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In this heartbreaking multimedia debut—filled with drawings, poems, and journal entries—author Jenny Laden draws on her own experience to create a story of grief and transcendence, perfect for fans of Francesca Zappia and Jennifer Niven. Danielle Silver is a Philadelphia high school senior at the dawn of the ’90s. Ever since her parents split up, she has known her father was gay, but she never expected to be hit with the bombshell that he is HIV positive. As he sickens, and AIDS starts to claim the lives of his friends, Danielle searches for silver linings while trying to balance paralyzing fear, grief, her social life, and schoolwork—capturing all the feelings as adolescence and some hard facts collide.
"In 2009, theater artist Aaron Landsman was dragged by a friend to a city council meeting in Portland, Oregon. At first he was bored, but when a citizen dumped trash in front of the council in order to show how the city needed cleaning up, he was rapt. He saw for the first time how our civic bodies often result in a performance of democracy as much as the real thing. He began attending local government meetings across the country, interviewing council members, staffers, activists and other citizens, using an ethnographic method. Out of this initial investigation, Landsman and director Mallory Catlett developed a participatory theater piece called City Council Meeting in five US cities. ... T...
This book provides a fascinating and concise history of devised theatre practice. As both a founding member of Philadelphia’s Pig Iron Theater Company and a Professor, Telory Arendell begins this journey with a brief history of Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop and Living Newspapers through Brecht’s Berliner Ensemble and Joe Chaikin’s Open Theatre to the racially inflected commentary of Luis Valdez’s Teatro Campesino and Ariane Mnouchkine’s collaboration with Théâtre de Soleil. This book explores the impact of devised theatre on social practice and analyzes Goat Island’s use of Pina Bausch’s gestural movement, Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed in Giving Voice, Anna...
A “scrupulously honest” (O, The Oprah Magazine) debut memoir that explores one man’s gender transition amid a pivotal political moment in America. Becoming a Man is a “moving narrative [that] illuminates the joy, courage, necessity, and risk-taking of gender transition” (Kirkus Reviews). For fifty years P. Carl lived as a girl and then as a queer woman, building a career, a life, and a loving marriage, yet still waiting to realize himself in full. As Carl embarks on his gender transition, he takes us inside the complex shifts and questions that arise throughout—the alternating moments of arrival and estrangement. He writes intimately about how transitioning reconfigures both his ...
The Humana Festival of New American Plays has been a leading home for extraordinary playwrights and their imaginations for more than four decades, making Actors Theatre of Louisville one of the nation’s preeminent powerhouses for new play development. For six weeks every spring, Louisville exerts a gravitational pull on producers and theatre lovers from around the country, who travel from far and wide for the adventure of seeing a diverse slate of fully-produced new plays. Many Humana Festival plays have gone on to garner awards and subsequent productions, making a sustained impact on the international dramatic repertoire. Humana Festival 2018: The Complete Plays brings together all six sc...
THE STORY: As little girls, nestled in the tiny projection booth of their family-owned cinema, Hazel and Muriel flew to exotic islands with their mother, lofted by the plane-like whir of the projectors. In her teens, Muriel found her first kiss the
Ever since this country came into being, women have waged battles for rights in the pages of their plays, and on the stages where those plays were performed. - FROM THE PREFACE BY SHIRLEY LAURO Front Lines is a pathbreaking collection of the most important, critically acclaimed plays written by the country's leading contemporary female playwrights. Including seven full scripts and accompanying materials, Front Lines provides both major examples of the playwright's craft and an essential introduction to the politically inspired work of female dramatists of the twenty-first century. Here is Jessica Blank's widely heralded The Exonerated (written with Erik Jensen), based on interviews with Amer...
Progressive modern theatre does not shrink from taking its scripts from real science. Chimera is the story of Jennifer Saunders who learns of her rare medical condition, and the struggles to maintain a sense of self. Deborah Stein’s critically acclaimed play is an ambitious, frightening and compelling take on timeless, pivotal issues of the human experience. Her inventive and funny solo performer reflects the biological, psychological and emotional ordeals in the face of the inescapability of genetic disease.
The first book on one of America’s most eminent contemporary playwrights
Up, Not Down Syndrome is a love letter and a map. Experience how it feels to think your life is over after having an unlovable baby. At first the loss seems impossible to overcome. Alex becomes the author's greatest teacher. Love is stronger than fear. Everyone has gifts. The book consists of three parts: the story, the lessons Alex taught the writer and Alex's perspective. Up, Not Down Syndrome is a promise to stay positive, no matter what: up, not down. Nancy's journey gets to the core of what it is to be human: * Explore what it feels like to think life, as you know it, is over. * Discover the fierce love, joy and peace a baby diagnosed with Trisomy 21 (Down syndrome) brings. * Learn the ...