American Plays: New & Featured

TheatreBooks stocks plays in English from around the world and, of course, all plays published in Canada. We stock and sell plays from Samuel French Ltd., Dramatists Play Service and Dramatic Publishing Co., and the leading play publishers in Great Britain. We carry books on all aspects of theatre production, as well as opera and dance. If you don't find the title or playwright you are looking for, please stop by the store and ask, or contact us at action@theatrebooks.com, by phone at 416.922.7175, toll-free at 1.800.361.3414 or by fax at 416.922.0739.

Two Trains Running
August Wilson
August Wilson's century cycle was his attempt to chronicle the African-American experience for every decade of the 20th century. In all, the ambitious series transforms historical tragedy into imaginative triumph. Two Trains Running is his distillation of the 1960s. Hardcover, 99 pp. $30.00.

A Prayer For My Enemy
Craig Lucas
"Prayer For My Enemy dares to ask smart and hard questions about a homegrown violence that reaches from suburban backyards into the battlefields of Iraq. Craig Lucas is one of the theatre's most probing and poetic charters of the sinister undertow that pulses beneath daily American life." - Ben Brantley, New York Times. Softcover, 55 pp. $18.95.

Yellow Face
David Henry Hwang
In this mock-documentary play, David Henry Hwang puts himself center stage as he uses the controversy over color-blind casting for Miss Saigon and the racially motivated federal investigation of his own father to explore Asian identity and the ever-changing definition of what it is to be an American. Softcover, 70 pp. $18.95.

Seven
Various playwrights
Seven is based on interviews with seven women leaders of the Vital Voices Global Partnership network who have triumphed over huge obstacles to create major changes in human rights in their home countries. Collaborated on by seven award-winning female playwrights, including Anna Deveare Smith, these stories fascinatingly reveal the comonality of those with the courage to rise up. 7W. Softcover, $11.99.

Life Science
Anna Ziegler
Four teenagers explore love, sex, religion and their dreams for the future over several months in a wealthy American suburb. 2M, 2W. Softcover, 50 pp. $11.99.

Hunter Gatherers
Peter Sinn Nachtrieb
A friendly, civilized dinner party slowly unravels and descends into ritual slaughter, sexual violence and dancing as the line between civilized and primal man is totally blurred in this dark, wildly original comedy. 2M, 2W. Softcover, 60 pp. $11.99.

Beast
Michael Weller
Michael Weller approaches the topic of the Iraq war from an utterly new perspective. Rather thatn tackle a realistic, fact driven war drama, he instead offers a surrealistic road trip that allegorizes the spirit of a country at war. 5 M, 2W. Softcover, 54 pp. $11.99.

Fifty Words
Michael Weller
Young parents Adam and Jan find their relationship tested as they try to make the most of their first night alone together in years. 1M, 1W. Softcover, 48 pp. $11.99.

Fault Lines
Stephen Belber
Stephen Belber's trademark style and brutally realistic dialogue that made his play TAPE such a success is on display here in full force. A contemporary comedy with an edge, Fault Lines explores the fragility of friendship and depths of betrayal. 3M, 1W. Softcover, 52 pp. $11.99.

The Best American Short Plays 2007-2008
Barbara Parisi
This edition of the highly esteemed and long-enduring Best American Short Plays contains fresh-voiced, cutting-edge works by twenty playwrights, both established and among the most promising of the new millennium. Each of these plays reflects the enormous diversity of contemporary American theatre. Softcover, 377 pp. $16.95.

Amusing Ourselves to Death
Neil Postman
Television has habituated us to visual entertainment measured out in spoonfuls of time. But what happens when we come to expect the same things from our politics and public discourse? What happens to journalism, education, and religion when they too become forms of show business? Softcover, 183 pp. $16.50.

The Night of the Iguana
Tennessee Williams
The earthy widow Maxine runs a hotel on a Mexican cliff overlooking the Pacific ocean where the defrocked Rev. Shannon, his tour group of ladies from a West Texas women's college, a family of grotesque Nazi vacationers, and an iguana tied by its throat to the veranda all find themselves assembled for a rainy and turbulent night. Softcover, 189 pp. $18.50.

Terre Haute
Edmund White
A famous author comes fact-to-face with America's most notorious terrorist. One has a story to write, the other has a story to tell. As the clock ticks on death row, a strange bond grows between the two men. Filled with clever sparring and raw emotion, this is a taut drama that touches on the definitions of freedom and the need for love. Softcover, 49 pp. $11.99.

Wild Nights! and Grandpa Clemens & Angelfish 1906
Joyce Carol Oates
The last days of Emily Dickinson and Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain are imagined in these two one-act plays. Softcover, 100 pp. $12.99.

Grenadine
Neil Weschler
Grenadine is the fantastical story of a man's quest for love in the company of three devoted friends. Edward Albee writes in his foreward, "I found it highly original;...both the questions the play asks and the answers it proposes are provocative; the play stretched my mind." Softcover, $21.95.

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2.5 Minute Ride/101 Humiliating Stories
Lisa Kron
"Lisa Kron turns humiliation into transcendence and the Holocaust into a wild roller coaster ride - her power as a writer/performer is a gift to the American stage." - Paul Vogel. Softcover, $16.95.

Purple Heart and The Infidel
Bruce Norris
Bruce Norris's explorations of the shadowy recesses of love and loss crackle with quick wit and crisp dialogue. In Purple Heart (M-2, F-2), a mysterious visitor arrives at the midwestern home that a Vietnam War widow, deep into drink, shares with her 12-year-old son and her intrusive mother-in-law. And in The Infidel (M-4, F-2) after a tortured affair with a young woman, a fallen jurist finds himself judging the most difficult case of his life -- his own. Softcover, $22.50.

The Farnsworth Invention
Aaron Sorkin
It's 1929. Two ambitious visionaries race against each other to invent a device called "television." Separated by two thousand miles, each knows that if he stops working, even for a moment, the other will gain the edge. Who will unlock the key to the greatest innovation of the 20th century: the ruthless media mogul, or the self-taught Idaho farm boy? Softcover, 101 pp. $11.99.

Some Men and Deuce
Terrence McNally
In Some Men, Terrence McNally takes us on a multigenerational journey of gay life in America. In interwoven vignettes, McNally uses the same characters at different points in their lives to address such issues as coming out, marriage, adoption, the military, and the AIDS crisis. In Deuce, we meet Leona and Midge, two septuagenarian ladies doubles tennis champions who are reunited to be honoured at the U.S. Open. As they watch the next generation of female athletes, these former tennis partners become embroiled in a head-to-head conversation as lively and nuanced as any match they ever played. Softcover, 180 pp. $20.50.

What of the Night?
Maria Irene Fornes
Maria Irene Fornes has written over 40 plays, musicals, and adaptations, and bilingual works for the stage. Featured in this volume are: Abingdon Square, What of the Night?, Enter THE NIGHT, and The Summer in Gossensass. This collection is an ideal introduction to her work. Softcover, 218 pp. $23.00.

Oh, the Humanity and other good intentions
Will Eno
The five short plays make up Oh, the Humanity and other good intentions move toward feeling by way of thought, and toward gratitude by way of loss. These largely sane plays feature people alone or in pairs, or both, attempting to present themselves in the best light, or ultimately, desperately, in any light. Softcovre, 63 pp. $20.95.

Jerome Bixby's "Man from Earth"
Richard Schenkman
After history professor John Oldman unexpectedly resigns from the University, his startled colleagues impulsively invite themselves to his home, pressing him for an explanation. But they're shocked to hear his reason for premature retirement: he claims that he must move on because he is immortal, and cannot stay in one place for more than ten years without his secret being discovered. M-6, F-3. Softcover, 65 pp. $11.99.

Grace
Mick Gordon & A.C. Grayling
Grace is an eminent scientist committed to a view of the world without God, a view which puts her in direct conflict with her son, Tom, when he decides to become a priest. M-2, F-2. Softcover, 74 pp. $23.00.

The Three Musketeers
Ken Ludwig
This adaptation is based on the timeless swashbuckler by Alexandre Dumas, a tale of heroism, treachery, close escapes and above all, honor. The story set in 1625, begins with d'Artagnan who sets off for Paris in search of adventure... Softcover, 136 pp. $11.99.

Crooked
Catherine Trieschmann
Fourteen year old Laney arrives in Oxford, Mississippi with a twisted back, a mother in crisis and a burning desire to be a writer. When she befriends Maribel Purdy, a fervent believer in the power of Jesus Christ to save her from the humiliations of high school, Laney embarks on a hilarious spiritual and sexual journey that challenges her mother's secular worldview and threatens to tear their fragile relationship apart. Softcover, 68 pp. $11.99.

The Awesome 80s Prom
Ken Davenport
The Awesome 80s Prom is a brand new blast-from-the-past party in the style of Tony 'n Tina's Wedding and The Donkey Show, set at Wanaget High's Senior Prom...in 1989! All your favorite characters are at the prom, from the captain of the football team to the asian exchange student, and they're all competing for prom king and queen. The audience decides who wins! Softcover, 49 pp. $11.99.

The Little Flower of East Orange
Stephen Adly Guirgis
In this unconventional family drama, celebrated playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis gives us a mother and son who must face a long family legact of abuse in order to find the true meaning of grace. 5 F / 5 M. Softcover, 108 pp. $17.50.

All That I Will Ever Be
Alan Bell
Alan Ball's All That I Will Ever Be is a darkly funny tale of cultural provocation and our eternal search for belonging as seen through the relationship of two young men in contemporary Los Angelas: Dwight, a privileged native Angeleno, and Omar, an enigmatic immigrant from the Middle East. Softcover, 62 pp. $10.99.

Dead Man's Cell Phone
Sarah Ruhl
A hallucinatory poetic fantasy play that blends the mundane and the metaphysical, the blunt and the obscure. As Dead Man's Cell Phone takes surprising twists and leaps, the lament for the supposed coziness of pre-digital culture takes on layers of nuance and contradiction. In Ruhl's new play, a woman is forced to confront her own assumptions about morality, redemption, and the need to connect in a technologically obsessed world. 4 F / 2 M. Softcover, 104 pp. $15.95.

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Last modified January 5, 2010.
Please note that all prices are in Canadian dollars. All prices are subject to change without notice.