The Amen Corner
A Play
Written by James Baldwin

Format: Trade Paperback, 112 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: February 17, 1998
Price: $12.95
ISBN: 978-0-375-70188-7 (0-375-70188-5)

Only a boy preacher who had grown up to become one of America's most eminent writers could have produced a play like The Amen Corner. To his first work for the theater, James Baldwin brought all the fervor and majestic rhetoric of the storefront churches of his childhood, along with an... Read more >

Blues for Mister Charlie
A Play
Written by James Baldwin

Format: Trade Paperback, 144 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: April 25, 1995
Price: $12.95
ISBN: 978-0-679-76178-5 (0-679-76178-0)

Noted by The New York Times as, "A play with fires of fury in its belly, tears of anguish in its eyes, a roar of protest in its throat," James Baldwin's drama takes us into a small Southern town where a white man murders a black man, then throws his body... Read more >

A Practical Handbook for the Actor

Written by Melissa Bruder

Format: Trade Paperback, 112 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: April 12, 1986
Price: $12.95
ISBN: 978-0-394-74412-4 (0-394-74412-8)

This is a simple and essential book about the craft of acting: it relates a technique developed and refined by the authors, all of them young actors, in their work with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Mamet, actor W.H. Macy and director Gregory Mosher. It is written for any actor who has... Read more >

The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me

Written by David Drake

Format: Trade Paperback, 112 pages
Publisher: Anchor
On Sale: February 1, 1994
Price: $15.00
ISBN: 978-0-385-47204-3 (0-385-47204-8)

David Drake's smash hit one-man show tells the story of his call to gay pride and activism through a series of vignettes exploring thoughts and emotions shared by a whole generation of gay men and women. Read more >

Imaginary Friends

Written by Nora Ephron

Format: Trade Paperback, 144 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: March 18, 2003
Price: $12.00
ISBN: 978-1-4000-3422-2 (1-4000-3422-1)

Although Lillian Hellman and Mary McCarthy probably only met once in their lives, their names will be linked forever in the history of American literary feuds: they were legendary enemies, especially after McCarthy famously announced to the world that every word Hellman wrote was a lie, “including ‘and’ and ‘the.’” The... Read more >

Reading Lyrics
More Than 1,000 of the Century's Finest Lyrics--a Celebration of Our Greatest Songwriters, a Rediscovery of Forgotten Masters, and an Appreciation of an
Edited by Robert Gottlieb and Robert Kimball

Format: Hardcover, 736 pages
Publisher: Pantheon
On Sale: November 21, 2000
Price: $45.00
ISBN: 978-0-375-40081-0 (0-375-40081-8)

Reading Lyrics is a collection of the finest American and British song lyrics written between 1900 and 1975.  More than one hundred lyricists are represented:  from Irving Berlin and "Alexander's Ragtime Band" to the greats of Broadway and Hollywood, including Ira Gershwin, Lorenz Hart, Cole Porter, Oscar Hammerstein, Yip Harburg, Dorothy Fields, Frank... Read more >

Gray's Anatomy

Written by Spalding Gray

Format: Trade Paperback, 96 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: November 23, 1993
Price: $12.00
ISBN: 978-0-679-75178-6 (0-679-75178-5)

In middle age Spalding Gray has entered "the Bermuda Triangle of Health," that place where the body begins to break down in alarming and humiliating ways. His immediate problem is an eye complaint that could be corrected with minor surgery. But for the high priest of high anxiety, nothing is ever... Read more >

Six Degrees of Separation

Written by John Guare

Format: Trade Paperback, 136 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: November 14, 1990
Price: $14.95
ISBN: 978-0-679-73481-9 (0-679-73481-3)

In this soaring and deeply provocative tragicomedy of race, class, and manners, John Guare has created the most important American play in years. Six Degrees of Separation is one of those rare works that capture both the supercharged pulse of our present era and the deepest and most mysterious movements of... Read more >

Les Blancs: The Collected Last Plays
The Drinking Gourd/What Use Are Flowers?
Written by Lorraine Hansberry

Format: Trade Paperback, 288 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: December 13, 1994
Price: $15.95
ISBN: 978-0-679-75532-6 (0-679-75532-2)

Before her death at age thirty-four, Lorraine Hansberry revolutionized American drama with plays that presented the black experience directly, unapologetically, and often with anger. Her work shook the complacency of white audiences even as it laid the ground for subsequent debates about racism, feminism, and African-American struggles for self-determination. In Les... Read more >

A Raisin in the Sun and The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window

Written by Lorraine Hansberry

Format: Trade Paperback, 368 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: June 13, 1995
Price: $15.00
ISBN: 978-0-679-75531-9 (0-679-75531-4)

By the time of her death at age thirty-four, Lorraine Hansberry had created two electrifying masterpieces of the American theater. With A Raisin in the Sun she gave this country its most movingly authentic portrayal of black family life in the inner city. Barely five years later, with The Sign in... Read more >

A Raisin in the Sun

Written by Lorraine Hansberry
Introduction by Robert Nemiroff

Format: Hardcover, 176 pages
Publisher: Modern Library
On Sale: August 22, 1995
Price: $15.95
ISBN: 978-0-679-60172-2 (0-679-60172-4)

"Never before, the entire history of the American theater, has so much of the truth of black people's lives been seen on the stage," observed James Baldwin shortly before A Raisin in the Sun opened on Broadway in 1959.

Indeed Lorraine Hansberry's award-winning drama about the hopes and aspirations of a struggling... Read more >

A Raisin in the Sun

Written by Lorraine Hansberry

Format: Paperback, 160 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: November 29, 2004
Price: $7.50
ISBN: 978-0-679-75533-3 (0-679-75533-0)

When it was first produced in 1959 A Raisin in the Sun was awarded the New York Drama Critics Circle Award and hailed as a watershed in American drama. Not only was it a pioneering work by an African-American playwright--Hansberry's play was also a radically new representation of black life, one... Read more >

Six Plays by Lillian Hellman

Written by Lillian Hellman

Format: Trade Paperback, 512 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: October 12, 1979
Price: $17.95
ISBN: 978-0-394-74112-3 (0-394-74112-9)

Including The Children's Hour, Days to Come, The Little Foxes, Watch on the Rhine, Another Part of the Forest, and The Autumn Garden, these six plays span nearly twenty years of theatre and display the range of Hellman's dramatic gifts.   Read more >

All in the Timing
Fourteen Plays
Written by David Ives

Format: Trade Paperback, 336 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: November 8, 1994
Price: $16.95
ISBN: 978-0-679-75928-7 (0-679-75928-X)

At once enchanting and perplexing, incisively intelligent and side-splittingly funny, this original paperback edition of Ives's plays includes:

"Sure Thing"

"Words, Words, Words"

"The Universal Language"

"Variations on the Death of Trotsky"

"The Philadelphia"

"Long Ago and Far Away"

"Foreplay, or The Art of the Fugue"

"Seven Menus"

"Mere Mortals"

"English Made... Read more >

Gross Indecency
The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde
Written by Moises Kaufman

Format: Trade Paperback, 160 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: January 27, 1998
Price: $14.00
ISBN: 978-0-375-70232-7 (0-375-70232-6)

In April 1895 Oscar Wilde brought a libel suit against the Marquess of Queensberry, the father of his youthful lover, who had publicly maligned him as a sodomite. In doing so, England's reigning man of letters set in motion a series of events that would culminate in his ruin and imprisonment... Read more >

The Laramie Project

Written by Moises Kaufman

Format: Trade Paperback, 128 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: September 11, 2001
Price: $14.00
ISBN: 978-0-375-72719-1 (0-375-72719-1)

For a year and a half following the murder of Matthew Shepard, Moisés Kaufman and his Tectonic Theater Project–whose previous play, Gross Indecency, was hailed as a work of unsurpassed originality–conducted hundreds of interviews with the citizens of Laramie, Wyoming, to create this portrait of a town struggling with a horrific... Read more >

Kazan on Directing

Written by Elia Kazan

Format: Trade Paperback, 368 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: January 12, 2010
Price: $17.95
ISBN: 978-0-307-27704-6 (0-307-27704-6)

Elia Kazan was the twentieth century’s most celebrated director of both stage and screen, and this monumental, revelatory book shows us the master at work. Kazan’s list of Broadway and Hollywood successes—A Streetcar Named Desire, Death of a Salesman, On the Waterfront, to name a few—is a testament to his profound... Read more >

Laugh Lines
Short Comic Plays
Edited by Eric Lane and Nina Shengold

Format: Trade Paperback, 528 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: April 10, 2007
Price: $18.00
ISBN: 978-0-307-27713-8 (0-307-27713-5)

This one-of-a-kind anthology features thirty-six hilarious short plays by major American playwrights and emerging new voices, all guaranteed to send readers and audiences into peals of laughter.

From the surrealistic wit of Steve Martin’s “The Zig-Zag Woman” to the biting political satire of Steven Dietz’s“The Spot,” from Christopher Durang’s wonderfully loopy... Read more >

Plays for Actresses

Edited by Eric Lane and Nina Shengold

Format: Trade Paperback, 640 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: March 25, 1997
Price: $19.95
ISBN: 978-0-679-77281-1 (0-679-77281-2)

Gather any group of actresses, from students to stars, and someone will inevitably ask, "Where are all the great roles for women?" The roles are right here, in this unprecedented and magnificently diverse collection of plays with all-female casts. The seven full-length and ten one-act selections range in tone from the... Read more >

Shorter, Faster, Funnier
Comic Plays and Monologues
Edited by Eric Lane and Nina Shengold

Format: Trade Paperback, 544 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: May 3, 2011
Price: $16.95
ISBN: 978-0-307-47664-7 (0-307-47664-2)

This cornucopia of comedy showcases works by major playwrights and emerging young writers, with casts of all sizes and diverse and challenging roles for actors of every age and type. You’ll discover such colorful characters as a businessman free-falling from a plane, an embittered sword swallower, a punkish girl skateboarder, and... Read more >

Take Ten: New 10-Minute Plays

Edited by Eric Lane and Nina Shengold

Format: Trade Paperback, 368 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: March 25, 1997
Price: $15.95
ISBN: 978-0-679-77282-8 (0-679-77282-0)

A ten-minute play is a streak of theatrical lightning. It doesn't last long, but its power can stand your hair on end. This splendid anthology contains enough wattage to light up a small city. In its pages, thirty-two of our finest playwrights hone their skills on a form that has been... Read more >

Take Ten II
More Ten-Minute Plays
Edited by Eric Lane and Nina Shengold

Format: Trade Paperback, 432 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: November 11, 2003
Price: $16.95
ISBN: 978-1-4000-3217-4 (1-4000-3217-2)

A ten-minute play is a blaze of theatrical energy. In this follow-up to their groundbreaking collection Take Ten, editors Eric Lane and Nina Shengold have put together a veritable bonfire of talent. Take Ten II: More 10-Minute Plays provides a fast-track tour of the current theatrical landscape, from the slapstick ingenuity... Read more >

Talk to Me
Monologue Plays
Edited by Eric Lane and Nina Shengold

Format: Trade Paperback, 560 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: December 7, 2004
Price: $18.00
ISBN: 978-1-4000-7615-4 (1-4000-7615-3)

In this one-of-a-kind collection of monologue plays, Eric Lane and Nina Shengold have gathered a breathtaking array of human voices and stories by master playwrights and emerging new writers. Each of the plays, ranging from one-acts and ten-minute plays to full-length works, creates a rich and specific world. In these pages... Read more >

Under Thirty
Plays for a New Generation
Edited by Eric Lane and Nina Shengold

Format: Trade Paperback, 656 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: October 12, 2004
Price: $17.00
ISBN: 978-1-4000-7616-1 (1-4000-7616-1)

For the vast generation of actors in their teens and twenties, as well as for teachers, directors, and producers, Under Thirty is an unparalleled source of diverse and challenging roles, created by some of today’s finest writers. The twenty plays presented here in full or in part include insightful looks at... Read more >

Mainly on Directing
Gypsy, West Side Story, and Other Musicals
Written by Arthur Laurents

Format: Hardcover, 192 pages
Publisher: Knopf
On Sale: March 10, 2009
Price: $25.00
ISBN: 978-0-307-27088-7 (0-307-27088-2)

From Arthur Laurents, playwright, screenwriter, director—a mesmerizing book about theater, the art, the artist, the insider, the outsider—and the making of two of the greatest musicals of the American stage, West Side Story and Gypsy. It is a book profoundly enriched by the author’s two loves, love for the theater and... Read more >