Chay Yew has been hailed by Time magazine as "a promising new voice in American theater." In this collection of four new plays, Yew continues to explore issues of artistic expression, self-identity, and the immigrant experience. In Red, a magical, mysterious drama set during China's Cultural Revolution, a renowned actor stands his ground against a young revolutionary in a struggle that pits politics against free expression and one generation against another. Set in New York's Chinatown, Scissors is a moving portrait of a weekly haircutting ritual between an elderly Chinese manservant and his Caucasian ex-employer. A Beautiful Country chronicles the turbulent history of Asians in America through the eyes of an immigrant drag queen, Miss Visa Denied. In Wonderland, a family working toward their American dream experiences dramatic and unexpected developments that threaten to shatter their hopes. Although aesthetically and tonally different from one another, Yew's four plays evoke an epic backdrop to the dreams, loves, longings, and lives of Asians in America. "Yew ... demonstrates the ability to shock and enlighten by writing it straight. It makes for a vital evening of theatre." -- Back Stage West/Dram-Logue

Banned in his native Singapore, Chay Yew has been hailed as "a promising new voice in American theater" by Time magazine. With these two powerful, provocative plays, Yew first brought his startling and poetic voice to stages across America and abroad, exploring the battlegrounds, both internal and external, where matters of the heart conflict with barriers of race and sexuality. Porcelain is an examination of a young man's crime of passion. Triply scorned -- as an Asian, a homosexual, and now a murderer -- 19-year-old John Lee has confessed to shooting his lover in a public lavatory in London. A winner of the London Fringe Award for Best Play, Porcelain dissects the crime through a prism of conflicting voices: newscasts, flashbacks, and John's own recollections to a prison psychiatrist. A Language of Their Own is a lyrical and dramatic meditation on the nature of desire and sexuality as four men -- three Asian and one white -- come together and drift apart in a series of interconnected stories. A critical and popular success at New York's Public Theater, it won both the George and Elisabeth Marton Playwriting Award and the GLAAD Media Award for Best Play.

"American Political Plays after 9/11 "is a diverse collection of bold, urgent, and provocative plays that respond to the highly charged, post 9/11 political landscape. Sparked by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and subsequently fueled by a series of controversial events--the Iraq war, the passing and enforcement of the U.S.A. Patriot Act, and the revelation of torture and other scandals at the Abu Ghraib prison--American political theater is currently experiencing a surge in activity. The plays in this collection include "The Guys" by Anne Nelson, "At the Vanishing Point" by Naomi Iizuka, "The Venus de Milo ""Is Armed" by Kia Corthron, "Back of the Throat" by Yusseff El Guindi, "Three Nights in Prague" by Allan Havis, and "Question 27, Question 28" by Chay Yew. The characters range from a New York City fire captain trying to respectfully memorialize eight of his lost comrades, to the citizens of a hog-killing Louisville neighborhood who poignantly exemplify the underside of the economic crisis, to an Arab American citizen being harshly (and possibly unfairly) interrogated by two officers as a "person of interest." Though not all of the plays deal explicitly with the Al Qaeda attacks, they collectively reveal themes of sorrow and anxiety, moral indignation, alarmist self-preservation, and economic and social insecurity stemming from the United States' fairly sudden shift from cold war superpower to vulnerable target. The lively introduction by Allan Havis includes a brief history of political theater in the United States, an extensive discussion about how theater communities responded to 9/11, and an informative analysis of the six plays in the book. A collection of dramatic material framed by this significant historical event, "American" "Political Plays after 9/11 "will be indispensable for theater and cultural studies scholars and students.