Essays
By Wallace Shawn
Published by: Haymarket Books
Publication Date: Sept. 1, 2009
List price: $18.95 trade cloth; 175 pages
In this new book of essays, actor and Obie Award–winning playwright Wallace Shawn, author of such plays as Aunt Dan and Lemon, The Fever and The Designated Mourner, forsakes his usual penchant for fiction to, as he writes in the book, "go off to the place called Reality for a brief vacation." Still, his non-fiction writing bears a certain resemblance to his plays, as his essays similarly challenge readers to view their own behavior more honestly. Shawn's diverse essay subjects include writing about sex, the relationship between art and politics, the strange world of Manhattan's cultural elite and the genesis of his plays. "With his distinctive humor and insight," notes the publisher, " Shawn invites us to look at the world with new eyes, the better to understand — and change it."
Dinosaurs on the Roof
By David Rabe
Published by: Simon & Shuster
Publication Date: Aug. 11, 2009
List price: $16 paperback; 484 pages
This new novel from David Rabe, author of such plays as Hurlyburly, Streamers and In the Boom Boom Room, takes place in a small town in Iowa and focuses on one day in the life of its two central characters: Jane Cawley, a recently divorced woman who has quit both her teaching job and her ex-colleague lover, and is now looking for some peace and quiet where she can "fall apart," and Bernice, best friend of Jane's deceased mother. It seems Bernice has been informed by her preacher that she and the entire congregation are to be visited by the Rapture that evening and she is desperate to find someone who will feed her dogs and cats and care for them after she departs this earth. So much for Jane's dreams of solitude. "Through that night and into the next," announces the book's cover, "the lives of these two women are inextricably woven together as they struggle to find reason in the incomprehensible, sometimes ludicrous events that unfold, and search for tangible signs of faith in themselves and the world around them."
The Cambridge Companion to Harold Pinter (2nd Edition)
Edited by Peter Raby
Published by: Cambridge University Press
Publication Date: April 2009
List price: $28 paperback; 346 pages; 15 b/w illustrations
This updated and revised second edition Companion to the work of Harold Pinter examines the playwright's writing for the theatre, radio, television and big screen, as well as focusing on his work as a director and actor. Covered, too, are events including Pinter's 2005 Nobel Prize for Literature, his appearance in Samuel Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape as well as other productions of his plays. The Companion includes essays by both academics and theatre professionals that offer new perspectives on Pinter's writing and, notes the publisher, includes "new production photographs, five updated and revised chapters and an extended chronology."
PLAYS OF NOTE
Mrs. Packard
By Emily Mann
Published by: Theatre Communications Group
Publication Date: July 2009
List price: $13.95 paperback; 120 pages
Winner of the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays Award, Emily Mann's Mrs. Packard is a harrowing dramatization of one woman's struggle for her rights. Based in fact, the story concerns Elizabeth Parsons Ware Packard, wife of 18th century Calvinist minister Theophilus Packard. When she questioned her husband's repressive doctrine, she was cruelly incarcerated in a state-run mental facility for three years, with no public hearing, based solely on her husband's declaration of her sanity. The play alternates between Elizabeth's time in the asylum and testimony from the Packard vs. Packard trial that went to court after her release. The play premiered at McCarter Theater Center in Princeton, NJ, where Mann is artistic director and resident playwright, and was produced at the Kennedy Center.
Grasses of a Thousand Colors
By Wallace Shawn
Published by: Theatre Communications Group
Publication Date: July 2009
List price: $13.95 paperback; 96 pages
The landscape is bleak: The world is dying off because of the lack of available nourishment caused by scientific interference in the world's crop growth. Yet the central characters in Wallace Shawn's first full-length play in more than a decade — a scientist, his wife and his two mistresses — manage somehow to survive "tasting the good life, admiring the beauties of nature, feasting on animalistic sex and finding love." Publisher notes describe the work as "frankly erotic, weirdly disturbing and undeniably funny."
Judy Samelson, former editor of Playbill, gathers information on theatre-related books, including published plays, for Playbill.com's monthly Shelf Life column. Write her at jsamelson@playbill.com.
*
The Playbill Store book shelf is packed with theatre-related books. Check it out at playbillstore.com.
