Various m and f roles From the author of Cabo San Lucas, Waiting, and Truth be Told, comes six new one act plays about love and relationship. Perfect for any theatre. Included in this book are: The Man in the Grey Suit, Different, Red Roses, The Same Thing, Knots, and Come to the Garden. All have simple casting and production requirements, all are easy to stage. "Ms. Soland has developed several plays...all interesting, all clever, all unique. She is gorgeously talented." -Charles Nelson Reil
(Applause Books). For over 70 years, The Best American Short Plays has been the standard of excellence for one-act plays in America. From its inception, it has identified cutting-edge playwrights who have gone on to establish award-winning careers, including Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, and more. In this volume, the plays capture the struggle between "hot tempers and cold decrees." Humans love to think of themselves as rational beings well in control of their lives and surroundings from sunup to sundown, sundown to sunrise. We learn to follow rules of proper behavior and more than happily issue out advice to our friends who just can't get a handle on themselves. Restraint and order, after all, are the cornerstones of human society and civilization. The problem is that human nature bucks and bridles at every attempt to socialize and civilize. Shakespeare got it right when he penned the observation, "The brain may devise laws for the blood, but a hot temper leaps o'er a cold decree." In those few words he has managed to capture precisely why it is so difficult to be human; if it were okay simply to let our hot tempers prevail, life would be so much easier. But cold decrees are what prevent us from self-destruction, and so we endure the struggle.
Truth Be Told is a full-length play that consists of eleven, one-person stories shared by a variety of personalities, all focused on getting at the truth. "Lisa Soland's characters are quirky, heartbreaking and enchanting. In these short, expertly-tuned monologues, we understand the entire life of the characters by focusing in on events that define their lives. The characters stay with us because there are pieces of them in us all." -Lloyd Noonan, Dramatic Writing Editor, Quay Journal. "An extraordinary, well-balanced and perfect evening of theatre - so clever, so witty, so insightful and so moving."" -Kieron Barry, Metro Pulse. "Having incarnated a few of Ms. Soland's characters, I am always struck by her profoundly unique voice that somehow finds a way to touch us all. Disarmingly, her characters in Truth Be Told engage the audience like candy to a child, until she invites us to grow up by exposing old wounds and adding salt where we need to heal."" -John D'Aquino, Actor/Writer.
(Best American Short Plays). Applause is proud to continue the series that for over 70 years has been the standard of excellence for one-act plays in America. As previous series editor Ramon Delgado wrote in his introduction to The Best American Short Plays of 1989 , the choice of entries for each edition has been based on the same goal: "to include a balance among three categories of playwrights: 1) established playwrights who continue to practice the art and craft of the short play, 2) emerging playwrights whose record of productions indicate both initial achievement and continuing artistic productivity, and 3) talented new playwrights whose work may not have had much exposure but evidences promise for the future." From its inception, The Best American Short Plays has identified new, cutting-edge playwrights who have gone on to establish award-winning careers, including Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, Wendy Wasserstein, David Mamet, and Horton Foote. This volume, Bill Demastes' first edition as series editor, illustrates how well the short story play can grapple with the many dimensions of love. The selected plays present unique perspectives on the wide range of love's impact on our lives, each giving a thoroughly modern twist to the idea that life would be so much easier (but also much less interesting) if we could only avoid love's mercurial influence.
Witness the ever-changing history and identity of America in this collection of 40 stories collected from the first 100 years of this bestselling series. For the centennial celebration of this annual series, The Best American Short Stories, master of the form Lorrie Moore selects forty stories from the more than two thousand that were published in previous editions. Series editor Heidi Pitlor recounts behind-the-scenes anecdotes and examines, decade by decade, the trends captured over a hundred years. Together, the stories and commentary offer an extraordinary guided tour through a century of literature with what Moore calls “all its wildnesses of character and voice.” These forty stories represent their eras but also stand the test of time. Here is Ernest Hemingway’s first published story and a classic by William Faulkner, who admitted in his biographical note that he began to write “as an aid to love-making.” Nancy Hale’s story describes far-reaching echoes of the Holocaust; Tillie Olsen’s story expresses the desperation of a single mother; James Baldwin depicts the bonds of brotherhood and music. Here is Raymond Carver’s “minimalism,” a term he disliked, and Grace Paley’s “secular Yiddishkeit.” Here are the varied styles of Donald Barthelme, Charles Baxter, and Jamaica Kincaid. From Junot Díaz to Mary Gaitskill, from ZZ Packer to Sherman Alexie, these writers and stories explore the different things it means to be American.
Since the middle of the twentieth century, Turkish playwriting has been notable for its verve and versatility. This two-volume anthology is the first major collection of modern Turkish plays in English—a selection dealing with ancient Anatolian mythology, Ottoman history, contemporary social issues, family dramas, and ribald comedy from Turkey’s cities and rural areas. It also includes several plays set outside Turkey. The second volume, "I, Anatolia” and Other Plays, includes eight major plays from the 1970s through the end of the millennium. Together, both volumes grant to English readers the pleasure of riveting drama in translations that are colloquial as well as faithful. For producers, directors, and actors they provide a wealth of fresh, new material, with characters ranging from Ottoman sultans to a Soviet cosmonaut, from the Byzantine Empress Theodora to a fisherman’s wife, from residents of an Istanbul neighborhood to King Midas, from Montezuma to a Turkish cabinet minister.
One twilight, Glenn Orgias was surfing at Bondi Beach when the worst happened: he was attacked by a shark, a 'man in a grey suit', as surfers call them. Although it suddenly released him, Glenn still thought his life was over – he was 80 metres from shore with one almost severed arm, losing blood and strength fast, and the great white shark was somewhere below. All he could think about was his wife, Lisa, who was four months pregnant. Man in a Grey Suit is a powerful memoir about overcoming life's obstacles, large and small. It's the story of how surfing helped Glenn find some release from the anger and anxiety he felt growing up, and how something that so nearly killed him actually helped turn his life around. This is a brave, honest and moving account of how an ordinary man dealt with an extraordinary event. 'He frankly and fiercely taps into Australians' deepest fear.' Robert Drewe 'Sometimes we all wonder if we could cope with the worst that life could throw at us. Glenn Orgias has been there, and has come through. His strength of character lies not in what he lost, but in what he's always had.' Malcolm Knox 'In crisp, punchy prose, he shows us why his life is fuller now than before.' Fiona Capp, The Age 'This moving and utterly gripping true story is a testament to the bravery and guts that human beings can display when truly pushed to the brink.' Herald Sun
THE STORIES: When Peter finally gets a good break for his Hollywood script, he finds himself PITCHING TO THE STAR of the pilot show. Promised control over something he's worked long and hard on, he finds his integrity and his storyline attacked eve
Coast Left Past is a collection of over 200 early stories written on the West (left) Coast. Temporally grouped, printed on pulp, it represents a myriad of comedic stories, philosophical rants, and refined sugar-sweet epiphanies from the authors past. Coast is fresh and raw at a time in world history that is dominated by bad sushi. Containing the abandonment of youth and the libido of a moose, here is a book to make you remember what the inside of a damp butterfly, the life of a sad writer, the taste of cold purple, and the smell of a late Thursday night feels like
“A solid men’s adventure yarn with loving descriptions of cars and their capabilities, and action scenes full of derring-do” from the bestselling author (Publishers Weekly). “Truscott, author of Army Blue and Dress Gray, has the makings of another hit here in this novel of old-fashioned honor and courage up against raw, violent political power. Major Sam Butterfield, en route to his new base in Kentucky, sees a man being savagely beaten and charges to the rescue. He ends up over his head in hot water; the man he rescued is blackmailing the political boss of southern Illinois, and Sam has accidentally been handed the evidence. When a friend who helps him escape is murdered, Sam, together with pool shark Johnny Gee and an old girlfriend in the governor’s office, stalks the politician to get evidence that will put him away forever.” —Library Journal
