METHUEN DRAMA

(P/B) Death of a Salesman
Why am I trying to become what I don't want to be . . . when all I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am. Willy Loman is an ageing travelling salesman haunted, driven and yet held back by empty dreams of prosperity and success. Justly celebrated as one of the most famous dramatisations of the failure of the American Dream, the play's moral and political purpose is perfectly counterbalanced by a powerful and moving human drama of a man trying to make his way in the world and of the human flaws that lead to the s...
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(P/B) Working with Actors: Meisner Technique for Directors and Actors
Working with Actors provides the key to unlocking the honest, dynamic performance every actor has within them. It offers a well-articulated formulation of the Meisner Technique easy for directors and actors to use within a working context. Through setting out an accessible training programme for practitioners working across stage and screen, this book establishes a clear-cut route to building a three-dimensional character in an organic, non-intellectual fashion, based squarely on the character's objectives. Few books in this field venture ...
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(P/B) The Doctor
First, do no harm. How do we defend the "truth" when no one agrees what it is and many have reason to undermine it? Very freely adapting Professor Bernhardi by Arthur Schnitzler, Robert Icke has written a gripping moral thriller that uses the lens of medical ethics to examine urgent questions of faith, belief, and scientific rationality. After a critically acclaimed run at London's Almeida Theatre, The Doctor transferred to the West End in September 2022. This revised and updated edition was published to coincide with the new production. ...
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(P/B) A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE
This revised Student Edition includes an introduction by Bess Rowen, Visiting Assistant Professor at Villanova University, US, which looks in particular at the play's treatment of rape, vulnerable people, mental institutions (especially in connection to Williams's own family), sexuality and sexual desire. A Streetcar Named Desire shows a turbulent confrontation between traditional values in the American South - an old-world graciousness and beauty running decoratively to seed - set against the rough-edged, aggressive materialism of the new...
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(P/B) COMPLETE PLAYS
When Blasted was first produced at the Royal Court in 1995 it was hailed jointly as a masterpiece and a 'disgusting piece of filth' (Daily Mail). Subsequently that play, and the others that followed, have been produced all over the world. This anthology includes Kane's never-before-published Channel 4 screenplay, Skin. (From the publisher)...
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(P/B) 4.48 PSYCHOSIS
4.48 Psychosis was written throughout the autumn and winter of 1998-99 as Kane battled with one of her recurrent bouts of depression. On February 20, 1999, aged 28, the playwright committed suicide. On the page, the piece looks like a poem. No characters are named, and even their number is unspecified. It could be a journey through one person's mind, or an interview between a doctor and his patient. (From the publisher)...
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(P/B) Bond Plays: 1
"Edward Bond is the most radical playwright to emerge from the sixties ...the most savagely powerful dramatist writing today ...Bond's plays cannot be ignored" (Independent) Saved - "The most uncompromising, original and un-English English play of the sixties" (Observer) Early Morning - "A gargantuan Swiftian metaphor of universal consumption" (Observer) The Pope's Wedding - "This bizarre and unclassifiable piece is an astonishing tour de force for a first play, and if it comes to that, would be an astonishing tour de force if it were a fi...
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AN ACTOR'S HANDBOOK
Here in concise form is what Stanislavski said about acting, alphabetically arranged to aid students, professionals and laymen interested in stage craft. These collected short statements on a variety of subjects cannot replace the full expression of Stanislavski’s ideas and discoveries in his other books, but they will serve to refresh the reader’s memory and pinpoint what Stanislavski has to offer inquiring minds both in and out of the theatre. (AΠΟ ΤΗΝ ΠΑΡΟΥΣΙΑΣΗ ΣΤΟ ΟΠΙΣΘΟΦΥΛΛΟ ΤΟΥ ΒΙΒΛΙΟΥ)...
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(P/B) CLOSER
Love and sex are like politics: it's not what you say that matters, still less what you mean, but what you do. Patrick Marber understands this perfectly, and in Closer he has written one of the best plays of sexual politics in the language: it is right up there with Williams' Streetcar, Mamet's Oleanna, Albee's Virginia Woolf, Pinter's Old Times and Hare's Skylight.' (From the publisher)...
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(P/B) Mother Courage and Her Children
This new Student Edition, featuring the classic John Willett translation of the play, includes an introduction by Katherine Hollander, which explores the following: Contexts (Thirty Years War, 1618-1648; World War II and exile; sources; influential figures such as Brecht, Margarete Steffin, Helene Weigel and Karin Michaelis) Themes (war; nature; capitalism) Dramatic devices (epic theatre) Production history and critical reception Academic debate (Marxist, feminist and postmodernist) Further study Widely regarded as Brecht's best work, Moth...
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(P/B) The Women of Troy
There's no decent way to say an indecent thing. An industrial port of a war-torn city. Women survivors wait to be shipped abroad. Officials come and go. A grandmother, once queen, watches as her remaining family are taken from her one by one. The city burns around them. First performed in 415BC, the play focuses on the human cost of war and the impact of loss. This new Student Edition of The Women of Troy includes a commentary and notes by Emma Cole, which looks at the Trojan War as represented in Greek literature and myth; the context in ...
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(P/B) The Crucible
Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang! How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name! In a small tight-knit community, gossip and rumour spread like wildfire, inflaming personal grievances until no-one is safe from accusation and vengeance. The Crucible is Arthur Miller's classic dramatisation of the witch-hunt and trials that besieged the Puritan community of Salem in 1692. Seen as a...
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(P/B) CLEANSED
A provocative play from the notorious author of Blasted, which probes the nightmarish world of twenty-somethings coming to grips with sexuality, social ostracism and the effects of drugs. Cleansed premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in spring 1998. (From the publisher)...
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(P/B) Educating Rita
'One way of describing Educating Rita would be to say that it was about the meaning of education ... Another would be to say that it was about the meaning of life. A third, that it is a cross between Pygmailion and Lucky Jim. A fourth, that it is simply a marvellous play, painfully funny and passionately serious; a hilarious social documentary; a fairy-tale with a quizzical, half-happy ending.' Sunday Times This new student edition includes an introduction covering the play's context; chronology; dramatic devices; critical reception; produ...
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(P/B) MCDONAGH: PLAYS 1
Martin McDonagh's plays have been produced in Galway, Dublin, London and New York. They have created excitement and have won numerous awards....
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(P/B) WRITING FOR STAGE AND SCREEN
"This book does what no other playwriting book in my experience has done, it offers a new way of seeing and conceiving how theatre makes meaning and carries emotional impact in performance." Suzan Zeder, Professor Emerita and former Head Of Playwriting at University of Texas at Austin, USA Combining a step-by-step analysis of the technique of writing for stage and screen with how the mystery, poetry and emotional momentum is achieved for the audience, Sherry Kramer offers an empowering, original guide for emerging and established writers. ...
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(P/B) Theatre and Dramaturgy
What is a dramaturg? What is dramaturgy? What are the political implications for the way that plays produce meaning in performance? Over the last decade, the role of the dramaturg has become more common in the theatrical process, but it is still a new term for many theatre-goers. Theatre & Dramaturgy offers a working definition of what dramaturgy means, and asks how understanding theatre from the perspective of dramaturgy can help us understand the world around us. This concise study examines how western histories and practices of theatre ...
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(P/B) RAVENHILL: PLAYS 1
"Ravenhill has more to say, and says it more refreshingly and wittily, than any other playwright of his generation" Time Out "There are few stage authors writing more interestingly than Mark Ravenhill ... He is - it is now yet more evident - a searing, intelligent, disturbing sociologist with a talent for satirical dialogue and a flair for sexual sensationalism." - Financial Times Shopping and Fucking: "is a darkly humorous play for today's twenty-somethings ... a real coup de theatre" - Nicholas de Jongh, Evening Standard Faust: "...an...
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(P/B) THE BEAUTY QUEEN OF LEENANE
Set in the mountains of Connemara, County Galway, The Beauty of Leenane tells the darkly comic tale of Maureen Folan, a plain, lonely woman in her early fortied, and Mag, her manipulative ageing mother, whose interference in Maureen's first and possibly final chance of a loving relationship sets in motion a train of events that leads inexorably towards the play's terrifying denouement. (From the publisher)...
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(P/B) THE GLASS MENAGERIE
This revised Student Edition includes an introduction by Daniel Ciba, which looks in particular at the play as a piece of realism or experimentalism and considers the play through the lens of Queer Identity. The introduction includes discussion of very recent revivals and adaptations of the play across the world. The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams' first great popular success and an autobiographical play about his mother and sister, launched the brilliant and controversial career of this ground-breaking American playwright. Set in St ...
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