Finding Plays

Winner of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Drama . . . there are many kinds of light. The light of fires. The light of stars. The light that reflects off rivers. Light that penetrates through cracks. Then there’s the type of light that reflects off the skin. --Nilo Cruz, Anna in the Tropics This lush romantic drama depicts a family of cigar makers whose loves and lives are played out against the backdrop of Depression-era America. Set in Ybor City (Tampa) in 1930, Cruz imagines the catalytic effect the arrival of a new "lector" (who reads Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina to the workers as they toil in the cigar factory) has on a Cuban-American family. Cruz celebrates the search for identity in a new land.

This is one of the best-loved Off-Off-Broadway plays of recent decades. In the innovative original production, which Fornes herself directed, the audience follows the lives of eight women in five different "environments." "Fornes is America's truest poet of the theater."--Erika Munk,Village Voice

Naomi Wallace, the rare writer who combines lyrical theatricality with political ferocity, turns her sight to the Middle East, with a new triptych for the stage. Vision One, A State of Innocence, is set--as the playwright describes, in "something like a small zoo, but more silent, empty, in Rafah, Palestine. Or a space that once dreamed it was a zoo"--and features a Palestinian woman, an Israeli architect, and an Israeli soldier. Vision Two, The Retreating World, is of an Iraqi bird keeper from Baghdad and his address before the International Pigeon Convention. Vision Three, Between this Breath and You, takes place after hours in the waiting room of a clinic in West Jerusalem, where a Palestinian father confronts the nurse's aide, a young Israeli woman, about the meaning of the loss of his son and the impact it had on her life. These multifaceted works explore the urgency and complexity of the Middle East's political landscape, through the voices and bodies of the people who inhabit it. Naomi Wallace is a poet and playwright from Kentucky, who currently resides in England. Her numerous awards include the MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship. Her plays, including One Flea Spare, In the Heart of America, and Trestle at Pope Lick Creek, are produced throughout the United States and around the world.

Eduardo Machado explores his lifelong themes with humor and passion in Havana Is Waiting (a writer returns to Cuba after thirty years), Kissing Fidel (a comedy set in Miami funeral parlor), The Cook (chronicling Cuban history), and Crocodile Eyes (inspired by Federico Garc#65533;a Lorca). Eduardo Machado is the author of more than forty plays. Born in Cuba, his plays have been widely performed. He is artistic director of INTAR Theatre and head of playwriting at New York University.

Naomi Wallace's plays speak the underside of life. Her characters suffer and survive against the enormous weight of the times with a dignity that inspires. Her work challenges the audience and reader to reexamine the conflicts and meaning of our everyday lives through her singular, poetic imagery and language. Includes: One Flea Spare In the Heart of America Slaughter City The War Boys The Trestle at Pope's Creek

The celebrated playwright, director, translator, lyricist, and seven-time Obie Award winner, has been an influential voice in American theatre for more than four decades and a highly-regarded teacher of playwriting. Includes: 'Mud, The Danube, Sarita,' and 'The Conduct of Life.'

First major collection by a leading Hispanic-American playwright.

Wikipedia description: Marisol Perez, a young Puerto Rican woman, is a copy editor for a Manhattan publisher. Although she has elevated herself into the white collar class, she continues to live alone in the dangerous Bronx neighborhood of her childhood. As the play begins, Marisol narrowly escapes a vicious attack by a golf club-wielding madman while traveling home on the subway. Later that evening Marisol is visited by her guardian angel who informs her that she can no longer serve as Marisol's protector because she has been called to join the revolution already in progress against an old and senile God who is dying and "taking the rest of the universe with him."

Surrealism, magic realism and expressionism are the hallmarks of Jose Rivera's influential body of work. This new volume collects the author's plays written in the past five years, including References to Salvador Dal#65533; Make Me Hot ("effortlessly melds otherworldly fantasy with gritty realism to make sparks fly onstage."--The Journal News), Sue#65533;o (a reworking for Pedro Calder#65533;n's Life is a Dream) and Sonnets for an Old Century, the author's most recent work, which recently premiered in Los Angeles.

"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.

"This bilingual edition of Zoot Suit combines the original English-language version with the first-ever Spanish translation of the critically acclaimed play by Luis Valdez, a work that cracked open the depiction of Chicanos on the stage, challenging viewers to revisit a troubled moment in our nation's history. From the moment the myth-infused character of El Pachuco burst onto the stage, literally cutting his way through the drop curtain with a switchblade, Luis Valdez spurred a revolution in Chicano theater." "Focusing on the events surrounding the Sleepy Lagoon Murder Trial of 1942 and the ensuing Zoot Suit Riots that turned Los Angeles into a bloody war zone, this is a gritty and vivid depiction of the horrifying violence and racism suffered by young Mexican Americans on the home front during World War II. Valdez's cadre of young urban characters struggle with the stereotypes and generalizations of America's dominant culture, the questions of assimilation and patriotism, and a desire to rebel against the mainstream pressures that threaten to wipe them out." "Experimenting with brash forms of narration, pop culture of the war era, and complex characterizations, this quintessential exploration of the Mexican-American experience in the United States during the 1940s was the first, and only, Chicano play to open on Broadway."--BOOK JACKET.