(Applause Books). The complete scripts to two of Larry Gelbart's most popular and powerful political satires. Review of Mastergate: "If George Orwell were a gag writer, he could have written Mastergate. Larry Gelbart's scathingly funny takeoff on the Iran-Contra hearings is a spiky cactus flower in the desert of American political theatre." Jack Kroll, Newsweek . Review of Power Failure: "There is in his broad etching all the ethical outrage of an Arthur Miller kvetching. And, oh, so much more fun " Carolyn Clay, The Boston Phoenix .

All the farces of Russia's greatest dramatist are rendered here in the classic lively translations which audiences and scholars alike applaud on the stage and in the classroom. The blustering, stuttering eloquence of Chekhov's unlikely heroes has endured to shape the voice of contemporary theatre. This volume presents seven minor masterpieces: Harmfulness of Tobacco, Swan Song, The Brute, Marriage Proposal, Summer in the Country, A Wedding, The Celebration.

This anthology gathers together recent work by the finest and most controversial contemporary American women dramatists. Collectively, this magnificent seven seeks to break the mold of the well-wrought psychological play and its rigid emphasis on realisticsocio-political drama. Includes: Occupational Hazard (Rosalyn Drexler) * Us (Karen Malpede) * What of the Night? (Maria Irene Forne) * Birth and After Birth (Tina Howe) * and more.

Have You Seen Zandile? is a wonderful South African resource, still as fresh and absorbing as when it was first written. Perfectly scripted, and with Gcina Mhlophe's sure instinct for stagecraft, it recounts the very personal story of Zandile, who is snatched away from her grandmother's loving care and taken to live with her matriarchal family in rural Transkei. Moving, funny and convincing, full of Zandile's shrewd, youthful insights, the play offers an illuminating window into the 1960s world that it depicts, with its issues of white dominance, rural hardship and black female repression. Have You Seen Zandile? is already an established favorite in performance circles, and is fast becoming a South African classic.

A group of resourceful kids start "solution-seekers.com," a website where "cybervisitors" can get answers to questions that trouble them. But when one questioner asks the true meaning of Christmas, the kids seek to unravel the mystery by journeying back through the prophecies of the Old Testament. What they find is a series of "S" words that reveal a "spectacular story " With creative characters, humorous dialogue and great music, The "S" Files is a children's Christmas musical your kids will love performing.

Collects for the first time major lesbian plays from controversial cultural perspectives spanning more than a generation of work in varied theatrical styles representing an amazing gamut of lesbian politics from all over America. Includes: The Quintessential Image (Jane Chambers) * The Postcard (Gloria Joyce Dickler) * A Lady and a Woman (Shirlene Holmes) * Nasty Rumors and Final Remarks (Susan Miller) * Desdemona (Paula Vogel) * and more!

If history is told by the victors, the story of war is usually told by the blokes. Now it's the 'sheilas' turn. Nearly a thousand Australian women had a part in the Vietnam War as entertainers, typists, consular staff and army nurses. Their experiences were extraordinary and they have now been brought to life in this collage of true stories. The one thing these women have in common is that their lives were changed forever by Vietnam. And for many of them it was the most vital and alive they had ever felt. These are the voices of those who were actually there; ordinary woman revealing how they survived a war and discovered what they believed in.

Two very different women meet during a long wait to buy subsidized rice and discover they have more in common than their poverty; an old man and a child share a last loving waltz; a cynical, disabled gangster learns humanity from a committed social worker, and a young girl finds her missing father and her role in the political struggle. This collection of stage plays, one radio play and a cinepoem, captures the essence of Zakes Mda’s method as a dramatist- a slow but intimate process of revelation (on the part of the characters). It is an artistic cooperation of the most pleasurable kind.

Sophiatown was the ‘Chicago of South Africa’, a vibrant community that produced not only gangsters and shebeen queens but leading journalists, writers, musicians and politicians, and gave urban African culture its rhythm and style. This play, based on the life history of Sophiatown, opened at the Market Theatre in Johannesburg in February 1986 to great acclaim. The play won the AA Life Vita Award for Playwright of the Year 1985/86. This new edition of the play includes an introduction which sets the work in its historical context.

"The Coast of Utopia", which can be enjoyed as a whole or as three separate plays, follows a group of young intellectuals from the country houses and cafes of the 1830s, through the European revolutions of 1848-9, to exile in London in the 1850s. The trilogy as a whole tells an epic story of romantics and revolutionaries caught up in the struggle for political freedom in an age of emperors.

Lorca's Blood Wedding is a classic of twentieth-century theatre. The story is based on a newspaper fragment which told of a family vendetta and a bride who ran away with the son of the enemy family. Lorca uses it to investigate the subjects which fascinated him: desire, repression, ritual, and the constraints and commitments of the rural Spanish community in which the play is rooted. Ted Hughes's version stays close in spirit and letter to the original Spanish. With marvellous directness, he fuses Lorca's vision to his own, and the result is a powerful poetic text which captures all the violence and pathos of the play for an English-speaking audience.

In this, the first anthology to focus exclusively on the lives of black South African women, the work of both emerging playwrights and national and international award-winners are represented. Plays by Maishe Maponya appear alongside the work of notable emerging writers, including Lueen Conning, Ismail Mahommed, Thulani Mtshali, Muthal Naidoo and Magi Williams. The collection consists of six full-length and four one-act plays as well as editorial introductions, interviews with the playwrights, photographers, artistic statements and production histories. Written during and after the apartheid era, the plays present a variety of approaches and theatrical styles, from solo performances to collective creations. An array of women's and men's voices are represented, dramatising diverse issues such as women's rights, racial identity, displacement from home, the struggle to keep families together, violence against women and education in the old and new South Africa.

'This remarkable play is about a nightmare all women must have dreamed at some time, and most men...' Ronald Bryden, Observer (1967) 'Joe Egg is unlike any play I've seen; concerns about whether it's dated fade next to the claims that can now be made for it. It's in the collisions between pious and rogue thoughts that the play's energy lies. We don't know what to feel. Which is why, once seen, Joe Egg won't go away.' Robert Butler, Independent on Sunday (1993)

Klima, a celebrated jazz trumpeter, receives a phone call announcing that a young nurse with whom he spent a brief night at a fertility spa is pregnant. She has decided he is the father. And so begins a comedy which, during five madcap days, unfolds with ever-increasing speed. Klima's beautiful, jealous wife, the nurse's equally jealous boyfriend, a fanatical gynaecologist, a rich American, at once Don Juan and saint, and an elderly political prisoner who, just before his emigration, is holding a farewell party at the spa are all drawn into this black comedy, as in A Midsummer Night's Dream. As usual, Milan Kundera poses serious questions with a blasphemous lightness which makes us understand that the modern world has taken away our right to tragedy.

J. M. Synge was one of the key dramatists in the flourishing world of Irish literature at the turn of the century. This volume offers all of Synge's published plays, which range from racy comedy to stark tragedy, all sharing a memorable lyricism. The introduction to this new, definitive edition of Synge's plays sets them--and his other work--in the context of the Irish literary movement, with special attention to his role as one of the founders of the Abbey Theatre and his work alongside W. B. Yeats and Lady Gregory. Under the General Editorship of Michael Cordner of the University of York, the texts of the plays have been newly edited and are presented with a scholarly introduction and detailed annotation. Riders to the Sea; The Shadow of the Glen; The Tinker's Wedding; The Well of the Saints; The Playboy of the Western World; Deirdre of the Sorrows;This book is intended for students of Irish Literature (especially drama).

Mark and Stevie's relaxing Saturday afternoon grinds to a halt when two door-to-door salesmen make their way into the house with a sales pitch that becomes increasingly relentless as the day progresses.

Often called the most autobiographical of Arthur Miller's plays, After the Fall probes deeply into the psyche of Quentin, a man who ruthlessly revisits his past to explain the catastrophe that is his life. His journey backward takes him through a troubled upbringing, the bitter death of his mother, and a series of failed relationships.