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"Some playwrights have a gift to amuse; Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig has a
darker gift. Anyone with romantic notions of Chinese culture will
be unsettled by the jagged, unsentimental portrait of modern urban
China."(Chicago Reader) Poetic and devastating, sensuous and
politically acute, Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig's China Plays explore the
forces of global capital as they explode within the lives of
everyday people in contemporary China. This volume collects
together the three plays in the series, including Cowhig's
exploration of the human cost of development in China's socialist
market economy (The World of Extreme Happiness), of justice and
revenge amidst ecological and economic catastrophe (Snow in
Midsummer), and the tale of the trade in blood that brought the
AIDS crisis to rural China (The King of Hell's Palace). In addition
to Cowhig's plays, the volume includes a host of supplemental
materials including an editorial preface and three (previously
published) brief essays responding to each play by the editor,
Joshua Chambers-Letson; a new introduction by theatre/performance
scholar and dramaturg Christine Mok that explores the key themes in
Cowhig's body of work; a summary discussion between Cowhig,
Chambers-Letson, and Mok, on Cowhig's process and the political and
aesthetic currents animating her work. The World of Extreme
Happiness: "Fearless, zippily-paced, and satirical . . . Cowhig
forces us down the long hard look path" (Independent) Snow in
Midsummer: "Gripping and affecting... graceful and impassioned"
(Times) The King of Hell's Palace: "A medical-scandal drama that we
can't afford to ignore" (Telegraph)
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Jar of Fat
Seayoung Yim; Foreword by Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig, Jacqueline Goldfinger, Virginia Grise, Rachel Lynett, …
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R631
Discovery Miles 6 310
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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An absurdist comedy and fifteenth winner of the Yale Drama Prize,
exploring family, religion, identity, desire, and beauty in Korean
American culture  In a fantastical fairy-tale world, two
Korean American sisters are deemed too fat to fit in their family
grave. Will the sisters’ close bond survive under the pressure of
their community and fretful parents, who will spare no effort to
make them tinier? Â Jar of Fat, the fifteenth winner of the
Yale Drama Prize, is a phantasmagorical, absurdist Korean American
tale about the allure and danger entangled within the quest for
beauty and thinness. Both laugh-out-loud funny and deeply
troubling, Seayoung Yim’s play burns through the accumulated rage
that anti-fat bias produces to reclaim what it steals from us every
day: grace, space, possibility, and breath.
Theatre has a complex history of responding to crises, long before
they happen. Through stage plays, contemporary challenges can be
presented, explored and even foreshadowed in ways that help
audiences understand the world around them. Since the theatre of
the Greeks, audiences have turned to live theatre in order to find
answers in uncertain political, social and economic times, and
through this unique collection questions about This anthology
brings together a collection of 20 scenes from 20 playwrights that
each respond to the world in crisis. Twenty of the world's most
prolific playwrights were asked to select one scene from across
their published work that speaks to the current world situation in
2020. As COVID-19 continues to challenge every aspect of global
life, contemporary theatre has long predicted a world on the edge.
Through these 20 scenes from plays spanning from 1980 to 2020, we
see how theatre and art has the capacity to respond, comment on and
grapple with global challenges that in turn speak to the current
time in which we are living. Each scene, chosen by the writer, is
prefaced by an interview in which they discuss their process, their
reason for selection and how their work reflects both the past and
the present. From the political plays of Lucy Prebble and James
Graham to the polemics of Philip Ridley and Tim Crouch. From bold
works by Inua Ellams, Morgan Lloyd Malcom and Tanika Gupta to the
social relevance of Hannah Khalil, Zoe Cooper and Simon Stephens
this anthology looks at theatre in the present and asks the
question: "how can theatre respond to a world in crisis?" The
collection is prefaced by an introduction from Edward Bond, one of
contemporary theatre's most prolific dramatists.
When the Henan Ministry of Health begins paying citizens for blood
plasma which is then sold to pharmaceutical companies, impoverished
farmers in the province's remote villages sell blood to buy
fertilizer, mend their houses and create a better life for their
children. As corrupt health officials cut costs to maximize
profits, safety standards are ignored, bringing potential
catastrophe to China's most vulnerable population. Inspired by true
events, this gripping drama explores the conflicts that arise when
a community's greatest source of capital becomes their own bodies.
Focusing on the personal repercussions of the cover-up, The King of
Hell's Palace questions how political and medical decisions are
made and how both a family and an entire country can look to
recover from traumatic events.
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Lidless (Paperback)
Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig
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R373
Discovery Miles 3 730
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig's powerful drama Lidless asks important and
difficult questions: is guilt a necessary form of moral reckoning,
or is it an obstacle to be overcome? Will the price of national
political amnesia be paid only by the next generation - the
daughters and sons who were never there? It's been fifteen years
since Guantanamo, fifteen years since Bashir last saw his U.S. Army
interrogator, Alice. Bashir is now dying of a disease of the liver,
an organ that he believes is the home of the soul. He tracks down
Alice in Texas and demands that she donate half her liver as
restitution for the damage wrought during her interrogations. But
Alice doesn't remember Bashir; a PTSD pill trial she participated
in while in the army has left her without any memory of her time
there. It is only when her inquisitive fourteen-year-old daughter
begins her own investigation that the fragile peace of mind that
Alice's drug-induced oblivion enabled begins to falter. Although
politically engaged and topical, the play's significance is
further-reaching and taps into timeless questions. Lidless portrays
the inevitable consequences of moral crimes, in spite of the lapse
of time and the oblivion of the perpetrators. Guilt inexorably
engenders retribution with a horrible symmetry, so comeuppance is
exacted upon what is held most dear. Within a modern and
politically-charged setting, Lidless has a tight plot of cyclical,
interfamilial violence and inevitable, if blindly executed,
vengeance.
Men in this town were born with mouths that can right wrongs with a
few words. Why are you too timid to speak? As she is about to be
executed for a murder she didn't commit, young widow Dou Yi vows
that, if she is innocent, snow will fall in midsummer and a
catastrophic drought will strike. Three years later, a
businesswoman visits the parched, locust-plagued town to take over
an ailing factory. When her young daughter is tormented by an angry
ghost, the new factory owner must expose the injustices Dou Yi
suffered before the curse destroys every living thing. A
contemporary re-imagining by acclaimed playwright Frances Ya-Chu
Cowhig of one of the most famous classical Chinese dramas, which
breathes new life into this ancient story, haunted by centuries of
retelling. The world premiere of Snow in Midsummer on 23 February
2017 at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-Upon-Avon, launched the RSC's
Chinese Translations Project, a cultural exchange bringing Chinese
classics to a contemporary Western audience. This edition has been
republished for the American premiere at the Oregon Shakespeare
Festival in June 2018 and includes a brand new afterword by Joshua
Chambers-Letson.
When Sunny is born in rural China, her parents leave her in a slop
bucket to die because she's a girl. She survives, and at 14 leaves
for the city, where she works a low-paying factory job and attends
self-help classes to improve her chances at securing a coveted
office position. When Sunny's attempts to pull herself out of
poverty lead to dire consequences for a fellow worker, she is
forced to question the system she's spent her life trying to master
- and stand up against the powers that be. Savage, tragic and
desperately funny, The World of Extreme Happiness is a stirring
examination of a country in the midst of rapid change, and
individuals struggling to shape their own destinies. This new
edition is published to coincide with the US premiere of the play
at the Goodman Theatre, Chicago, which then transfers to the
Manhattan Theater Club, NYC.
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Lidless (Paperback)
Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig; Foreword by David Hare
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R540
Discovery Miles 5 400
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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The third winner of the Yale Drama Series competition for emerging
playwrights-a haunting and provocative imagining of the reunion,
years later, of a Guantanamo detainee and the female interrogator
who tortured him It's been fifteen years since Guantanamo, fifteen
years since Bashir last saw his U.S. Army interrogator, Alice.
Bashir is now dying of a disease of the liver, an organ that he
believes is the home of the soul. He tracks down Alice in Texas and
demands that she donate half her liver as restitution for the
damage wrought during her interrogations. But Alice doesn't
remember Bashir; a PTSD pill trial she participated in while in the
army has left her without any memory of her time there. It is only
when her inquisitive fourteen-year-old daughter begins her own
investigation that the fragile peace of mind that Alice's
drug-induced oblivion enabled begins to falter. Frances Ya-Chu
Cowhig's powerful drama asks important and difficult questions: Is
guilt a necessary form of moral reckoning, or is it an obstacle to
be overcome? Will the price of our national political amnesia be
paid only by the next generation-the daughters and sons who were
never there? Upon awarding the prize, David Hare wrote, "We admired
the play because-although it was stylishly written, although the
governing metaphor and basic realism were held in a fine balance-it
also recalled the political urgency which had propelled a previous
generation of writers into the theatre in the first place."
When Sunny is born in rural China, her parents leave her in a slop
bucket to die because she's a girl. She survives, and at 14 leaves
for the city, where she works a low-paying factory job and attends
self-help classes to improve her chances at securing a coveted
office position. When Sunny's attempts to pull herself out of
poverty lead to dire consequences for a fellow worker, she is
forced to question the system she's spent her life trying to master
- and stand up against the powers that be. Savage, tragic and
desperately funny, The World of Extreme Happiness is a stirring
examination of a country in the midst of rapid change, and
individuals struggling to shape their own destinies.
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