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.

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.


The Overwhelming
J.T. Rogers
As a middle-aged American academic who desperately needs to publish a book in order to gain tenure, Jack Exley leaps at the chance to go to Rwanda to write about his old college classmate Dr. Joseph Gasanam, who in the intervening years has specialized in treating children stricken by AIDS. But when Jack arrives in Kigali in early 1994, he is not only unable to find Joseph, he is unable to find anyone who will even admit to having known the Tutsi doctor. Jack and his family slowly become enmeshed in the tension and terror, the professional risks and personal betrayals, that they ultimately realize mark the start of a genocidal war - a horror that they can sense is coming but cannot comprehend or control. 3 F / 8 M. $11.99.

Dark Play or Stories for Boys
Carlos Murillo
During a college sexual encounter, the girl in Nick's bed wants to know why his abdomen is covered in scars. Does Nick tell the truth, or does he do what he does so well—weave an elaborate tale? The question launches him into a memory. An outsider at age fourteen, Nick discovers the intoxicating pleasures of inventing fake personalities in the chat rooms of the World Wide Web. Adam's online profile, and the words "I want to fall in love," pique his curiosity. Nick invents Rachel, the girl of Adam's dreams, and his curiosity becomes obsession. As Adam mounts the pressure to meet his Internet love in the real world, Nick creates ever more elaborate deceptions to fuel Adam's desire. When the boys finally meet in the real world, the consequences are catastrophic. A tale of deception, fluid personality and sexual license in the Internet age, Dark Play examines what happens when the real world and virtual world collide. 3 M / 2 W. $11.99.

La Gringa
Carmen Rivera
La Gringa is about a young woman's search for her identity. Maria Elena Garcia goes to visit her family in Puerto Rico during the Christmas holidays and arrives with plans to connect with her homeland. Although this is her first trip to Puerto Rico, she has had an intense love for the island. Once there, her uncle Manolo spiritually teaches her that identity isn't based on superficial and external definitions, but rather is an essence that she has had all along in her heart. Softcover, 84 pp. $13.99.

August: Osage County
Tracy Letts
Tracy Letts' Pulitzer prize winning play about a Southern family on the brink has become an instant classic of the American stage. August: Osage County may well be the finest play to come out of the USA in a generation. 8W, 5M. Softcover, 138 pp. $17.95.

The Drunken City
Adam Bock
Off on the bar crawl to end all bar crawls, three twenty-something brides-to-be find their lives going topsy-turvy when one of them begins to question her future after a chance encounter with a recently jilted handsome stranger. The Drunken City is a wildly theatrical take on the mystique of marriage and the ever-shifting nature of love and identity in a city that never sleeps. Softcover, 69 pp. $11.99.

A Streetcar Named Desire
Tennessee Williams
This atmospheric recording of Tennessee Williams's powerful classic stars Rosemary Harris and James Farentino as Blanche and Stanley - roles they performed to acclaim in a smash revival at New York's Lincoln Center. Audio CD. $21.95.

Land O'Fire
Luis Santeiro
Land O'Fire is an insightful and often humorous examination of life interfered with and forever changed by association with a "superior" culture. Softcover, 60 pp. $10.99.

Last of the Boys
Steven Dietz
Ben and Jeeter fought in Vietnam, and for thirty years they have remained united by a war that divided the nation. Joined by Jeeter's new girlfriend and her off-the-grid, whiskey-drinking mother, these friends gather at Ben's remote trailer for one final hurrah. As the night deepens, the past makes a return appearance, and its many ghosts come flickering to life. This is a fierce, funny, haunted play about a friendship that ends - and a war that does not. Softcover, 64 pp. $10.99.

The Piano Teacher
Julia Cho
Mrs. K is an elderly widow who lives by herself in a small suburban town. She whiles away her time reminiscing about her late husband and the children she taught long ago as a piano instructor. One day, she finds herself compelled to call her old students, but is it out of loneliness or some other, darker need? As Mrs. K discovers, it may not be what we cannot know that troubles us the most; it may be what we cannot bear to know. Softcover, 36 pp. $10.99.

Some Men
Terrence McNally
Some Men is Tony Award-winner Terrence McNally at his best. Often funny and sometimes touching, Some Men looks at same-sex life and love against a background of some of the events that shaped the last century. Softcover, 67 pp. $10.99.

Speech & Debate
Stephen Karam
Three teenage misfits in Salem, Oregon discover they are linked by a sex scandal that's rocked their town. When one of them sets out to expose the truth, secrets become currency, the stakes get higher, and the trio's connection grows deeper in this searching, fiercely funny dark comedy with music. Softcover, 96 pp. $10.99.

Things We Want
Jonathan Marc Sherman
A dirty, sexy suicide comedy. Three adult brothers are living together once again in their childhood apartment, struggling to redefine themselves while pursuing their desires and coping with the void left behind by their parents' deaths. Drastic shifts in their dynamics occur after a neighbor names Stella ecomes a part of their lives. A sweet and sour look at the illusions we have about what makes us happy -- and what is within our power to change. Softcover, 57 pp. $10.99.

Scarcity
Lucy Thurber
In a small town in Western Massechusetts, the Lawrence family struggles with poverty, boredom and lost potential. Into this isolated town comes Ellen, a highly educated, wealthy and well-traveled young woman who wants to give back to her country through education. She starts teaching in the public high school where Billy and Rachel Lawrence go, and she develops an obsession with Billy's intelligence. Her desire to lift Billy out of poverty tears the family apart. Softcover, 57 pp. $10.99.

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Stay
Lucy Thurber
A first-time professor, Rachel struggles to deal with her students while hurrying to finish her novel before the deadline passes. In addition, her brother has come to stay because he has just been fired from his job. But Rachel has a secret: She has an angel that talks to her. Spending her life withdrawn from the people around her, she shares all her love, fears, and hopes with something tthat isn't human. When Julia, one of Rachel's students, reveals that she has similar powers, Rachel has to decide to share all of who she is or to close herself off forever. Softcover, 50 pp. $10.99.

Where We're Born
Lucy Thurber
Small-town America, class distinctions, sexual politics and love. Where We're Born explores the fact that sometimes in order to leave your home you have to destroy it. Lilly is a scholarship student from a very rural town. After her first year at college, she comes home to her cousin Tony, who functions as her combination father, brother and best friend. In an attempt to bring her new world and her old world together, Lilly breaks apart everything around her. Softcover, 58 pp. $10.99.

Killers and Other Family
Lucy Thurber
Elizabeth is about to finish her dissertation. She is very much in love with her gilrfriend and their life together. But then her brother and his best friend show up, and they are on the run. Their arrival forces Elizabeth to confront her past and finally make a choice about the kind of person she wants to be. Softcover, 38 pp. $10.99.

Ug, The Caveman Musical
Jim Geoghan
Ug and his feisty tribe of Neanderthals are feasting on a tasty dinner of wild boar when he decides to tell one of his many feats of bravery by reenacting the event. Without knowing it, Ug has invented theatre. So gripping and lifelike is this new form of entertainment, that the tribe decides to stage the performance for a rival group; however, rehearsals and creative differences cause nothing but friction. It seems that the problems that face theatre artists of today, have roots that go way back. 6M, 2W. Softcover, 69 pp. $10.99.

Three Plays: Dividing the Estate, The Trip to Bountiful, and The Young Man From Atlanta
Horton Foote
Three unforgetable plays from two-time Academy Award winning writer Horton Foote, sometimes called the American Chekhov. Softcover, 208 pp. $31.00.

Third
Wendy Wasserstein
His name is Woodson Bull III, but you can call him "Third." Believing that Third's sophisticated essay on King Lear could not possibly have been written by such a specimen, Professor Jameson reports his plagiarism to the college's committee of academic standards. But is Jameson's accusation justified? Or is she casting Third as the villain in her own struggle with her relationships, her age and the increasingly polarized political environment? Softcover, 48 pp. $10.99.

The Accomplices
Bernard Weinraub
Based on actual events, The Accomplices is the true story of one man's fight on American soil to shatter a conspiracy of silence and inaction in the face of genocide. Softcover, 62 pp. $10.99.

Stick Fly
Lydia Diamond
The LeVays, an affluent African American family, gather in their vacation home on Martha's Vineyard, joined by the housekeeper's daughter, who is filling in for her mother. Dr. LeVay, a respected neurosurgeon and hopeless philanderer, has two sons -- one has followed his footsteps, and the other is a struggling novelist. Each brings along his current girlfriend to meet the family for the first time. But Mom is conspicuously absent, and conversations about race, economics, and politics and the sharp barbs they elicit can only distract from her absence for so long. The tension rises and family dynamics are revealed as the play reaches a climax when an old family secret finally comes out.
M-3, F-3. Softcover, 134 pp. $18.50.

Conversations in Tusculum
Richard Nelson
Set in the village of Tusculum in 45 B.C., Richard Nelson's Conversations in Tusculum is a riveting new work about power - and the abuse of power - in ancient Rome that has startling resonance with our age. Softcover, 104 pp. $15.50.

Alice Invents a Little Game and Alice Always Wins
Nick Flynn
Four strangers meet on a New York City sidewalk during a blackout. Gideon finds himself locked out of his apartment, stranded on the street with nothing but a television and the company of three individuals, each mysterious in his or her own way.Unable to make sense of their predicament, let alone alter it, the four float aimlessly in and out of seeming reality only to find themselves even more lost when the electricity finally comes back on. Softcover, 65 pp. $14.50.

The Fifth Column
Ernest Hemingway
The Fifth Column, Hemingway's only full-length play, is a moving portrait of the effects of war on soldiers, civilians, and the correspondents sent to cover it. Written in 1937, while Hemingway was in Madrid as a correspondent for the North American Newspaper alliance, the play was recently revived for the New York theater. This edition can be easily used in stage productions. Softcover, 92 pp. $13.99.

The Flu Season and other plays
Will Eno
From the author of the hit Thom Payne (based on nothing) comes another collection of cuttingly funny and rather heartfelt plays. Eno's subversive and inventive edge, combined with his gift for the alchemy of grim and humorous creates a refreshingly beautiful triad of plays for the modern reader. With this collection we are introduced to: Flu Season, Tragedy: A tragedy, and Intermission. Softcover, 109 pp. $16.95.

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Last modified February 12, 2009
Please note that all prices are in Canadian dollars. All prices are subject to change without notice.