New York City, 1930. Following a decade of explosive creativity, the Harlem Renaissance is starting to feel the bite of the Great Depression. In the face of hardship and dwindling opportunity, Angel and her friends battle to keep their artistic dreams alive. But, when Angel falls for a stranger from Alabama, their romance forces the group to make good on their ambitions, or give in to the reality of the time. Pearl Cleage's Blues for an Alabama Sky was first performed in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1995. It was revived at the National Theatre, London, in 2022, directed by Lynette Linton, with a cast including Samira Wiley and Giles Terera. Pearl Cleage is a celebrated American playwright, novelist, poet and political activist, and was one of the first Black women in America to achieve national recognition as a dramatist. Her plays, also including Flyin' West and Bourbon at the Border, provide a remarkable and penetrating look at the African-American experience over the last century. 'As a woman, as an African-American, her artistic objectivity and sensitivity to history combine with her capacity to dig for truth' Ruby Dee 'One of the voices singing in the wilderness' Ossie Davis

'I'd get freaked out here, alone in the dark. Wondering what's lurking at the bottom of the bed, ready to grab your feet.' Jenny and Sam - and their baby Phoebe - have recently moved into their new home. But something feels frightening and wrong. Very wrong. Over the baby monitor, at 2:22 every night, Jenny hears footsteps around her daughter's cot. Could the house be haunted? When their friends Lauren and Ben come round for a housewarming dinner, they drink wine, relive their pasts, and argue about the existence of ghosts. They decide to stay up until 2:22, to discover the truth. Over one adrenaline-filled night - as the foxes scream outside - secrets will emerge and ghosts may appear... Spine-chilling, funny and scary, Danny Robins' play 2:22 was premiered at the Noel Coward Theatre in London's West End in August 2021, directed by Matthew Dunster, and starring Lily Allen, Julia Chan, Hadley Fraser and Jake Wood. It went on to win Best New Play at the 2022 WhatsOnStage Awards, and was nominated for Best New Play at the Olivier Awards. 2:22 provides rich opportunities for any drama group wanting to make things go bump in the night - and their audiences scream.

In Happy Days, Samuel Beckett pursues his relentless search for the meaning of existence, probing the tenuous relationships that bind one person to another, and each to the universe, top time past and time present. Once again, stripping theater to its barest essentials, Happy Days offers only two characters: Winnie, a woman of about fifty, and Willie, a man of about sixty. In the first act Winnie is buried up to her waist in a mound of earth, but still has the use of her arms and few earthly possessions--toothbrush, tube of toothpaste, small mirror, revolver, handkerchief, spectacles; in the second act she is embedded up to her neck and can move only her eyes. Willie lives and moves--on all fours--behind the mound, appearing intermittently and replying only occasionally into Winnie's long monologue, but the knowledge of his presence is a source of comfort and inspiration to her, and doubtless the prerequisite for all her "happy days."

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is a genius, the most brilliant musician the world will ever see. But the court of eighteenth-century Vienna doesn't recognize his talents - only Antonio Salieri, the Court Composer, does, and he is tortured by what he hears. Seething with rage at the genius of this flippant buffoon and suddenly aware of his own mediocrity, Salieri declares war and sets out to destroy the man he sees as God's instrument on earth. Peter Shaffer's award-winning play is a rich, exuberant portrayal of a God-like man among mortals, and lives destroyed by envy.

One of Lorca's best known plays tells the story of a young peasant wife in rural Spain whose sole conscious desire is to embody what she regards as the natural, moral and social laws governing her life as a woman in motherhood. The tragedy of Yerma, which literally means 'barren', in this powerful and emotive drama, is that she remains childless and so is denied the dignity and the emotional fulfilment which traditionally only the role of mother could bring. The frustration of Yerma's maternal instinct, the only acceptable channel for her sexuality in her repressive society, leads her through humiliation and despair to an erosion of her whole personality which culminates at the end of the play in violence and death. It is not only the strong feminist theme that accounts for the play's great popular appeal today. With the highly charged emotion are blended poetic imagery and lyricism which haunt the imagination of modern audiences as much as those of fifty years ago when Lorca was murdered. Spanish text with facing-page translation, introduction and notes.

The old songs will have to change.
No more hymns to our faithlessness and deceit.
Apollo, god of song, lord of the lyre,
never passed on the flame of poetry to us.
But if we had that voice, what songs
we'd sing of men's failings, and their blame. History is made by women, just as much as men.
Medea has been betrayed. Her husband, Jason, has left her for a younger woman. He has forgotten all the promises he made and is even prepared to abandon their two sons. But Medea is not a woman to accept such disrespect passively. Strong-willed and fiercely intelligent, she turns her formidable energies to working out the greatest, and most horrifying, revenge possible.
Euripides' devastating tragedy is shockingly modern in the sharp psychological exploration of the characters and the gripping interactions between them. Award-winning poet Robin Robertson has captured both the vitality of Euripides' drama and the beauty of his phrasing, reinvigorating this masterpiece for the twenty-first century.

A modern classic about one woman's struggle to come to terms with her past. Brutally separated from her German Jewish parents at the age of nine, Eva is brought to England with the promise of a new life... Between 1939 until the outbreak of World War II, nearly 10,000 Jewish children were taken from their families in Nazi-occupied Germany and sent to live with foster families in Britain. Diane Samuels' seminal play, Kindertransport, imagines the fate of one such child. Now widely considered a modern classic, Kindertransport has been read and studied the world over. Kindertransport won the 1992 Verity Bargate Award and was subsequently staged by the Soho Theatre Company at the Cockpit Theatre in London in 1993. It also won the Meyer-Whitworth Award in 1993. Since its premiere the play has been revived several times. Watford Palace Theatre staged it in 1996, in a production that transferred to the West End. Renowned theatre company Shared Experience also revived the play to great acclaim for a regional tour in 2007. This edition includes several personal memoirs by German-born children whose lives were saved, and transformed, by the Kindertransport. Kindertransport is a SET TEXT for GCSE English Literature (AQA) and AS/A-Level English Literature (WJEC).

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.

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.

Winner of the 2022 Olivier Award for Best New Play "Life of Pi will make you believe in the power of theatre" (Times). After a cargo ship sinks in the middle of the vast Pacific Ocean, there are five survivors stranded on a lifeboat - a hyena, a zebra, an orangutan, a Royal Bengal tiger, and a sixteen year-old boy named Pi. Time is against them, nature is harsh, who will survive? Based on one of the most extraordinary and best-loved works of fiction - winner of the Man Booker Prize, selling over fifteen million copies worldwide - and featuring breath-taking puppetry and state-of-the-art visuals, Life of Pi is a universally acclaimed, smash hit adaptation of an epic journey of endurance and hope. Adapted by acclaimed playwright Lolita Chakrabarti, this edition was published to coincide with the West End premiere in November 2021.

The Old South lives on at the MacGregor Plantation - in the breeze, in the cotton fields... and in the crack of the whip. Nothing is as it seems, and yet everything is as it seems. Jeremy O. Harris's Slave Play rips apart history to shed new light on the nexus of race, gender and sexuality in twenty-first-century America. It opened at New York Theatre Workshop in November 2018, and transferred to Broadway the following year.

Weary of academic study, an eminent scholar turns to magic and makes a deal with the Devil. Mephistopheles will serve him and give him whatever he wants, but after twenty-four years Faustus must keep his side of the bargain. This edition contains a detailed introductory section that puts the play in its historical context, in-depth textual notes, extracts from key critical works and exam-style questions.

Why am I trying to become what I don't want to be ... when all I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am. Willy Loman is an ageing travelling salesman haunted, driven and yet held back by empty dreams of prosperity and success. Justly celebrated as one of the most famous dramatisations of the failure of the American Dream, the play's moral and political purpose is perfectly counterbalanced by a powerful and moving human drama of a man trying to make his way in the world and of the human flaws that lead to the shattering of his family and of their figurehead. Death of a Salesman is Miller's tragic masterpiece and considered one of the greatest plays of the twentieth century. Awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1949, the play remains a classic work of literature and drama that is studied and performed around the world. This new edition includes an introduction by Claire Conceison that explores the play's production history as well as the dramatic, thematic, and academic debates that surround it; a must-have resource for any student exploring Death of a Salesman.

You can paint your placards 'til the cows come home, but until you have marched through this town in five inch heels and fishnets, you will never know what it is to truly be a faggot on the front line. Told against the backdrop of Dublin's burgeoning gay rights movement of the 1980s and 1990s and the contemporary LGBTQ+ community of today, Once Before I Go charts the close friendship of Lynn, Daithi, and the luminous Bernard, and sits on the exhilarating edge between comedy, tragedy and melodrama. Exploring the fragile yet resilient bonds of Irish queer lives across three decades in Dublin, London and Paris, the play steps between the early days of the AIDS crisis and today's LGBTQ+ community, living in an era of marriage equality, gender self-determination, and untransmittable HIV. At once political, joyous and heart-breaking, Once Before I Go honours the fabulous people we lost along the way, and celebrates those who fight on. This edition was published to coincide with the world premiere at Dublin's Gate Theatre in October 2021.

Though a staple in high school English classes, Julius Caesar is not a simple play. Seemingly irreconcilable forces are at work: fate and free will, the changeableness and stubbornness of ambitious men, the demands of public service and the desire for private gain. Drawn from history as recorded by Plutarch, the major characters-Caesar, Brutus, Cassius, and Mark Antony-are complex, as are the twists and turns of their fortunes. What kind of man rises to power? What price does he pay when he becomes a politician? These questions raised by Shakespeare are relevant in every age, whether ancient Rome, Elizabethan England, or even in our own day.

The world can and will go on without us but I have to think that we have made this world a better place. That we have left it richer, wiser than had we not chosen the way of art. The 1996 Tony Award winner for Best Play. Terrence McNally's Master Class presents the legendary opera diva, Maria Callas, as she puts aspiring young singers through their paces in a series of master classes. Both moving and entertaining, this theatrical tour de force dramatizes the Callas phenomenon and "is an unembarrassed, involving meditation on Callas's life and the nature of her art. Such subjects are not easily dramatized, certainly not with this brio." (New York Times) After opening on Broadway in 1995 with Zoe Caldwell and Audra McDonald, the play premiered in London in 1997 with Patti LuPone. It was last revived on Broadway and in the West End in 2011-12 starring Tyne Daly.

The final volume in Methuen Drama's acclaimed series of work by Arthur Miller who, during his lifetime, was acknowledged as "the greatest American dramatist of our age" (Evening Standard). Featuring two plays from the 1990s and his final two plays (2002 and 2004), it offers the first ever publication of Miller's final play, Finishing the Picture. Inspired by his experience during the filming of The Misfits with his then wife Marilyn Monroe, the play was completed and produced at the Goodman Theatre, Chicago, just months before the playwright's death in February 2005. Broken Glass (1994) is set in Brooklyn in 1938 and intertwines a woman's obsession with the news from Germany that government thugs are smashing Jewish stores, with her strange relationship with her husband. "It balances private lives with public morality. . . it is also an amazingly full-blooded piece, bursting with pain and passion." (Daily Telegraph). Mr Peters' Connections (1998) is an unforgettable journey through one man's mind at a time of suspended consciousness, where the living and dead intermingle in his memory. Resurrection Blues (2002) is Miller's astonishing black comedy set in a South American banana republic, that satirises global politics and the predatory nature of a media saturated culture. The volume also features a chronology of the writer's work and an introduction by Enoch Brater, professor of English Literature at the University of Michigan.

A Schools Edition of Men Should Weep by Scottish playwright Ena Lamont Stewart, a popular set text for SQA Higher English. Set in the 1930s, Men Should Weep centres on the challenges faced by the Morrison family. This riveting portrayal of life in Glasgow's slums explores themes such as poverty, love and the role of women. This edition includes: - An educational introduction with an overview of the play and playwright - The full playscript - Notes on the text, key quotations and questions to improve students' understanding of the play - Tasks and activities designed to support study/revision and build the skills of analysis and evaluation - Assessment advice for the Critical Reading question paper