Samuel French, Inc. – serie

Dramatic Readings Eighteen well-known tales are given a new look by having the main character from each tell a story. Poe, Hawthorne, Wilde, Twain, O. Henry are some of the authors represented.

For audition, performance and classroom use these highly diverting pieces are a perfect fit. From the foreward by Greer Garson, "A kindly sense of humor and acute observation illumine his gallery of recognizable contemporary portraits."

To his horror, the middle-aged Captain Gulliver finds himself marooned, dying of hunger and thirst in "The Country of The Young"--a world of youth so mistrustful of age that anyone approaching thirty is ritually dispatched. Here, he encounters an ersatz aristocracy and servant class who are both appalled by and attracted to what they see in him. By virtue of age alone, he represents everything they hate--the old men immortalized in their books who have sent younger men off to war; old men who frustrate and thwart the young in order to keep themselves in power. Yet he appeals to their latent humanity and their need to do something other than just play at childish games. Through his cunning and wisdom, Gulliver manages to gain the trust of one of his female captors and enlist the help of a talented servant-class carpenter. Together they make a narrow escape, the two young islanders looking forward to the promise of a new world in which people may someday see their children grow into manhood and womanhood and hold their grandchildren on their knees. Conceived in the 1960s, amid a youthful population who had discovered for the first time its social and political clout, Youth might well have been Wilder's satirical meditation on the excesses of America. More than just a jab at a particular decade and the foibles of utopian idealism of young people everywhere, however, Youth demonstrates Wilder's ever-generous spirit, his life-long belief in community and the value of the contributions every individual can make.

Comedy Peter Williams Characters: 6 male, 6 female Interior Set Mild mannered Mr. Beldinker is running for congress on the Good Government ticket. His wife, Aspasia, is writing an opera and their children aren't ordinary teenagers---one's on a health kick, another paints incomprehensible modern pictures and the third is world brat #1. The plot centers around an encyclopedia salesman who hooks them on buying the set on so called easy payments. Mad fun for all!

Beth is preparing food for her father's wake - real sandwiches, which the audience are invited to partake of as they become the mourners visiting following the service. After nursing her father for years, Beth plans to sell the house and go back-packing, despite the disapproval of others.

This collection of Wilder's most famous one act plays includes, The Long Christmas Dinner, The Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden, Pullman Car Hiawatha, Queens of France, Such Things Only Happen in Books, and Love and How to Cure It. In these mini-masterpieces, Wilder experiments with techniques and dramatic forms he would later develop in his celebrated full-length works, Our Town, The Matchmaker, The Skin of Our Teeth, and The Alcestiad. Among these plays we encounter a first glimpse of Wilder's Stage Manager; his use of pantomime, minimal scenery, and farce; as well as his signature connection between the commonplace and the cosmic dimensions of the human experience.

Green Gables is the home of lovable Matthew Cuthbert and his stern sister, Marilla. They agree to adopt a boy to help with the farm work. Imagine their consternation when Anne Shirley, a girl in her teens, is sent by the orphanage by mistake!

Full Length, Tragedy / 8m, 4f Produced in modern dress in New York with Katherine Cornell and Sir Cedric Hardwicke, the Galantiere version of the Greek legend comes from a Paris that suffered under the heel of tyranny. The play's parallels to modern times are exciting and provocative. "Its dimensions are noble, its intentions uncompromising."-Southwestern University, Texas

Dramatic Comedy Characters: 8 male, 3 female (with doubling) Hailed by the New Yorker's John Lahr as "extraordinary", "bold", and "inventive", Sarah Ruhl's Passion Play takes us behind the scenes of three communities attempting to stage the death and resurrection of Christ. From Queen Elizabeth's England to Hitler's Germany to Reagan's America, Ruhl's exploration of devotion takes us on a humorous yet unsettling journey filled with lust, whimsy, and a lot of fish. This intimate epic occurs at the timely intersection of politics and religion. Ruhl dramatizes a community of players rehearsing their annual staging of the Easter Passion in three different eras: 1575 northern England, just before Queen Elizabeth outlaws the ritual; 1934 Oberammergua, Bavaria, as Hitler is rising to power; and Spearfish, South Dakota, from the time of Vietnam through Reagan's presidency. In each period, the players grapple in different ways with the transformative nature of art, and politics are never far in the background, as Queen Elizabeth, Hitler, and Reagan each appear, played by a single commanding actor.Named one of the "Ten Best Plays of 2008" by The New Yorker "Her [Ruhl's] unmistakable voice - poetic and quirky, underpinned with serious feeling and even more serious intelligence - trumpets forth in brash, impressive form in this ambitious and frisky if sometimes unruly play." -New York Times. "Ruhl's voice seems to retreat beyond the sphere of the play, performing that special vanishment that good writers-and good gods-know best how to do...Critic's Pick!" -Time Out NY "Let's just get the superlatives out of the way. Sarah Ruhl's Passion Play is the most exciting, stimulating, and thrilling piece of theater to hit New York since Angels in America." -Backstage

From the nationally recognized Educational Theatre Association's Thespian Playworks competition come four short scripts - all created by high schoo laged playwrights! Included in this volume are: 507 by Natasha Sowka, Circuits by Rachel Lepore, South of Someplace by I.B. Hopkins, Shelf Life by Beth Seeley