Discover the behind-the-scenes story of how The Second City theatre created a generation of world class great actors, directors, and writers. In the late Fifties and Sixties, iconoclastic young rebels in Chicago opened two tiny theatres—The Compass and The Second City—where they satirized politics, religion and sex. Developing scenes by improvising based on audience suggestions turned out to be a fine way to develop great actors, directors, and writers. Alumni went on to create such ground-breaking works as The Graduate, Groundhog Day, and Don’t Look Up. Many of them also became stars on Saturday Night Live. Something Wonderful Right Away features the pioneers who founded the empire that transformed American comedy.   This new edition tells even more of the story. Included for the first time is an interview with Viola Spolin, the genius who invented theatre games that were  the foundation of improvisational theatre. Also included are dozens of follow-up stories about Mike Nichols, Barbara Harris, Del Close, Joan Rivers, Alan Arkin, and Gilda Radner, plus “You Only Shoot the Ones You Love,� the story of how this book’s author, playwright Jeffrey Sweet, ended up being so involved in the community he covered that he was captured by it.  

The art and craft of playwriting as explored in candid conversations with some of the most important contemporary dramatists Edward Albee, Lanford Wilson, Lynn Nottage, A. R. Gurney, and a host of other major creative voices of the theater discuss the art of playwriting, from inspiration to production, in a volume that marks the tenth anniversary of the Yale Drama Series and the David Charles Horn Foundation Prize for emerging playwrights. Jeffrey Sweet, himself an award-winning dramatist, hosts a virtual roundtable of perspectives on how to tell stories onstage featuring extensive interviews with a gallery of gifted contemporary dramatists. In their own words, Arthur Kopit, Marsha Norman, Christopher Durang, David Hare, and many others offer insights into all aspects of the creative writing process as well as their personal views on the business, politics, and fraternity of professional theater. This essential work will give playwrights and playgoers alike a deeper and more profound appreciation of the art form they love.

Dramatic Comedy / 2m, 2f Winner of Chicago's Joseph Jefferson Award for Best New Script Flyovers is a 90-minute play about a film critic who finds himself caught up in a Culture Clash of economics, sex and long-submerged resentment when he returns to the small Ohio town where he grew up. Trying to make peace with his past, he reconnects with some former classmates, a bully and a girl he had a crush on. The encounters are unsettling for all three; nothing turns out as expected. It's 1998 and the economic troubles that will later engulf the rest of the country are offering a preview of coming attractions in Ohio. The plant that has been the economic heart of a downstate town is closed by a decision from Wall Street. Oliver, a movie critic on a TV show, returns for a high school reunion unaware that his current identifi cation as a Jewish New Yorker can't help but trigger a reaction. An invitation from Ted, the bully who used to plague him, and the addition of Ted's unstable wife Lianne and the provocative Iris bring things to a boil in a play that is by turns funny and wrenching. When it opened at the Tony(R) Award-winning Victory Gardens Theatre - in a production starring Chicago acting legends Amy Morton and William Petersen under the direction of Dennis Zacek - Flyovers broke house records and took home the "Jeff" Award for new script. It won new admirers in New York in a limited-run production starring Richard Kind and Michele Pawk under the direction of Sandy Shinner. "Startling explosions and bursts of heart breaking insight. Beautifully mixes laughs and lessons. While funny, it's also a faithful tone poem on its characters, who end up dissected, desperate, and, in Sweet's strange, deftly managed plot twists, strained in a dreary, Flannery O'Connor like neverland of an ending." -Chicago Tribune

A lavishly illustrated celebration of the fifty-year history of the most influential theatrical organization in America, the O'Neill Theater Center "At the O'Neill, we were all engaged with full-hearted passion in sometimes the silliest of exercises, and all in service of finding that wiggly, elusive creature, a new play."-Meryl Streep "I would not be who or where I am today without the O'Neill."-Michael Douglas As the old ways of the commercial theater were dying and American playwriting was in crisis, the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center arose as a midwife to new plays and musicals, introducing some of the most exciting talents of our time (including August Wilson, Wendy Wasserstein, and Christopher Durang) and developing works that went on to win Pulitzer Prizes and Tony Awards. Along the way, it collaborated with then-unknown performers (like Meryl Streep, Michael Douglas, Courtney Vance, and Angela Bassett) and inspired Robert Redford in his creation of the Sundance Institute. This is the story of a theatrical laboratory, a place that transformed American theater, film, and television.

Spanning a quarter of a century, this collection of plays demonstrates playwright Sweet's eye for the drama of human relationships. This title details Sweet's works with sensitivity and irony to confront both personal politics and the impact of historical change. These ten works, taken together, present a playwright who extends the struggles of his small circles of characters to his audience and humanity in general.The title work, first mounted in 1982, is a comedy-drama about the aftermath of the blacklist whose continued relevance makes it a frequently produced play today. The family drama 'Porch' suggests larger social changes through the interaction of a small-town shopkeeper and his defiant daughter. The lauded 'American Enterprise', set in the Chicago of the robber barons, is a song-filled true story about a millionaire whose stubborn idealism leads to disaster. 'Stay Till Morning' is a rueful comedy about sex and accommodation in the Florida Keys. The three plays that grew out of his fascination with the effects of World War II - 'Berlin '45', 'Court-Martial at Fort Devens', and 'The Action Against Sol Schumann' - dramatize the ways in which that conflict transformed private fates. Each script is accompanied by an extended introduction from the playwright as well as complete performance notes.