Plays / Theatre

The unique format of this book will get students talking whether they're actors or not! Duologs are not scenes for two people; rather, they are a pair of monologs about the same subject but from different viewpoints. Likewise, triologs offer three perspectives on the same topic, without the actors ever interacting. These can be great tools for opening up subjects for discussion or debate. Even the standard single monologs including in this creative collection touch on issues ripe for discussion for middle and high school students. The subject material of all these monologs, ranging from one to three minutes maximum, is honest and true to life. Best of all, you don't have to worry about inappropriate language or situations. These monologs don't skirt important issues that teens face today, but each situation is handled in a way that allows the actor, not the language, to be center stage. Monologs range from light-hearted topics -- blind dates, babysitting blues, and fender benders -- to more sensitive ones such as family problems, drunk driving, and suicide.

This collection of 100 short (very short) plays from The Neo-Futurists' acclaimed cult hit Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind was originally published by Chicago Plays in 1993. The show presents 30 plays in 60 minutes, its ensemble of writer/performers generating between two and 12 new plays each week, as dictated by a roll of the dice. The material runs the gamut of style, tone, and topic: musical, confession, agit-prop, poetic gesture, physical comedy, puppet theater, audience interrogation, folk song, sex joke, and many more. The plays are funny, moving, challenging, powerful, and occasionally just plain weird. There is no fourth wall in Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind -- the show embraces the ideal that theater is created in the connection between audience and performer. Randomness, dynamism, speed, brevity, and planned obsolescence are celebrated and exploited to engage and refresh all participants. The plays stand as an entertaining document of the show's output, and they are ideal for scene study, auditions, and competitions.

A guide to one hundred plays drawn from around the world, written by one hundred different playwrights, addressing the most urgent and important issue of our time: the climate crisis.

The plays discussed in this guide span a wide variety of styles, genres, and cast sizes--all speaking to an aspect of the climate emergency. Encompassing both famous plays and lesser-known works, the selections include recent writing that explicitly wrestles with these issues, as well as classic texts in which these resonances now ring out clearly. Each play is explored in a concise essay illuminating key themes and highlighting its contribution to our understanding of climate issues, with sections including Resources, Energy, Migration, Responsibility, Fightback, and Hope.

100 Plays to Save the World is a book to provoke as well as inspire--to start conversations, to inform debate, to challenge our thinking, and to be a launch pad for future productions. It is an empowering resource for theatre directors, producers, teachers, youth leaders, and writers looking for plays that speak to our present moment. Above all, it is a call to arms: to step up, think big, and unleash theatre's power to imagine a better future into existence.

The book includes a foreword by Daze Aghaji, a leading youth climate justice activist.

Having surveyed post-war British drama in State of the Nation, Michael Billington now looks at the global picture. In this provocative and challenging new book, he offers his highly personal selection of the 101 greatest plays ranging from the Greeks to the present-day.

But his book is no mere list. Billington justifies his choices in extended essays -- and even occasional dialogues -- that put the plays in context, explain their significance and trace their performance history. In the end, it's a book that poses an infinite number of questions. What makes a great play? Does the definition change with time and circumstance? Or are certain common factors visible down the ages? It's safe to say that it's a book that, in revising the accepted canon, is bound to stimulate passionate argument and debate.

Everyone will have strong views on Billington's chosen hundred and one and will be inspired to make their own selections. But, coming from Britain's longest-serving theatre critic, these essays are the product of a lifetime spent watching and reading plays and record the adventures of a soul amongst masterpieces.

Thirteen plays by the Oscar-winning author of Moonstruck. Includes: The Big Funk Savage in Limbo Danny & The Deep Blue Sea Welcome to the Moon The Red Coat Down & Out Let Us Go Out Into the Starry Night Out West A Lonely Impulse of Delight Women of Manhattan The Dreamer Examines His Pillow Italian-American Reconciliation and Beggars in the House of Plenty. Also includes an introduction by the author.

Exit the King is a highly stylized, ritualized death rite unfolding the final hours of the once-great king Berenger the First. As he dies, his kingdom also dies. His armies suffer defeat, the young emigrate, the seasons change overnight, and his kingdom's borders shrink to the outline of his throne. At last, as the curtain falls, the king himself dissolves into a gray mist.

"Suzan-Lori Parks is one of the most important dramatists America has produced."--Tony Kushner

"The plan was that no matter what I did, how busy I was, what other commitments I had, I would write a play a day, every single day for a year. It would be about being present and being committed to the artistic process every single day, regardless of the 'weather.' It became a daily meditation, a daily prayer celebrating the rich and strange process of a writing life."--Suzan-Lori Parks

On November 13, 2002, the incomparable Suzan-Lori Parks got an idea to write a play every day for a year. She began that very day, finishing one year later. The result is an extraordinary testament to artistic commitment. This collection of 365 impeccably crafted pieces, each with its own distinctive characters and dramatic power, is a complete work by an artist responding to her world, each and every day. Parks is one of the American theater's most wily and innovative writers, and her "stark but poetic language and fiercely idiosyncratic images transform her work into something haunting and marvelous" (TIME).

5-Minute Plays is the latest collection from veteran editor Lawrence Harbison, a man who has spent his career championing new and established playwrights by bringing their work into print. What's the story behind this one? In keeping with the spirit of the book, we'll give it to you in five. 1. On any given day, freely circulated viral videos make waves across our society -ÿand we take the time to consume them. The top trenders boast an average length around five minutes. 2. Needless to say, an average play runs far longer (and costs much more). Accordingly, we don't have the time (or money) for theater. 3. Variety is the spice of life - perhaps that's why the passive consumption of digital media runs rampant. Sometimes you feel like something melodramatic; sometimes you feel like something comedic. Sometimes you crave the firm grounding of realism; sometimes you crave the sweet escape of surreality. Sometimes you desire each of these things in rapid succession within the course of a half hour. Whatever your mood, bite-sized bits of entertainment keep you covered. 4. At long last, the world of theater has caught up with the digital realm. Five-minute plays and festivals abound - you can now plow through a full-fledged performance in less time than it takes a busy barista to make your grande chai latte, skim, with whip. 5. Seems you suddenly do have time for theatre. Whether you're an actor looking for a quick warm-up, an instructor scrounging for tight scene exercises, or an everyday reader eager to speed-date some of today's most talented playwrights, 5-Minute Plays provides all the theater you need without killing all the free time you have. Why not give it a whirl?