Greek Tragedies, Volume I contains Aeschylus's "Agamemnon," translated by Richmond Lattimore; Aeschylus's "Prometheus Bound," translated by David Grene; Sophocles's "Oedipus the King," translated by David Grene; Sophocles's "Antigone," translated by Elizabeth Wyckoff; and Euripides's "Hippolytus," translated by David Grene. Sixty years ago, the University of Chicago Press undertook a momentous project: a new translation of the Greek tragedies that would be the ultimate resource for teachers, students, and readers. They succeeded. Under the expert management of eminent classicists David Grene a... View More...
Greek Tragedies, Volume III contains Aeschylus's "The Eumenides," translated by Richmond Lattimore; Sophocles's "Philoctetes," translated by David Grene; Sophocles's "Oedipus at Colonus," translated by Robert Fitzgerald; Euripides's "The Bacchae," translated by William Arrowsmith; and Euripides's "Alecestis," translated by Richmond Lattimore. Sixty years ago, the University of Chicago Press undertook a momentous project: a new translation of the Greek tragedies that would be the ultimate resource for teachers, students, and readers. They succeeded. Under the expert management of eminent classi... View More...
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR DRAMA Recently revived on Broadway in a production directed by Joe Mantello, starring two-time Oscar winner Glenda Jackson and Tony winner Laurie Metcalf Earning a Pulitzer and Best Play awards from the Evening Standard, Critics Circle, and Outer Critics Circle, among others, when it premiered, Edward Albee has, in Three Tall Women, created a masterwork of modern theater. As an imperious, acerbic old woman lies dying, she is tended by two other women and visited by a young man. Albee's frank dialogue about everything from incontinence to infidelity portrays ag... View More...
A seminal work of twentieth-century drama, Waiting for Godot was Samuel Beckett's first professionally produced play. It opened in Paris in 1953 at the tiny Left Bank Theatre de Babylone, and has since become a cornerstone of twentieth-century theater. The story line revolves around two seemingly homeless men waiting for someone--or something--named Godot. Vladimir and Estragon wait near a tree on a barren stretch of road, inhabiting a drama spun from their own consciousness. The result is a comical wordplay of poetry, dreamscapes, and nonsense, which has been interpreted as a somber summation... View More...
A seminal work of twentieth-century drama, Waiting for Godot was Samuel Beckett's first professionally produced play. It opened in Paris in 1953 at the tiny Left Bank Theatre de Babylone, and has since become a cornerstone of twentieth-century theater. The story line revolves around two seemingly homeless men waiting for someone--or something--named Godot. Vladimir and Estragon wait near a tree on a barren stretch of road, inhabiting a drama spun from their own consciousness. The result is a comical wordplay of poetry, dreamscapes, and nonsense, which has been interpreted as a somber summation... View More...
A seminal work of twentieth-century drama, Waiting for Godot was Samuel Beckett's first professionally produced play. It opened in Paris in 1953 at the tiny Left Bank Theatre de Babylone, and has since become a cornerstone of twentieth-century theater. The story line revolves around two seemingly homeless men waiting for someone--or something--named Godot. Vladimir and Estragon wait near a tree on a barren stretch of road, inhabiting a drama spun from their own consciousness. The result is a comical wordplay of poetry, dreamscapes, and nonsense, which has been interpreted as a somber summation... View More...
A delightful seriocomedy about a prominent civil rights attorney who is a schlemiel on the home court in his relationships with his intractable aging father and budding lawyer son. "Nathan Minter is one of those overbearing men who believe that success in their chosen professions makes them, without further effort, successful sons, husbands and fathers. As Alan Brandt sets out to demonstrate in 2 1/2 JEWS, his understanding and compassionate debut play, which bares a man's flaws but shies from tragedy, Nathan Minter is a winner as a humanitarian lawyer but a loser in his personal relationships... View More...
Ben Brantley, drama critic of "The New York Times" relives unforgettable Broadway and off-Broadway moments. Witness the night a star was born, a director's brilliant debut, a play that broke new ground, a musical that redefined the genre, and even a terrible play that ran for years. This entertaining, essential volume for anyone who loves Broadway will include a foreword from a major actor, a full introduction by Ben Brantley, drama critic of "The Times," and his choice of 100 other most important plays of the twentieth century. Each of the best 100 will include the full, original "New York Ti... View More...
A collection of eleven one- and two-act plays. With hints of Samuel Beckett, Sam Shepard, Neil LaBute, and Tracy Letts, Scott Caan grapples with the emotional interiors of people in a fractured world. Whether writing about actors, lovers, or co-workers, Caan takes on the complicated tension between what we say and what we feel, how we grapple with the world publicly and privately, and what that difference says about us as people. Caan's training as an actor imbues his words with a sense of play and the characters he leaves other actors to create within these plays are deep and open to interpre... View More...
A modern verse play about the search for meaning, in which a psychiatrist is the catalyst for the action. "An authentic modern masterpiece" (New York Post). "Eliot really does portray real-seeming characters. He cuts down his poetic effects to the minimum, and then finally rewards us with most beautiful poetry" (Stephen Spender).
Treating ancient plays as living drama. Classical Greek drama is brought vividly to life in this series of new translations. Students are encouraged to engage with the text through detailed commentaries, including suggestions for discussion and analysis. In addition, numerous practical questions stimulate ideas on staging and encourage students to explore the play's dramatic qualities. Bacchae is suitable for students of both Classical Civilisation and Drama. Useful features include full synopsis of the play, commentary alongside translation for easy reference and a comprehensive introduction ... View More...
Never before, the entire history of the American theater, has so much of the truth of black people's lives been seen on the stage, observed James Baldwin shortly before A Raisin in the Sun opened on Broadway in 1959. Indeed Lorraine Hansberry's award-winning drama about the hopes and aspirations of a struggling, working-class family living on the South Side of Chicago connected profoundly with the psyche of black America--and changed American theater forever. The play's title comes from a line in Langston Hughes's poem Harlem, which warns that a dream deferred might dry up/like a raisin in the... View More...
Never before, the entire history of the American theater, has so much of the truth of black people's lives been seen on the stage, observed James Baldwin shortly before A Raisin in the Sun opened on Broadway in 1959. Indeed Lorraine Hansberry's award-winning drama about the hopes and aspirations of a struggling, working-class family living on the South Side of Chicago connected profoundly with the psyche of black America--and changed American theater forever. The play's title comes from a line in Langston Hughes's poem Harlem, which warns that a dream deferred might dry up/like a raisin in the... View More...
'I think I'm a human being before anything else. I don't care what other people say. I don't care what people write in books. I need to think for myself.' Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House premiered in 1879 in Copenhagen, the second in a series of realist plays by Ibsen, and immediately provoked controversy with its apparently feminist message and exposure of the hypocrisy of Victorian middle-class marriage. In Ibsen's play, Nora Helmer has secretly (and deceptively) borrowed a large sum of money to pay for her husband, Torvald, to recover from illness on a sabbatical in Italy. Torvald's percepti... View More...
Ibsen's seminal play, which changed modern drama, is a searing view of a male-dominated and authoritarian society, presented with a realism that elevates theatre to a level above mere entertainment. The reverberations of Nora's slamming the door as she leaves Torvald continue to this present day. Nicholas Rudall, justly celebrated for his translations of Ibsen, again provides a play of power and speakability. View More...