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› Find signed collectible books: 'The American Dream: And the Zoo Story'
The American Dream: The story of one of America's most dysfunctional families, it is a ferocious, uproarious attack on the substitution of artifical values for the real values- a startling tale of murder and morality that rocks middle-class ethics to its complacent foundations. The Zoo Story: A harrowing depiction of a young man alienated from the human race- a searing story of loneliness and the desperate need for recognition that builds to a violent, shattering climax. Together, these plays show men and women at their most hilarious, heartbreaking, and above all, human. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Angels in America'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes Millennium Approaches/Perestroika'
Tony Kushner's Angels in America is that rare entity: a work for the stage that is profoundly moving yet very funny, highly theatrical yet steeped in traditional literary values, and most of all deeply American in its attitudes and political concerns. In two full-length plays--Millennium Approaches and Perestroika--Kushner tells the story of a handful of people trying to make sense of the world. Prior is a man living with AIDS whose lover Louis has left him and become involved with Joe, an ex-Mormon and political conservative whose wife, Harper, is slowly having a nervous breakdown. These stories are contrasted with that of Roy Cohn (a fictional re-creation of the infamous American conservative ideologue who died of AIDS in 1986) and his attempts to remain in the closet while trying to find some sort of personal salvation in his beliefs.
But such a summary does not do justice to Kushner's grand plan, which mixes magical realism with political speeches, high comedy with painful tragedy, and stitches it all together with a daring sense of irony and a moral vision that demands respect and attention. On one level, the play is an indictment of the government led by Ronald Reagan, from the blatant disregard for the AIDS crisis to the flagrant political corruption. But beneath the acute sense of political and moral outrage lies a meditation on what it means to live and die--of AIDS, or anything else--in a society that cares less and less about human life and basic decency. The play's breadth and internal drive is matched by its beautiful writing and unbridled compassion. Winner of two Tony Awards and the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for drama, Angels in America is one of the most outstanding plays of the American theater. --Michael Bronski [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Anna Christie'
› Find signed collectible books: 'Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman'
Arthur Miller's 1949 Death of a Salesman has sold 11 million copies, and Willy Loman didn't make all those sales on a smile and a shoeshine. This play is the genuine article--it's got the goods on the human condition, all packed into a day in the life of one self-deluded, self-promoting, self-defeating soul. It's a sturdy bridge between kitchen-sink realism and spectral abstraction, the facts of particular hard times and universal themes. As Christopher Bigsby's mildly interesting afterword in this 50th-anniversary edition points out (as does Miller in his memoir, Timebends), Willy is closely based on the playwright's sad, absurd salesman uncle, Manny. But of course Miller made Manny into Everyman, and gave him the name of the crime commissioner Lohmann in Fritz Lang's angst-ridden 1932 Nazi parable, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse.
The tragedy of Loman the all-American dreamer and loser works eternally, on the page as on the stage. A lot of plays made history around 1949, but none have stepped out of history into the classic canon as Salesman has. Great as it was, Tennessee Williams's work can't be revived as vividly as this play still is, all over the world. (This edition has edifying pictures of Lee J. Cobb's 1949 and Brian Dennehy's 1999 performances.) It connects Aristotle, The Great Gatsby, On the Waterfront, David Mamet, and the archetypal American movie antihero. It even transcends its author's tragic flaw of pious preachiness (which undoes his snoozy The Crucible, unfortunately his most-produced play).
No doubt you've seen Willy Loman's story at least once. It's still worth reading. --Tim Appelo [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Arthur Miller's the Crucible'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Camino Real'
› Find signed collectible books: 'Crucible'
Release Date: October 28, 1976. The place is Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692, an enclave of rigid piety huddled on the edge of a wilderness. Its inhabitants believe unquestioningly in their own sanctity. But in Arthur Miller's edgy masterpiece, that very belief will have poisonous consequences when a vengeful teenager accuses a rival of witchcraft-and then when those accusations multiply to consume the entire village. First produced in 1953, at a time when America was convulsed by a new epidemic of witchhunting, The Crucible brilliantly explores the threshold between individual guilt and mass hysteria, personal spite and collective evil. It is a play that is not only relentlessly suspenseful and vastly moving but that compels readers to fathom their hearts and consciences in ways that only the greatest theater ever can. "A drama of emotional power and impact" -New York Post [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Crucible : A Play in Four Acts'
The Crucible, Arthur Miller's classic play about the witch-hunts and trials in seventeenth-century Salem, Massachusetts, is returning to Broadway. To mark the occasion, Penguin is pleased to offer this beautiful hardcover edition.
"A powerful drama." (Brooks Atkinson, The New York Times) [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Crucible : A Screenplay'
The masterpiece of American drama is now a major motion picture from 20th Century Fox, starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Winona Ryder, and Paul Scofield. Set during the witch hunts in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692, The Crucible recounts the vengeance, mass hysteria, and collective evil that poisoned this small town. photos, some in color. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Death of a Salesman'
Ever since it was first performed in 1949, death of a salesman has been recognized as a milestone of the american theater. In the person of willy loman, the aging, failing salesman who makes his living riding on a smile and a shoeshine, arthur miller redefined the tragic hero as a man whose dreams are at once insupportably vast and dangerously insubstantial. He has given us a figure whose name has become a symbol for a kind of majestic grandiosity-and a play that compresses epic extremems of humor and anguish, promise and loss, between the four walls of an american living room. "by common consent, this is one of the finest dramas in the whole range of the american theater." -brooks atkinson, the new york times "so simple, central, and terrible that the run of playwrights would neither care nor dare to attempt it." -time [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Death of a Salesman/Coles Notes'
This is a study guide to help students who have to answer questions or write exams or essays about Death of a Salesman. It is the Coles Notes Edition. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Fences'
Drama / 5m, 2f / 1 Set Winner of the New York Drama Critic's and Tony Awards as well as the Pulitzer Prize, this sensational drama starred James Earl Jones as Troy Maxson, a former star of the Negro baseball leagues who now works as a garbage man in 1957 Pittsburgh. Excluded as a Negro from the major leagues during his prime, Troy's bitterness takes it's toll on his relationships with both his wife and son who now wants his own chance to play. "One of the great characters in American drama." - The New York Post "One of the richest experiences I have ever had in the theatre. I wasn't just moved. I was transfixed." - The New York Post "A blockbuster and a major American play." - New York Daily News [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Fences'
A Pulitzer Prize winner. Garbage collector Troy Maxson clashes with his son over an athletic scholarship.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Glass Menagerie'
This all-new, all-star film version of a beloved American classic combines the monumental talent of the biggest and best film stars with the literary genius of Tennessee Williams. Paul Newman directs. Joanne Woodward, John Malkovich, Karen Allen and James Naughton star in the motion picture from Cineplex Odeon Films. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Glengarry Glen Ross'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Goat Or, Who Is Sylvia: Notes Toward A Definition Of Tragedy'
Three-time Pulitzer Prize winner Edward Albee's most provocative, daring, and controversial play since Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Goat won four major awards for best new play of the year (Tony, New York Drama Critics Circle, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle). In the play, Martin, a successful architect who has just turned fifty, leads an ostensibly ideal life with his loving wife and gay teenage son. But when he confides to his best friend that he is also in love with a goat (named Sylvia), he sets in motion events that will destroy his family and leave his life in tatters.
The playwright himself describes it this way: Every civilization sets quite arbitrary limits to its tolerances. The play is about a family that is deeply rocked by an unimaginable event and they solve that problem. It is my hope that people will think afresh about whether or not all the values they hold are valid. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Iceman Cometh'
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Iceman Cometh: A Play'
The Place: Harry Hope's bar, a cheap gin-mill of the five-cent whiskey, last-resort variety situated downtown on the West Side of New York.
The Time: Salesman Hickey's birthday celebration, two days during the summer of 1912 -- a time when all tomorrows are forced abruptly to become today; when the delineation between hopes, dreams, and pipe dreams disintegrates; when "self-knowledge" destroys self-respect, compassion -- and life.
One of the last of Eugene O'Neill's plays, The Iceman Cometh stands today with Long Day's Journey into Night and A Moon for the Misbegotten as the supreme expression of his dramatic genius. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Long Day's Journey into Night'
This work is interesting enough for its history. Completed in 1940, Long Day's Journey Into Night is an autobiographical play Eugene O'Neill wrote that--because of the highly personal writing about his family--was not to be released until 25 years after his death, which occurred in 1953. But since O'Neill's immediate family had died in the early 1920s, his wife allowed publication of the play in 1956. Besides the history alone, the play is fascinating in its own right. It tells of the "Tyrones"--a fictional name for what is clearly the O'Neills. Theirs is not a happy tale: The youngest son (Edmond) is sent to a sanitarium to recover from tuberculosis; he despises his father for sending him; his mother is wrecked by narcotics; and his older brother by drink. In real-life these factors conspired to turn O'Neill into who he was--a tormented individual and a brilliant playwright. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Monarch Notes on Williams' Street-Car Named Desire'
More editions of Monarch Notes on Williams' Street-Car Named Desire:
Our Town was first produced and published in 1938 to wide acclaim. This Pulitzer Prizewinning drama of life in the town of Grover 's Corners, an allegorical representation of all life, has become a classic. It is Thornton Wilder's most renowned and most frequently performed play.
It is now reissued in this handsome hardcover edition, featuring a new Foreword by Donald Margulies, who writes, "You are holding in your hands a great American play. Possibly the great American play." In addition, Tappan Wilder has written an eye-opening new Afterword, which includes Thornton Wilder's unpublished notes and other illuminating photographs and documentary material.
[via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Our Town: A Play in Three Acts'
Our Town was first produced and published in 1938 to wide acclaim. This Pulitzer Prizewinning drama of life in the town of Grover 's Corners, an allegorical representation of all life, has become a classic. It is Thornton Wilder's most renowned and most frequently performed play.
It is now reissued in this handsome hardcover edition, featuring a new Foreword by Donald Margulies, who writes, "You are holding in your hands a great American play. Possibly the great American play." In addition, Tappan Wilder has written an eye-opening new Afterword, which includes Thornton Wilder's unpublished notes and other illuminating photographs and documentary material.
[via]More editions of Our Town: A Play in Three Acts:

› Find signed collectible books: 'Proof'
› Find signed collectible books: 'Relationships: A Mess Worth Making'
Hope for messy, conflict-ridden relationships. Your best friend is suddenly cool and distant. Your spouse can t stop complaining about your bad habits. Your son refuses to talk to you. What are you supposed to do? Plans A, B, and C might be to shut down, lash out, or get out. But consider Plan D: Recognize that God has the last word on those messy, conflict-ridden relationships. He can use them to make you into someone who can give and receive love with God and others. Impossible? Idealistic? Not really. In Relationships: A Mess Worth Making, Tim Lane and Paul Tripp show you how God does it, and how it can happen for you. They help you tackle the stubborn problems that plague many close relationships. They show you the deeper issues that drive our reactions, choices, and behaviors. And they show you how God steps in to help you build relationships that are all he intended them to be. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Streetcar Named Desire'
The Pulitzer Prize and Drama Critics Circle Award winning playreissued with an introduction by Arthur Miller (Death of a Salesman and The Crucible), and Williams' essay "The World I Live In."
It is a very short list of 20th-century American plays that continue to have the same power and impact as when they first appeared57 years after its Broadway premiere, Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire is one of those plays. The story famously recounts how the faded and promiscuous Blanche DuBois is pushed over the edge by her sexy and brutal brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski. Streetcar launched the careers of Marlon Brando, Jessica Tandy, Kim Hunter and Karl Malden, and solidified the position of Tennessee Williams as one of the most important young playwrights of his generation, as well as that of Elia Kazan as the greatest American stage director of the '40s and '50s.More editions of A Streetcar Named Desire:
› Find signed collectible books: 'A Streetcar Named Desire'
Starring Rosemary Harris as the vulnerable Blanche DuBois, this dazzling drama of love, lust, and unbridled passion set against the steamy backdrop of New Orleans is an unrivaled classic of modern American theatre. This recording features the cast of the smash revival in 1973 at Lincoln Center. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Summer and Smoke'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Touch of the Poet'

› Find signed collectible books: 'A Touch of the Poet: Play'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?'
Twelve times a week, answered Uta Hagen when asked how often shed like to play Martha in Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf? In the same way, audiences and critics alike could not get enough of Edward Albees masterful play. A dark comedy, it portrays husband and wife George and Martha in a searing night of dangerous fun and games. By the evenings end, a stunning, almost unbearable revelation provides a climax that has shocked audiences for years. With the plays razor-sharp dialogue and the stripping away of social pretense, Newsweek rightly foresaw Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf? as a brilliantly original work of artan excoriating theatrical experience, surging with shocks of recognition and dramatic fire [that] will be igniting Broadway for some time to come.
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