Theatre In Bloom

A girl made of glass. Gods and murders. A serial killer’s friends. And a secret in a bottle. This volume also contains the short plays Seven Jewish Children, Ding Dong the Wicked, Pigs and Dogs, War and Peace Gaza Piece, Tickets Now on Sale, and Beautiful Eyes.

“This new play is a subversive enchantment. It is part absurd domestic seriocomedy, part erotic magic realism, unflinching about taboos and about questioning that, just maybe, monogamy isn’t enough.” —Linda Winer, Newsday

Over dinner with another married couple, George and her husband grow fascinated by stories of their friends’ new acquaintance—an intriguing younger woman named Pip. What begins as an innocent intellectual discussion turns into a sexually explosive New Year’s Eve party after George extends an invitation to Pip and her two live-in boyfriends, raising the question: What ultimately binds human beings together?

“Smart, funny and utterly engrossing…This unexpectedly rich sequel reminds us that houses tremble and sometimes fall when doors slam, and that there are living people within, who may be wounded or lost…Mr. Hnath has a deft hand for combining incongruous elements to illuminating ends.” —Ben Brantley, New York Times

It has been fifteen years since Nora Helmer slammed the door on her stifling domestic life, when a knock comes at that same door. It is Nora, and she has returned with an urgent request. What will her sudden return mean to those she left behind? Lucas Hnath’s funny, probing, and bold play is both a continuation of Ibsen’s complex exploration of traditional gender roles, as well as a sharp contemporary take on the struggles inherent in all human relationships across time.

From whimsical comedies to nail-biting chillers, Julia Cho is one of the most versatile playwrights in the contemporary theater. Her plays have been produced at Playwrights Hori­zons, Roundabout Theatre Company, Vineyard Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop, South Coast Repertory, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, and Long Wharf Theatre, among others. She’s the recipient of a Susan Smith Black­burn Prize and is an alumna of New Dramatists. This collection includes the plays The Language Archive, Durango, Aubergine, The Piano Teacher, and Office Hour.

“Young Jean Lee is, hands down, the most adventurous downtown playwright of her generation.” —Charles Isherwood, New York Times 

In Straight White Men, when Ed and his three adult sons come together to celebrate Christmas, they enjoy cheerful trash-talking, pranks, and takeout Chinese. Then they confront a problem that even being a happy family can’t solve: when identity matters, and privilege is problematic, what is the value of being a straight white man? 

In Untitled Feminist Show, six charismatic stars of the downtown theater, dance, cabaret, and burlesque worlds come together to invite the audience on an exhilaratingly irreverent, nearly-wordless celebration of a fluid and limitless sense of identity. 

One of the American theater’s greatest and least compromising experimentalists…Her dramas are sites of living history, where personal stories of racism’s unhealed wounds mingle with dark tales thieved from the Brothers Grimm and 1940s Hollywood.—Alexis Soloski, New York Times

In the titular play of this remarkable collection, Adrienne Kennedy journeys into Georgia and New York City in the 1940s to lay bare the devastating effects of segregation and its aftermath. He Brought Her Heart Back in a Box is the story of a doomed interracial love affair unfolds through fragmented pieces—letters, recollections from family members, songs from the time—to present a multifaceted view of our cultural history that resists simple interpretation. This volume also includes Etta and Ella on the Upper West Side and Mom, How Did You Meet The Beatles?, cowritten with her son Adam P. Kennedy.

Finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Drama

Now a major motion picture starring Jon Hamm, Geena Davis, Lois Smith, and Tim Robbins.

“An elegant, thoughtful and quietly unsettling drama. Marjorie Primeoperates by stealth… at some point, you realize that it’s been landing skillfully targeted punch after punch, right where it hurts… It keeps developing in your head, like a photographic negative, long after you have seen it.” —Ben Brantley, New York Times

“Brilliant…A startling and profound new drama.” —Jesse Green, New York

“Memory is an essential element of life—crucial to thought, feeling, progress, identity. But it also comes into play with particular power and meaning after someone who has been loved dies. And it is this tension between life and death—with memory functioning as connective tissue—that animates Jordan Harrison’s subtly shattering, Marjorie Prime.” —Hedy Weiss, Chicago Sun-Times

“Jordan Harrison’s play has all the hallmarks of the best science fiction; it’s clever in conceit, alive with humor, surprising in its turns, and terribly haunting by the time the lights go out.” —Rollo Romig, New Yorker

With help from an intriguingly innovative technology in a future not far from our present, Marjorie examines her past, sometimes replacing her realities with idealized memories. Through deeply drawn characters—both real and in the form of artificial intelligence companions, or “Primes” —Harrison burrows into troubling questions of the digital age: What would we remember, and what would we forget, given the power of authorship? Will we be any less human, once computers know us better than we know ourselves?

Jordan Harrison grew up on Bainbridge Island, near Seattle. His plays include Maple and Vine, The Grown-Up, Doris to Darlene, Amazons and Their Men, Finn in the Underworld, Act a Lady, Kid-Simple, and Futura. Harrison is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Hodder Fellowship, the Kesselring Prize, and the Horton Foote Prize, among other awards. He was a 2015 Pulitzer Prize finalist for Marjorie Prime. A graduate of the Brown MFA program, Harrison is a writer-producer for the Netflix original series Orange is the New Black.

In reaction to the extraordinary events of the first hundred days of the presidency of Donald J. Trump, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks has created a unique and personal response to one of the most tumultuous times in our recent history—a play diary for each day of the presidency, to capture and explore the events as they unfolded. Known for her distinctive lyrical dialogue and powerful sociopolitical themes, Parks’s 100 Plays for the First Hundred Days is the powerful and provocative everyman’s guide to the Trumpian universe of uncertainty, confusion, and chaos.

A thoughtful and deeply personal book by a master theatre-maker.

In Tip of the Tongue, Peter Brook takes a charming, playful, and wise look at topics such as the subtle, telling differences between French and English, and the many levels on which we can appreciate the works of Shakespeare. Brook also revisits his seminal concept of the "empty space," considering how theatre—and the world—have changed over the span of his long and distinguished career. Threaded throughout with intimate and revealing stories from Brook's own life, Tip of the Tongue is a short but sparkling gift from one of the greatest artists of recent times.

Tip of the Tongue is part of Peter Brook’s “Reflections” trilogy, along with The Quality of Mercy and Playing by Ear.

A troubled teenager and her estranged mother—an undocumented Mexican immigrant on the verge of deportation—embark on a road trip and strive to mend their frayed relationship along the way. Combined with the musical talent of Erin McKeown, Hudes artfully crafts a story of the barriers and the bonds of family, while also addressing the complexities of immigration in today’s America.

“A richly suggestive and beautifully written piece of work, provoking questions that will continue to nag and expand in your mind…The genius of the play is to embed its pressingly topical preoccupations in a humane, tragicomic scenario that is never, despite the circumstances, portentous or clangingly apocalyptic in tone…The Children consolidates my view that Kirkwood is the most rewarding dramatist of her generation.” —Independent

“Sly, gripping, darkly funny…This is sci-fi kitted out with real people, real dilemmas, real scope. It’s really good.” —The Times

“Grips compulsively…Genuinely disturbing…Leaves you an abundance of ideas on which to ruminate.” —Guardian

“A far-reaching, unsettling play about legacy, survival and responsibility…Deceptively lightly written and often tartly funny…Kirkwood tackles huge themes and poses tough, even shocking questions, but weaves them into a droll script that both chastises and sympathises with her characters…” —Financial Times

“Retired people are like nuclear power stations. We like to live by the sea.”

Two retired nuclear scientists in an isolated cottage by the sea as the world around them crumbles. Then an old friend arrives with a frightening request.

“At our time of life we simply cannot deal with this shit.”

Lucy Kirkwood’s previous plays include Chimerica (winner of the Olivier Award for Best Play, the Evening Standard Award, the Critics’ Circle Best New Play Award and the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize), small hours, NSFW, and it felt empty when the heart went at first but it is alright now. The Children premiered at the Royal Court, London, and will receive its US premiere at Manhattan Theatre Club in the fall of 2017.

"Letts is a master of pitch-dark comedies that measure the grisliest depths of human behavior…Linda Vista is very funny, equally unsettling…An inspired, ruthless take on the classic midlife-crisis comedy." —Ben Brantley, New York Times

Fifty-year-old Wheeler is moving into his own apartment after a nasty divorce. With a blend of humor and humanity, Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Tracy Letts demonstrates the ultimate midlife crisis: the bewildering search for self-discovery once you’ve already grown up.

In this collection of essays, legendary theatre director Peter Brook reflects on the role of music in theatre and performance and revisits some of the best-known productions from his long and distinguished career, including Titus Andronicus, Don Giovanni, The Magic Flute, and The Prisoner. In his prologue, Brook writes, “As Orpheus discovered, every animal can respond to sounds. For us, the living question is ‘Which sounds? What music?’ In this book we will try to explore together the infinite range of experiences that can sometimes touch us deeply, sometimes leave us cold.” With topics ranging from how to evoke “true listening” to the relationship between words and music to the “living presence” of silence, Brook’s ever-inquisitive and questing mind invites the reader to pay greater attention to the rhythms and melodies present on stage and in life.

The Kilroys: "We Make Trouble. And Plays."

"When I look at the list of women and nonbinary writers included in this volume, many of whom I have mentored or taught, it is a beautiful reminder that we are a community to be reckoned with, and that there is an abundance of vital narratives awaiting a larger audience. While there remains a great deal of work to be done to reach racial and gender equity in the theater, the powerful and provocative writing presented here is part of the inciting incident that will no doubt shake up the status quo." —Lynn Nottage, from her Foreword

The Kilroys are back with a new collection of 67 monologues and scenes by women and nonbinary playwrights. This collection includes a monologue or scene from each play from the 2016 and 2017 editions of The List.

“Gloria: A Life is a unique, deeply moving performance created in the hopeful, conversational spirit of its extraordinary subject.” —Sara Holdren, New York Magazine’s Vulture  

Five decades after Gloria Steinem began raising her voice for equality and championing the voices of others, she remains a leader of the American feminist movement. 

Emily Mann’s play, Gloria: A Life, traces the progress of Steinem’s extraordinary life, from her undercover Playboy Bunny exposé in the 1960s, through her founding of Ms. Magazine in the 1970s, to her activism in today’s women’s movement.

“The idea is inspired and the treatment piercingly beautiful . . . Two formidable artists have shown respect for the integrity of each other’s work here and the result is magnificent.” —Independent

“Bob Dylan’s back catalogue is used to glorious effect in Conor McPherson’s astonishing cross-section of hope and stoic suffering . . . It is the constant dialogue between the drama and the songs that makes this show exceptional.” —Guardian

“Beguiling and soulful and quietly, exquisitely, heartbreaking. A very special piece of theatre.” —Evening Standard

“A populous, otherworldly play that combines the hard grit of the Great Depression with something numinous and mysterious.” —Telegraph

Duluth, Minnesota. 1934. A community living on a knife-edge. Lost and lonely people huddle together in the local guesthouse. The owner, Nick, owes more money than he can ever repay, his wife Elizabeth is losing her mind, and their daughter Marianne is carrying a child no one will account for. So when a preacher selling bibles and a boxer looking for a comeback turn up in the middle of the night, things spiral beyond the point of no return . . .

In Girl from the North Country, Conor McPherson beautifully weaves the iconic songbook of Bob Dylan into a show full of hope, heartbreak and soul. It premiered at the Old Vic, London, in July 2017, in a production directed by the author.

Conor McPherson is an award-winning Irish playwright. His best-known works include The Weir (Royal Court; winner of the 1999 Olivier Award for Best New Play), Dublin Carol (Atlantic Theater Company) and The Seafarer (National Theatre).

Bob Dylan, born in Duluth, Minnesota, in 1941, is one of the most important songwriters of our time. Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016. He released his thirty-ninth studio album, Triplicate, in April 2017, and continues to tour worldwide.

Winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Drama 

“An intense and gripping new drama . . . the kind of new play we desperately need: well-informed and unafraid of the world’s brutalities.”—David Cote, Time Out New York 

A rain forest bar and brothel in the brutally war-torn Congo is the setting for Lynn Nottage’s extraordinary play, Ruined. The establishment’s shrewd matriarch, Mama Nadi, keeps peace between customers from both sides of the civil war, as government soldiers and rebel forces alike choose from her inventory of women, many already “ruined” by rape and torture when they were pressed into prostitution. 

Inspired by interviews she conducted in Africa with Congolese refugees, Nottage has crafted an engrossing story with humor and song served alongside its postcolonial and feminist politics in the rich theatrical tradition of Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage.

Lucy Kirkwood has swiftly made a name for herself as one of Britain’s leading young playwrights and is widely considered to be the natural successor to the great Caryl Churchill. Kirkwood’s plays are infused with a sharp wit and a fierce intelligence, taking an unflinching look at the issues affecting our world today. This collection gathers together five of Kirkwood’s plays, including Chimerica, Tinderbox, it felt empty when the heart went at first but it is alright now, small hours, and NSFW.

“A beautiful, endlessly echoing portrait of a murder and its afterlife. Ms. Nottage shaped this story with such theatrical inventiveness and discipline that it never feels sensational… A finely wrought fusion of elements.” —Ben Brantley, New York Times

Continuing in her tradition of crafting thought-provoking, socially conscious dramas, Lynn Nottage’s play tells the story of Mlima, an elephant struck down by poachers for his magnificent tusks. Beginning in a game park in Kenya, the play tracks the trajectory of Mlima’s tusks through the ivory trade market while Mlima’s ghost follows close behind—marking all those complicit in his barbaric death.

This new collection brings together plays and monologues from the National Black Theatre Festival, one of the most historic and culturally significant events—not only in the history of Black theater but in American theater. Held every two years in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, this gathering of Black theater companies and artists from around the country and across the globe features an extraordinary array of performances, workshops, films, spoken-word poetry, and more. Established in 1989 by Larry Leon Hamlin and the North Carolina Black Repertory Company, this volume includes three full-length plays produced at the Festival:

Maid’s Door by Cheryl L. Davis

Berta, Berta by Angelica Chéri

Looking for Leroy by Larry Muhammad

This collection also includes seventeen monologues and scenes selected from each year of the Festival, featuring the artists and playwrights: Jackie Alexander, Ifa Bayeza, Pearl Cleage, Kamilah Forbes, Endesha Ida Mae Holland, Javon Johnson, Rhodessa Jones, and others.

Winner of the 1996 OBIE Award for Best Play

A gripping examination of the conflicting realities of the Black experience of twentieth-century America.

A broken taillight leads to the brutal beating of a highly educated, middle-class black man by a policeman in suburban Virginia. The Kennedys interweave the trial of the victimized son (subsequently accused of assaulting the offending officer) with his mother's poignant letters of defense and remembrance.

“Until the Flood is an urgent moral inquest.” —Jesse Green, New York Times

In the gripping and revelatory Until the Flood, Dael Orlandersmith journeys into the heart and soul of modern-day America—confronting the powerful forces of history, race, and politics. Drawn from interviews following the shooting of a black teenager, Michael Brown, by a white police officer, Darren Wilson, Orlandersmith embodies the many faces of a community rallying for justice and a country still yearning for change.

Tender, ruminative…Fugard has been anatomizing the evils of apartheid, and the troubling legacies it left behind, throughout his long and distinguished career.—Charles Isherwood, New York Times

A touching portrayal of compassion passed down through two generations in a racially torn continent, The Painted Rocks at Revolver Creek centers around Nukain and Bokkie, an elderly African painter and his young protege. Inspired by the life of Nukain Mabuza, a self-taught artist who painted the boulders on the farm on which he worked, this play observes two differing experiences with racism, in the decades during and following apartheid, while ultimately illuminating the meaning of preserving the history of one’s own past.

The Painted Rocks at Revolver Creek is another entry in Fugard's canon that sheds a light on the looming shadow of apartheid and its resulting dissolution of society and politics in South Africa.

Since he first arrived on the New York art/theatre/performance scene in 1970, Lee Breuer has been at the forefront of the American theatrical avant-garde, creating challenging works both independently and with Mabou Mines, the company he co-founded with JoAnne Akalaitis, Philip Glass, Ruth Maleczech, and David Warrilow. By blending disciplines and techniques from widely different cultures, he has created a unique performance genre fusing sound and musical components, visual arts, and arresting movement/dance/puppetry into a groundbreaking form.

Breuer’s work as a director includes radical adaptations of major works, such as his celebrated stagings of The Lost Ones by Samuel Beckett, The Gospel at Colonus, inspired by Sophocles, a gender-reversed King Lear, and a revolutionary reinterpretation of Ibsen with Mabou Mines DollHouse.

Breuer has also been a prolific writer who redefines the concept of character and the use of biography in such works as The Shaggy Dog Animation, A Prelude to Death in Venice, Hajj, Ecco Porco, and La Divina Caricatura in a distinctive American voice.

In this volume, theatre historian and journalist Stephen Nunns has assembled a unique look into one of contemporary theatre’s most singular creative minds. Using interviews and excerpts from Breuer’s writings, with added historical commentary, the thrilling result is equal parts autobiography, artistic manifesto, and critical exploration. Extensively illustrated with photographs of his work from around the world, this is a one-of-a-kind portrait of the artist and theatrical activist at work.

A career summation, its author's own 'Mecca.'—Frank Rich, New York Times

After her husband dies, aging Miss Helen begins to fill her home and garden in the remote South African bush with strange sculptures made from cement, glass, wire, and recycled materials. Marius, a local clergyman, believes Helen should cease this habit and move to a senior home. But Elsa, a young teacher from Cape Town, arrives and encourages Helen to keep going. The two visitors spar over whether the peculiar art is an outpouring of creativity or an outbreak of madness.