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Plays / Theatre
"Sitting in an automobile was where I first remember understanding how drama works...Hidden in the back seat of a sedan, I quickly realized how deep the chasm or intense the claustrophobia could be inside your average family car." --Neil LaBute
Be it the medium for clandestine couplings, arguments, shelter, or ultimately transportation, the automobile is perhaps the most authentically American of spaces. In Autobahn, Neil LaBute's provocative new collection of one-act plays set within the confines of the front seat, the playwright employs his signature plaintive insight to great effect, investigating the inchoate apprehension that surrounds the steering wheel. Each of these seven brief vignettes explore the ethos of perception and relationship--from a make-out session gone awry to a kidnapping thinly disguised as a road trip, a reconnaissance mission involving the rescue of a Nintendo 64 to a daughter's long ride home after her release from rehab. The result is an unsettling montage that gradually reveals the scabrous force of words left unsaid while illuminating the delicate interplay between intention and morality, capturing the essence of middle America and the myriad paths which cross its surface.
Challenging the critique of autoethnography as overly focused on the self, Tami Spry calls for a performative autoethnography that both unsettles the "I" and represents the Other with equal commitment. Expanding on her popular book Body, Paper, Stage, Spry uses a variety of examples, literary forms, and theoretical traditions to reframe this research method as transgressive, liberatory, and decolonizing for both self and Other.
The first original screenplay by Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida, Away We Go is the new movie direcetd by Academy Award(R) winner Sam Mendes.
Longtime couple Verona (Maya Rudolph) and Burt (John Krasinski) are expecting a baby, and the impending child's only living grandparents are moving to--where else--Belgium. So Burt and Verona head out on the road, across America, looking for the right place to call home. Along the way they encounter a succession of strange and hilarious friends and relatives (played by a cast that includes Jeff Daniels, Catherine O'Hara, Maggie Gyllenhall, Josh Hamilton, Allison Janney, and Jim Gaffigan), most of whom have no idea what they're doing. In the end--with and despite the help of those they meet on their journey--Burt and Verona come closer to an understanding of their own definition of home and family.
BAAL, which renowned playwright Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) wrote when he was in college, is the provocative story of a drunken, ruthless, womanizing poet and singer, a desperate antihero in the tradition of Villon and Rimbaud. The NEW YORK TIMES called the first American production strong stuff, both horrible and fascinating.
On the face of it, Gabriel Axel's Babette's Feast (1989) is a film in which the eyes - and mouths - of religious zealots are opened to the glories of the sensual world. It is a critique of what Nietzsche called life-denying religion in favour of life-affirming sensuality. But to view the film in that way is to get it profoundly wrong. In his study of the film, Julian Baggini argues that Babette's Feast is not about the battle between religiosity and secularity but a deep examination of how the two can come together. Baggini's analysis focuses on themes of love, pleasure, artisty and grace, to provide a rich philosophical reading of this most sensual of films.
An electrifying new play by Tony Award-winning playwright Richard Greenberg, The Babylon Line opens at Lincoln Center Theater on December 5, 2016. A thirty-eight-year-old writer from Greenwich Village, Aaron is painfully aware of his failures as an artist when his desperate need for a job forces him to commute along the Babylon Line to Levittown to teach. What awaits him is a classroom of varyingly unwilling students, some who attend because their preferred course was full, others who are attentive enough but sit silently at their desks--and all of whom have yet to set pen to paper. Over the course of the semester, Aaron's adult pupils write increasingly more honest life accounts and stories, and cracks begin to appear in their small-town community. A particularly bold and troubled student, Joan, strikes up a rapport with Aaron that threatens to become something more, as the pair bond over their failing marriages and creative frustrations. In the end, we observe the life-changing effects of artistic expression as Greenberg maps out the rest of each of the characters' lives, full of triumphs and newfound joy that can be traced back directly to those few weeks in a classroom in 1967. Richard Greenberg's intelligent, nuanced, and perceptive dialogue has been described by the New York Times as "exquisite . . . sparkling gems that [he] delivers with gratifying frequency." One of America's most loved and frequently produced playwrights, Greenberg has wisdom that runs deep, and his humor and charm make his work destined to be read and performed for generations to come.
A bold new translation of Euripides' shockingly modern classic work, from Forward Prize-winning poet, Robin Robertson, with a new introduction by bestselling and award-winning writer, critic and translator Daniel Mendelsohn.
Thebes has been rocked by the arrival of Dionysus, the god of wine and ecstasy. Drawn by the god's power, the women of the city have rushed to worship him on the mountain, drinking and dancing with frenzied abandon.
Pentheus, the king of Thebes, is furious, denouncing this so-called "god" as a charlatan and an insurgent. But no mortal can deny a god, much less one as powerful and seductive as Dionysus, who will exact a terrible revenge on Pentheus, drawing the king to his own tragic destruction.
This stunning translation by award-winning poet Robin Robertson reinvigorates Euripides' masterpiece. Updating it for contemporary readers, he brings the ancient verse to fervid, brutal life, revealing a work of art as devastating and relevant today as it was in the fifth century, BC.
The plays of Euripides have stimulated audiences since the fifth century BC. This volume, containing Phoenician Women, Bacchae, Iphigenia at Aulis, Orestes, and Rhesus
completes the new editions of Euripides in Penguin Classics.
completes the new editions of Euripides in Penguin Classics.
Features a general introduction, individual prefaces to each play, chronology, notes, bibliography, and glossary
Leipzig, Germany, 1722: Johann Kuhnau, revered organist of the Thomaskirche, suddenly dies, leaving his post vacant. In order to fill the position, the city council invites a small number of musicians to audition for the appointment, including Johann Sebastian Bach. This, however, is not his story. Based on actual events, Bach at Leipzig imagines with uncommon intelligence and wit how six little-known musicians resorted to bribery, blackmail, and betrayal in an attempt to secure the most coveted musical post in all of Europe.
Shannon Jackson explores a range of disciplinary, institutional, and political puzzles that engage the social and aesthetic practice of performance in this collection of twenty essential essays spanning her career. Back Stages starts by considering the historical connection between performance practice and movements of social reform, while later writings analyze disciplinary debates on the place of performance in higher education and within the contemporary field of socially engaged art, tracking fraught and allied relationships to literary studies, art history, visual culture, theater, social theory, and critical theory. At a time of increased aesthetic experimentation and political debate within the art world, these essays alight on artists, groups, and cultural organizations whose experiments have challenged conventions of curation and critique, including Theaster Gates, Paul Ramírez Jonas, Harrell Fletcher, and My Barbarian. Throughout, Jackson navigates the political ambivalences of performance, from the late nineteenth to the twenty-first century, tracking shifts in participatory art that seek to resist capitalism, even as such performance work paradoxically risks neoliberal appropriation by a post-Fordist experience economy. Back Stages surfaces unexpected cross-disciplinary connections and provides new opportunities for mutual engagement within a wide network of educational, artistic, and civic sectors. A substantial introduction excavates the critical links between the essays and a variety of disciplines and movements.
Great Scott! Go Back to the Future with Doc Brown and Marty McFly in this visually stunning look at the creation of one of the most beloved movie trilogies of all time.
Few films have made an impact on popular culture like the Back to the Future trilogy. This deluxe, officially licensed book goes behind the scenes to tell the complete story of the making of these hugely popular movies and how the adventures of Marty McFly and Doc Brown became an international phenomenon.
Back to the Future: The Ultimate Visual History is a stunning journey into the creation of this beloved time-traveling saga and features hundreds of never-before-seen images from all three movies, along with rare concept art, storyboards, and other visual treasures.
The book also features exclusive interviews with key cast and crew members--including Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, Robert Zemeckis, Bob Gale, Steven Spielberg, Frank Marshall, Kathleen Kennedy, and more--and tells the complete story of the production of the movies, from the initial concept to the staging of iconic scenes such as the "Enchantment Under the Sea" dance and the hoverboard sequence. The book also delves into the wider Back to the Future universe, exploring the animated television show and Back to the Future: The Ride.
Written by Michael Klastorin--the production publicist on the second and third movies--with Back to the Future expert Randal Atamaniuk, this book delivers a range of surprises from the Universal Pictures archives and also includes a wealth of special removable items.
Comprehensive, compelling, and definitive, Back to the Future: The Ultimate Visual History is the book that fans have been waiting for.
The best-selling script analysis book for thirty-five years
Considered an essential text since its publication thirty-five years ago, this guide for students and practitioners of both theater and literature complements, rather than contradicts or repeats, traditional methods of literary analysis of scripts. Ball developed his method during his work as literary director at the Guthrie Theater, building his guide on the crafts playwrights of every period and style use to make their plays stageworthy. The text is full of tools for students and practitioners to use as they investigate plot, character, theme, exposition, imagery, conflict, theatricality, and the other crucial parts of the superstructure of a play. Also included are guides for discovering what the playwright considers a play' s most important elements, thus permitting interpretation based on the foundation of the play rather than its details. Using Shakespeare's Hamlet as illustration, Ball assures a familiar base for clarifying script-reading techniques as well as exemplifying the kinds of misinterpretation readers can fall prey to by ignoring the craft of the playwright. Of immense utility to those who want to put plays on the stage (actors, directors, designers, production specialists) Backwards & Forwards is also a fine playwriting manual because the structures it describes are the primary tools of the playwright.
Bad Jews tells the story of Daphna Feygenbaum, a "Real Jew" with an Israeli boyfriend. When Daphna's cousin Liam brings home his shiksa girlfriend Melody and declares ownership of their grandfather's Chai necklace, a vicious and hilarious brawl over family, faith and legacy ensues.
Anne Carson writes, "Euripides was a playwright of the fifth century BC who reinvented Greek tragedy, setting it on a path that leads straight to reality TV. His plays broke all the rules, upended convention and outraged conservative critics. The Bakkhai is his most subversive play, telling the story of a man who cannot admit he would rather live in the skin of a woman, and a god who seems to combine all sexualities into a single ruinous demand for adoration. Dionysos is the god of intoxication. Once you fall under his influence, there is no telling where you will end up."
Book jacket/back: The setting of Jean Genet's celebrated play is a brothel that caters to refined sensibilities and peculiar tastes. Here men from all walks of life don the garb of their fantasies and act them out: a man from the gas company wears the robe and mitre of a bishop; another customer becomes a flagellant judge, and still another a victorious general, while a bank clerk defiles the Virgin mary. These costumed diversions take place while outside a revolution rages which has isolated the brothel from the rest of the rebel-controlled city. In a stunning series of macabre, climactic scenes, Genet presents his caustic view of man and society.
The leading figure of absurdist theater and one of the great innovators of the modern stage, Eugène Ionesco (1909-94) did not write his first play, The Bald Soprano, until 1950. He went on to become an internationally renowned master of modern drama, famous for the comic proportions and bizarre effects that allow his work to be simultaneously hilarious, tragic, and profound. As Ionesco has said, "Theater is not literature. . . . It is simply what cannot be expressed by any other means."
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is an American western anthology film written, directed, and produced by the Coen brothers. It stars Tim Blake Nelson, Liam Neeson, James Franco, Zoe Kazan, Tyne Daly, and Tom Waits. It premiered at the 75th Venice International Film Festival on August 31, 2018, where it won the Golden Osella Award for Best Screenplay and is scheduled to be released November 16 on Netflix after a theatrical run. Six chapters each present a different story from the wild frontier. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs tells the story of a sharp-shooting songster. In Near Algodones, a wannabe bank robber gets his due and then some. Meal Ticket is a gothic tale about two weary travelling performers. All Gold Canyon is a story about a prospector mining for gold, while a woman finds an unexpected promise of love, along with a dose of life's cruel irony, on a wagon train across the prairies in The Gal Who Got Rattled. Finally, ghostly laughs haunt The Mortal Remains as a Lady rains judgment upon a motley crew of strangers undertaking a final carriage ride.
Akim Volynsky was a Russian literary critic, journalist, and art historian who became Saint Petersburg s liveliest and most prolific ballet critic in the early part of the twentieth century. This book, the first English edition of his provocative and influential writings, provides a striking look at life inside the world of Russian ballet at a crucial era in its history.
Stanley J. Rabinowitz selects and translates forty of Volynsky s articles vivid, eyewitness accounts that sparkle with details about the careers and personalities of such dance luminaries as Anna Pavlova, Mikhail Fokine, Tamara Karsavina, and George Balanchine, at that time a young dancer in the Maryinsky company whose keen musical sense and creative interpretive power Volynsky was one of the first to recognize. Rabinowitz also translates Volynsky s magnum opus, "The Book of Exaltations, " an elaborate meditation on classical dance technique that is at once a primer and an ideological treatise. Throughout his writings, Rabinowitz argues in his critical introduction, which sets Volynsky s life and work against the backdrop of the principal intellectual currents of his time, Volynsky emphasizes the spiritual and ethereal qualities of ballet."