Drama Theatre Texts: 21st Century

"Sparkling and combustible" (Bloomberg Businessweek), "DISGRACED rubs all kinds of unexpected raw spots with intelligence and humor" (Newsday). "In dialogue that bristles with wit and intelligence, Akhtar puts contemporary attitudes toward religion under a microscope, revealing how tenuous self-image can be for people born into one way of being who have embraced another.... Everyone has been told that politics and religion are two subjects that should be off-limits at social gatherings. But watching these characters rip into these forbidden topics, there's no arguing that they make for ear-tickling good theater" (New York Times). "Add a liberal flow of alcohol and a couple of major secrets suddenly revealed, and you've got yourself one dangerous dinner party" (Associated Press).

In a “first ring” suburb outside a midsize American city, Ben and Mary fire up the grill to welcome the new neighbors who’ve moved into the long-empty house next door. The fledgling friendship soon veers out of control, shattering the fragile hold that newly unemployed Ben and burgeoning alcoholic Mary have on their way of life—with unexpected comic consequences. Detroit is a fresh, offbeat look at what happens when we dare to open ourselves up to something new. After premiering at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre last year to rave reviews, Lisa D’Amour’s brilliant and timely play moves to Broadway this fall.

Dramatic Comedy CHaracters: 5 male (1 non-speaking) Single Set Finalist for the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Drama Winner! 2011 Obie Award for Best New American Play Winner! 2011 New York Times Outstanding Playwright Awards Winner! 2008 National Latino Playwriting Award Mace is a professional wrestler. He's a really good professional wrestler. He's not the champion though - that's the impossibly charismatic Chad Deity. When Mace discovers a young Indian-American Brooklyn kid whose charisma rivals that of the champ, Mace decides to get him a job in the company. Only problem is, the boss has a very specific plan for the duo: put them onscreen as terrorists. Kristoffer Diaz's The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity is a serious minded comedy about wrestling, geopolitics, and raisin bread. "The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity...has the delicious crackle and pop of a galloping, honest-to-God, all-American satire." - The New York Times"Ladies and Gentlemen, in this corner of Chicago's rich theater scene, weighing in with a unique combo of vigorous physicality and wickedly intelligent humor, please put your hands together for The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity, a vibrantly entertaining, insightful new play about - wait for it - professional wrestling."- Variety

Richard Foreman has been at the leading edge of the theatrical avant-garde in the United States and throughout the world since 1968. His legendary productions, written and directed by him at his Ontological-Hysteric Theatre have influenced two generations of theater artists. This new anthology collects plays written and performed over six years, including Now That Communism Is Dead My Life Feels Empty, Maria del Bosco, Panic (How to Be Happy!), Bad Boy Nietzsche!, Bad Behavior and King Cowboy Rufus Rules the Universe.

Richard Foreman founded the Ontological-Hysteric Theatre in 1968. The theater is currently in the historic St. Marks Church, where he rehearses and produces one of his new plays each year, each play performing for 16 weeks every winter.

I'm also going to give you some advice. Your husband is not the Red Cross. The last time he started consoling a cute, suicidal chick, he married her.

Becky Shaw is an amusing and cleverly constructed comedy about ambition, the cost of being truthful, and the perils of a blind date. The fast and funny dialogue navigates between five distinctively perverse and disingenuously dysfunctional characters.

The plot is as follows: from the moment that Becky arrives overdressed for her blind date with straight-talking Max, it's clear the evening won't go to plan. In the immediate fallout, Becky becomes an object of devotion for her boss Andrew, who appears to have a fetish for vulnerable women. In turn Andrew's wife Suzanna turns to her step-brother Max for comfort, and their mutual desire begins to resurface.

Gina Gionfriddo's masterful play is a biting American comedy with sharp, witty dialogue and a carefully crafted yet unforced story arc. Character-driven, Becky Shaw is a comic tale of tangled love lives and a subtle but acerbic comedy of manners.

After suffering a major loss while he was on a cross-country bike trip, 21 year-old Leo seeks solace from his feisty 91 year-old grandmother Vera in her West Village apartment. Over the course of a single month, these unlikely roommates infuriate, bewilder, and ultimately reach each other. 4000 MILES looks at how two outsiders find their way in today's world.

Cow. Slob. Pig. How many insults can you hear before you have to stand up and defend the woman you love? Tom faces just that question when he falls for Helen, a bright, funny, sexy young woman who happens to be plus sized-and then some. Forced to explain his new relationship to his shallow (although shockingly funny) friends, finally he comes to terms with his own preconceptions of the importance of conventional good looks. Neil LaBute's sharply drawn play not only critiques our slavish adherence to Hollywood ideals of beauty but boldy questions our own ability to change what we dislike about ourselves.

Neil LaBute burst onto the American theater scene in 1989 with his controversial debut work Filthy Talk for Troubled Times. Set in a barroom in Anytown USA and populated by a series of everymen (and two beleaguered everywomen), this series of frank exchanges explores the innumerable varieties of American intolerance. A unique snapshot of the times, the play — seldom allowed production by the author since — provides a compelling look at the early thinking and evolution of one of our great theater artists.
Also in this collection is a series of new, short works, some never before produced. They include “The New Testament,” a showbiz satire that takes a close look at the perils of color-blind casting, and “The Furies,” in which a woman helps navigate her brother’s breakup with his out-and-then-perhaps, in-the-closet-again lover.

Winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Drama

"A tremendous achievement in American playwriting: a tragicomic populist portrait of a tough land and a tougher people."--"Time Out New York"

"Tracy Letts' "August: Osage County" is what O'Neill would be writing in 2007. Letts has recaptured the nobility of American drama's mid-century heyday while still creating something entirely original."--"New York" magazine

One of the most bracing and critically acclaimed plays in recent Broadway history, "August: Osage County" is a portrait of the dysfunctional American family at its finest--and absolute worst. When the patriarch of the Weston clan disappears one hot summer night, the family reunites at the Oklahoma homestead, where long-held secrets are unflinchingly and uproariously revealed. The three-act, three-and-a-half-hour mammoth of a play combines epic tragedy with black comedy, dramatizing three generations of unfulfilled dreams and leaving not one of its thirteen characters unscathed. After its sold-out Chicago premiere, the play has electrified audiences in New York since its opening in November 2007.

Tracy Letts is the author of "Killer Joe," "Bug," and "Man from Nebraska," which was a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. His plays have been performed throughout the country and internationally. A performer as well as a playwright, Letts is a member of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, where "August: Osage County" premiered.

This dark comedy takes place in a seedy motel room outside Oklahoma City, where Agnes, a drug-addled cocktail waitress, is hiding from her ex-con ex-husband. Her lesbian biker friend R.C. introduces her to Peter, a handsome drifter who might be an AWOL Gulf War veteran. They soon begin a relationship that takes place almost entirely within the increasingly claustrophobic confines of her motel room. Peter begins to rant about the war in Iraq, UFOs, the Oklahoma City bombings, cult suicides, and then secret government experiment on soldiers, of which he believes he is a victim. His delusions infect Agnes and the tension mounts as mysterious strangers appear at their door, past events haunt them at every turn and they are attacked by real bugs. Tracy Letts's tale of love, paranoia, and government conspiracy is a thought-provoking psycho-thriller that mixes terror and laughter at a fever pitch.

“A terrific production . . . American playwright Donald Margulies' self-reflective, dream reverie comedy drama Brooklyn Boy is tough, insightful, bittersweet, funny and ultimately wise.”—The Hollywood Reporter

“Those who know Margulies' plays will find his familiar themes here: the inevitable transformations wrought by aging, the complex hands linking parents and children, the uneasy dance between commercial and artistic success. The story unfolds with an uncanny resonance that distinguishes all great theatre.”—Orange County Register

This new play by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Dinner with Friends is slated for a Broadway run in January 2005. Brooklyn Boy follows the career of Eric Weiss, a writer whose novel hits the bestseller list the same time his life begins to unravel. His wife is out the door, his father is in the hospital and his childhood friend thinks he has sold himself to the devil. A funny and emotionally rich look at family, friends and fame.

Donald Margulies received the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Dinner with Friends. The play received numerous awards, including the American Theatre Critics Association New Play Award, the Dramatists Guild/Hull-Warriner Award, the Lucille Lortel Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award and a Drama Desk nomination, and has been produced all over the United States and around the world. In addition to his adaptation of God of Vengeance, his many plays include Collected Stories, Sight Unseen, The Model Apartment, The Loman Family Picnic, What's Wrong with This Picture? and Two Days. Mr. Margulies currently lives with his wife and their son in New Haven, Connecticut, where he teaches playwriting at Yale University.

The first original screenplay by the great American novelist Cormac McCarthy. In early 2012 it was announced that Cormac McCarthy had written his first original screenplay - news which provoked huge excitement, a swift deal and the appointment of Ridley Scott to direct. But this is no ordinary screenplay. This is a work of extraordinary imagination which draws on many of the themes of McCarthy's work as well as taking it to new dark places. It is also written with great descriptive passages counteracting the dialogue, so the reader is given the full experience of the McCarthy prose. It is the story of a lawyer, the Counselor, a man who is so seduced by the desire to get rich, to impress his fiancee Laura, that he becomes involved in a drug-smuggling venture that quickly takes him way out of his depth. His contacts in this are the mysterious and probably corrupt Reiner and the seductive Malkina, so exotic her pets of choice are two cheetahs. As the action crosses the Mexican border, things become darker, more violent and more sexually disturbing than the Counselor has ever imagined. The film stars Michael Fassbender, Brad Pitt, Cameron Diaz, Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem.

Clybourne Park spans two generations fifty years apart. In 1959, Russ and Bev are selling their desirable two-bedroom at a bargain price, unknowingly bringing the first black family into the neighborhood (borrowing a plot line from Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun) and creating ripples of discontent among the cozy white residents of Clybourne Park. In 2009, the same property is being bought by a young white couple, whose plan to raze the house and start again is met with equal disapproval by the black residents of the soon-to-be-gentrified area. Are the issues festering beneath the floorboards actually the same, fifty years on? Bruce Norris’s excruciatingly funny and squirm-inducing satire explores the fault line between race and property.

Clybourne Park is the winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and the winner of the 2012 Tony Award for Best Play.

Defiance is a necessary step in the life of an individual and in the life of a nation."--John Patrick Shanley

"As thoughtful and probing as its predecessor, Defiance [is] filled with the provocative questions and bristling dialogue for which Mr. Shanley is known . . . as it wonders about its big, knotty subjects."--Ben Brantley, The New York Times

Defiance is the "very rich and satisfying" (The Village Voice) second work in John Patrick Shanley's trilogy that began with Doubt. The play is set in 1971 at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, where Lt. Col. Morgan Littlefield and his reluctant protégé Capt. Lee King--a young African American officer--clash over issues of race and authority within the Marine Corps, even as the civil rights movement and Vietnam War divide the world outside. In this high-stakes struggle at the top of the ranks, witnessed by the base's inquisitive Chaplain White and Littlefield's irreproachable wife Margaret, Shanley has crafted another timely play exploring issues of power and morality within a hallowed institution.

John Patrick Shanley's Doubt won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Play, and was chosen as best play of the year by over ten news-papers and magazines. His other plays include Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, Four Dogs and a Bone, Psychopathia Sexualis, and Savage Limbo. He has written extensively for TV and film, including Moonstruck, for which he won an Academy Award for best screenplay.

"In the appallingly entertaining Dirty Story . . . Mr. Shanley has expanded his focus from the intimate to the international to create one of the liveliest, boldest and--against the odds--funniest studies ever of a subject that even hard-core satirists tend to approach on tiptoe."--Ben Brantley, The New York Times

Three new works by Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Patrick Shanley, one of our country's most politically current and theatrically elastic playwrights. In Dirty Story a couple of sadomasochistic writers fight over rights to their New York City loft, in this sexy satire of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that is "astonishing," says Tony Kushner, "The analysis of the Middle East in this play is dead on, exactly perfectly pitched." In his dark comedy Where's My Money? Shanley takes on marriage, infidelity and divorce lawyers in a play that is "so harsh, it's funny--terrifying, but funny," (The New York Times). And in his Sailor's Song, love becomes an act of courage, in this seaside romance about the certainty of death, the brevity of youth, and the importance of now.

John Patrick Shanley's Doubt won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Play, and was chosen as best play of the year by over 10 newspapers and magazines. His other plays include Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, Four Dogs and a Bone, Psychopathia Sexualis and Savage Limbo. He has written extensively for TV and film, including Moonstruck, for which he won an Academy Award for best screenplay.