Random House New Releases - Drama - Between May 20, 2012 and June 19, 2013.

A Midsummer Night's Dream by David Scott Kastan

2013-06-05T00:30:00-05:00

A Midsummer Night's Dream
Written by William Shakespeare
Edited by David Bevington and David Scott Kastan

Magic, love spells, and an enchanted wood provide the materials for one of Shakespeare’s most delightful comedies. When four young lovers, fleeing the Athenian law and their own mismatched rivalries, take to the forest of Athens, their lives become entangled with a feud between the King and Queen of the Fairies. Some Athenian tradesmen, rehearsing a play for the forthcoming wedding of Duke Theseus and his bride, Hippolyta, unintentionally add to the hilarity. The result is a marvelous mix-up of desire and enchantment, merriment and farce, all touched by Shakespeare’s inimitable vision of the intriguing relationship between art and life, dreams and the waking world.

Each Edition Includes:
• Comprehensive explanatory notes
• Vivid introductions and the most up-to-date scholarship
• Clear, modernized spelling and punctuation, enabling contemporary readers to understand the Elizabethan English
• Completely updated, detailed bibliographies and performance histories
• An interpretive essay on film adaptations of the play, along with an extensive filmography

From the Paperback edition.

Richard II by William Shakespeare

2013-05-08T00:30:00-05:00

Richard II
Written by William Shakespeare

eBook, 304 pages | Bantam Classics | Drama - British & Irish | $6.99 | May 8, 2013 | 978-0-307-41615-5 (0-307-41615-1)

This moving and eloquent historical drama depicts the conflict between a willful and arrogant poet of a king, Richard II, and his politically pragmatic cousin, Bolingbroke. Rich with memorable scenes and speeches, this lyrical history moves from a splendid medieval tournament to the poignant surrender of a crown; from the queen’s heart-shattering farewell to her king to Richard’s murder—a deed “chronicled in hell” that lives forever as one of the great moments in theater.

The Tempest by William Shakespeare

2013-05-01T00:30:00-05:00

The Tempest
Written by William Shakespeare

eBook, 240 pages | Bantam Classics | Drama - British & Irish | $4.99 | May 1, 2013 | 978-0-307-80861-5 (0-307-80861-0)

This joyous play, the last comedy of Shakespeare's career, sums up his stagecraft with a display of seemingly effortless skill. Prospero, exiled Duke of Milan, living on an enchanted island, has the opportunity to punish and forgive his enemies when he raises a tempest that drives them ashore—as well as to forestall a rebellion, to arrange the meeting of his daughter, Miranda, with an eminently suitable young prince, and, more important, to relinquish his magic powers in recognition of his advancing age. Richly filled with music and magic, romance and comedy, the play's theme of love and reconciliation offers a splendid feast for the senses and the heart.

ZALMEN OR THE MADNESS OF GOD by Elie Wiesel

2013-04-10T00:30:00-05:00

ZALMEN OR THE MADNESS OF GOD
Written by Elie Wiesel

On Yom Kippur eve in 1965, Elie Wiesel found himself in Russia, “in a synagogue crowded with people. The air was stifling. The cantor was chanting . . . Suddenly a mad thought crossed my mind: Something is about to happen; any moment now the Rabbi will wake up, shake himself, pound the pulpit and cry out, shout his pain, his rage, his truth. I felt the tension building up inside me; the wait became unbearable. But nothing happened . . . It was too late. The Rabbi no longer had the strength to imagine himself free.”

In Zalmen, or The Madness of God, Wiesel gives his Rabbi that strength, the courage to voice his oppression and isolation, and the result is a passionate cry. This play illuminates not only the plight of the Soviet Jew, but the anguish of individuals everywhere who must survive—and yet long for something more than mere survival.

(Adapted for the stage by Marion Wiesel.)

Buchanan Dying by John Updike

2013-04-09T00:30:00-05:00

Buchanan Dying A Play
Written by John Updike

To the list of John Updike’s well-intentioned protagonists—Rabbit Angstrom, Richard Maple, Henry Bech—add James Buchanan, the harried fifteenth president of the United States (1857–1861). In what the author calls “a kind of novel, conceived in the form of a play,” Buchanan’s political and private lives are represented as aspects of his spiritual life, whose crowning, condensing act is the act of dying. This definitive edition includes a Foreword by Updike, discussing early productions of the work, the historical context in which it was written, and its kinship to his later novel Memories of the Ford Administration. A wide-ranging Afterword fleshes out this dramatic portrait of one of America’s lesser known, and least appreciated, leaders.

Buchanan Dying by John Updike

2013-04-09T00:30:00-05:00

Buchanan Dying A Play
Written by John Updike

To the list of John Updike’s well-intentioned protagonists—Rabbit Angstrom, George Caldwell, Piet Hanema, Henry Bech—add James Buchanan, seen above as a young Congressman in the 1820’s, and on the front cover as the harried fifteenth President of the United States (1857-1861). In a play meant to be read, Buchanan’s political and private lives are represented as aspects of his spiritual life, whose crowning, condensing act is the act of dying. A wide-ranging Afterword rounds out the dramatic portrait of one of America’s lesser known, and least appreciated, leaders.

Living with Shakespeare by Harold Bloom

2013-04-09T00:30:00-05:00

Living with Shakespeare Essays by Writers, Actors, and Directors
Written by Susannah Carson
Foreword by Harold Bloom

Why Shakespeare? What explains our continued fascination with his poems and plays? In Living with Shakespeare, Susannah Carson invites forty actors, directors, scholars, and writers to reflect on why his work is still such a vital part of our culture.

We hear from James Earl Jones on reclaiming Othello as a tragic hero, Julie Taymor on turning Prospero into Prospera, Camille Paglia on teaching the plays to actors, F. Murray Abraham on gaining an audience’s sympathy for Shylock, Sir Ben Kingsley on communicating Shakespeare’s ideas through performance, Germaine Greer on the playwright’s home life, Dame Harriet Walter on the complexity of his heroines, Brian Cox on social conflict in his time and ours, Jane Smiley on transposing King Lear to Iowa in A Thousand Acres, and Sir Antony Sher on feeling at home in Shakespeare’s language. Together these essays provide a fresh appreciation of Shakespeare’s works as a living legacy to be read, seen, performed, adapted, revised, wrestled with, and embraced by creative professionals and lay enthusiasts alike.

F. Murray Abraham ● Isabel Allende ● Cicely Berry ● Eve Best ● Eleanor Brown ● Stanley Cavell ● Karin Coonrod ● Brian Cox ● Peter David ● Margaret Drabble ● Dominic Dromgoole ● David Farr ● Fiasco Theater ● Ralph Fiennes ● Angus Fletcher ● James Franco ● Alan Gordon ● Germaine Greer ● Barry John ● James Earl Jones ● Sir Ben Kingsley ● Maxine Hong Kingston ● Rory Kinnear ● J. D. McClatchy ● Conor McCreery ● Tobias Menzies ● Joyce Carol Oates ● Camille Paglia ● James Prosek ● Richard Scholar ● Sir Antony Sher ● Jane Smiley ● Matt Sturges ● Julie Taymor ● Eamonn Walker ● Dame Harriet Walter ● Bill Willingham ● Jess Winfield

Living with Shakespeare by Harold Bloom

2013-04-09T00:30:00-05:00

Living with Shakespeare Essays by Writers, Actors, and Directors
Written by Susannah Carson
Foreword by Harold Bloom

Come Back, Little Sheba by William Inge

2013-04-03T00:30:00-05:00

Come Back, Little Sheba
Written by William Inge

William Inge's famous story of marital frustration which erupts in violence. Doc and Lola had an indiscreet affair, she became pregnant and, compelled to marry her, he gave up his medical studies, forfeited his future and settled down to a life of quiet desperation with the simple, homey Lola, who lost the child but has remained Doc's steadfast if slatternly wife. Now a chiropractor and recovering alcoholic, Doc's sobriety is tested when Marie, a young college student becomes their boarder bringing new life and long-dormant hostilities to the surface of Doc and Lola's troubled marriage.

Picnic by William Inge

2013-04-03T00:30:00-05:00

Picnic
Written by William Inge

This title collects four plays by American playwright William Inge, including Come Back Little Sheba, Picnic, Bus Stop, and The Dark at the Top of the Stairs.

The Tragedy of Mister Morn by Anastasia Tolstoy

2013-03-19T00:30:00-05:00

The Tragedy of Mister Morn
Written by Vladimir Nabokov
Translated by Thomas Karshan and Anastasia Tolstoy

For the first time in English, Vladimir Nabokov’s earliest major work, written when he was only twenty-four: his only full-length play, introduced by Thomas Karshan and beautifully translated by Karshan and Anastasia Tolstoy.

The Tragedy of Mister Morn was written in the winter of 1923–1924, when Nabokov was completely unknown. The five-act play—the story of an incognito king whose love for the wife of a banished revolutionary brings on the chaos the king has fought to prevent—was never published in Nabokov’s lifetime and lay in manuscript until it appeared in a Russian literary journal in 1997. It is an astonishingly precocious work, in exquisite verse, touching for the first time on what would become this great writer’s major themes: intense sexual desire and jealousy, the elusiveness of happiness, the power of the imagination, and the eternal battle between truth and fantasy. The play is Nabokov’s major response to the Russian Revolution, which he had lived through, but it approaches the events of 1917 above all through the prism of Shakespearean tragedy.

The Tragedy of Mister Morn by Anastasia Tolstoy

2013-03-19T00:30:00-05:00

The Tragedy of Mister Morn
Written by Vladimir Nabokov
Translated by Thomas Karshan and Anastasia Tolstoy

The Wakefield Mystery Plays by Martial Rose

2012-09-19T00:30:00-05:00

The Wakefield Mystery Plays
Written by Martial Rose

Four hundred years ago the medieval mystery plays, presented each year in various English villages to teach the stories of the Bible to the illiterate population, were the great classic English dramas. Queen Elizabeth I banned these plays because she considered them Roman Catholic, and since then the texts have been available only to scholars.

In this volume, Martial Rose has restored the most dramatic collection of these plays—the cycle presented annually by the town of Wakefield—to the modern reader in complete, acting versions of the original text, with notes on their production and staging.

The thirty-two plays of the Wakefield cycle, written during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, go from the Creation to the Last Judgement, covering every important event in the Old and New Testaments. The anonymous authors, it is now clear, had not only a deep dedication to their subject, but also a keen sense of the theatre. Humor, horror, and sharp earthly details are mingled with admonitions to the audience and religious devotion. The plays are both lively and moving in their own right, and important links in the history of drama.

Fifteen One-Act Plays by Sam Shepard

2012-08-14T00:30:00-05:00

Fifteen One-Act Plays
Written by Sam Shepard

Filled with wry, dark humor, unparalleled imagination, unforgettable characters, and exquisitely crafted storytelling, Sam Shepard’s plays have earned him enormous acclaim over the past five decades. In these fifteen one-acts, we see him at his best, displaying his trademark ability to portray human relationships, love, and lust with rare authenticity. These fifteen furiously energetic plays confirm Shepard's status as our most audacious living playwright, unafraid to set genres and archetypes spinning with results that are utterly mesmerizing. Included in this volume:

Ages of the Moon
Evanescence; Shakespeare in the Alley
Short Life of Trouble
The Unseen Hand
The Rock Garden
Chicago
Icarus’s Mother
4H Club
Fourteen Hundred Thousand
Red Cross
Cowboys #2
Forensic & The Navigators
The Holy Ghostly
Back Bog Beast Bait
Killer’s Head

Fifteen One-Act Plays by Sam Shepard

2012-08-14T00:30:00-05:00

Fifteen One-Act Plays
Written by Sam Shepard

Stella Adler on America's Master Playwrights by Barry Paris

2012-08-14T00:30:00-05:00

Stella Adler on America's Master Playwrights Eugene O'Neill, Thornton Wilder, Clifford Odets, William Saroyan, Tennessee Williams, William Inge, Arthur Miller, Edward Albee
Written by Stella Adler
Edited by Barry Paris

In her long-awaited book, the legendary acting teacher Stella Adler gives us her extraordinary insights into the work of Henrik Ibsen (“The creation of the modern theater took a genius like Ibsen . . . Miller and Odets, Inge and O’Neill, Williams and Shaw, swallowed the whole of him”), August Strindberg (“He understood and predicted the forces that would break in our lives”), and Anton Chekhov (“Chekhov doesn’t want a play, he wants what happened in life. In life, people don’t usually kill each other. They talk”).

Through the plays of these masters, Adler discusses the arts of playwriting and script interpretation (“There are two aspects of the theater. One belongs to the author and the other to the actor. The actor thinks it all belongs to the author . . . The curtain goes up and all he knows are the lines . . . It is not enough . . . Script interpretation is your profession”).

She looks into aspects of society and class, and into our cultural past, as well as the evolution of the modern spirit (“The actor learns from Ibsen what is modern in the modern theater. There are no villains, no heroes. Ibsen understands, more than anything, there is more than one truth”).

Stella Adler—daughter of Jacob Adler, who was universally acknowledged to be the greatest actor of the Yiddish theater, and herself a disciple of Stanislavsky—examines the role of the actor and brings to life the plays from which all modern theater derives: Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, The Master Builder, An Enemy of the People, and A Doll’s House; Strindberg’s Miss Julie and The Father; Chekhov’s The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, The Cherry Orchard, and Three Sisters (“Masha is the sister who is the mystery. You cannot reach her. You cannot reach the artist. There is no logical way. Keep her in a special pocket of feelings that are complex and different”).

Adler discusses the ideas behind these plays and explores the world of the playwrights and the history—both familial and cultural—that informed their work. She illumines not only the dramatic essence of each play but its subtext as well, continually asking questions that deepen one’s understanding of the work and of the human spirit.

Adler’s book, brilliantly edited by Barry Paris, puts her famous lectures into print for the first time.

Stella Adler on America's Master Playwrights by Barry Paris

2012-08-14T00:30:00-05:00

Stella Adler on America's Master Playwrights Eugene O'Neill, Thornton Wilder, Clifford Odets, William Saroyan, Tennessee Williams, William Inge, Arthur Miller, Edward Albee
Written by Stella Adler
Edited by Barry Paris

“Don’t use your conscious past. Use your creative imagination to create a past that belongs to your character. I don’t want you to be stuck with your own life. It’s too little.”

“You must get beneath the words before you can say them. The text must be in you. It is your job to fill, not to empty the words. They can only be used if they come out of what you need to say.” —Stella Adler

From one the most celebrated and influential acting teachers of her time, of all time, whose generations of students include Marlon Brando, Anthony Quinn, Eva Marie Saint, Diana Ross, Robert De Niro, Warren Beatty, Annette Benning, Peter Bogdanovich, Mark Ruffalo—the long-awaited companion volume to her book on the master European playwrights Ibsen, Strindberg, and Chekhov (“Evidence,” wrote John Guare, “that Stella Adler is hands down the greatest acting teacher America has produced . . . Nobody with a serious interest in the theater can afford to be without this book”).

She was a force of nature, an unforgettable personality. Once, when she walked into a crowded room and her presence caused a hush to fall over it, a little girl asked, “Mommy, is that God?”

Adler saw script interpretation as the actor’s profession (“The most important thing you can teach actors is to understand plays”). Her classes of script analysis became legendary; brilliant revelations of the playwrights, the characters, the social class and the time of the play as opposed to one’s own. Adler explored how to find the ideas and experience them; how to search for the soul, for what is unsaid; all of this as a way of building craft as distinct from talent.

Her new book, brilliantly edited by Barry Paris, brings together her most important lectures on America’s plays and playwrights, the giants of the twentieth century, men she knew, loved, and worked with. Adler considers, among them, Eugene O’Neill, Mourning Becomes Electra; his first play, Beyond the Horizon; and his last, Long Day’s Journey into Night (“O’Neill is a mystical playwright . . . his speech is vernacular, down-to-earth . . . it conveys the idea that there is nothing real outside, but that’s where I want to be—somewhere out in the fog. The answers are hard to get in a fog”) . . .

She writes about Tennessee Williams and The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, Summer and Smoke, and The Lady of Larkspur Lotion (“Williams captivates us because of the romantic way in which he escapes the filth and frustration . . . The greatness in Williams is that [the characters] have a right to run away. What do they run away from? From the monster of commercialism and competition, from things that kill the melody and beauty of life”) . . . about Clifford Odets (“Clifford, if you don’t become a genius,” Adler once said to him, “I’ll never forgive you”); and about his plays Waiting for Lefty and Golden Boy (on Lorna Moon and Joe Bonaparte: “You can’t put a whore together with a Napoleonic man and think they’re going to make it. They might make it under certain conditions—but not from the point of view of love. This is not a love story. It’s a hate story”) . . . about William Inge and The Dark at the Top of the Stairs and Come Back, Little Sheba; about Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman (“[The salesman’s sons] are Biff and Happy . . . They’re not George and Jacob. Their names are shortcuts. It’s the American Way—a way of saying, ‘We’ll leave out tradition’ . . . That tells you something you’ll see throughout the entire play: they are cut off from custom”) about Miller’s After the Fall; and Edward Albee’s The Zoo Story and The Death of Bessie Smith.

Illuminating, revelatory, inspiring: Stella Adler at her electrifying best.

Caligula and Three Other Plays by Albert Camus

2012-08-08T00:30:00-05:00

Caligula and Three Other Plays
Written by Albert Camus

Richard III by Eric Rasmussen

2012-06-06T00:30:00-05:00

Richard III
Written by William Shakespeare
Edited by Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen

An exciting new edition of the complete works of Shakespeare with these features: Illustrated with photographs from New York Shakespeare Festival productions, vivid readable readable introductions for each play by noted scholar David Bevington, a lively personal foreword by Joseph Papp, an insightful essay on the play in performance, modern spelling and pronunciation, up-to-date annotated bibliographies, and convenient listing of key passages.

From the Paperback edition.

Random House New Releases - Drama - Between May 20, 2012 and June 19, 2013.

A Midsummer Night's Dream by David Scott Kastan

A Midsummer Night's Dream Written by William Shakespeare Edited by David Bevington and David Scott Kastan

Richard II by William Shakespeare

Richard II Written by William Shakespeare

The Tempest by William Shakespeare

The Tempest Written by William Shakespeare

ZALMEN OR THE MADNESS OF GOD by Elie Wiesel

ZALMEN OR THE MADNESS OF GOD Written by Elie Wiesel

Buchanan Dying by John Updike

Buchanan Dying A PlayWritten by John Updike

Buchanan Dying by John Updike

Buchanan Dying A PlayWritten by John Updike

Living with Shakespeare by Harold Bloom

Living with Shakespeare Essays by Writers, Actors, and DirectorsWritten by Susannah Carson Foreword by Harold Bloom

Living with Shakespeare by Harold Bloom

Living with Shakespeare Essays by Writers, Actors, and DirectorsWritten by Susannah Carson Foreword by Harold Bloom

Come Back, Little Sheba by William Inge

Come Back, Little Sheba Written by William Inge

Picnic by William Inge

Picnic Written by William Inge

The Tragedy of Mister Morn by Anastasia Tolstoy

The Tragedy of Mister Morn Written by Vladimir Nabokov Translated by Thomas Karshan and Anastasia Tolstoy

The Tragedy of Mister Morn by Anastasia Tolstoy

The Tragedy of Mister Morn Written by Vladimir Nabokov Translated by Thomas Karshan and Anastasia Tolstoy

The Wakefield Mystery Plays by Martial Rose

The Wakefield Mystery Plays Written by Martial Rose

Fifteen One-Act Plays by Sam Shepard

Fifteen One-Act Plays Written by Sam Shepard

Fifteen One-Act Plays by Sam Shepard

Fifteen One-Act Plays Written by Sam Shepard

Stella Adler on America's Master Playwrights by Barry Paris

Stella Adler on America's Master Playwrights Eugene O'Neill, Thornton Wilder, Clifford Odets, William Saroyan, Tennessee Williams, William Inge, Arthur Miller, Edward AlbeeWritten by Stella Adler Edited by Barry Paris

Stella Adler on America's Master Playwrights by Barry Paris

Stella Adler on America's Master Playwrights Eugene O'Neill, Thornton Wilder, Clifford Odets, William Saroyan, Tennessee Williams, William Inge, Arthur Miller, Edward AlbeeWritten by Stella Adler Edited by Barry Paris

Caligula and Three Other Plays by Albert Camus

Caligula and Three Other Plays Written by Albert Camus

Richard III by Eric Rasmussen

Richard III Written by William Shakespeare Edited by Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen

A Midsummer Night's Dream
Written by William Shakespeare
Edited by David Bevington and David Scott Kastan

Richard II
Written by William Shakespeare

The Tempest
Written by William Shakespeare

ZALMEN OR THE MADNESS OF GOD
Written by Elie Wiesel

Buchanan Dying A Play
Written by John Updike

Buchanan Dying A Play
Written by John Updike

Living with Shakespeare Essays by Writers, Actors, and Directors
Written by Susannah Carson
Foreword by Harold Bloom

Living with Shakespeare Essays by Writers, Actors, and Directors
Written by Susannah Carson
Foreword by Harold Bloom

Come Back, Little Sheba
Written by William Inge

Picnic
Written by William Inge

The Tragedy of Mister Morn
Written by Vladimir Nabokov
Translated by Thomas Karshan and Anastasia Tolstoy

The Tragedy of Mister Morn
Written by Vladimir Nabokov
Translated by Thomas Karshan and Anastasia Tolstoy

The Wakefield Mystery Plays
Written by Martial Rose

Fifteen One-Act Plays
Written by Sam Shepard

Fifteen One-Act Plays
Written by Sam Shepard

Stella Adler on America's Master Playwrights Eugene O'Neill, Thornton Wilder, Clifford Odets, William Saroyan, Tennessee Williams, William Inge, Arthur Miller, Edward Albee
Written by Stella Adler
Edited by Barry Paris

Stella Adler on America's Master Playwrights Eugene O'Neill, Thornton Wilder, Clifford Odets, William Saroyan, Tennessee Williams, William Inge, Arthur Miller, Edward Albee
Written by Stella Adler
Edited by Barry Paris

Caligula and Three Other Plays
Written by Albert Camus

Richard III
Written by William Shakespeare
Edited by Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen