Lorraine Hansberry's award-winning drama about the hopes and aspirations of a struggling, working-class family living on the South Side of Chicago connected profoundly with the psyche of black America--and changed American theater forever. The play's title comes from a line in Langston Hughes's poem "Harlem," which warns that a dream deferred might "dry up/like a raisin in the sun."
This play is based on the Greek myth of Pygmalion. It tells the story of Henry Higgins, a professor of phonetics (based on phonetician Henry Sweet), who makes a bet with his friend Colonel Pickering that he can successfully pass off a Cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, as a refined society lady by teaching her how to speak with an upper class accent and training her in etiquette. In the proc…
No play in the modern theater has so captured the imagination and heart of the American public as Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie. As Williams's first popular success, it launched the brilliant, if somewhat controversial, career, of our pre-eminent lyric playwright. Since its premiere in Chicago in 1944, with the legendary Laurette Taylor in the role of Amanda, Menagaerie has been the …
rthur Miller's classic parable of mass hysteria draws a chilling parallel between the Salem witch-hunt of 1692 – 'one of the strangest and most awful chapters in human history' – and the McCarthyism which gripped America in the 1950s. The story of how the small community of Salem is stirred into madness by superstition, paranoia and malice, culminating in a violent climax, is a savage attac…
Subtitled 'A tragicomedy in two Acts', and famously described by the Irish critic Vivien Mercier as a play in which 'nothing happens, twice', En attendant Godot was first performed at the Theatre de Babylone in Paris in 1953. It was translated into English by Samuel Beckett, and Waiting for Godot opened at the Arts Theatre in London in 1955.
This book contains a general introduction to Shakespeare's life and Elizabethan theatre, a separate introduction to Hamlet, a chronology, suggestions for further reading, an essay by Paul Prescott discussing performance options on both stage and screen, and a commentary. William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was born to John Shakespeare and Mary Arden some time in late April 1564 in Stratford-upon-Av…
Presents the classic play, first produced in 1947, about guilt, responsibility, and the relationship between fathers and sons in the aftermath of a World War II corruption case.
Background information about Shakespeare, Elizabethan theater, and the text accompany his play about unrequited love and mistaken identity
A romantic comedy which offers a challenging mixture of tragic and violent events, lyrical love-speeches, farcical comedy, pastoral song and dance, and, eventually, dramatic revelations and reunions.
A fully dramatized recording featuring performances by the cast of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's 2017 stage production, directed by Shana Cooper. Julius Caesar is a marked man. Adoring commoners celebrate his battlefield victories, but those higher up the Roman political ladder worry that his ambition has grown too large. On a stormy night, Cassius persuades Caesar's friend Brutus to help h…
The Taming of the Shrew is one of the most famous and controversial of Shakespeare's comedies.
Presents prose retellings of Shakespeare's best-known comedies and tragedies, including "Hamlet," "Romeo and Juliet," and "Othello."
Tracy Beaker is back . . . and she's just desperate for a role in her school play. They're performing A Christmas Carol and for one extremely worrying moment, the irrepressible Tracy thinks she might not even get to play one of the unnamed street urchins. But then she is cast in the main role. Can she manage to act grumpy, difficult and sulky enough to play Ebenezer Scrooge? Well, she does have…
Presents ten short scripts for use in the examined performance element of GCSE Drama. These scripts offer material in different theatrical styles. Each script is followed by a double-page spread of script-specific activities, to be undertaken individually or in a group. Cast sizes vary from 3 to 6 actors and durations from 15 to 30 minutes.
Presents ten extracts from set or recommended texts lists to use in the examined performance element of GCSE Drama. The scripts in this title offer material in different theatrical styles. Each script is followed by a double-page spread of script-specific activities, to be undertaken individually or in a group. Cast sizes vary from 3 to 6 actors.
Factual, yet humorous look at the life snd work of one of the most famous playwrights of the Elizabethan age.