American Plays

D to H by playwright

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.

The American Nightmare
Phillip Hayes Dean
Thunder in the Index is about a hip young black man named Joshua Noon, confined in a mental hospital and who engages in a comedic verbal duel with his physician, who is not what he seems. (2M, 1W, plus two brief bits for men.) This Bird of Dawning Singeth All Night Long centers on two women, one white and the other black, who the latter claims are twin sisters, setting off a confrontation yielding racial tension and distrust. (2W.) In Dream of Passion, a couple attempts to exorcise themselves from a powerful show business figure who dominates their bodies and spirits, ending with tragic results. (1M, 1W.) Softcover, 72 pp. $10.99.

Love-Lies-Bleeding
Don DeLillo
Three people gather to determine the fate of the man who sits in a straight-backed chair saying nothing. He is Alex Macklin, who gave up easel painting to do land art in the southwestern desert, and he is seventy now, helpless in the wake of a second stroke. The people around him are the bearers of a complicated love, his son, his young wife, the older woman -- his wife of years past -- who feels the emotional tenacity of a love long-ended. Love-Lies-Bleeding explores a number of perilous questions about the value of life and how we measure it. M-2, F-2. Softcover, 99 pp. $21.00.

tempOdyssey
Dan Dietz
"It wasn't me. It was the black hole." With these words, a temp worker named Genny launches us on an epic, fantastical journey through corporate America, Appalachia, astrophysics and beyond. TempOdyssey tells the story of a young woman who's convinced she's the goddess of death. Fleeing the imminent creation of the black hole on one side of the country, she lands smack in the middle of a bomb manufacturing company on the other. Her only hope lies in the unlikely guise of a nameless temp who considers himself immortal. Can he help Genny cast off her dark mythology once and for all? Or will she explode, taking all of downtown Seattle with her? Dan Dietz melds the absurdity of contemporary cubicle life with the epic poetics of Greek mythology, and thee results are hilarious, horrifying and ultimately uplifting. Softcover, 60 pp. $10.99.

Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure
Steven Dietz
The world's greatest detective has seemingly reached the end of his remarkable career when a case presents itself that is too tempting to ignore. The King of Bohemia is about to be blackmailed about a notorious photograph, and the woman at the heart of this crime is the famous opera singer, Irene Adler. In this spirited, fast-moving adaptation, Steven Dietz presents Holmes at the height of his powers - surrounded by all the elements that fans of his exploits have come to expect: danger, intrigue, wit, humour and surprise. Softcover, 67 pp. $10.99.

Inventing Van Gogh
Steven Dietz
A haunting and hallucinatory drama about the making of art, Inventing Van Gogh is the story of the final Van Gogh portrait, painted just before the artist's death, which has never been seen... until now. Patrick Stone, a contemporary painter, is hired to forge his final masterpiece and finds himself squaring off, across the years, with Van Gogh himself. The result is a compelling mystery about the obsession to create and the fine line that seperates story from myth. 4M, 1W. Softcover, 66 pp. $9.99.

Continental Divide: Daughters of the Revolution
David Edgar
Moving on to higher things from his job in a community college, former sixties activist Michael Bern finds that his partner has thrown a surprise fifty-fifth party in his honour, where his friends present him with his FBI file. In the file, Michael finds proof that one of an eight-strong group of activists was an FBI informer. In his search for the informer, Michael discovers what happened to his former friends, but more profoundly, what has happened to himself. M-7, F-8. Softcover, 100 pp. $9.99.

Wit
Margaret Edson
In this extraordinary play Margaret Edson has created a work that is as intelligently challenging as it is emotionally immediate. A renowned professor of English who has spent years teaching the Holy Sonnets of the metaphysical poet John Donne has been diagnosed with terminal ovarian cancer. Her approach to her illness in not unlike her approach to the study of Donne: aggressively probing and intensely rational. During the course of her illness the academic comes to reassess her life and her work with a profundity and humor that are transformative both for her and the audience. $18.95.

Such a Beautiful Voice is Sayeda's and Karima's City
Yussef El Guindi
In Such a Beautiful Voice is Sayeda's, Islam hangs in the very air you breathe; spirits, or jimns, may lurk near; flattering dresses and lipstick are evidence of infidelity; and a woman singing can bring dishonor and ruin to herself and her family. (3M, 6W, doubling possible) Karima's City. Karima's beloved city is changing around her. The seeds-and-nuts vendor, the fruit seller and the butcher who used to greet her every morning no longer do. Everywhere concrete monstrosities are rising, and the trees are vanishing. These changes are making Karima physically ill, and she can no longer keep silent. But whenever she speaks her mind, all manner of suffering befalls her. In a society that judges iconoclasts shameful, dangerous and a menace, it slowly becomes apparent that Karima's devastating fate has already been written. (6 to 7 actors can play the 25 roles). Softcover, 53 pp. $10.99.

Back of the Throat
Yussef El Guindi
Back of the Throat is the tale of an apparently friendly visit by two government officials, which soon desolves into a full-blown, no-holds-barred probe. Khaled, an Arab-American writer and the focus of their inquiry, finds himself, to his astonishment, suddenly accused of possible ties to terrorists. As the interrogation proceeds, the officials reveal their evidence, but is it really evidence? Or have innocent events been distorted through the lens of paranoid suspicion? As the situation turns increasingly surreal, and the menace to Khaled increasingly real, the question of what it means to be an American takes on a very personal and charged significance. Softcover, 53 pp. $10.99.

The Treatment
Eve Ensler
This two-character drama delves into the layers of power, fear and intimacy that exist between a traumatized soldier (and former military interrogator) and the female psychologist colonel who is assigned to give him routine treatment. The Treatment is a blunt exploration of torture, accountability and a soldier's "duty" to commit atrocities in the name of democracy. Softcover, 33 pp. $10.99.

The Good Body
Eve Ensler
This collection of diverse monologues is a wake-up call for us to love the bodies we inhabit. Botox, Bulimia, Breast Implants: Eve Ensler, author of the international sensation The Vagina Monologues, is back, this time to rock our view of what it means to have a "good body". Softcover, 95 pp. $27.95.

Necessary Targets
Eve Ensler
From the author of The Vagina Monologues comes a play about two American women from two very different backgrounds who go to Bosnia to help women confront their memories of war. " A brave, powerful, and crucial testimony against violence aimed at women as an act of war." Meryl Streep SC $19.95.

The Vagina Monologues:
The V-Day Edition
Eve Ensler
with a foreward by Gloria Steinem
The part that dare not speak its name now has the stage to herself... The Vagina Monologues is a celebration of female sexuality in all its complexity and mystery. It has been performed in cities all across America (and, at last, Toronto) and at hundreds of college campuses, and has inspired a grass-roots movement -- V-Day -- to stop violence against women. Witty and irreverent, compassionate and wise, Eve Ensler's Obie Award-winning masterpiece gives voice to real women's deepest fantasies and fears, guaranteeing that no one who reads it will ever look at a woman's body, or think of sex, in quite the same way again. $19.95.

Thom Pain (based on nothing)
Will Eno
He's just like you, except worse. He is trying to save his life, to save your life -- in that order. In his quest for salvation, he'll stop at nothing, be distracted by nothing, except maybe a piece of lint, or the woman in the second row. M-1. Softcover, 32 pp. $9.99.

The Flu Season
Will Eno
Set in a hospital and in a theatre, The Flu Season is a love story -- a reluctant one, a love story in spite of itself. M-4, F-2. Softcover, 45 pp. $9.99.

Imaginary Friends
Nora Ephron
Softcover, 114 pp. $18.00.

Zap
Paul Fleischman
This wildly entertaining post-modern play achieves the seemingly impossible: Zap is seven plays in one act. Ideal for high schools, who demand fresh inventive material -- with a large cast, no less -- Zap brings together seven disparate genres (The English Mystery, Shakespeare, The Comedy, The Russian Play, The Performance Art Monologue, The Avant-Garde Play, and The Southernn Play) in one unforgettable theatrical event. Softcover, 83 pp. $23.99.

Hannah and Martin
Kate Fodor
Hannah and Martin is based on the relationship between the Jewish political theorist Hannah Arendt and the renowned philosopher Martin Heidegger. Their dissimilar political sympathies comes to the fore, when they are re-united in post-war Germany. M-4, F-4 (doubling). Softcover, 56 pp. $9.99.

The Shape of the River
Horton Foote
Softcover, 170 pp. $24.95.

The Carpetbagger's Children & The Actor
Horton Foote
Softcover, 92 pp. $22.50.

The O'Conner Girls
Katie Forgette
The warm and amusing story of The O'Conner Girls takes place in 1997 in Minnesota following the death of Mr. O'Conner. As his wife Sarah and their children begin to excavate his mountain of personal effects, clues to the quiet patriarch's life are discovered and the children are forced to reconsider their long-held opinions of their parents. 1M,4W. Softcover, 59 pp. $9.99.

Bad Boy Nietzsche! and other plays
Richard Foreman
Richard Foreman has been leading the theatrical avant-garde in the United States and throughout the world since 1968, when he founded the Ontological-Hysteric Theater Company. This volume of plays includes: Bad Boy Nietzsche!, Now That Communism Is Dead My Life Feels Empty!, Maria del Bosco, Bad Behavior, Panic! (How to Be Happy!) and King Cowboy Rufus Rules the Universe. Softcover, 237 pp. $19.95.

Summer of '42
Hunter Foster & David Kirshenbaum
This nostalgic musical recreates the summer of 1942 -- America is at war and men line up by the thousands to join the army. On a tiny island off the coast of Maine, three fifteen-year-old boys begin a summer that they will never forget. This coming of age story is poignant and charming tale of life, love and the scope of human compassion. M-5, W-4. Softcover, 70 pp. $12.95.

 Back to top

Parallel Lives
Mo Gaffney & Kathy Najimy
In Parallel Lives, two Supreme beings plan the beginning of the world with the relish of two slightly sadistic suburban wives decorating a living room. With great wit and a feminist sensibility, this play reexamines the ongoing quest to find parity and love in a contest handicapped by capricious gods -- or, in this case, goddesses. Softcover, 134 pp. $9.99.

Mombo
Alan Gelb
The mother-child relationship, which, for so many people, is the paradigm for all relationships to come, is profoundly felt, highly complicated and genuinely multi-faceted. Mombo explores this unique relationship through nine short plays, each of which examines the contours of this dyad. Softcover, 49 pp. $10.99.

Suitcase or, Those That Resemble Flies from a Distance
Melissa James Gibson
The boyfriends of two Ph.D. candidates are trying to talk their way in to the women's apartments. Dissertations go nowhere: objects get found; boyfriends won't get lost; love figures in there somewhere. M-2, F-2. Softcover, 128 pp. $9.99.

[sic]
Melissa James Gibson
Melissa James Gibson has demonstrated that language can be both an instrument of intimacy and a weapon of defense in her new play [sic]. This is a unique play that is as witty and wise as it is stylistically groundbreaking and unexpected. 3M, 2W. Softcover, 130 pp. $9.99.

Tattoo Joint
Jason Gileno
A blind tattoo artist named Joint has his reclusive lifestyle turned on end when a woman of flawless beauty comes to him with a problem. Alexandra believes that, through error, she has been born into the wrong body. She also believes that Joint has the power to make her invisible. Strange, dark, and comic, Tattoo Joint explores the nature of art and beauty and its effects on the unsuspecting artist. Softcover, 70 pp. $15.00.

Blue Surge
Rebecca Gilman
Ms. Gilman's last play, Boy Gets Girl, was acclaimed by Time Magazine as the best play of 2000. This play received at The Goodman Theatre in Chicago in July 2001 and will premiere in NYC, Spring 2002. This is an intimate look into the class struggle in America today told with sharp delineation of character and. pitch-perfect dilaogue and effortless use of humour, both biting and silly. $19.00.

Boy Gets Girl
Rebecca Gilman
The winner of many American and British awards probes the dark side of relationships in the 1990's with rich insight and compelling characterizations in this, her latest play, which moves to Broadway from a sold-out off-Broadway run. SC $19.00.

After Ashley
Gina Gionfriddo
After Ashley is a funny and affecting story about a teenage boy navigating the joys and terrors of life -- all through the distorting prism of a media firestorm. When a family tragedy deals the Hammond family a dose of dubious celebrity, Justin finds himself paralyzed, unable to fully grieve or grow up. The only bright spot is a girl, only Justin can't decide if she's a saving angel or a self-interested groupie. In a world as weird as this one, she might just be both. 4M, 2W. Softcover, 79 pp. $10.99.

U.S. Drag
Gina Gionfriddo
Two young women in Manhattan seek love and happiness, but they'll settle for rent money. Along the way, they volunteer for a community advocacy group called SAFE ("Stay Away From Ed") named for an elusive serial attacker terrorizing the city. M-4, F-4 (doubling). Softcover, 56 pp. $9.99.

Modern Orthodox
Daniel Goldfarb
In a Manhattan coffee shop, Ben, an Upper West Side financial consultant, meets Hershel, an Orthodox jewel merchant, to buy an engagement ring. Despite their initial dislike for each other, their fates are intertwined, and a emotionally destitute Hershel comes to live with Ben and his fiance Hannah. Together they learn to see beyond their differences in this touching comedy about love, sex, faith and friendship. M-2, F-2. Softcover, 55 pp. $9.99.

The Wind Cries Mary
Philip Kan Gotanda
Loosely based on Hedda Gabler, this play is set on a college campus in the late '60s. Amidst the turbulent anti-war demonstrations and beginnings of Asian-American identity politics, we follow an extraordinary young woman, Eiko Hanabi, through the course of several days' events which will alter her life forever. Eiko is a woman caught on the cusp of a world changing from Oriental to Asian American in a different political and radical climate. 3M, 3W. Softcover, 69 pp. $9.99.

PEN
David Marshall Grant
PEN is about a Long Island family at a pivotal moment in their lives. Confined to a wheelchair, Helen and her son, Matt, are locked in a relationship where love, guilt, recriminations and the ever-present desire to make things right all share centre-stage. PEN is a sly, perceptive play about the deep bonds that hold a family together and the harsh truths that tear them apart. Softcover, 65 pp. $10.99.

The Voysey Inheritance
Harley Granville-Barker & David Mamet
For generations, the Voysey family business has been secretly skimming money from its clients' accounts. When Edward, designated to take over the firm from his aging father, discovers the embezzlement that has been keeping his relatives in a life of luxury, he must weigh the trappings of wealth and the imperative to preserve his family's good name against the better principles of his conscience. But moral righteousness turns to self-protection when he comes to understand fully the consequences of his "inheritance." One hundred years after the first publication of The Voysey Inheritance, David Mamet resurrects Harley Granville-Barker's classic investigation into the capitalist soul in this brilliant adaptation. Softcover, 58 pp. $10.99.

Life Interrupted: The Unfinished Monologue
Spalding Gray
Spalding Gray died in early 2004, and though never completed, Life Interrupted is rich with brave self-revelation, masterfully acute observations of wonderfully peculiar people, penetrating wit and genuine humour, an irresolvable fascination with life and death, and all other attributes of Gray's singular and unmistakable voice. This volume also include two additional monologues, as well as many of the eulogies that were delivered by his friends and family at memorial services held at Lincoln Center and in Sag Harbor. Hardcover, 255 pp. $27.95. Also available as an audio CD. The pieces are read by award-winning playwright Sam Shepard. $19.95.

The House in Town
Richard Greenberg
The time is New Year's Eve, 1929. In an elegant New York brownstone on "Millionaire's Row", Sam Hammer, a Jewish Department store tycoon and his non-Jewish wife Amy bid their last few guests farewell with a parting wish: "A better year ahead."The looming Great Depression is likely to put a crimp in the lavish lifestyle of of the Hammers and their friends - just as the rapidly rising giant London Terrace apartments across the street is about to rob their house of much of its light. Softcover, 60 pp. $10.99.

Take Me Out
Richard Greenberg
Homosexuality has long been a taboo subject in the sports world, but Richard Greenberg's tackles it head on in this witty and touching play. Controversy ensues after the star player of the baseball team the Empires decides to "out" himself during a press conference. This stunning work was a 2003 Tony Award-winner. M -11.

Marie Antoinette: The Color of Flesh
Joel Gross
Marie Antoinette: The Color of Flesh is a dramatic love triangle set during the turbulent years around the French Revolution. Elizabeth Vigee le Brun, a beautiful, social-climbing portrait painter, uses her affair with Count Alexis de Ligne, a left-leaning philanderer, to get a commision to paint the naive young Queen Marie Antoinette. While Elisa uses the Queen to further her career and Alexis uses the Queen to further his political goals, both learn to love the woman they're exploiting. Softcover, 70 pp. $10.99.

The Den of Thieves
Stephen Adley Guirgis
Maggie is going through some changes in her life. She's just broken up with her crazy boyfriend Flaco, is trying to quit shoplifting, and give up her junk-food-binging ways. Things seem to be going alright, when Flaco shows up with his new girlfriend Boochie and crazy plan to steal $750,000 in drug money. Paul, Maggie's 12 Step sponsor is also persuaded to join the caper to fulfill the legacy of his grandfather - head of the infamous Den of Thieves. Things don't quite go as planned by Flaco, and the hapless quartet find themselves tied to chairs and totally immobile in the basement of a Tribeca Disco. They must now fight for their lives by out-arguing each other as to who deserves to live the most. The Den of Thieves is a fast-paced struggle for survival twists in every direction imaginable. Softcover, 56 pp. $9.99.

Our Lady of 121st Street
Stephen Adly Guirgis
In this dark, insightful and very funny comedy, we enter the Ortiz Funeral Room. The body of beloved community activist and nun Sister Rose has been stolen from the viewing room, and waiting for her proper return are some of New York City's most emotionally charged denizens. The crowd square off on each other, motivated by pain, rage and a scary desire to come clean. 8M, 4W. Softcover, 57 pp. $9.99.

Kitty Kitty Kitty
Noah Haidle
Kitty, a suicidal housecat, finds his true love in his clone, the first successfully cloned housecat, Kitty Kitty. They give each other hand jobs, but Kitty Kitty doesn't love Kitty back. So Kitty decides to make another clone of himself, the title character Kitty Kitty Kitty. But something goes wrong in the cloning process, and he makes more copies of himself, each one more retarded than the last. The final clone, Kitty Kitty Kitty Kitty Kitty, communicattes in nothing but grunts and yells and drool. Kitty Kitty Kitty is a comedy about love, unrequired love, regret and hand jobs. Softcover, 47 pp. $10.99.

Mr. Marmalade
Noah Haidle
Lucy is a four-year-old girl with a very active imagination. Unfortunately, her imaginary friend Mr. Marmalade doesn't have much time for her. Not to mention he beats up his personal assistant, has a cocaine addiction, and a penchant for pornography and very long dildos. Larry, her only real friend, is the youngest suicide attempt in the history of New Jersey. Mr. Marmalade is a savage black comedy about what it takes to grow up in these difficult times. 4M, 2W (doubling). Softcover, 52 pp. $10.99.

Rag and Bone
Noah Haidle
Two brothers, Jeff and George, run The Ladder Store, which is actually a front for their business in black-market hearts. In the world of Rag and Bone, hearts are bought and sold for people who can't feel enough. The play begins when George steals the heart of a poet. The play then follows the poet with no heart; a hooker with a heart of gold; T-Bone, her pimp who feels too damn much; and the Millionaire, who eventually receives the poet's heart and sees a whole different world. Jeff and George recently lost their mother, but they put her heart into George's body, and all of a sudden he's wearing a dress, drinking martinis and cooking pot roasts. This is a heartfelt comedy about the limits of feeling, and the consequences of either feeling nothing or too damn much. 5M, 2W. Softcover, 61 pp. $10.99.

Hank Williams: Lost Highway
Randal Myler & Mark Harelik
Hank Williams: Lost Highway is the spectacular musical biography of the legendary singer-songwriter frequently mentioned alongside Louis Armstrong, Robert Johnson, Duke Ellington, Elvis and Bob Dylan as one of the great innovators of American popular music.
M-7, F-3. Softcover, 63 pp. $12.95.

Work Song: Three Views of Frank Lloyd Wright
Eric Simonson & Jeffrey Hatcher
In this new play about the famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright, audiences get a good look at the master builder at three distinct phases of his life and career. Each part of the play has its own style: a multi-scene "epic" style covering three decades of part one; a compressed "country weekend" comedy a la Chekhov for part two; and a single setting for part three's final encounter between Wright and a young couple living in one of his earliest houses built half a century before, played out in real time. The play also allows for a development in the play's design that mirrors the architectural ideas of Wright himself. WORK SONG is about a man who wanted to create the perfect home for the American family but could never build one for himself. 6M, 2W (4 extras). Softcover, 83 pp. $10.99.

Murder by Poe
Jeffrey Hatcher
A dark and dreadful night. A woman in white lost within a wood, and the only shelter is a house full of murderers. Mixing funhouse tricks, Grand Guignol and a deadly game of cat and mouse, Murder by Poe is a theatrical imagining of some of Poe's most famous tales of terror. As each haunted figure tells a story of crime and mayhem, the woman must solve the puzzle of the house and the riddle of the man who ushers her into its mysteries. Softcover, 40 pp. $9.99.

Ridiculous Fraud
Beth Henley
A disastrous New Orleans wedding rehearsal dinner is the latest in a series of unfortunate events that befall the Clay brothers in Beth Henley's boisterous and bittersweet new comedy. Daddy's in jail for fraud, Uncle Baites has taken up with a panhandler, and Lafcad's just called off his own wedding. What family doesn't have its ups and downs? Softcover, 57 pp. $10.99.

Urinetown: The Musical
Greg Kotis and Mark Hollman
In a Gotham-like city, a depletion of the earth's water supply has lead to a government-enforced ban on private toliets. The priviledge to pee is regulated by a single malevolent company that profits by charging admission for one of humanity's most basic needs. Amid the people, a hero has risen who will lead them to freedom. An innovative and acclaimed new musical. Softcover, 103 pp. $21.00.

Christmas Belles
Nicholas Hope, Jessie Jones & Jamie Wooten
A church Christmas program spins hilariously out of control in this Southern farce about squabbling sisters, family secrets, a surly Santa, a vengeful sheep and a reluctant Elvis impersonator. Softcover, 60 pp. $10.99.

Tea
Velina Hasu Houston
Four women come together to clean the house of a fifth after her tragic suicide upsets the balance of life in their small Japanese immigrant community in the middle of the Kansas heartland. The spirit of the dead woman returns as a ghostly ringmaster to force the women to come to terms with the disquieting tension of their lives and find common ground so she can escape the limbo between life and death, and move on to the next world in peace--and indeed carve a pathway for their future passage. 5W. Softcover, 41 pp. $10.99.

Moonlight and Magnolias
Ron Hutchinson
1939 Hollywood is abuzz. Legendary producer David O Selznick has shut down production of his new epic, Gone with the Wind, a film adaptation of Margaret Mitchell's novel. The screenplay, you see, just doesn't work. So what's an all-powerful movie mogul to do? While fending off the film's stars, gossip columnists, and his own father-in-law, Selznick sends a car for famed screenwriter Ben Hecht and pulls formidable director Victor Fleming from the set of The Wizard of Oz. Summoning both to his office, he locks the doors, closes the shades, and on a diet of bananas and peanuts, the three men labor over five days to fashion a screenplay that will become the blueprint for one of the most successful and beloved films of all time. M-3, F-1. Softcover, 60 pp. $9.99.

Back to top

Last modified May 30, 2008 .
Please note that all prices are in Canadian dollars. All prices are subject to change without notice.