Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

After the Fall : A Play in Two Acts

by Arthur Miller

A lost character draws upon events in his past as he searches for life's meaning in Miller's powerful play.

Arcadia is a brilliantly inventive play that moves back and forth between centuries, populated by a varied and vastly entertaining cast of characters who discuss such topics as the nature of truth and time, the difference between the classical and the romantic temperament, and the disruptive influence of sex on our orbits in life-according to the author, "the attraction which Newton left out.

Swimming to Cambodia

by Spalding Gray

"It took courage to do what Spalding did-courage to make theatre so naked and unadorned, to expose himself in this way and fight the demons in public. In doing so, he entered our hearts-my heart-because he made his struggle my struggle. His life became my life."-Eric Bogosian "Virtuosic. A master writer, reporter, comic and playwright. Spalding Gray is a sit-down monologist with the soul of a stand-up comedian.... (more)

THE SEARCH FOR SIGNS OF INTELLIGENT LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE

THE SEARCH FOR SIGNS OF INTELLIGENT LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE

by Jane Wagner

Jane Wagner's masterpiece--The first play in more than 20 years to become a national bestseller--is now a motion picture!

Betrayal (Pinter Plays)

by Harold Pinter

Part of a collection of Harold Pinter's works, this is a comedy of sexual manners in which Pinter captures the psyche's sly manoeuvres for self-respect with sardonic forgiveness. Written in 1978 by the author of "The Caretaker", "The Lover", "The Homecoming" and "The Birthday Party".

Crimes of the heart: The Pulitzer Prize-winning comedy : [screenplay]

Crimes of the heart: The Pulitzer Prize-winning comedy : [screenplay]

by Beth Henley

The reunion of the McGrath sisters in Hazlehurst, Mississippi, is joyful but troubling. Lenny is still unmarried at 30, Meg is recovering from a failed singing career. Babe is out on bail for shooting her husband, and a young lawyer tries to keep her out of jail without falling in love with her. Beth Henley blends comedy and pathos in this Chekhovian story of the sometimes frayed edges of sisterly bonds.

'night, Mother: A Play (Mermaid Dramabook)

'night, Mother: A Play (Mermaid Dramabook)

by Marsha Norman

' night, Mother is a taut and fluid drama that addresses different emotions and special relations. By one of America's most talented playwrights, this play won the Dramatists Guild's prestigious Hull-Warriner Award, four Tony nominations, the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, and the Pulitzer Prize in 1983. 'night, Mother had its world premiere at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in... (more)

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

by Tennessee Williams

Williams's Pulitzer Prize-winning play has captured both stage and film audiences since its debut in 1954. One of his best-loved and most famous plays, it exposes the lies plaguing the family of a wealthy Southern planter of humble origins.

The First Part of King Henry the Fourth: Texts and Contexts (The Bedford Shakespeare Series)

The First Part of King Henry the Fourth: Texts and Contexts (The Bedford Shakespeare Series)

by William Shakespeare

The "New Penguin Shakespeare" offers a complete edition of the plays and poems. "Henry IV, Part One" has been prepared from the original text, and includes an introduction, a list of further reading, a full commentary and a short account of the textual problems of the play.

Macbeth

by William Shakespeare

Each edition includes: • Freshly edited text based on the best early printed version of the play • Full explanatory notes conveniently placed on pages facing the text of the play • Scene-by-scene plot summaries • A key to famous lines and phrases • An introduction to reading Shakespeare's language • An essay by an outstanding scholar providing a modern perspective on the play • Illustrations from the Folger... (more)

The Marriage of Bette and Boo.

by Christopher Durang

Laughing Wild and Baby with the Bathwater: Two Plays

Laughing Wild and Baby with the Bathwater: Two Plays

by Christopher Durang

“Laughing wild amid severest woe” perfectly describes the fiercely ironic comedy of Christopher Durang’s Laughing Wild (which takes its title from this Thomas Gray quotation via Samuel Beckett) and the previously unpublished Baby with the Bathwater. In Laughing Wild, two comic monologues evolve into a man and a woman’s shared nightmare of modern life and the isolation it creates. From her turf battles at the... (more)

A Moon for the Misbegotten

by Eugene O'Neill

Eugene O’Neill’s last completed play, A Moon for the Misbegotten is a sequel to his autobiographical Long Day’s Journey Into Night. Moon picks up eleven years after the events described in Long Day’s Journey Into Night , as Jim Tyrone (based on O’Neill’s older brother Jamie) grasps at a last chance at love under the full moonlight. This paperback edition features an insightful introduction by Stephen A.... (more)

The Collected Plays of Neil Simon, Vol. 2

The Collected Plays of Neil Simon, Vol. 2

by Neil Simon

The Collected Plays of Neil Simon, Vol. 1

The Collected Plays of Neil Simon, Vol. 1

by Neil Simon

Since 1960, a Broadway season without a Neil Simon play has been a rare one. For more than thirty years, Simon's wry and astute observations on life, love, and the human condition have been making audiences laugh uproariously even as his beautifully realized characters touch their hearts. These five plays show Simon at the pinnacle of his extraordinary career. Rumors Come Blow Your Horn Barefoot in the... (more)

The Complete Plays: The Ruffian on the Stair, Entertaining Mr. Sloan, the Good and Faithful Servant, Loot, the Erpingham Camp, Funeral Games, What the Butler Saw

The Complete Plays: The Ruffian on the Stair, Entertaining Mr. Sloan, the Good and Faithful Servant, Loot, the Erpingham Camp, Funeral Games, What the Butler Saw

by Joe Orton

This volume contains every play written by Joe Orton, who emerged in the 1960s as the most talented comic playwright in recent English history and was considered the direct successor to Wilde, Shaw, and Coward.

The Iceman Cometh

by Eugene O'Neill, Eugene Gladstone O'Neill

Eugene O’Neill was the first American playwright to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. He completed The Iceman Cometh in 1939, but he delayed production until after the war, when it enjoyed a long run of performances in 1946 after receiving mixed reviews. Three years after O'Neill's death, Jason Robards starred in a Broadway revival that brought new critical attention to O’Neill’s darkest and most nihilistic... (more)

The Play About The Baby

by Edward Albee

A wicked, concise, and provocative summation of the themes that have guided Edward Albee’s legendary career, The Play About the Baby is a hilarious and intriguing exploration of the bonds between parents and children.

Cyrano de Bergerac

by Edmond Rostand, Lowell Bair, Anthony Burgess

Rostand's masterpiece-and the ultimate triumph of the great French romantic tradition-is the magnificent hero-for-all-seasons, Cyrano de Bergerac.

Cloud Nine

by Caryl Churchill

Cloud Nine is an inventive, surrealistic and entertaining look at sexual repression and sexual role conditioning. The first act takes placei n Victorian Africa, suggeting the parallel between colonial and sexual repression. Clive, the whtie man, imposes his ideals on his family and the natives. Betty, his wife, is played by a man because she wants to be what men want her to be; and Joshua, their black servant, is... (more)

Shelfari Book Activity

Browse Subjects: playwright

Top Books

by Arthur Miller

by Tom Stoppard

by Spalding Gray

by Jane Wagner

by Harold Pinter

by Beth Henley

by Marsha Norman

by Tennessee Williams

by William Shakespeare

by William Shakespeare

by Christopher Durang

by Christopher Durang

by Eugene O'Neill

by Neil Simon

by Neil Simon

by Joe Orton

by Eugene O'Neill, Eugene Gladstone O'Neill

by Edward Albee

by Edmond Rostand, Lowell Bair, Anthony Burgess

by Caryl Churchill