It's the middle of the night when 21-year-old Leo arrives on the doorstep of the West Village apartment where his feisty 91-year-old grandmother Vera lives. She's an old Communist who lives alone, he's a latter-day hippie, recently returned from a cross-country bike trip which ended traumatically. Over the course of a single month, these unlikely roommates infuriate, bewilder, and ultimately connect. When Leo's old girlfriend shows up and he begins to reveal the mysterious events of his journey, Leo and Vera discover the narrow line between growing up and growing old. Peopled with nuanced, beautifully-drawn characters, Amy Herzog's award-winning play has established her as a remarkable new talent. 4000 Miles had its 2011 world premiere at New York's Lincoln Center Theater.

Narratology in Practice opens up the well-known theory of narrative to various disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. Written as a companion to Mieke Bal's international classic Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative, in which the examples focus almost exclusively on literary studies, this new book offers more elaborate analyses of visual media, especially visual art and film. Read independently or in parallel with its companion, Narratology in Practice enables readers to use the suggested concepts as tools to assist them in practising narrative analysis.

This accessible and engaging text covering sketch, sitcom and comedy drama, alongside improvisation and stand-up, brings together a panoply of tools and techniques for creating short and long-form comedy narratives for live performance, TV and online. Referencing a broad range of comedy from both sides of the Atlantic, spanning several decades and including material on contemporary internet sketches, it offers all kinds of useful advice on creating comic narratives for stage and screen: using life experience as raw material; constructing comedy worlds; creating comic characters, their relationships and interactions; structuring sketches, scenes and routines; and developing and plotting stories. The book's interviewees, from the UK and the USA, feature stand-ups, sketch comics, improvisers and TV comedy producers, and include Steve Kaplan, Hollywood comedy guru and author of The Hidden Tools of Comedy, Will Hines teacher and improviser from the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre and Lucy Lumsden TV producer and former Controller of Comedy Commissioning for BBC. Written by "the ideal person to nurture new talent" (The Guardian), Creating Comedy Narratives for Stage & Screen includes material you won't find anywhere else and is a stimulating resource for comedy students and their teachers, with a range and a depth that will be appreciated by even the most eclectic and multi-hyphenated writers and performers.