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American Plays
American plays by playwright: R
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.
Plays
are also listed by playwright, by last name.
A / B / C / D / E / F / G / H / I / J / K / L / M /
N / O / P / Q / R / S / T / U / V / W /
X / Y / Z
If you are unsure of the author's name, please to to our search
engine and enter the title of the work you are interested in.
 The Momologues
Lisa Rafferty, Stefanie Cloutier & Sheila Eppolito
This original comedy about motherhood rips away the gauzy mask of parenthood to reveal what all mothers know but don't always talk about: that it's overwhelming and exhausting, but also very, very funny. 4f. Softcover, 46 pp. $11.99.
 9 Parts of Desire
Heather Raffo
A portrait of the extraordinary (and ordinary) lives of a whole cross-section
of Iraqi women: a sexy painter, a radical communist, doctors, exiles, wives and
lovers. This book delves into the many conflicting aspects of what it means to
be a woman in the age-old war zone that is Iraq. An unusually timely meditation
on the ancient, the modern and the feminine in a country overshadowed by war. 9
Parts of Desire can be performed as a one-woman show or with a cast
of three to nine women. Softcover, 78 pp. $10.99.
 The Ice-Breaker
David Rambo
Both a science play and a love story, intellectual and romantic sparks fly when geologist Sonia Milan, a brilliant Ph.D. candidate, tracks down her mentor, Lawrence Blanchard, in seclusion in the desert Southwest. She's at a professional and personal crossroads, and wants to play a role in explaining the rapidly changing planet. He wants nothing more to do with climate science, but she persists. When the wine, firewood and night are all gone, Sonia has made unexpected discoveries, and Lawrence has confronted the past. Their world has changed, and they have to decide what to do about it. Softcover, 52 pp. $10.99.
 The Lady With All the Answers
David Rambo
"Dear Ann Landers" ... For decades, renowned advice columnist Ann Landers answered countless letters from lovelorn teens, confused couples and a multitude of others in need of advice. No topic was off-limits, including nude housekeeping, sex in a motorcycle helmet, the proper way to hang toilet paper, sibling rivalries, addiction, religion and wandering spouses. Landers regaled her readers with direct, insightful and often humorously honest responses. Late on a 1975 night in Landers' Chicago apartment, an ironic twist of events confronts her with a looming deadline for a column dealing with a new kind of heartbreak: her own. As she shares her struggles to complete the column with us, we learn as much about ourselves as we do about the wise, funny, no-nonsense woman whose daily dialogue with America helped shape the social and sexual landscapes of the last half-century. 1W. Softcover, 32 pp. $10.99.
 Three Plays: Night of January 16th, Ideal, Think Twice
Ayn Rand
Published together for the first time, here are Ayn Rand's three compelling
stage plays. Written in 1933, and a Broadway success in 1935, Night
of January 16th is presented here in it's definitive, final revised
text -- a superb dramatic objectification of Ayn Rand's vision of human strength
and weakness, a play famous for the author's refusal to prearrange a dramatized
verdict, leaving the solution to the audience. Also included are two of Rand's
unproduced plays: Think Twice (1939), a philisophical murder
mystery, and Ideal (1934), the author's bitter indictment
of people's willingness to betray their highest values, symbolized by a Hollywood
goddess seemingly fleeing the authorities. Softcover, 291 pp. $12.99.
 The Metal Children
Adam Rapp
In small-town America, a young adult novel about teen pregnancy is banned by the local school board, igniting a fierce and violent debate over abortion, religious beliefs, and modern feminism. When the novel's directionless New York City author arrives in town to defend the book, he finds that it has inspired a group of local teens to rebel in strange and unexpected ways. A timely and unforgettable drama about the failure of urban and heartland America to understand each other, The Metal Children explores what happens when fiction becomes a matter of life and death.
m5, f4. Softcover, 102 pp. $17.95.
 Kindness
Adam Rapp
An ailing mother and her teenaged son flee Illinois and a crumbling marriage for the relative calm and safety of a midtown Manhatten hotel. Mom holds tickets to a popular musical about love among bohemians. Her son isn't interested, so Mom takes the kindly cabdriver instead, while the boy entertains a visitor from down the hall: an enigmatic, potentially dangerous young woman. 2m, 2f. Softcover, 64 pp. $12.99.
 Our House
Theresa Rebeck
In this darkly comic new play by master playwright Theresa Rebeck one household's twisted dynamic becomes a testing ground for unearthing the line where reality ends and 'Reality TV' begins. Softcover, 68 pp. $11.99.
 Almost Blue
Keith Reddin
Almost Blue is a stage noir set in a seedy rooming house. A man just out of prison trying to stay straight, a strange loner down the hall who writes pornographic greeting cards, a violent ex-con who wants to settle old scores. And of course, the beautiful woman in trouble, who messes with everybody's head. Written in a series of brutal, funny encounters, Almost Blue is a journey into the dark night, full of plot twists and sultry exchanges. Softcover, 47 pp. $10.99.
 All the Rage
Keith Reddin
A blood-splattered body lies on the living room carpet at the start of All the Rage. By the end of this examination of our culture of violence, eleven characters have been killed, sent to prison or gone mad. Yes, All the Rage is a comedy. The action takes place in unnamed city today, in a series of scenes that show the interconnected lives of ten characters. They all come in contact and set a chain of violent events in motion. A modern-day Jacobean Revenge Tragedy, All the Rage gives us a picture of a world spinning out of control, as everybody has a gun and is ready to use it. 8M, 2W. Softcover, 75 pp. $10.99.
 String Fever
Jacquelyn Reingold
In this comedy, Lily juggles the big issues: turning fourty, artificial
insemination and the elusive scientific Theory of Everything. Lily's
world includes an Icelandic comedian, her wisecracking best friend, a
cat-loving physicist, her no-longer-suicidal father and an ex-boyfriend
who carries around a chair. With language that is surprising, inventive
and unique, String Fever is an appealing comedy populated by oddball
characters. 3M, 3W. Softcover, 53 pp. $9.99.
 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.
 Rantoul and Die
Mark Roberts
Rallis and Debbie's marriage has reached its expiration date. In fact, it's soured and stuck to the bottom of the carton. She wants him to pack his stuff and hit the bricks, but he's clingin' to the past like a cat on a screen door. How far will a man go to hang on to his fair lady? It's a thin line between love and hate. A kiss and a punch. An ice cream cone and a bottle to the back of the head. 2m, 2f. Softcover, 45 pp. $11.99.
 White People
J.T. Rogers
White People is a controversial and darkly funny play about the lives of three ordinary Americans placed under the spotlight: Martin, a Brooklyn-born high powered attorney for a white-shoe law firm in St. Louis, MO; Mara Lynn, a housewife and former homecoming queen in Fayetteville, NC; and Alan, a young professor struggling to find his way in New York City. Through heart-wrenching confessions, they wrestle with guilt, prejudice, and the price they and their children must pay for their actions. Softcover, 37 pp. $10.99.
 Madagascar
J.T. Rogers
Madagascar is the haunting story of a mysterious disappearance that changes three lives forever. At three periods in time, three Americans find themselves alone, in the same hotel room overlooking the Spanish Steps in Rome: June, a young woman who works as a tour guide of the city's ancient ruins; Lilian, her wealthy, elegant jet-setting mother; and Nathan, a rumpled university economist and the best friend of Lilian's famous deceased husband. They each tell their individual story of how and why they are here. Their relationship to each other, what this room means to them, and why they have been called to it slowly reveal themselves. Their stories spill out, weave back and forth, becoming strands of one disquieting tale. 1M, 2W (doubling). Softcover, 43 pp. $10.99.
 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 mamrk the start of a genocidal war - a horror that they can sense is coming but cannot comprehend or control. M-14, F-3. Softcover, 137 pp. $16.00.
 On The Line
Joe Roland
Three lifelong friends take on management, the union and ultimately each other when a strike wreaks havoc on their working-class town. Along the way they have to negotiate mobs of angry first graders, bat-wielding bartenders, no-neck corporate shills and the North American Free Trade Agreement. Lines are drawn, crossed and double crossed in the raw, powerful and often hilarious story about loyalty, love and the crippling power of unbending principles. Softcover, 50 pp. $10.99.
 Twelve Angry Men
Reginald Rose
A blistering character study and an examination of the American melting
pot and the judicial system that keeps it in check, Twelve Angry
Men holds at its core a deeply patriotic faith in the U.S. legal
system. The play centres around Juror Eight, who is at first the
lone holdout
in an 11-1 guilty verdict. Eight sets his sights not on proving the
other jurors wrong, but rather on getting them to look at the situation
in a clear-eyed way not affected by personal prejudices or bias.
Rose
deliberately and carefully peels away the layers of artifice from
the men and allows a fuller picture of them, and of America at its
best and worse, to emerge. Softcover, 75 pp. $13.50.
 Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead
Bert V. Royal
When CB's dog dies from rabies, CB begins to question the existence of an afterlife. His best friend is too burnt out to provide any coherent speculation; his sister has gone goth; his ex-girlfriend has recently been institutionalized; and his other friends are too inebriated to give him any sort of solace. But a chance meeting with an artistic kid, the target of this group's bullying, offers CB a peace of mind and sets in motion a friendship that will push teen agnst to the very limits. Drug use, suicide, eating disorders, teen violence, rebellion and sexual identity collide and careen toward an ending that's both haunting and hopeful. 4M, 4W. Softcover, 51 pp. $10.99.
 The Naked Eye
Paul Rudnick
Alex DelFlavio is an ambitious downtown artist who plans to include sexually explicit photographs in his uptown show to advance his career. Nan Bemiss, the wife of a Republican senator who is running for the presidency and a gallery board member, appeals to DelFlavio to remove three of his most "offensive" photographs for the opening. Unexpectedly, Nan is liberated in the process. 3m, 5w. Softcover, 58 pp. $11.99.
 Mr. Charles, Currently of Palm Beach
Paul Rudnick
This acclaimed one act focuses on Mr. Charles -- the most joyously, fiercely,
politically incorrect creature imaginable -- who confronts his audience with
such provocative questions as: "What causes homosexuality?" Together,
with his hunky partner Shane, he confronts every hot-button topic from gay
marriage to the history of gay theatre, finally delving into the highest matters
of identity and flamboyance. M-2. Softcover, $9.99.
 Valhalla
Paul Rudnick
Valhalla intertwines two stories: the life of Ludwig of Bavaria, the 1880s
Mad King responsible for building a series of storybook castles inspired by
Wagnerian operas, and the fictional adventures of James Avery, a wild Texas
teenager of the 1940s. These two iconoclasts are tracked from childhood through
their deaths, and while they embody separate eras, they are ultimately revealed
as time-traveling soul mates. M-4, F-2, doubling. Softcover, 76 pp. $9.99.
 Passion Play
Sarah Ruhl
This is an intimate epic about the annual staging of the Passion by a community of players in three different eras: 1575 Northern England, just before Queen Elizabeth outlaws the ritual; 1934 Oberammergau, Bavaria, as Hitler is rising to power; and Spearfish, South Dakota, from the time of Vietnam through Reagan's presidency. Softcover, 252 pp. $15.95.
 In the Next Room or The Vibrator Play
Sarah Ruhl
In a seemingly perfect Victorian home, proper gentleman and scientist Dr. Givings has innocently invented an extraordinary new device for treating "hysteria" in women (and occasionally men): the vibrator. Adjacent to the doctor's laboratory, his young and energetic wife tries to tend to their newborn daughter -- and wonders exactly what is going on in the next room. m3, f4. Softcover, 86 pp. $12.99.
 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. Softcover, 104 pp. $15.95.
 The Clean House & Other Plays
Sarah Ruhl
This volume is the first collection of Sarah Ruhl's work. In the
award-winning Clean House - a play of uncommon romance and unique
comedy - a maid, who hates cleaning, has dreams of creating the perfect
joke. This volume also includes Eurydice, Melancholy Play and Late:
a cowboy song. Softcover, 411 pp. $25.00.
 Cavedweller
Kate Moira Ryan
Adapted from the best-selling novel by Dorothy Allison, Cavedweller follows
Delia Byrd, the forty-year-old lead singer of the "Mud Dog" whose
rock-star boyfriend has just died in an accident, as she decides to leave Los
Angeles and return home to rural Georgia with her teenage daughter, Cissy.
M-2, F-6 (doubling). Softcover, 69 pp. $9.99.
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