This book explores the sensations of haste and delay as represented in seventeenth-century French theater. Jennifer Eun-Jung Row proposes that these disruptive velocities—occasions when the tempos of desire subverted society's rhythms and norms—sparked new queer attachments and intimacies.
Inspired by recent controversial closures of public schools in Chicago, the riotously funny and angry Exit Strategy follows a group of teachers who fight to keep their doomed high school open.
Pike St. is the highly praised sixth play by Nilaja Sun, playwright of the solo show “No Child . . .”. In it, a single mother is pulled into different directions by the needs of her immobilized daughter, the wanderings of her amorous father, and a soldier brother just returned from a tour in Afghanistan.
In Smart People, Lydia R. Diamond shows that no matter how well we think we understand the influence of race on human interaction, it still manages to get in the way of genuine communication and connection. As in all of her work, Diamond brings a sharp wit and a subtle intelligence to bear on questions that never cease to trouble us as individuals and as a society.
The Nether, a daring examination of moral responsibility in virtual worlds, opens with a familiar interrogation scene given a technological twist. As Detective Morris, an online investigator, questions Mr. Sims about his activities in a role-playing realm so realistic it could be life, she finds herself on slippery ethical ground.
In The Jacksonian, Beth Henley returns to the Southern Gothic storytelling that made her reputation with both critics and audiences. Set in a seedy motel in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1964, the play centers around Rosy, a troubled teenager, and Bill, her dentist father who has been living at the motel for several months as his wife, Susan, considers the disgrace of divorce.
Black Theater Is Black Life fills a critical gap in the history of African American culture in Chicago. Through interviews with prominent producers, directors, choreographers, designers, dancers, and actors, Young and Zabriskie create a portrait of a diverse, dynamic artistic community between 1970 and 2010. They frame this history with helpful guides, including a chronology of key events, a glossary of names, and an appendix of leading performing arts institutions in Chicago.
Edited by E. Patrick Johnson and Ramón H. Rivera-Servera
Foreword by D. Soyini Madison
The collection solo/black/woman features seven solo performances by emerging and established feminist performance artists from the past three decades. The scripts are accompanied by interviews and critical essays, as well as a DVD showcasing the performances. The performers range from Robbie McCauley and Rhodessa Jones, who were at the leading edge of the solo monologue boom of the 1980s, to new talents such as Stacey Robinson and Misty DeBerry. Collectively, their work displays an enormous range of aesthetic approach and thematic emphasis. The anthology offers a comprehensive, stimulating introduction to the beauty, richness, urgency, pleasure, and political promise of black feminist performance.
In her latest theatrical production inspired by a classic story, Mary Zimmerman reimagines The White Snake, an ancient Chinese legend in which a snake spirit transforms herself into a beautiful woman in order to experience the human world.
As in her Tony Award–winning Metamorphoses, Mary Zimmerman transforms Greek mythology—here the story of Jason and the Argonauts—into a mesmerizing piece of theater. Encountering an array of daunting challenges in their “first voyage of the world,” Jason and his crew illustrate the essence of all such journeys to follow—their unpredictability, their inspiring and overwhelming breadth of emotion, their lessons in the inevitability of failure and loss.
