Sun was awarded the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for that season and hailed as a watershed in American drama. A pioneering work by an African-American playwright, the play was a radically new representation of black life. "A play that changed American theater forever."--The New York Times.

The Patient, known as Mrs. Wingfield, has been horribly injured in a fall from her balcony. Unable to communicate, it could have been an accident, attempted suicide or worse still a coldblooded killer bent on murder. While relatives gather around her hospital bed the tension builds as an ingenious device helps Mrs. Wingfield convey a message that could solve the mystery.

A Methuen Student Edition of Chekhov's classic play in Michael Frayn's acclaimed translation 'The play has been flooded with light, like a room with the curtains drawn back' John Peter, Sunday Times 'The direct simplicity of this new translation ... uncovers not only the nerve endings of Chekhov's restless malcontents but also their comic absurdities. It is, as he always intended, actually funny ...' Jack Tinker, Daily Mail When it opened in St Petersburg in 1896, The Seagull survived only five performances after a disastrous first night. Two years later it was revived by Nemirovich-Danchenko at the newly-founded Moscow Art Theatre with Stanslasky as Trigorin and was an immediate success. Checkhov's description of the play was characteristically self-mocking: "A comedy - 3F, 6M, four acts, rural scenery (a view over a lake); much talk of literature, little action, five bushels of love". Michael Frayn's translation was commissioned by the Oxford Playhouse Company.

One of the nineteenth century's most successful and most frequently revived plays, An Ideal Husband has divided critics more than any other of Wilde's plays. Treating political intrigue, financial fraud, blackmail, scandal and spin, and the role of women in public life, it is a play which engaged with issues of vital importance to its late-Victorian audience, which continue to resonate today. Sos Eltis, a specialist in Victorian drama and its relation to women's issues, provides a stimulating new perspective on An Ideal Husband, through an introduction that looks at its relation with contemporary social purity campaigns, women's rights, and political scandals. The introduction also gives a substantial performance history, with particular reference to the play's film versions and the influential Peter Hall theatre production.

Elesin Oba, the King's Horseman, has a single destiny. When the King dies, he must commit ritual suicide and lead his King's favourite horse and dog through the passage to the world of the ancestors. A British Colonial Officer, Pilkings, intervenes to prevent the death and arrests Elesin. The play is a set text for NEAB GCSE, NEAB A Level and NEAB A/S Level. 'A masterpiece of 20th century drama' - Guardian "A transfixing work of modern world drama" (Independent); "clearly a masterpiece. . . he achieves the full impact of Greek tragedy" (Irving Wardle, Independent on Sunday); "the action of the play is as inevitable and eloquent as in Antigone: a clash of values and cultures so fundamental that tragedy issues: a tragedy for each individual, each tribe" (Michael Schmidt, Daily Telegraph)

Wilde's "trivial play for serious people" is a sparkling comedy of manners. This hilariously absurd satire pits sincerity against style, barbed witticisms against ostentatious elegance. Wilde's brilliantly constructed plot and famous dialogue enrich the appeal of his celebrated characters, as he turns accepted ideas inside out and situations upside down in this, his masterpiece. The Student Edition offers a plot summary, full commentary, character notes and questions for study, besides a chronology and bibliography.

On a still, cool day in the east of a city by the sea, three sounds only: a bulldozer’s engine, a forgotten song, a canon that tells the time. Behind the bulldozer, a sign: Luxury Mall Coming Soon. As the vehicle moves in to the clear ground, it strikes at something unexpected…

What Remains is a fusion of text, dance and movement to tell a story about the unexpected uncovering of a slave burial ground in Cape Town, the archaeological dig that follows and a city haunted by the memory of slavery. When the bones emerge from the ground, everyone in the city – slave descendants, archaeologists, citizens, property developers – is forced to reckon with a history sometimes remembered, sometimes forgotten.

Loosely based on the events at Prestwich Place, What Remains is a path between memory and magic, the uncanny and the known, waking and dreaming. Four figures – The Archaeologist, The Healer, The Dancer and The Student – move between bones and books, archives and madness, paintings and protest, as they struggle to reconcile the past with the now.

An unhappy game of romantic follow-the-leader explodes into murder one weekend at The Hollow, home of Sir Henry and Lucy Angkatell. Dr. Cristow is at the center of the trouble when his mistress Henrietta, ex-mistress Veronica, and wife Gerda, simultaneously arrive at The Hollow. Also visiting are Edward (who is in love with Henrietta) and Midge (who loves Edward). Veronica ardently desires to marry Cristow and succeeds in reopening their affair but is unable to get him to divorce his wife. Veronica unwisely states that if she cannot have him, no one shall. Within five minutes Cristow is dead. Nearly everyone has a motive and most had the opportunity. Enter Inspector Colquhoun and Sergeant Penny to solve the crime.

Softcops renders the philosophy of Foucault as a music-hall turn and Victorian freakshow "theatre and history combine to give such intelligent fun" (TLS); Top Girls brings five great and less-than-great women from history together for a dinner party and "has a combination of directness and complexity which keeps you both emotionally and intellectually alert" (Sunday Times); Fen scrutinises the lives of the low-paid women potato pickers of the fens (in Eastern England) and "the playwright pins down her poetic subject matter in dialogue of impressive vigour and economy" (Financial Times) while Serious Money is a satirical study of the effects of the Big Bang - "Pure genius...the first play about the city to capture the authentic atmosphere of the place." (Daily Telegraph)

This volume includes The Seagull, a about the battle for power between a mother and her son which ends in tragedy; Uncle Vanya tells of two obsessive love affairs that lead nowhere, and a flirtation that brings disaster; Three Sisters in which three siblings wrestle with their futures and The Cherry Orchard where the old must inevitably give way to the new. Haunting and elusive, these four great late masterpieces have found in Michael Frayn a translator who perfectly captures their delicate balance of the tragic and the absurd. The volume also contains four of Chekhov's early short 'vaudevilles' as well as a substantial introduction by Michael Frayn. "The critical clamour for a Complete Chekhov in Michael Frayn's translation has borne fruit" (Sunday Times)

Beautiful Thing explores pre-teenage homo-erotic sensuality and the frictions and intimacies of living cheek by jowl on a Thamesmead housing estate.

Is God Is is a modern myth about twin sisters who sojourn from the Dirty South to the California desert to exact righteous revenge. Winner of the 2016 Relentless Award, Aleshea Harris collides the ancient, the modern, the tragic, the Spaghetti Western, and Afropunk in this darkly funny and unapologetic world premiere.

Hedda is an intelligent and ambitious woman, trapped in the stifling environment of a bourgeois 19th-century marriage. When writer Eilert Loevborg, an old flame returns to Hedda's life with a masterpiece that might threaten her husband's career, Hedda decides to take drastic and fatal action. Universally condemned in 1890 when it was written, Hedda Gabler has since become one of Ibsen's most frequently performed plays. Its title role is elusive and complex: Hedda is an intelligent and ambitious woman, who has no means of finding personal fulfilment in the stifling world of late nineteenth-century bourgeois society. Too frightened of scandal to become involved with a brilliant, wayward writer, she opts for a conventional but loveless marriage in the hope of finding surrogate satisfaction through her husband's career. Blending comedy and tragedy disconcertingly together, Ibsen probes the thwarted aspirations and hidden anxieties of his characters against a background of contemporary social conditions and attitudes.

A student edition of Mamet's Pulitzer Prize-winning play First staged in Britain in 1983, Glengarry Glen Ross is the tale of four real-estate salesmen in a cut-throat sales competition. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1984 and was made into a film, starring Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, Kevin Spacey and Alec Baldwin, in 1992. "The finest American playwright of his generation" Sunday Times "A chillingly funny indictment of a world in which you are what you sell" Guardian "Nobody alive writes better American...Here at last, carving characters out of language, is a play with real muscle" Observer "David Mamet, screenwriter of The Verdict and The Postman Always Rings Twice, is alongside Sam Shepard and Michael Weller, one of the most distinctive voices on the contemporary American stage" Michael Coveney, Financial Times

Calvin, a ten-month old baby (acted by an adult), can still remember his previous life when he was happily married to Laura, despite the constant attentions of his womanising friend, Bob. Calvin will lose his blissful memories when he reaches his first birthday - or speaks - so he determines nothing will make him talk!3 women, 2 men

In hierdie drama word die leser/gehoor gekonfronteer met die gevolge van keuses waarmee bykans alle Suid-Afrikaners kan identifiseer: kwessies soos emigrasie, die behoud van bande met die geboorteland, nagevolge van die Angolese bosoorlog, moorde op bejaardes en sosiale onsekerhede as gevolg van kriminele geweld. Hiermee gee Opperman dramaties gestalte aan die gedagte dat die persoonlike dikwels ’n politieke strekking het. Ook ander verwysingsraamwerke tree na vore, waaronder die invloed van die geskiedenis en die soeke na identiteit.

'I know the trade: I learned it when I was in Wittenberg' Thus speaks Lacy, the gentleman who disguises himself as a simple shoemaker in order to win his true love, the grocer's daughter Rose. The Shoemaker's Holiday is one of the most engaging citizen comedies of the 17th century. Written and first performed at much the same time as Hamlet, it has an unexpected affinity with Shakespeare's tragedy: both feature a leading character who has spent time in Wittenberg, where he has learned something that has changed him. But whereas Hamlet's Wittenberg philosophy steers him into the realm of the individuated self, Lacy's Wittenberg trade directs him and his fellows into the world of the collectively crafted commodity. In the process, the play offers fascinating insight into the evolution of fashion and the growth of consumer culture in newly capitalist London. This new student edition contains a lengthy new Introduction with background on the author, date and sources, the play's major preoccupations, and stage history. The editor, Jonathan Gil Harris, is Professor of English at George Washington University. he is the author of Foreign Bodies and the Body Politic, Sick Economies, and Untimely Matter in the Time of Shakespeare.

"Come to A Raisin in the Sun as you would to any classic. It speaks to us today as it did almost half a century ago." Bonnie Greer In south side Chicago, Walter Lee, a Black chauffeur, dreams of a better life, and hopes to use his father's life insurance money to open a liquor store. His mother, who rejects the liquor business, uses some of the money to secure a proper house for the family. Mr Lindner, a representative of the all-white neighbourhood, tries to buy them out. Walter sinks the rest of the money into his business scheme, only to have it stolen by one of his partners. In despair Walter contacts Lindner, and almost begs to buy them out, but with the help of his wife, Walter finally finds a way to assert his dignity. A Raisin in the Sun was the first play written by a Black woman to be produced on Broadway and won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award. Hansberry was the youngest and the first Black writer to receive this award. Deeply committed to the Black struggle for equality and human rights, Lorraine Hansberry's brilliant career as a writer was cut short by her death when she was only 34. This new, updated edition in Methuen Drama's Modern Classics series includes the full, definitive text and a brand new introduction by Soyica Diggs Colbert.

What is home? The answer seems obvious. But Telling Our Stories of Home, an international collection of eleven plays by and about women from Lebanon, Haiti, Venezuela, Uganda, Palestine, Brazil, India, UK, and the US, complicates the answer. The "answer" includes stories as far-ranging as: enslaved women trying to create a home, one by any means necessary, and one in the ocean; siblings wrestling with their differing devotion to home after their mother's death; a family wrestling with the government's refusal to allow the burial of their soldier-son in their hometown; a young scholar attempting to feel at home after studying abroad; a young man fleeing home due to his sexual orientation only to discover the difficulty of creating home elsewhere, and Siddis (Indians of African descent) continuing to struggle for acceptance despite having lived in India for over 600 years. These are voices seldom represented to a larger audience. The plays and performance pieces range from 20 to 90-minute pieces and include a mix of monologue, duologue, and ensemble plays. Short yet powerful, they allow fantastic performance opportunities particularly in an age of social-distancing with flexible casts that together invite the theme of home to be performed and studied on the page. The plays include: The House by Arze Khodr (Lebanon), Happy by Kia Corthron (US), The Blue of the Island by Evelyne Trouillot (Haiti), Nine Lives by Zodwa Nyoni (UK), Leaving, but Can't Let Go by Lupe Gehrenbeck (Venezuela), Questions of Home by Doreen Baingana (Uganda), On the Last Day of Spring by Fidaa Zidan (Palestine) Letting Go and Moving On by Louella Dizon San Juan (US), Antimemories of an Interrupted Trip by Aldri Anunciacao (Brazil), So Goes We by Jacqueline E. Lawton (US), and Those Who Live Here, Those Who Live There by Geeta P. Siddi and Girija P. Siddi (India)