American Plays
American plays by playwright: S
TheatreBooks stocks plays in English from around the world and, of course, all
plays published in Canada. We stock and sell plays from Samuel French Ltd., Dramatists Play Service and Dramatic Publishing Co., and the leading play publishers
in Great Britain. We carry books on all aspects of theatre production, as well
as opera and dance.
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are also listed by playwright, by last name.
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 The Bilbao Effect
Oren Safdie
A world famous architect faces censure by the American Institute of Architects, following accusations that his urban redevelopment project for Staten Island has led to a woman's suicide. The play explores whether architecture has become more of an art than a profession, and at what point the ethics of one field violate the principles of the other. 7m, 2w (flexible casting). Softcover, 53 pp. $11.99.
 The Last Word ...
Oren Safdie
Henry Grunwald is a Viennese Jew who fled the Nazis and became a successful
New York advertising executive. Now retired and nearly blind, Henry
is determined to fulfill his lifelong dream of being a playwright.
When young Len Artz, also an aspiring playwright, applies for a position
as Henry's assistant, their job interview quickly expands into a fierce
and intellectual debate, with Henry as the avid advocate of Eurocentrism
and Len as the impassioned defender of experimentalism. This smart
two-hander is a thought-provoking comedy about loyalty, dreams and
the fear of failure. Softcover, 45 pp. $11.99.
 Land O'Fire
Luis Santeiro
Land O'Fire is an insightful and often humorous examination of life interfered with and forever changed by association with a "superior" culture. Softcover, 60 pp. $10.99.
 Jerome Bixby's "Man from Earth"
Richard Schenkman
After history professor John Oldman unexpectedly resigns from the University, his startled colleagues impulsively invite themselves to his home, pressing him for an explanation. But they're shocked to hear his reason for premature retirement: he claims that he must move on because he is immortal, and cannot stay in one place for more than ten years without his secret being discovered. M-6, F-3. Softcover, 65 pp. $11.99.
 What Makes Sammy Run?
Budd Schulberg
Softcover, 303 pp. $33.00.
 The Gingerbread House
Mark Schultz
Brian and Stacey want a better life, the life they deserve. Raising two children has left them unsatisfied, running back and forth endlessly from work to Little League games. Seemingly at a dead-end, they decide to ditch their little bundles of responsibility. However, as they begin to enjoy the fruits of the good life, Stacey begins to suspect that hapiness is just the ability to turn a blind eye to horror. And she's finding it hard to be happy. 4m, 3w. Softcover, 62 pp. $11.99.
 Everything Will Be Different: A Brief History of Helen of Troy
Mark Schultz
Teenage Charlotte's beautiful mother is dead, and in the midst of her
own grief and her father's unwillingness to cope, she turns for comfort
to the story of Helen of Troy, convinced that beauty, desire and
fame can help her bring her mother back and punish the world that
took her
away in the first place. M-4, F-2. Softcover, 63 pp. $9.99.
 God's Ear
Jenny Schwartz
Throught the skillfully disarming use of cliched language and homilies, this inventive and carefully crafted drama explores with subtle grace and depth thew way the death of a child tears one family apart, while at the same time showcasing the talents of a promising young writer. Softcover, 158 pp. $16.50.
 Shine!
The Horatio Alger Musical
Richard Seff
A rags-to-riches musical for the whole family. From peniless boot black to budding Wall Street entrepeneur, Ragged Dick comes across schemers, villains, benefactors and whole world of colourful characters in 1870s New York. 13m, 6f. Softcover, 115 pp. $11.99.
 Baby Taj
Tanya Shaffer
The legendary Taj Mahal is the next assignment for Rachel, an American travel writer whose failed romances have led her to ask: why not have the baby she craves -- on her own? She finds unexpected answers and larger questions among the glittering legacies of India's past. Alive with the sounds and colours of a remarkable country, this bittersweet comedy of mischevious matchmaking raises provocative questions about love, friendship, family, and what it means to be ready to be a parent. Softcover, 89 pp. $12.99.
 Doubt, A Parable
John Patrick Shanley
In this brilliant and powerful drama, Sister Aloysius, a Bronx school principal, takes matters into her own hands when she suspects the young Father Flynn of improper relations with one of the male students. Softcover, 54 pp. $10.99.
 Dirty Story and Other Plays
John Patrick Shanley
This collection of plays by Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Patrick Shanley includes Where's My Money?, Sailor's Song, and Dirty Story. Softcover, 180 pp. $24.95.
 Defiance
John Patrick Shanley
Defiance is set on a United States Marine Corps base in North Carolina in 1971. Two officers, one black and one white, are on a collision course over race, women and the high cost of doing the right thing. This new work is about power, love and responsibility - who has it, who wants it and who deserves it. 5M, 1W. Softcover, 58 pp. $10.99.
 Sailor's Song
John Patrick Shanley
Sailor's Song is an extravagant romantic seaside story decorated with
dance. In the tradition of Gene Kelly and Eugene O'Neill, who should
have worked together but never did, this stylistically daring love
story give us a cynical man and a true believer who battle over beautiful
women and the power of love. M-2, F-3 (doubling). Softcover, 43 pp.
$9.99.
 Doubt
John Patrick Shanley
John Patrick Shanley's riveting new play is a provocative parable about truth
and consequences, set in St. Nicholas, a Catholic church and school in the
Bronx. Brilliantly conceived and masterfully written, Doubt raises
more questions than it answers, and it will leave the thoughtful reader with
much to ponder long after they've raced through its 58 engrossing pages. Winner
of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. M-1, F-3. Softcover, 58 pp. $18.95.
 13 by Shanley
John Patrick Shanley
Thirteen short, thought provoking plays by
the author of Moonstruck. $16.95.
 The Fever
Wallace Shawn
While visiting a poverty-striken country far from home, the unnamed
narrator of The Fever is forced to consider the political persecution
that may be occurring just beyond a traveller's hotel window. By doing
this, a pampered conscience is awakened in a profoundly dramatic way. The
Fever is an eloquent meditation on whether it's possible to live
in an ethical relationship with others in the world. Softcover, 67 pp.
$17.95.
 When The World Was Green (A Chef's Fable)
Joseph Chaikin & Sam Shepard
A hauntingly lyrical memory play, When The World Was Green is steeped in the elliptical, poetic style for which Shepard is justly celebrated. With only two characters, an old man who was once a superb chef, and a young reporter who comes to interview him in the prison where he has been locked up for many years after poisoning a man he mistook for his cousin. Softcover, 34 pp. $10.99.
 Curse of the Starving Class
Sam Shepard
The setting is a famhouse in the American West, inhabited by a family who has enough to eat but not enough to satisfy the other hungers that bedevil them. The father is a drunk; the mother a frowzy slattern; the daughter precocious beyond her years; and the son a deranged idealist. Through the course of the play, the characters become a metaphor for the underside of American life -- benighted innocents pursuing a dream that remains beyond their reach. 7m, 2f. Softcover, 68 pp. $11.99.
 Kicking a Dead Horse
Sam Shepard
When a successful art dealer's horse dies, while riding through the desert, he finds himself in quite the prediciment. What unfolds is an eighty-minute monologue which covers the fate of his marriage, his career, politics, and eventually the nature of the universe. 1m, 1f. Softcover, 34 pp. $11.99.
 The God of Hell
Sam Shepard
Frank and Emma are a quiet, respectable couple who raise cows on their Wisconsin
farm. Soon after they agree to put up Frank's old friend Haynes, who is on
the lam from a secret government project involving plutonium, they're visited
by Welch, an unctous government bureaucrat from hell. His aggressive patriotism
puts the trio on the defensive, transforming a heartland American household
into a scene of torture and promoting a radioactive brand of conformity with
a dangerously long half life. M-3, F-1. Softcover, 98 pp. $17.00.
 Great Dream of Heaven: Stories
Sam Shepard
In these eighteen terse stories Sam Shepard is at his best, exercising his
gifts for diamond-sharp physical description and effortless dialogue in stories
that recall the themes he has explored with such singular intensity in his
work for the theatre. Hardcover, 142 pp., $30.00.
 Tooth
of Crime (Second Dance)
Sam Shepard
In Tooth of Crime, an aging rock star exists in a world in which
entertainment and street warfare go hand in hand. Hoss must defend himself against
Crow, a newcomer who battles him for fame. Combining musical styles and intense
dialogue in an unconventional musical fantasy, Sam Shepard's thrillingly innovative
rock drama riffs eloquently on rising stars and fading legends, and rock lived
and died for. Softcover, 96 pp. $17.00.
 Buried
Child
Sam Shepard
A sense of madness greets Vince and his girlfriend as they arrive at the squalid
farmhouse of Vince's hard-drinking grandparents, who seem to have no idea who
he is. Nor does his father, Tilden, a hulking former All-American football
player, or his uncle, who has lost one of his legs to a chain saw. Only the
memory of an unwanted child, buried in an undisclosed location, can hope to
deliver this family from its sin. M-5, F-2. Softcover, 120 pp. $17.00.
 Love and Happiness
Julian Sheppard
A fast-paced comedy with something for the whole family and with a little
extra for fans of Arthur Murray, Leibniz and the NRA. This play tells
the story of sixteen-year-old Allen and his attempt to end his mother's
relationship with a new man, which propells him through a series
of events and dissapointments that will either ruin his life or reunite
him with his mother like they have never been before. Softcover, 48
pp. $10.99.
 Things We Want
Jonathan Marc Sherman
A dirty, sexy suicide comedy. Three adult brothers are living together once again in their childhood apartment, struggling to redefine themselves while pursuing their desires and coping with the void left behind by their parents' deaths. Drastic shifts in their dynamics occur after a neighbor names Stella ecomes a part of their lives. A sweet and sour look at the illusions we have about what makes us happy -- and what is within our power to change. Softcover, 57 pp. $10.99.
 Dying City
Christopher Shinn
A year after her husband's death in Iraq, Kelly, a young therapist, confronts his identical twin brother, who shows up at her apartment unannounced. Softcover, 42 pp. $10.99.
 Beautiful Child
Nicky Silver
Harry and Nan's lives are turned upside down when their adult
son, Issac, comes home and reveals a secret. An art teacher and painter,
Issac has fallen in love and is having an affair with one of his
students -- an 8-year-old boy named Brian. Beautiful Child is
a cheerfully demented examination of love and morality. M-2, F-3.
Softcover, 52 pp. $9.99.
 The Collected Plays
of Neil Simon
Volume IV
Neil Simon
Includes: Rumors; Lost in Yonkers;
Jake's Women; Laughter on the 23rd Floor; London Suite. $21.00.
 Work Song: Three Views of Frank Lloyd Wright
Eric Simonson & Jeffrey Hatcher
In this new play about the famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright, audiences get a good look at the master builder at three distinct phases of his life and career. Each part of the play has its own style: a multi-scene "epic" style covering three decades of part one; a compressed "country weekend" comedy a la Chekhov for part two; and a single setting for part three's final encounter between Wright and a young couple living in one of his earliest houses built half a century before, played out in real time. The play also allows for a development in the play's design that mirrors the architectural ideas of Wright himself. WORK SONG is about a man who wanted to create the perfect home for the American family but could never build one for himself. 6M, 2W (4 extras). Softcover, 83 pp. $10.99.
 Same Time Next Year
Bernard Slade
One of the most popular romantic comedies of the century, Same Time Next Year ran four years on Broadway, was a successful motion picture, and remains one of the most widely produced plays in history. It follows a love affair between people who rendezvous once every year. Twenty five years of manners, morals and attitudes are hilariously mirrored by the lovers.
1m, 1f. Softcover, 72 pp. $11.99.
 House Arrest & Piano: Two Plays
Anna Devere Smith
In the provocative and, at times, bitterly funny play House Arrest,
Smith examines the relationships between a succession of American presidents
and their observers in and out of the press. In Piano, Smith casts her
gaze back a century as she follows the tangled lines of race, sex and exploitation
in a prosperous Cuban household on the eve of the Spanish-American War. House
Arrest Various Characters; Piano 8M, 6W. Softcover, 281 pp. $20.00.
 The Savannah Disputation
Evan Smith
Two elderly sisters forget all about southern charn when a young door-to-door evangelist comes knocking. This theological comedy blends Smith's trademark sharpness of wit and depth of character, while telling a story in which a crisis of faith arises when seemingly similar beliefs are discovered to be worlds apart. 1m, 3w. Softcover, 54 pp. $11.99.
 Bethlehem
Octavio Solis
A rookie journalist travels to El Paso to write an exclusive piece on a convicter murderer in this dark play about self-knowledge and the nature of evil. 2m 5f. Softcover, 83 pp. $11.99.
 Lydia
Octavio Solis
The Flores family welcomes Lydia, an undocumented maid, into their El Paso home to care for their daughter Ceci, who was tragically disabled in a car accident on the eve of her fifteenth birthday. Lydia's immediate and seemingly miraculous bond with the girl sets the entire family on a mysterious and shocking journey of discovery. Set in the 1970s on the Texas border separating the United States and Mexico, Lydia is an unflinching and deeply emotional portrait of a Mexican immigrant caught in a web of dark secrets. 4m, 3f. Softcover, 82 pp. $12.99.
 The Farnsworth Invention
Aaron Sorkin
It's 1929. Two ambitious visionaries race against each other to invent a device called "television." Separated by two thousand miles, each knows that if he stops working, even for a moment, the other will gain the edge. Who will unlock the key to the greatest innovation of the 20th century: the ruthless media mogul, or the self-taught Idaho farm boy? Softcover, 101 pp. $11.99.
 Freud's Last Session
Mark St. Germain
Freud's Last Session centers on legendary psychoanalyst Dr. Sigmund Freud who invites the young, rising Oxford Don C.S. Lewis to his home in London. On the day England enters World War Two, Freud and Lewis clash about love, sex, the existence of God, and the meaning of life, just weeks before Freud took his own life. 2m. Softcover, 37 pp. $11.99.
 Direct from Death Row the Scottsboro Boys
Mark Stein
Despite incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, the nine Scottsboro
Boys were arrested and convicted for the rape of two white women
in Scottsboro, Alabama in 1931. Putting on their own vaudeville show, The
Scottsboro Boys use songs, a magic act, a ventriloquist act,
skits and soft shoe to convey the tawdry show that their case became.
M-7,
F-2 (flexible casting). Softcover, 73 pp. $9.99.
 Underpants
Carl Sternheim & Steve Martin
Steve Martin's hilarious reinterpretation of Carl Sternheim's 1910 comedy,
is scathing examination of our fascination with fame, our reliance on gender
roles, and our enslavement by sex. M-4, F-2. Softcover, 152 pp. $15.95.
 One Night a Week
Richard Harris, Mary Stewart-David & Denis King
This heart-warming, toe-tapping musical chronicles several months in the life of a beginners tap dancing class set in the gym of an old YMCA community centre in the suburbs. 1m, 9f . Softcover, 131 pp. $11.99.
 Rock 'N' Roll
Tom Stoppard
Rock 'n' Roll spans the years from 1968 to 1990 from the double perspective
of Prague, where a rock 'n' roll band comes to symbolise resistance
to the Communist regime, and of Cambridge where the verities of love
and death are shaping the lives of three generations in the family
of a Marxist philosopher.
Softcover, 118 pp. $22.95.
 Food For Fish
Adam Szymkowicz
Bobbie drops the pages from his novel into the Hudson River. They tell the story of three sisters: Sylvia, Barbara, and Alice, who are going to bury their father - when they get around to it. Meanwhile, Bobbie goes out each night kissing strangers, and Sylvia goes out each night looking for Bobbie. A story of unrequited love, missed connections and a novel in a bottle. Softcover, 67 pp. $10.99.
 Nerve
Adam Szymkowicz
Nerve is a dark comedy about falling into a relationship on the first date. Elliot has never had an online date before...at least not one that showed up. Susan has had far too many but would prefer not to discuss them. When they meet in a bar one night, all their personality flaws are revealed, along with a puppet, some modern dance and a desperation that may or may not be love. Softcover, 41 pp. $10.99.
 Deflowering Waldo
Adam Szymkowicz
Waldo is having a bad day, He's afraid of crowds, spiders, skyscrapers, flowers, brown soap and sex. His father won't stop being Scottish. His therapist wants to seduce him. His ex-girlfriend could spontaneously combust at any moment. And the new woman in his life seems to want something else completely. Will he manage to find true love - or at least mow the lawn? 2M, 4W. Softcover, 39 pp. $10.99.
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