The Methuen Drama Book of New American Plays

The Methuen Drama Book of New American Plays

The Methuen Drama Book of New American Plays

The Methuen Drama Book of New American Plays

The Methuen Drama Book of New American Plays

Overview

The Methuen Drama Book of New American Plays is an anthology of six outstanding plays from some of the most exciting playwrights currently receiving critical acclaim in the States. It showcases work produced at a number of the leading theatres during the last decade and charts something of the extraordinary range of current playwriting in America. It will be invaluable not only to readers and theatergoers in the U.S., but to those around the world seeking out new American plays and an insight into how U.S. playwrights are engaging with their current social and political environment. There is a rich collection of distinctive, diverse voices at work in the contemporary American theatre and this brings together six of the best, with work by David Adjmi, Marcus Gardley, Young Jean Lee, Katori Hall, Christopher Shinn and Dan LeFranc. The featured plays range from the intimate to the epic, the personal to the national and taken together explore a variety of cultural perspectives on life in America. The first play, David Adjmi's Stunning, is an excavation of ruptured identity set in modern day Midwood, Brooklyn, in the heart of the insular Syrian-Jewish community; Marcus Gardley's lyrical epic The Road Weeps, The Well Runs Dry deals with the migration of Black Seminoles, is set in mid-1800s Oklahoma and speaks directly to modern spirituality, relocation and cultural history; Young Jean Lee's Pullman, WA deals with self-hatred and the self-help culture in her formally inventive three-character play; Katori Hall's Hurt Village uses the real housing project of "Hurt Village" as a potent allegory for urban neglect set against the backdrop of the Iraq war; Christopher Shinn's Dying City melds the personal and political in a theatrical crucible that cracks open our response to 9/11 and Abu Graib, and finally Dan LeFranc's The Big Meal, an inter-generational play spanning eighty years, is set in the mid-west in a generic restaurant and considers family legacy and how some of the smallest events in life turn out to be the most significant.

Authors

David Adjmi

David Adjmi was called “virtuosic” by the New York Times and “dazzling” by the NY Observer, and he was named one of the Top Ten in Culture by The New Yorker. His play The Stumble is a commission for Lincoln Center Theatre, and The Blind King (Parts I and II) was developed at ...

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Dan LeFranc

DAN LEFRANC’s plays include Rancho Viejo (Playwrights Horizons), Bruise Easy (American Theater Company), Troublemaker (commissioned and produced by Berkeley Rep), The Big Meal (American Theater Company, Playwrights Horizons, HighTide Festival, UK), Sixty Miles to Silver Lake ...
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Young Jean Lee

Young Jean Lee has been called “hands down, the most adventurous downtown playwright of her generation” by the New York Times and “one of the best experimental playwrights in America” by Time Out New York. She has written and directed nine shows in New York with her company, ...

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Christopher Shinn

Christopher Shinn was born in Hartford, Connecticut, and lives in New York. His plays have been premiered by the Royal Court Theatre, Lincoln Center Theater, Manhattan Theatre Club, Playwrights Horizons, the Vineyard Theatre, South Coast Rep, and Soho Theatre, and later seen ...
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Author

Katori Hall

Marcus Gardley

Marcus Gardley is a poet-playwright. He was the 2012 James Baldwin Fellow and the 2011 PEN Laura Pels award winner for Mid-Career Playwright. The New Yorker describes Gardley as “the heir to Garcia Lorca, Pirandello and Tennessee Williams.” His play The House that Will Not St ...
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