After their father dies, five siblings find themselves around the kitchen table of their childhood, pouring whiskey and sharing memories. The eldest, Ann, reminisces about her days playing Peter Pan at the local children’s theater, and soon the five are transported back to Neverland. For Peter Pan on her 70th birthday is a fantastical exploration of the enduring bonds of family, the resistance to “growing up,” and the inevitability of growing old.
“The finest American author of his generation.” — Sunday Mail “Viewed as an indictment of journalism or the law—take your pick— The Penitent is timely and exciting and, in the best of ways, awfully depressing.” — NBC New York “David Mamet is an American theater icon for good reason. He writes plays with nuance and depth that require the audience to really listen and think. About subjects that will stick to your ribs and keep your mind and your guts churning long after you leave the theater. The Penitent is no exception.” — Front Row Center In David Mamet’s searing new drama, Charles, a psychiatrist, is thrown into a firestorm of controversy when he refuses to testify on behalf of a gay client accused of killing ten people. He claims his refusal is a principled defense of the Hippocratic oath, enshrining the confidentiality of the doctor-client relationship. The client’s defense claims it is bigotry. As Charles is subjected to a Job-like barrage of misfortune, The Penitent asks the question: What is the cost of standing up for what you believe? David Mamet is a playwright, essayist and screenwriter who directs for both the stage and film. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Glengarry Glen Ross . His other plays include American Buffalo , The Anarchist , Race , Speed-the-Plow , Oleanna and China Doll , among many others.
“How many plays make us long for grace? Water by the Spoonful by Quiara Hudes is such a rare play; it is a yearning, funny, deeply sad and deeply lyrical piece, a worthy companion to Hudes’s Elliot, A Soldier’s Fugue. The play infects us with the urge to find connection within our families and communities and remains with us long after we’ve left the theater.” –Paula Vogel, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of How I Learned to Drive “Hudes’s writing is controlled and graceful. Each of the play’s 15 short scenes is perfectly balanced, the language both lyrical and lucid.” –Richard Zoglin, Time “For a drama peopled by characters who have traveled a long way in the dark, Water by the Spoonful gives off a shimmering, sustaining warmth. Ms. Hudes writes with such empathy and vibrant humor about people helping one another to face down their demons that regeneration and renewal always seem to be just around the corner.” –Charles Isherwood, New York Times Winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Water by the Spoonful is “a rich, brilliant montage of American urban life that is as dazzling to watch as it is difficult to look away from” (Associated Press). Somewhere in Philadelphia, Elliot has returned from Iraq and is struggling to find his place in the world. Somewhere in a chat room, recovering addicts forge an unbreakable bond of support and love. The boundaries of family and community are stretched across continents and cyberspace as birth families splinter and online families collide. Water by the Spoonful is a heartfelt and poetic meditation on lives on the brink of redemption and self-discovery during a time of heightened uncertainty, “as startling and innovative and human on the page as on the stage” (Junot Díaz, Pulitzer Prize-Winning author). Hudes’s cycle of three plays began with Elliot, A Soldier’s Fugue (Pulitzer Prize finalist) and concludes with The Happiest Song Plays Last. Quiara Alegría Hudes is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Water by the Spoonful, the Tony Award-winning musical In the Heights and the Pulitzer Prize finalist Elliot, A Soldier’s Fugue. Her other works include Barrio Grrrl!, a children’s musical; 26 Miles; Yemaya’s Belly and The Happiest Song Plays Last, the third piece in her acclaimed trilogy. Hudes is on the board of Philadelphia Young Playwrights, which produced her first play in the tenth grade. She now lives in New York with her husband and children.
“Soul-searing… Eclipsed [/i]shines with a compassion that makes us see beyond the suffering to the indomitable humanity of its characters.” Charles Isherwood, New York Times [/i] [/i] “A major achievement… Eclipsed [/i]is shattering in part because, while the Liberian Civil War finally ended, the struggle continues in a ravished human landscape. We can do little more than bear witness—something this miraculous play helps boldly to accomplish.” Jeremy Gerard, Deadline [/i] [/i] “Danai Gurira’s remarkable play is an epic of war and suffering… painted with warmth, humor and rage…A considerable work of art.” Stewart Pringle, Time Out London [/i] [/i] “It’s a common lament that there are no good roles for women. But Danai Gurira has packed this harrowing drama with five of them.” Joe Dziemianowicz, New York Daily News [/i] [/i] Amid the chaos of the Liberian Civil War, the captive wives of a rebel officer band together to form a fragile community—until the balance of their lives is upset by the arrival of a new girl. Drawing on reserves of wit and compassion, Eclipsed [/i]reveals distinct women who must discover their own means of survival in this chilling and humanizing story of transformation and renewal in a hostile world of horrors not of their own making. Danai Gurira is an award-winning Zimbabwean American actor and playwright. Her plays include In the Continuum [/i], The [/i] Convert [/i], Familiar [/i]and Eclipsed [/i]. As an actor, she is best known for her role as Michonne on AMC’s The Walking Dead [/i]. She is the co-founder of Almasi Collaborative Arts, and founder LOVE OUR GIRLS: a campaign bringing awareness to injustices faced by women and girls throughout the world. (Visit: logpledge.org [/i])
• All three parts of this play cycle premiered in 2016 at The Public Theatre, Off-Broadway, in New York City: Hungry in March, What Did You Expect in September, and Women of a Certain Age on November 8 – the night of the 2016 presidential election, which is the topic of the plays.• Selected as a New York Times Critics’ Pick• A play cycle that hinges on the national election, this would do well with political and history-centric audiences, as well as the academic arena.• Nelson is also known for his critically-lauded four-part play cycle The Apple Family plays, with each part revolving around a specific inciting event in American history• Nelson won the 1979 Obie Award for Playwriting for The Vienna Notes• He received the 2000 Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical for James Joyce's The Dead• Nelson received the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award, Master American Dramatist, and the 1990 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding New Play for Some Americans Abroad
Three provocative dramas, <em>Paradise Blue</em>, <em>Detroit ’67 </em>and <em>Skeleton Crew</em>, make up Dominique Morisseau’s <em>The Detroit Project</em>, a play cycle examining the sociopolitical history of Detroit. Each play sits at a cross-section—of race and policing, of labor and recession, of property ownership and gentrification—and comes alive in the characters and relationships that look toward complex, hopeful futures. With empathetic storytelling and an ear for the voices of her home community, Morisseau brings to life the soul of Detroit, past and present.
“Pevear and Volokhonsky are at once scrupulous translators and vivid stylists of English.” – James Wood, New Yorker Best known for his novel The Master and Margarita , Mikhail Bulgakov had a knack for political allegory. Both Molière, or the Cabal of Hypocrites and Don Quixote were contentious in their time, written as a challenge to Soviet politics of the early twentieth century, especially Stalin’s harsh regime. Charged with cultural subtext and controversial intrigue, the plays in this exceptional new volume from TCG’s Russian Drama Series are given new light by the foremost translators of Russian classic literature, Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, in collaboration with renowned playwright Richard Nelson. Richard Nelson ’s many plays include The Apple Family: Scenes from Life in the Country ( That Hopey Changey Thing , Sweet and Sad , Sorry , Regular Singing ); The Gabriels: Election Year in the Life of One Family ( Hungry , What Did You Expect? , Women of a Certain Age ); Nikolai and the Others ; Goodnight Children Everywhere (Oliver Award for Best Play); Franny’s Way ; Some Americans Abroad ; Frank’s Home ; Two Shakespearean Actors and James Joyce’s The Dead (with Shaun Davey; Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical). Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky have translated the works of Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Nikolai Gogol, Anton Chekhov, Boris Pasternak, and Mikhail Bulgakov. Their translations of The Brothers Karamazov and Anna Karenina won the PEN Translation Prize in 1991 and 2002 respectively. Pevear, a native of Boston, and Volokhonsky, of St. Petersburg, are married and live in France.
• World premiere at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in the summer of 2015, with a subsequent production produced by Arena Stage in Washington DC• Highly anticipated New York production coming this Fall, directed by Kate Whoriskey (Ruined)• Glowing review of OSF production in NY Times• Likely contender for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Drama• Made “The List,” an initiative begun by The Kilroys to promote women playwrights in the national theatre scene by listing the most highly recommended plays in the country by industry elites• Significant play in the context of recent American history, specifically dealing with the financial crisis of 2008; has the same contextual relevance as the major 2016 Academy Award-nominated film, The Big Short – indicating a market for this topic.• Would appeal to the academic sector, for both Theatre and American History courses• Nottage is one of the most highly regarded contemporary American playwrights from the past decade:• Nottage’s previous work Ruined earned her the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Drama• Nottage has received Guggenheim and MacArthur Fellowships• Her play By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, which premiered in 2011, received rave reviews from the critics and was nominated for the 2012 Drama Desk Award, Outstanding Play
• World premiere in the spring of 2016 at Signature Theatre Company (Off-Broadway, New York), directed by Thomas Kail (Hamilton)• Hudes’ work deals with both human interest stories as well as more specifically cultural topics relevant to Hispanic Americans. Target readership might be as broad as anyone with an interest in theatre, as well as any Hispanic/Latino-leaning organizations or academic curricula.• Daphne’s Dive is Hudes’ first contribution to her residency as part of Signature’s “Residency One” program, which offers an established playwright complete artistic freedom in the development of new work for one year at Signature Theatre.• Hudes is an award-winning playwright with mass contemporary appeal.• She is currently the Shapiro Distinguished Professor of Writing and Theatre at Wesleyan University• Hudes’ play, Water by the Spoonful, won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2012.• She is best known for writing the book to the Tony Award-winning musical In the Heights. She collaborated with Lin-Manuel Miranda, the lyricist, composer and star of In the Heights, who also wrote and stars in the current Broadway phenomenon, Hamilton.• In the Heights is on stage now in the West End.• She was named a Fellow by United Stated Artists in 2010.
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Molière
When the seemingly perfect Tartuffe ingratiates himself with the wealthy Orgon and his mother Madame Pernelle, he is soon welcomed into their home and into their lives. His combination of charm, respectability and religious authority proves so irresistible that he is eventually promised the hand of Orgon's daughter in marriage. But the rest of Orgon's family have grave doubts – is there more to Tartuffe than meets the eye? When the threat of eviction for the family and imprisonment for Orgon become apparent, is it all too late to find out? This hilarious and irreverent whirlwind of lies, religious hypocrisy and family feuds features one of theatre's most perfect comedy creations, the beguiling Tartuffe .