I'd had a conversation specifically with Dan about ecstasy. It's one of the things you do as a parent, isn't it? Wear your helmet when you're out on your bike, you know, don't take drugs. To be honest, I was more worried about him being safe on his bike than at a party with his friends. The words of the title are the last ones spoken by sixteen-year-old Daniel Spargo-Mabbs to his mother. One evening in January 2014, Daniel's parents thought he was going to a friend's house. He actually attended an illegal rave and later died after taking MDMA. That fateful evening is told through the words of his school friends and family, divided into two hard-hitting acts in Mark Wheeller's verbatim play. I Love You, Mum - I Promise I Won't Die was commissioned by the charity set up in Daniel's memory to raise awareness about the danger of party drugs. It is a fast-paced, tragic, vibrant piece of verbatim theatre, which should engage teenage readers, audiences and performers alike.

Ohio State Murders explores the experiences of Suzanne Alexander, a fictional Black writer whose life both is, and is not, like her author's. When Suzanne enters Ohio State University in 1949, she has no idea what the supposed safe haven of academia holds in store. Years later, Suzanne returns to the university to talk about the violence in her writing. A dark mystery unravels. Adrienne Kennedy's play is an intriguing, unusual and chilling look at the destructiveness of racism in the U.S.

A gang of teenage girls gathers in an abandoned treehouse to summon the ghost of Pablo Escobar. Are they messing with the actual spirit of the infamous cartel kingpin? Or are they really just messing with each other? A roller coaster ride through the danger and damage of girlhood - the teenage wasteland - has never been so much twisted fun. Critic's Pick! "Highly entertaining - equally funny and scary." - The New York TimesFour Stars! "Just when you think you know where the play is heading, there's a disorienting coup de theatre that leaves you shaken. Our Dear Dead Drug Lord isn't for the faint of heart, but neither is coming of age." - Raven Snook, Time Out Critic's Pick! "Highly entertaining - equally funny and scary - the play starts off as a hoot and winds up a primal scream. They're throwing quite a seance at the McGinn/Cazale Theater." - Ben Brantley, The New York Times "As funny as it is violent and dark... Our Dear Dead Drug Lord is not quiet, small, or apologetic. It is loud and messy and truthful. It is incredibly complicated and a thing of extreme beauty. It is everything in women that society tells them they need to repress, and in this I found it incredibly enjoyable and inspiring." - Brittany Crowell, New York Theatre Guide "The challenges of female adolescence... explored with a remarkably fresh, honest and sometimes hilarious perspective." - Brian Scott Lipton, Theater Pizzazz "Unsettling... Scheer's characters are brilliantly drawn... the work of a born playwright and a unique new voice... As a story of female empowerment, it is both scary and revealing." - Victor Gluck, Theater Scene "An imaginative and ultimately savage new play... An offbeat Mean Girls sort of dramedy that unexpectedly concludes in a violent burst of magical realism." - Michael Sommers, New York Stage Review

Edward Einhorn blends absurdist humor with philosophy in these critically acclaimed plays about legendary Jewish figures. GOLEM STORIES retells an old Kabalistic legend. It's a ghost story and a love story, about a childlike clay man who may be a demon inside. In THE LIVING METHUSELAH, the oldest living man survives every disaster is human history, with the help of his wife Serach, the oldest living woman. But when a doctor tells him he will only live until the end of the play, will this be his final curtain? To find the title character of A SHYLOCK, Jacob Levy interrogates every character in The Merchant of Venice, but oddly Hamlet may know the most-although this Hamlet is a woman. And in ONE-EYED MOSES AND THE CHURNING RED SEA, Rabbi Tzipporah Finestein dreams Moses is a pirate captain, but what do the dreams mean? Two congregants hold the key.

This is the first collection from groundbreaking playwright Alistair McDowall, "an exceptionally talented and fast-rising writer. Still only in his twenties, this writer is surely going places. Whatever he dreams up next, his name will almost certainly be in lights at the Royal Court soon, if not at the National Theatre." (The Times) Having won a Judges Award at the Bruntwood Prize in 2011 and been shortlisted for the Writers' Guild Best Play Award in 2013, Alistair McDowall is one of the most exciting playwrights of this generation. The anthology features the play that brought McDowall to people's attention, Brilliant Adventures, up to his latest major play, Pomona, that received ecstatic reviews, transferred to the National Theatre, and hailed him as one of the most important playwrights of this generation. It also includes two previously unpublished plays. Brilliant Adventures (Royal Exchange/Live Theatre, 2013) is a fast paced tale of brotherhood, addiction and breaking the laws of physics. It won McDowall a Bruntwood Prize. Captain Amazing (Live Theatre, 2013) is a funny and poignant one-man show that thrusts us into the life of Britain's only part-time superhero. Talk Show (Royal Court, 2013) is black comedy about talking and transmission. It was premiered as part of the Royal Court's Open Court season and has not previously been published. Pomona (Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama/Orange Tree Theatre, 2014) is a sinister and surreal thriller, which takes as its setting Manchester's Pomona - an abandoned concrete island at the heard of the city; a place where journeys end and nightmares are born. The anthology is introduced by the author and includes a foreword by Olivier-award-winning playwright Simon Stephens.

A dynamic collection of five absurdist, hilarious, provocative plays exploring everything from power to loneliness to menstruating hippos. The collection contains: Real American Dinner Party - Sometimes you lose your keys, sometimes you lose your temper, and sometimes you lose the most unexpected of things. A particularly tense dinner party can change everything in the blink of an eye... (2f, 2m) Hippos of the Eastern Enclosure - On Thanksgiving, a nervous male zookeeper is overwhelmed by three female hippos, who all get their periods. While the zookeeper, his girlfriend, and his co-worker decide who is on clean-up, the hippos interrogate the nature of ambition. (5f, 1m) The Visitations - Dana has been alone in her home for a bit too long. Either she is losing it or she is having an increasingly intimate relationship with a ghost. (1f) Ubu Anew (A Play for Strange People) - A shortened and extremely loose adaptation of Ubu Roi, featuring Pixy Stix and Hillary Clinton. (2f, 4m) Your Mother in the Night Sky - Your mother leaves a voicemail, the strangest voicemail you've ever received. (1f)

Sephy and Callum sit together on a beach. They are in love. It is forbidden. Sephy is a Cross and Callum is a Nought. Between Noughts and Crosses there are racial and social divides. A segregated society teeters on a volatile knife-edge. As violence breaks out, Sephy and Callum draw closer, but this is a romance that will lead them into terrible danger. This gripping Romeo and Juliet story by acclaimed writer Malorie Blackman is a captivating drama of love, revolution and what it means to grow up in a divided world. Sabrina Mahfouz's stage adaptation first toured the UK in 2019 and won the Excellence in Touring category at the UK Theatre Awards. It was commissioned and presented by Pilot Theatre in co-production with Derby Theatre, Belgrade Theatre Coventry, Mercury Theatre Colchester and York Theatre Royal.

A collection of short stories and plays links characters on the edge of self-destruction with their favorite watering holes- highlighting their stream of whiskey consciousness.

Sidle up to a bar stool and stake a claim. In "Next Whiskey Bar: Stories, Plays, and Drunk Talk," Charlie Moodie shares an eclectic collection of entertaining tales that bring to life the kinds of lonely characters who teeter on the periphery of self-destruction, lurk in dark watering holes, and tell timeless stories to anyone who will listen.

Moodie begins with three tales about people who are on a perpetual quest to find themselves. Declan is a young man who attempts to drown his troubles in a glass of whiskey; Katrina is a maid who lives in Paris-if only on Sunday afternoons; and Cara has a big heart, but only she knows if she can achieve her dreams. With a common theme of music, Moodie weaves a tapestry of stories that illustrate his characters' challenges as they struggle to understand each other in an uncertain world where love, loss, acceptance, and grief swirl within streams of whiskey consciousness.

From the Great Depression to the driving buzz of the today's cities, "Next Whiskey Bar" takes you to the back of a bar, where listening to the music and eavesdropping on the sweet drunk talk make it all worthwhile. Moodie begins with three tales about people who are on a perpetual quest to find themselves. Declan is a young man who attempts to drown his troubles in a glass of whiskey; Katrina is a maid who lives in Paris-if only on Sunday afternoons; and Cara has a big heart, but only she knows if she can achieve her dreams. With a common theme of music, Moodie weaves a tapestry of stories that illustrate his characters' challenges as they struggle to understand each other in an uncertain world where love, loss, acceptance, and grief swirl within streams of whiskey consciousness. From the Great Depression to the driving buzz of the today's cities, "Next Whiskey Bar" takes you to the back of a bar, where listening to the music and eavesdropping on the sweet drunk talk make it all worthwhile.

Aristophanes' Peace was performed at the City Dionysia in Athens in 421 BC as a decade-long war with Sparta seemed finally to be drawing to an end, and is one of only eleven extant plays by the greatest Old Comic poet. Olson's edition of the play, which replaces Platnauer's of 1969, is based on a complete new collation of the manuscripts, many of which have never been adequately reported before. The extensive commentary explores matters of all sorts, but it focuses in particular on the realities of day-to-day life in classical Athens and also examines the practical problems of staging. The substantial introduction includes essays on Aristophanes' early career, the politics of the Greek world in the late 420s, and the poet's theology.

This study seeks to reunite American drama with more of the mainstream of American literature using contemporary literary theories of feminism, Derrida, Lacan, as well as the nature of language. It also focuses on the theatrical ways that plays work through performance and staging. This reveals how contemporary playwrights see themselves not as authors, but as parts of a team of designers, actors, and directors. Stage directions are largely omitted, but knowledge of original productions--both as seen live and recorded on tapes archived at Lincoln Center--reveal aspects of fragmentation of scenery, minimalist acting, emphasis on the "unsayable," which makes these plays far more postmodern than they might seem merely as read. More importantly, the final chapter reveals how these techniques culminate in 1990s play' ability to extend beyond the real in a myriad of ways, all united by a new, postmodern view of the divine as interpenetrating reality. In one sense, this seems to be juggling quite a few different items-poststructural theory, modernist realists, as well postmodern deconstructive realists and theatrical practice. All fit together neatly, however, in each chapter through a focus on performance, staging is seen as central to the dramatic experience, with reviews, photographs, and archival videotapes of productions used to verify and explore the plays' meanings. The plays, taken as a whole, reflect the key issues of American society from reactions to the Vietnam War, through issues of sexual preference, race, and feminism and its backlash, through issues of wealth and poverty to arrive at a new vision of a forgiving divine which accepts without judgment all the issues of diversity. American Drama and the Postmodern is an important book for collections in American literature, drama and theatre, as well as for literary theory.

UNDERSTANDING DRAMA EIGHT PLAYS CLEANTH BROOKS ROBERT B. HEILMAN Yale University University of Washington i-ost Graduate of An Commerce, 0. c. HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY NEW YORK CONTENTS LETTER TO TEACHER AND STUDENTS IX PART ONE Problems of the Drama 1. DIALOGUE AND ACTION 3 j. Types of Dialogue 3 Courtroom Dialogue 3 The Conversation 5 The Difference between the Conversation and Drama 7 2 The Meaning of Action 8 Shooting-Script for The Great McGinty 8 The Script and the Com pleted Movie 9 Action and Character n The Relation of Dialogue to Action 12 2. DRAMA AND OTHER LITERARY FORMS 13 i Drama and Eiction 13 A Sum in Addition, William March 13 The Method of the Story 15 The Story as Drama 16 The Difference between Story and Play 17 Another Story 18 2. Drama and Poetry 19 To a Mouse, Robert Burns 19 The Method of the Poem 20 The Climax 22 The Poem Compared with Other Forms 23 3. The Elements Common to Drama and Other Forms 24 4. The Difference Between Drama and Other Forms 24 3. SPECIAL PROBLEMS OF THE DRAMA 27 Iroblerns of Scope 27 The Dramatic Situation 27 Number of Characters 28 Place 29 roblems of Dialogue 29 Progression 29 Exposition 30 The Use of Informative Devices 30 Plausibility 31 Naturalness Poetic Drama 32 Tempo 33 4. HOW THE PROBLEMS ARE MET 34 i. Lady Windermeris Fan Oscar Wilde 34 Act I 35 Notes on Act I 43 Characterization 43 111 IV CONTENTS Exposition 43 Motivation and Pro gression 44 Concentration 45 Act II 46 Notes on Act II 54 The Structure of Act II 54 Evidences of Melo drama 56 Act III 57 Notes on Act III 63 The Rhythm of Act III 63 The Melodramatic Tendency Motiva tion 64 The Mother-Daughter Coincidence 65 Act IV 66 Notes on Act IV 73 Wildes Problem Fur therMelodramatic Effects 73 Mrs. Erlynnes in Act IV Part The Play as a Whole The Limitations The Symbolic Situation The Authors Attitude The Treatment of Society Treatment of Mrs. Erlynne The Theme Other Evidence The Epigrammatic Style The Nature of Comedy The Authors Choice The Well-Made Play The Problem Play Other Questions 73 74 74 75 75 76 76 77 78 78 7 79 80 81 81 PART TWO Simpler Types 1. INTRODUCTION 2. EVERYMAN NOTES ON Everyman 1. The Nature of Parable The Problem of the Para able-Writer the Re lationship of Theme and Form How We Become Aware of the Meaning 2. Theme and Drama in Everyman Characterization Structure Parti 86 IOO IOO 101 102 103 103 104 105 Part II Part III Part IV. The Compli cation of Theme The Growth of Every mans Character Significant Variation Summary 3. Everyman as Tragedy Questions 106 107 107 1 08 1 08 109 3. PLAUTUS, THE TWIN MENAECHMI 112 NOTES ON The Twin Me naechmi 136 I. The Nature of Farce 137 CONTENTS 2. The Quality of Plautuss Farce 140 Conventions 141 Variety 141 Climactic Arrangement 142 Language 142 Probability 142 Conclusion 144 Questions 145 4. LILLO, THE LONDON MERCHANT 146 Act I 147 Questions on Act I 153 Act II 154 Questions on Act II 160 Act III 1 60 Questions on Act III 166 Act IV 167 Questions on Act IV 173 Act V 173 Questions on Act V 179 NOTES ON The London Mer chant 1 80 1. Lack of Focus 180 2. Multiplicity of Objectives 181 3. The Treatment of Barn well 184 Barnwells Language 185 The Problem of Acts IV and V 187 Conclusion Questions 188 189 PART THREE More Mature Types 1. INTRODUCTION 193 2. SHERIDAN, THE SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL 194 Act I 196 Questions on Act I 203 Act II 204 Questions on Act II 211 Act III 212 Questions on Act III 221 Act IV221 Questions on Act IV 232 Act V 232 NOTES ON The School for Scandal 243 7. Sheridan and Other Drama tists Structure and Mechanics 244 Theme and Form 244 Characterization 244 Focus 245 Sheridan and Farce 245 Melodramatic Ten dencies 246 2. Sheridans Attitude Theme The Sentimental Tendency 248 Sir Olivers Reward 249 The Treatment of Charles 249 3. Other Influences on the Tone 252 Summary 254 Questions 254 3...

Alcestis is one of Euripides' richest and most brilliant - as well as most controversial - plays. But, apart from D. J. Conacher's student text, no annotated edition in English has appeared for more than fifty years. The present work is designed to aid close reading and to serve as an introduction to the serious study of the play in its various aspects. The introduction covers the background to the story in myth and folktale, its treatment by other writers from antiquity to the present, the critical reception of Euripides' play, and its textual transmission and metres. The notes are designed in particular to help readers who have been learning Greek for a relatively short time. More advanced matter, such as discussion of textual problems, is placed in square brackets at the end of the note.