Drama

10029 books

$180.00

by George Fredric Franko (Author)Plautus' Mostellaria is one of ancient Rome's most breezy and amusing comedies. The plot is ridiculously simple: when a father returns home after three years abroad, a clever slave named Tranio devises deceptions to conceal that the son has squandered a fortune partying with pals and purchasing his prized prostitute's freedom. Tranio convinces the gullible father that his house is haunted, that his son has purchased the neighbor's house, and that he must repay...

Adapting Macbeth: A Cultural History - Hardcover

$198.00

by William C. Carroll (Author), Mark Thornton Burnett (Editor)In this study, William C. Carroll analyses a wide range of adaptations and appropriations of Macbeth across different media to consider what it is about the play that compels our desire to reshape it. Arguing that many of these adaptations attempt to 'improve' or 'correct' the play's perceived political or aesthetic flaws, Carroll traces how Macbeth's popularity and adaptability stems from several of its formal features: its openly...

Corneille: Three Masterpieces: The Liar; The Illusion; Le Cid - Paperback

$36.38

by Pierre Corneille (Author), Ranjit Bolt (Translator)Includes the plays The Liar, The Illusion, Le CidPierre Corneille (1606-84), the great seventeenth-century neoclassical dramatist, wrote over thirty plays during his long and varied career. Triumphant in both comedy and tragedy, his plays remain at the core of the repertory.When the young Molière saw The Liar (Le Menteur), a delightful chronicle of a pathological liar's adventures in love, he decided to become a playwright. The Illusion (L...

The Flu Season & Intermission - Paperback

$17.48

by Will Eno (Author)The Flu SeasonNo one in the middle of being in love ever sat down to write a love story. It's only after the belongings are sorted and the shirts returned that the pencils are sharpened and the notebooks opened. So, in a serious way, love stories are never love stories. Love is their inspiration, yes, but the end of love is the reason for their existence. This is a problem. It proposes anti-journeys where we saw only journeys, directs things toward a new negative we hadn't...

$17.48

by Selma Dimitrijevic (Author)Victoria Frankenstein is a brilliant, visionary young woman. It's an age of enlightenment, a time when old orders begin to crumble and everything seems possible. Provided of course, that you are an English-man. Women are not allowed to study medicine in England, so Victoria travels to Bavaria to fulfil her destiny and become Dr. Frankenstein. Victoria's experiments lead her to very brink of human knowledge, the secret of life itself. Author BiographySelma Dimitri...

The Methuen Drama Book of Trans Plays: Sagittarius Ponderosa; The Betterment Society; How to Clean Your Room; She He Me; The Devils Between Us; Doctor - Hardcover

$155.25

by Azure D. Osborne-Lee (Author), Ty Defoe (Author), Mj Kaufman (Author)The Methuen Drama Book of Trans Plays for the Stage is the first play anthology to offer eight new plays by trans playwrights featuring trans characters. This edited collection establishes a canon of contemporary American trans theatre which represents a variety of performance modes and genres. From groundbreaking new work from across America's stages to unpublished work by new voices, these plays address themes such as g...

$21.53

by Mikhail Bulgakov (Author)A mysterious stranger appears in a Moscow park. Soon he and his retinue have astonished the locals with the magic show to end all magic shows. But why are they really here, and what has it got to do with the beautiful Margarita, or her lover, the Master, a silenced writer? A carnival for the senses and a diabolical extravaganza, this most exuberant of Russian novels was staged in this adaptation at Chichester Festival Theatre.Author BiographyMikhail Bulgakov (1891-...

$21.53

by Nell Leyshon (Author)Late August down on the Somerset levels: deep in the water and the silt, something is moving, unfurling... Suffused with the austere poetry of the West Country, Glass Eels tells the story of a girl's sexual awakening as she struggles to free herself from the shadows of her childhood and the stifling atmosphere of an all-male household. Glass Eels was produced by Hampstead Theatre and the Brewhouse Theatre (Somerset) and premiered in June 2007.Author BiographyNell Leysh...

$21.53

by Luke Rhinehart (Author)A play by Paul Lucas, inspired by Luke Rhinehart's novel 'The Dice Man'.The Dice House unfolds in a commune run by maverick psychiatrist Dr. Ratner where the patients are encouraged to surrender all their decisions to the roll of the dice. When Ratner's rival Dr Drabble hurls one of his own patients into the clinic to kidnap an inmate - his wife - a comic romp of Pythonesque proportions ensues. The Dice House is a glorious glimpse of how insane life could be if deter...

Real American Dinner Party & Other Short Plays - Paperback

$23.89

by Jen Silverman (Author)A dynamic collection of five absurdist, hilarious, provocative plays exploring everything from power to loneliness to menstruating hippos. The collection contains: Real American Dinner Party - Sometimes you lose your keys, sometimes you lose your temper, and sometimes you lose the most unexpected of things. A particularly tense dinner party can change everything in the blink of an eye... (2f, 2m)Hippos of the Eastern Enclosure - On Thanksgiving, a nervous male zookeep...

$23.89

by Sarah Ruhl (Author)Dramatic ComedyCharacters: 8 male, 3 female (with doubling)Hailed by the New Yorker's John Lahr as "extraordinary", "bold", and "inventive", Sarah Ruhl's Passion Play takes us behind the scenes of three communities attempting to stage the death and resurrection of Christ. From Queen Elizabeth's England to Hitler's Germany to Reagan's America, Ruhl's exploration of devotion takes us on a humorous yet unsettling journey filled with lust, whimsy, and a lot of fish. Th Numbe...

Shakespearean Character: Language in Performance - Paperback

$62.91

by Jelena Marelj (Author), Jonathan Hope (Editor), Lynne Magnusson (Editor)Why do we continue to experience many of Shakespeare's dramatic characters as real people with personal histories, individual personalities, and psychological depth? What is it that makes Falstaff seem to jump off the page, and what gives Hamlet his complexity? Shakespearean Character: Language in Performance examines how the extraordinary lifelikeness of some of Shakespeare's most enigmatic and self-conscious characte...

Euripides: Iphigenia Among the Taurians - Paperback

$55.71

by Isabelle Torrance (Author), Thomas Harrison (Editor)In this new student introduction to a Greek tragedy, Isabelle Torrance looks at what makes Iphigenia among the Taurians a successful tragedy in ancient Greek terms, and how dramatic excitement is achieved through the exotic setting, the cast of characters, and the chorus. Assuming no knowledge of Greek, and with students in mind, the central themes of ethnicity and gender relations are examined to show how Euripides manipulates establishe...

$20.18

by Tabby Lamb (Author)'He was a boy, she was a girl. Can I make it any more binary?' When friends die and pronouns change, what's left of the memories that don't fit anymore? Brought to life with storytelling, an original pop music score, and way too many America's Next Top Model references, Since U Been Gone is a moving and powerful autobiographical account about childhood co-stars, teenage rebellion, growing up queer in the mid-noughties, and finding yourself while losing a friend.Author Bi...

$21.53

by Lucy Prebble (Author)I like the internet. I like that way of talking to people. It's honest. It's a place where people are free to say anything they like. And most of what they say is about sex. Dani is 17. She's looking to meet someone honest and direct. What she finds is a man twice her age who thinks she's an 11-year-old boy. - I'm sorry I'm not the freak show you expected.- We're on the same side of the bars I think. Lucy Prebble's debut play is a devastatingly and disturbingly funny e...

$21.53

by Martin Travers (Author)Four Scottish teenagers. Two interlocking stories. One ideology tears them apart. Talented kickboxers and A-grade pupils Fatma and Britney have been best friends for ever. That is until now. Britney's views about everything are changing dramatically. She's getting drawn into the alt right online. When Fatma is sent something sinister through the post it triggers a series of decisions that will destroy their lives and their teacher's life for ever. Britney's brother J...

The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays - Paperback

$5.95

by Oscar Wilde (Author), Sylvan Barnet (Introduction by), Elise Bruhl (Afterword by)A universal favorite, The Importance of Being Earnest displays Oscar Wilde's theatrical genius at its brilliant best. Subtitled "A Trivial Comedy for Serious People", this hilarious attack on Victorian manners and morals turns a pompous world on its head, lets duplicity lead to happiness, and makes riposte the highest form of art. Also included in this special collection are Wilde's first comedy success, Lady ...

Ecologies of Precarity in Twenty-First Century Theatre: Politics, Affect, Responsibility - Paperback

$80.91

by Marissia Fragkou (Author), Enoch Brater (Editor), Mark Taylor-Batty (Editor)Presenting a rigorous critical investigation of the reinvigoration of the political in contemporary British theatre, Ecologies of Precarity in Twenty-First Century Theatre provides a fresh understanding of how theatre has engaged with precarity, affect, risk, intimacy, care and relationality in recent times. The study makes a compelling case for reading precarity as a 'sticky' theatrical trope which carries the pot...

$22.88

by John Van Druten (Author)London Wall is a wryly comic look at the life of women office workers in the 1930s. In a solicitor's office in the City, Brewer, the office manager, sees pretty new 19-year-old typist Pat as fair game. As some of the more experienced secretaries try to warn her, and others leave her to her fate, her steady boyfriend - an idealistic young writer - desperately tries to win her back. Meanwhile, cynical Miss Janus' romantic life seems to be over as she is jilted by her ...

$20.18

by Euripides (Author), Caroline Bird (Adapted by)The war is over. Beyond the prison walls, Troy and its people burn. Inside the prison, the city's captive women await their fate. But their grief at what has been before will soon be drowned out by the horror of what is to come, as the Greek lust for vengeance consumes everything - man, woman and baby - in its path. This caustic and radical new version of Euripides' classic tragedy comes from one of the UK's most exciting young poets, Caroline ...

$22.88

by Oliver Lansley (Author)A new play inspired by the true story of a miner who became entombed in a tunnel during World War One. As the horror threatens to engulf him, he discovers another world beneath the mud and death. Setting off on an epic journey of salvation, the boundaries between reality and fantasy blur as he questions what's real, what's not and whether it even matters? The Trench blends Les Enfants Terribles' acclaimed brand of physical storytelling, verse, puppetry and live music...

$20.18

by Arthur Wing Pinero (Author), Stephen Unwin (Introduction by)When Aubrey Tanqueray marries for the second time, he knows that his new wife, Paula, is a 'woman with a past'. But he has no idea how that past will catch up with himin the end.More probing than Oscar Wilde, more accessible than Ibsen, Pinero's The Second Mrs Tanqueray (1893) is one of the masterpieces of the Victorian theatre: sexy, dramatic, funny and very moving.Author BiographyBorn in 1855, Arthur Wing Pinero was an English a...

$20.18

by Griselda Gambaro (Author), Gwen Mackeith (Translator)In this absurd and forceful play, two brothers, one weak, one strong, play out a primal scene of envy, cruelty and torture as the strong exerts his power and aggression over the weak. Involuntarily, the audience finds itself complicit in the brutality witnessed onstage through Gambaro's command of powerful and irresistible black humor.Author BiographyGriselda Gambaro (born July 28, 1928) is an Argentine playwright, whose works often conc...

$20.18

by Richard Bean (Author)"I'm a scientist. I don't 'believe' in anything."The study of climate science is the cool degree at the university where Dr Diane Cassell is a lead academic in Earth Sciences. At odds with the orthodoxy over the causes of climate change, she finds herself increasingly vilified and is forced to ask if the issue is becoming political as well as personal. Could the belief in anthropogenic global warming be the most attractive religion of the 21st century. What evidence do...

$20.18

by Rachael McGill (Author)"Mad cow disease, Bovine Spongiform Encephalophy. I mean who thinks these names up? I prefer Mad Cow, at least you can still say it when you're pissed. Me daughter says you can get it from mechanically recovered meat products. I asked if that meant the RAC scraping up roadkill and selling it on."Despite their bickering stage double act on the Leeds pub circuit, Mike and his seventeen year old daughter Becky are TIGHT. She pretends not to laugh at his jokes, he preten...

$20.18

by Michael Hastings (Author)1928: The Paris apartment of James Joyce and his family. A world of secret lives and secret dreams. A young student named Samuel Beckett arrives and an unusual love begins.Calico is a fictional story inspired by fact. It is a captivating and exuberant play about a family in crisis. Scrupulously researched, Calico mixes sadness and great compassion to explore love almost to the brink of insanity.Calico opened at the Duke of York Theatre in London's West End in Febru...

Plays One: Transformation, Masses Man Hoppla, We're Alive! - Paperback

$36.38

by Ernst Toller (Author)Ernst Toller was the most prominent of the German Expressionist playwrights. Transformation is a poetic distillation in stations of the author's conversion from patriot to pacifist in the First World War. In Masses Man, utopian socialist realism clashes with Leninist revolutionary violence. With Hoopla We're Alive, Toller espoused "new sobriety" and presented a contemporary political cross-section of Berlin.Author BiographyErnst Toller was a formative figure in the de...

$20.18

by Philip Osment (Author)1988. THATCHER'S BRITAIN. Seventeen-year-old Luke runs away to London - away from homophobic playground slurs, headlines that scream 'Don't Teach Our Children To Be Gay' and a family who wouldn't understand him - to Uncle Martin, who he once saw with his arms around another man at a march. In the capital, Mark is sacked because of fears about colleagues working with 'someone like him'. His boyfriend, Selwyn, faces being beaten up both by the police and at home by his ...

$20.18

by Josh Overton (Author)Sad Little Man is a stand-up tragedy set performed by the mind of a young man in shock. Described as "a stunning, bittersweet story" and "theatrically beautiful" by Noises Off Magazine, a combination of performance poetry, physical theatre and projection tell the story of the many lives of Lee and someone he loves.Written by Josh Overton, winner of The Times Playwriting Award 2015, and created by the Pub Corner Poets, Total Theatre Emerging Company 2015 award nominees....

$20.18

by Kalungi Ssebandeke (Author)Fanuco's taking English lessons from the only American he knows. The thing is, she's the FBI's most wanted woman and he's a Cuban teenager desperate to live the American Dream.When will he realize his mentor is a former Black Panther, a convicted felon and has a million dollars on her head?Author BiographyKalungi Ssebandeke's other plays include View of Her Own Beauty (Black Lives, Black Words), My Darling Wife (Talawa Firsts), The Star (Team Angelica's Boom!) an...

$20.18

by Inua Ellams (Author)When we were young, we worshipped stars, gleaming long-limbed godsframed in the act of impossible flight.For a time we tried to follow, to carve out our own piece of skywith a butter-smooth arc of an armand a Spalding ball glued to the fingertips... Seen from a British perspective, The Spalding Suite gets to the heart and soul of the gravity-defying game and delves into the hopes and dreams of those who play it. From the fleeting high of the score and the robust camarad...

$20.18

by Sue MacLaine (Author)A bold new work by Sue MacLaine about our cognitive capacity to process traumatic experience and the ability of language to represent it. Winner of a Total Theatre award for 'Innovation & Playing with Form' and recommended for the British Council showcase at the Edinburgh Festival 2015. The play explores how possible the cognition and articulation of traumatic and private experience is. A hymn to resilience, this personal and political piece spars across the heard ...