Many Loves, which ran for nearly a year (1959) in repertory at New York's famous Living Theatre, explores four varieties of human attachment, while A Dream of Love, first produced in 1949, is a penetrating and poetic treatment of infidelity and marriage. Tituba's Children, written three years before Arthur Miller's Crucible, is a dramatic study of witch-hunting - the Salem trials of 1692 and McCarthyism in the 1950's. The First President was first published in 1936. It is preceded by a long introduction on the theory of opera, the role of music, and the problems of realizing a historic figure on the stage. The Cure (1960) reminds us that Dr. Williams was for forty-two years a practicing physician. Its theme, developed in a very unusual situation, is the relationship between nurse and patient.

Jeffrey, a gay actor/waiter, has sworn off sex after too many bouts with his partners about what is "safe" and what is not. In gay New York, though, sex is not something you can avoid. Whether catering a ditzy socialite's "Hoe-down for AIDS" or cruising at a funeral; at the gym or in the back rooms of an anonymous sex club; at the annual Gay Pride Parade, or in the libidinous hands of a father-confessor, Jeffrey finds the pursuit of love and just plain old physical gratification to be the number-one preoccupation of his times—and the source of plenty of hilarity. Suddenly, just after he's reconciled himself to celibacy, Jeffrey's flamboyant friends introduce him to the man of his dreams, who also happens to be HIV-positive. What follows is an audacious and moving romantic comedy with a difference—one in which the quest for love and really fabulous clothes meet, and where unflagging humor prevails even when tragedy might be just around the corner.

Amid the cactus wilds some two hudred miles from Hollywood lies a privileged oasis called Desert D'Or. It is a place for starlets and would-be starlets, directors, studio execs, and the well-groomed lowlifes who cater to them. And, as imagined by Norman Mailer in this blistering classic of 1950s Hollywood, Desert D'Or is a moral proving ground, where men and women discover what they really want—and how far the are willing to go to get it.The Deer Park is the story of two interlacing love affairs. Sergius O'Shaugnessy is a young ex-Air Force pilot whose good looks and air of indifference launch him into the orbit of the radiant actress Lulu Meyers. Charles Eitel is a brilliant director wounded by accusations of communism—and whose liaison with the volatile Elena Esposito may supply the coup de grace to his career. As Mailer traces their couplings and uncouplings, their uneasy flirtation with success and self-extinction, he creates a legendary portrait of America's machinery of desire.

One of The New Yorker 's "Books We Loved in 2017" A Grace Paley Reader compiles a selection of Paley’s writing across genres, showcasing her breadth of work as well as her extraordinary insight and brilliant economy of words. "A writer like Paley," writes George Saunders, “comes along and brightens language up again, takes it aside and gives it a pep talk, sends it back renewed, so it can do its job, which is to wake us up.” Best known for her inimitable short stories, Grace Paley was also an enormously talented essayist and poet, as well as a fierce activist. She was a tireless member of the antiwar movement, the civil rights movement, the tenants’ rights movement, the anti-nuclear-power movement, and the Women’s Pentagon Action, among other causes, and proved herself to be a passionate citizen of each of her communities—New York City and rural Vermont.

In these three short plays, middle-aged Bobby Gould returns to the old neighborhood in a series of encounters with his past that, however briefly, open windows to his present. In The Disappearance of the Jews (also included in Mamet's Three Jewish Plays), Bobby and an old buddy fantasize about finding themselves in a nostalgic shtetl paradise, while revealing how lost they are in their own families. In Jolly, Bobby's sister, from the comfort of her kitchen, unscrolls a list of childhood grievances that is at once painful and hilarious. And the old girlfriend in Deeny, faced with a man she once loved, finds herself obsessively free-associating on gardening, sex, and subatomic particles.

The complete memoirs of Neil Simon, the greatest—and most successful—American playwright of all time, the author of such iconic works as Lost in Yonkers , The Odd Couple , Biloxi Blues , and The Goodbye Girl , now with an insightful Introduction by Nathan Lane. This omnibus edition combines Neil Simon’s two memoirs, Rewrites and The Play Goes On , into one volume that spans his extraordinary five-decade career in theater, television, and film. Rewrites takes Simon through his first love, his first play, and his first brush with failure. There is the humor of growing up in Washington Heights (the inspiration for his play Brighton Beach Memoirs ) where, despite his parents’ rocky marriage and many separations, he learned to see the funny side of family drama, as when his mother thought she saw a body on the floor in their apartment—and it turned out to be the clothes his father discarded in the hallway after a night of carousing. He describes his marriage to his beloved wife, Joan, and writes lucidly about the pain of losing her to cancer. The Play Goes On adds to his life’s story, as he wins the Pulitzer Prize and reflects with humor and insight on his tumultuous life and meteoric career. “Neil Simon’s terrific memoirs are worth revisiting” ( New York Post ). Now, with the whole story in one place, he traces the history of modern entertainment over the last fifty years as seen through the eyes of a man who started life the son of a garment salesman and became the greatest—and most successful—American playwright of all time.

THE STORY: A Man enters a small boutique, hoping to find a suitable gift for his young mistress, who is facing a grave operation. Unaccountably he quickly finds himself confiding in the Proprietress, speaking without hesitation of the pain he feels at having his telephone calls to his loved one unreturned, of his fear that her condition may be fatal. The Proprietress consoles him, suggesting that perhaps she wants to spare him, that she needs to face her ordeal alone and without added burden that his involvement would impose. As they speak specters of other deep-seated concerns arise: the difference in age between the Man and his mistress; his unfulfilling marriage; the emptiness of material success without love to enrich it; the void that might have been filled had there been the possibility of children; the frustration of being unable to make a true and total commitment to another person. It is almost as though the Proprietress might be-or has become-the absent mistress. As the play ends the Man and the Proprietress embrace, two strangers grateful for the small miracle which, if only for a brief moment, has let them share closeness always hoped for but seldom achieved.

Comedy Joseph Fields and Peter de Vries adapted from the novel by Mr. de Vries Characters: 2 male 4 female Interior Set Tom Ewell played the Broadway part of a suburban husband in a 5 year childless marriage. He and his wife decide to adopt a baby but a loud mouth neighbor upsets the apple cart when the adoption investigator comes to call. However not to be outdone Ewell finds himself in the clutches of the investigator who has suddenly turned color. Later she announces that she is pregnant and is going off to have the baby. She will see that the man and his wife receive the child in due time through the agency. Shortly after the baby arrives however the wife learns of the matter and starts packing to go home to Mother. But it turns out that the adopted baby was not fathered by the husband and also that the wife is now herself pregnant; and matters are mended. "It offers laugh after laugh." N.Y. World Telegram & Sun.

"Sharona Muir's Heredity and Other Inventions radiate like elements discovered late at night after years of searching ... a rocket in a museum in another country is both public knowledge and family secret; a daughter's umbilical cord in her father's lab sparks questions about the uses of love; the body of an airplane holds the imagined gestures of humans in their fi nal moments of life ... Muir renders the physical world so unfl inchingly that the metaphysical blows back, in equal and opposite reaction ... these poems are an act of postmortem collaboration: daughter as witness to history, using language to weld and spark familial bonds and to summon up their mysteries." --Rebecca Klaver, author of Empire Wasted "... Muir has a gift for conjuring beauty in the least expected places, dazzling audiences with rich imagery ... While the speaker's narrative is particular to her unique experience, in many ways this chapbook's poems transcend place and time, and resonate with all who have looked to the past for a way of understanding the present." --Mary Biddinger, author of Small Enterprise

Taken from the journals of distinguished writer Leonard Michaels, Time Out of Mind chronicles the author's life as a friend, lover, husband, and father. With wrenching dramatic intensity, it captures the character and the mind of an extraordinary talent -- from his days as a struggling young writer in Greenwich Village, through the turbulent Vietnam era, to his years as a professor of English literature at Berkeley. This is an unforgettable portrait of an artist in the world -- from one of the most acclaimed authors of our time.

Cast in the style of a vaudeville Wild West Show, this highly theatrical play explores the theme of Americas mistreatment of the indigenious tribes was a celebrated hit on Broadway starring Stacy Keach. The hero is Buffalo Bill, whose life is defined and destroyed by an unfulfilled vision. Like all tragic heroes he has a fatal character flaw: he knows and loves the Native Americans, but craves money and fame. He helps destroy the buffalo herds, reducing the Native Americans to starvation. Ultimately, ambition leads him to even greater cruelty, destroying both the tribes and himself.

Father Tom Farley has found peace and lost his faith. He invokes the gods of pop theology and atones with sacramental burgundy. Seminarian Mark Dolson is aflame with love for his Lord, in hot water for his ideas... and subjected to a baptism of fire by the priest he calls "a song and dance theologian, a phony and a drunkard". "Don't kick ass", counsels Father Tim. "Better than kiss it", says Mark.

Rural Central Texas, 1909. A young Russian-Jewish immigrant, newly arrived in America through the port of Galveston, pulls his banana cart into the hamlet of Hamilton. Fleeing the vicious pogroms of his homeland, he has sought refuge in the land of the free. Able to speak only Yiddish, alone in the midst of a staunchly Christian community, he begs for shelter. Over the next thirty years, he makes a home and raises a family in this tiny town. THE IMMIGRANT is the story of a young Russian-Jewish couple and the local couple that take them in, as religion meets religion, culture meets culture, fear meets fear, and love meets love. This is the true story of Haskell Harelik, "the Immigrant". "THE IMMIGRANT received a well-deserved standing ovation on opening night at the Mark Taper Forum...superb." Pros, Variety "A lovely and loving evening of theater. Harelik's story is tender and touching" Ed Kaufman, Hollywood Reporter "A funny new play... The scenes evoke the rural era with the firm-handed clarity of a Jewish Horton Foote...they glow." Linda Winer, U S A Today

"Nearly every family has a skeleton in its closet, an ancestor who "sins" against custom and tradition and pays a double price. Karen Tintori refused to allow the truth to remain forgotten. This is a book for anyone who shares the conviction that all history, in the end, is family history."--Frank Viviano, author of Blood Washes Blood and Dispatches from the Pacific Century "Many books are called ‘page-turners' by reviewers, but this one will truly have you glued to the turning pages for hours."-- Comunes of Italy Magazine " Unto the Daughters reads like a nonfiction version of the film Godfather II--if it had been told from the point of view of a female Corleone."--Eleni N. Gage, author of North of Ithaka Karen Tintori thought she knew her family tree. Her grandmother Josie had immigrated from Sicily with her parents at the turn of the century. They settled in Detroit, and with Josie's eight siblings, worked to create a home for themselves away from the poverty and servitude of the old country. Their descendants were proud Italian-Americans. But Josie had a sister that nobody spoke of. Her name was Frances, and at age sixteen, she fell in love with a young barber. Her father wanted her to marry an older don in the neighborhood mafia--a marriage that would give his sons a leg up in the mob. But Frances eloped with her barber. And when she returned a married woman, her father and brothers killed her for it. Her family then erased her from its collective memory. Even 80 years and two generations later, Frances and her death were not spoken of, her name was erased from the family genealogy, her pictures burned, and her memory suppressed. Unto the Daughters is a historical mystery and family story that unwraps the many layers of family, honor, memory, and fear to find an honor killing in turn of the century Detroit. "Many books are called ‘page-turners' by reviewers, but this one will truly have you glued to the turning pages for hours. It's a must read for anyone researching their Italian ancestry."-- Comunes of Italy Magazine KAREN TINTORI is a writer and journalist who lives in Michigan with her family. Karen's books include Trapped, a 2002 Chicago Tribune favorite book, and The Book of Names (co-author), among others. Visit her website at: www. karentintori .com

"When the play begins there is Harry Berlin, looking like a shaved, mustachioed beatnik who has sunk so low that honest beatniks would disown him. He has no future except to jump off the bridge and is about to do so when Milt Manville comes along and intervenes. Milt and Harry turn out to be college classmates. As Harry, in his rags, slowly drops hints of his tale of woe, Milt, a picture of prosperity, is all sympathy. but LUV has ample place in its bosom for more than one miserable fellow. Milt is also full of frustration, for his wife won't release him and let him marry the girl he loves. Presently Milt's wife, Ellen, appears. As she stands under the lamppost, her expression congealed and fur-coated body rigid, it is clear that she too is torn by anguish. Now we have a trianglematched in misery. Milt has had an inspiration. Why not bring Ellen and Harry together and thus win the freedom to marry the other girl? But Ellen looks despairing; she needs sprucing up. Milt tidies her dress and slip, combs her hair, rouges her lips, powders her cheeks, delicately touches up her eyelashes and sprays her with perfume. Could a husband be more tender with a wife he hopes to palm off? The events that follow need not be detailed. All you will wish to kow is that whatever marriages are mand and unmade, Milt, Ellen and Harry end up in sorrow and agony, and the greater their misunderstandings and problems, the more you laugh"--Page 4 of cover

Jon Robin Baitz has been praised as one of America's foremost playwrights on themes of conscience. Now from the author of The Substance of Fire comes an absorbing new play about power and money and the ruinous effects it can have on friendship, love, marriage, and ultimately oneself. In this modern tragedy set in urban New York City, Wall Street powerhouse Sandy Sonenberg finds his personal and professional life threatened by the unraveling secrets of his past. After burying his true sexual identity, a lethal affair with a young male associate forces Sonenberg to confront a lifetime of unrequited love and betrayal.

From a small, bogside cabin in rural New England, 38-year-old Aimee Slater unravels the story of her life, attempting to make sense of the tangled thread that leads from her mother's house-a short, unbridgeable distance away-to the world she now inhabits. It is soon after the Civil War; Aimee lives alone, but is graced with visits from two friends, a crippled man and a troubled eleven-year-old girl. She is perpetually caught between the sensual world she so desires and the divine retribution passed down to her by her mother's scorn. How Aimee ultimately creates a life for herself and bridges that distance makes for a moving story of love and loss. Told in a voice of spare New England lyricism, Unravelling is a remarkably haunting account of the power of redemption.

We first meet Lucy Appelbaum, the heroine of Paradise, New York , n 1970, when she is a nine year old girl enjoying her family's Catskills hotel, the Garden of Eden. Ten years later, having found nothing else at which she can distinguish herself, she tries to save the Eden by capitalizing on a wave of nostalgia for the Borscht Belt, running the hotel as a sort of living museum of Yiddish culture. In the course of that season, Lucy comes to realize her love for the hotel's black handyman, Mr. Jefferson -- and the difficulties she faces in overcoming the barriers between them. She battles her grandmother's not-so-subtle attempts to sabotage her success, her parents' superstitious fear of anything that attracts attention to the Jews, and her brother's contention that what Lucy is doing is more a matter of ego than authentic religious feeling. On top of all this, Lucy must contend with the Hasid who buys the chicken farm next door, a cell of ancient Jewish Communist who foment a strike among Eden's overworked young staff, and a gay chef and a gay baker who want to prove to the world that kosher cuisine can satisfy the most sophisticated gourmet. Among the novel's characters are Shirley and Nat Feidel, who barely survived the Holocaust but refuse to allow bitterness to rule their lives; Mami Goshgarian, the Eden's tumeler ; and Jimmy Kilcoin, and Irish Catholic insurance adjustor who has earned a reputation as "the Don Juan of the Catskills" and is determined to seduce Lucy before summer's end.

The Zen of La Llorona is a second collection of poetry by a Native American woman, and as such, it goes beyond initial concerns with personal racial identity. While still very much speaking from an indigenous point of view, The Zen of La Llorona complicates that indigenous identity with visceral explorations of gendered violence, sexual orientation and mothering in an unpredictable, chaotic world. Key to these poems are historical and current events: traumas as distant as the colonization of California’s indigenous peoples and as close as the destructive forces of 9/11 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. How do we survive destruction without becoming destroyers ourselves? How can the elements of earth, love, community and work nurture creation, and manifest hope? Utilizing the figure of “La Llorona,” a mythical indigenous figure of the Americas who first murders and then mourns her children, the poems in this book seek to unravel the mysterious fascination we have with despair, and move us along with the poet to a more clarifying, centering focus on joy. Zen, the author notes, tells us “everyone loses everything,” leaving us with only a decision about our attitude toward loss itself. La Llorona, on the other hand, says, “Nonsense – there’s always something left to lose.” What that “something” is, and how we can preserve and honor it, is at the heart of this collection of poems.

Genre: Dramatic Comedy Characters: 3 males, 3 females Scenery: Interior Maureen Stapleton won Broadway's Tony Award as Best Actress for the role of Evy Meara, a popular singer who has hit the skids. After a short stay in rehab, her best friend age-defying Toby, her daughter Polly, and Jimmy Perry, a gay actor try to help her adjust to sobriety with a jolly birthday party. Enter Lou Tanner, a former lover, who ends up giving her a black eye. The party is a wash out, the "gingerb