"Alice Birch's new play is scored like a piece of music ... It is an extraordinary echoing text, full of pain and strange beauty. The three stories play out simultaneously on stage, the dialogue from one scene overlapping with the other two in a manner that borders on the choral ... Birch has provided a text that explores these ideas in a formally invigorating way." The Stage Three generations of women. For each, the chaos of what has come before brings with it a painful legacy. A powerful, unflinching look at a family afflicted with severe depression and mental illness. Presented as a triptych of plays performed side by side, this groundbreaking play reverberates with audiences and readers. Published for the first time in Methuen Drama's Modern Classics series, this edition features a brand new introduction by Ava Davies.

Some Truths And Other Perversities is a compilation of some theatrical works and scripts for short fictions written by Kalent Zaiz during the point of her life when she was given a break in acting. The works written during the process were created and designed as a concern of an actress, the feelings during the career years in the majority of the projects where she worked. The scripts have strong, masculine characters. After that, she began to start searching for feminine or historical character like "Frida Kahlo," whose lives marked a milestone in culture and in the society. Its main objective is to create a strong-willed feminine character and a deep content, away from false vanity and the established prototype. The works of Kalent narrates a real story and daily lives of human life from simple dimension to the most complicated ones.

Plays from Romania: Dramaturgies of Subversion reflects the diversity of dramatic writing exploring the past and present of Romania, and takes stock thirty years after the collapse of communism. In addition to plays originally written in Romanian, the collection includes work by German, Hungarian and Roma authors born and/or working in Romania, and brings together plays written during the communist period and its aftermath. The plays included in the collection, edited and translated by Jozefina Komporaly and fully published for the first time in English, demonstrate broad variety in terms of form and content - ranging from family dramas to allegories, and absurdist experiments to modular texts rooted in open dramaturgy - and are the work of both individual playwrights and the results of collective creation. These works share a preoccupation with critically reflecting urgent concerns rooted in Romanian realities, and are notable dramaturgical experiments that push the boundaries of the genre. In addition, these plays also seek novel ways to examine universal experiences of the human condition, such as love, loss, abuse, betrayal, grief, violence, manipulation and despair. This unique anthology celebrates the renewed vitality and variety of writing for the stage after 1990, and endeavours to place Romanian theatre in a forward-looking transnational context. Lowlands ('Niederungen') by Herta Muller, adapted for the stage by Mihaela Panainte (German) This stage adaptation is based on a volume of short stories by Herta Muller written in German in 1982 and focuses on the perspective of a child narrator, by way of a series of episodes that centre on mundane aspects of daily life in a remote village against the backdrop of the oppressive atmosphere of mid-twentieth century Romania. The Spectator Sentenced to Death ('Spectatorul condamnat la moarte') by Matei Visniec (Romanian) This play is a bitter parody of the Stalinist justice system, which totally disregards the fundamental question whether the accused is actually guilty or not. The Passport ('Kalucsni') by Gyoergy Dragoman (Hungarian) This play is set pre-1989 in a typical small town in the Transylvanian province of Romania, in which the lives of the various social classes, and the fate of the persecuted and that of those who persecute are closely intertwined. The Man Who Had His Inner Evil Removed ('Omul din care a fost extras raul') by Matei Visniec (Romanian) This topical play is a sharp reflection on the voluntary servitude in which we place ourselves, often unawares, in conditions of our contemporary consumer culture, and a fierce critique of increasingly dominant tendencies to abandon moral criteria in political life. Stories of the Body (Artemisia, Eva, Lina, Teresa) ('A test toertenetei') by Andras Visky (Hungarian) The cycle Stories of the Body comprises four plays based on real life stories as experienced by remarkable women (including Mother Teresa and Italian Renaissance painter Artemisia Gentileschi), and are connected to various cities including Budapest, Cluj/Kolozsvar, Kolkata and Rome, from the 17th to the 21st century. Sexodrom by Giuvlipen Theatre Company (Mihaela Dragan, Antonella Lerca Duda, Nicoleta Ghita, Zita Moldovan, Bety Pisica, Oana Rusu, Raj Alexandru Udrea), based on a concept by Bogdan Georgescu.(Roma) This is a work of collective creation by members of the Roma Theatre company Giuvlipen, aiming to bring to public attention taboo subjects, to enhance the visibility of Roma performers and to experiment with new forms of theatre-making in a Romanian context.

This novel is an opportunity to see a world full of prejudice and ignorance through the eyes of a sixteen-year-old. Many of the facts are real, but for personal reasons, the author has used fictitious names and places. The story takes place in Romania during the communist period, and most of the situations reflect a dark side of the underground life which the totalitarian regime of that time tried to hide. The author discovered a thread of events that he followed, driven by curiosity, and then he tried, through the naivety of his age, to depict it in a mature and dramatic way. Beyond the psychological exaggerations of the author, you will discover a bygone world of human ignorance and indifference in an outmoded and morally rotten society.

How Not To Drown was first performed on 4 August 2019 at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh. "I don't know why my Dad let me go... I was too young, too weak, to make this journey. I wouldn't have sent me... He wouldn't have sent me unless there was a reason." In 2002, in the turmoil after the end of the Kosovan War, Dritan is sent on the notoriously perilous journey across the Adriatic with a gang of people smugglers to a new life in Europe. He relies on his young wit and charm to make it to the UK. But the fight for survival continues as he clings to his identity and sense of self when he ends up in the British care system. Painful yet uplifting, How Not to Drown shares a story of endurance for a little kid who wasn't safe or welcome anywhere in the world. Award-winning theatre company ThickSkin (Chalk Farm, The Static) returns to the stage with an action packed, highly visual production.

This collection, which Mr Hampden has now revised and expanded was probably the first attempt to make a really representative selection of modern one-act plays. English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish dramatists are her tragedies, comedies, fantasies, poetic plays, a religious play, and almost inevitably, a play for women only. There are a number of established favourites: including such masterpieces in their own kind as T.S. Eliot's Sweeney Agonistes and Charles Lee's Mr Sampson. Besides Sweeney Agonistes, Mr Hampden has chosen three other pieces to make up the twenty four items in this new edition - A Pound on Demand by Sean O'Casey The Dreaming of the Bones by W.B. Yeats and The Bespoke Overcoat by Wolf Markowitz - and has written a new Introduction.

Set in the First World War, Journey's End concerns a group of British officers on the front line and opens in a dugout in the trenches in France. Raleigh, a new eighteen-year-old officer fresh out of English public school, joins the besieged company of his friend and cricketing hero Stanhope, and finds him dramatically changed ...

Laurence Olivier starred as Stanhope in the first performance of Journey's End in 1928; the play was an instant stage success and remains a great anti-war classic.

In the beginning, there is an almighty power, known by the name the Lord God, his royal majesty. His greatest creation, Lucifer, stands on his right and is the almighty's go-to divine servant. The almighty does ask Lucifer to complete many tasks, such as creating the heavens and the earth. But Lucifer also has a few ideas of his own, some of which are cause for speculation.

In The Greatest Fall from Grace, the most devilish character in history experiences mind-bending adventures through time and space, breaching heavenly and hellish bodies both physical and otherworldly. Lucifer understands that being the first of anything is difficult, but being the first created to fall from grace is even more difficult. Trying to redeem himself and trying hard not to fall in love, are challenges he faces.

This drama follows Lucifer through his life's adventures and answers the question of whether or not he, the others, and earth will survive the catastrophes this universe and beyond can create.

Based on the conviction that only translators who write poetry themselves can properly re-create the celebrated and timeless tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the Greek Tragedy in New Translations offers new translations that go beyond the literal meaning of the Greek in order to evoke the poetry of the originals.
Collected here for the first time in the series are four major works by Euripides all set in Athens: Hippoltos, translated by Robert Bagg, a dramatic interpretation of the tragedy of Phaidra; Suppliant Women, translated by Rosanna Warren and Steven Scully, a powerful examination of the human psyche; Ion, translated by W. S. Di Piero and Peter Burian, a complex enactment of the changing relations between the human and divine orders; and The Children of Herakles, translated by Henry Taylor and Robert A. Brooks, a descriptive tale of the descendants of Herakles and their journey home. These four tragedies were originally avialble as single volumes. This volume retains the informative introductions and explanatory notes of the original editions and adds a single combines glossary and Greek line numbers.

Winner of the London Hellenic Prize 2020 The Greek Trilogy of Luis Alfaro gathers together for the first time the three 'Greek' plays of the MacArthur Genius Award-winning Chicanx playwright and performance artist. Based respectively on Sophocles' Electra and Oedipus, and Euripides' Medea, Alfaro's Electricidad, Oedipus El Rey, and Mojada transplant ancient themes and problems into the 21st century streets of Los Angeles and New York, in order to give voice to the concerns of the Chicanx and wider Latinx communities. From performances around the world including sold-out runs at New York's Public Theater, these texts are extremely important to those studying classical reception, Greek theatre and Chicanx writers. This unique anthology features definitive editions of all three plays alongside a comprehensive introduction which provides a critical overview of Luis Alfaro's work, accentuating not only the unique nature of these three 'urban' adaptations of ancient Greek tragedy but also the manner in which they address present-day Chicanx and Latinx socio-political realities across the United States. A brief introduction to each play and its overall themes precedes the text of the drama. The anthology concludes with exclusive supplementary material aimed at enhancing understanding of Alfaro's plays: a 'Performance History' timeline outlining the performance history of the plays; an alphabetical 'Glossary' explaining the most common terms in Spanish and Spanglish appearing in each play; and a 'Further Reading' list providing primary and secondary bibliography for each play. The anthology is completed by a new interview with Alfaro which addresses key topics such as Alfaro's engagement with ancient Greek drama and his work with Chicanx communities across the United States, thus providing a critical contextualisation of these critically-acclaimed plays.

Chekhov's fame grows steadily with the years, and now for the first time his best work is made available in a single low priced volume. The translation is by S.S. Koteliansky, whose English versions of The Cherry Orchard and The Seagull appear here for the first time. The Wood Demon, the earlier version of Uncle Vanya, is the third of the full length plays in the book. A few shorter playlets are also included, and Tchekhov's mastery of the art of the short story is shown by a selection of thirteen of his best stories, including My Life, and The Lady with the Toy Dog.

Euripides' Medea is one of the most popular Greek tragedies in the contemporary theatre. Numerous modern adaptations see the play as painting a picture of the struggle of the powerless under the powerful, of women against men, of foreigners versus natives. The play has been adapted into colonial and historical contexts to lend its powerful resonances to issues of current import. Black Medea is an anthology of six adaptations of the Euripidean tragedy by contemporary American playwrights that present Medea as a woman of color, combined with interviews, analytical essays and introductions which frame the original and adaptations. Placing six adaptations side by side and interviewing the playwrights in order to gain their insights into their work allows the reader to see how an ancient Greek tragedy has been used by contemporary American artists to frame and understand African American history. Of the six plays present in the volume, three have never before been published and one of the others has been out of print for almost thirty years. Thus the volume makes available to students, scholars and artists a significant body of dramatic work not currently available. Black Medea is an important book for scholars, students, artists and libraries in African American studies, classics, theatre and performance studies, women and gender Studies, adaptation theory and literature. Theatre companies, universities, community theatres, and other producing organizations will also be interested in the volume.

Part one begins by examining the nature of Diderot's theatrical revolution as it is revealed in the works of dramatic theory, the Entretiens sur Le Fils naturel and De la poesie dramatique, as well as in his letters and articles for the Correspondance litteraire. It also compares this theory with the level of innovation revealed in practical terms in the plays themselves. Diderot's approach to theatrical dialogue seems to be one of the most original, and most frequently criticised, aspects of his dramaturgy and this is therefore the subject of a separate chapter. Part two examines both the sources of Diderot's dramatic works, and the way in which he renews this source material in order to produce dramatic theory which seems more original than it actually is, and a theoretical style which, for good or ill, is uniquely his own. This section begins with a consideration of the most obviously derivative of his dramatic works, his translation of The Gamester, which, because of the contemporary popularity of the English play, gives us a unique opportunity to compare Diderot's working methods with those of three French contemporaries who were also attracted by this text. The remaining chapters deal firstly with the major influences on the dramatic theory, and secondly with the sources and compositional methods of the four plays: Le Fils naturel, Le Pere de famille, Les Peres malheureux and Est-il bon? Est-il mechant?

Pygmalion, by George Bernard Shaw - Akasha Classics, AkashaPublishing.Com - As will be seen later on, Pygmalion needs, not a preface, but a sequel, which I have supplied in its due place. The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it. They spell it so abominably that no man can teach himself what it sounds like. It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him. German and Spanish are accessible to foreigners: English is not accessible even to English-men. The reformer England needs today is an energetic phonetic enthusiast: that is why I have made such a one the hero of a popular play. There have been heroes of that kind crying in the wilderness for many years past. When I became interested in the subject towards the end of the eighteen-seventies, Melville Bell was dead; but Alexander J. Ellis was still a living patriarch, with an impressive head always covered by a velvet skull cap, for which he would apologize to public meetings in a very courtly manner. He and Tito Pagliardini, another phonetic veteran, were men whom it was impossible to dislike. Henry Sweet, then a young man, lacked their sweetness of character: he was about as conciliatory to conventional mortals as Ibsen or Samuel Butler. His great ability as a phonetician (he was, I think, the best of them all at his job) would have entitled him to high official recognition, and perhaps enabled him to popularize his subject, but for his Satanic contempt for all academic dignitaries and persons in general who thought more of Greek than of phonetics. Once, in the days when the Imperial Institute rose in South Kensington, and Joseph Chamberlain was booming the Empire, I induced the editor of a leading monthly review to commission an article from Sweet on the imperial importance of his subject. When it arrived, it contained nothing but a savagely derisive attack on a professor of language and literature whose chair Sweet regarded as proper to a phonetic expert only. The article, being libelous, had to be returned as impossible; and I had to renounce my dream of dragging its author into the limelight. When I met him afterwards, for the first time for many years, I found to my astonishment that he, who had been a quite tolerably presentable young man, had actually managed by sheer scorn to alter his personal appearance until he had become a sort of walking repudiation of Oxford and all its traditions. It must have been largely in his own despite that he was squeezed into something called a Readership of phonetics there. The future of phonetics rests probably with his pupils, who all swore by him; but nothing could bring the man himself into any sort of compliance with the university, to which he nevertheless clung by divine right in an intensely Oxonian way. I daresay his papers, if he has left any, include some satires that may be published without too destructive results fifty years hence. He was, I believe, not in the least an ill-natured man: very much the opposite, I should say; but he would not suffer fools gladly.

This is the first complete new scholarly edition for almost a century of one of the masterpieces of Athenian Old Comedy. Olson offers an extensive introduction, a text based on a fresh collation of the manuscripts, and a massive literary and historical commentary. All Greek in the introduction and commentary not cited for technical reasons is translated, making much of the edition accessible to non-specialists.

Like all plantations, during America's slave period, the Big A had its share of secrets. And as Mr. Arnold went on believing old Mae (his oldest and best picker) was oblivious to his little secret... old Mae had a few secrets of her own, which left the wealthy plantation owner clueless to what would be his own undoing... yet old Mae couldn't hold a candle to Pleasant, who stayed royally humble, as he went about helping everyone around him. But not even Ella knew what Duval took to the battle field with him. And while Clora Lee and Cowayne held more secrets than anyone could count, Sistah often kept the two young adventure seekers off balance, with her double life. Yet the secret, the Arnold's oldest daughter held close to her chest, was sure to come to light one day. And as the Big A slowly fell into ruins, it collapsed on one last secret, the old plan-tation hoped to keep hidden for all eternity...