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Books: New Downtown Now: An Anthology Of New Theater From Downtown New York

[amazonify]0816647313[/amazonify]At a time when most serious drama being written and produced for the American stage aspires only to mainstream acceptance and high-toned mediocrity, an innovative new generation of playwrights based in New York City has emerged, crafting works that challenge and undermine the conventional structure, language, and characterization of commercial theater while rejecting outdated notions of the avant-garde. New Downtown Now brings together ten new works that exemplify the playfulness, excitement, and possibilities of the theater. Characterized by fragmenting structure, hypnotic rhythms, kaleido-scopic imagery, unpredictable characters, and lyrical language, these plays resemble puzzles from which the writers are teasing revelations. Though disparate in subject matter and style, with characters ranging from a sushi chef to a soldier and settings from a taxicab to a live television broadcast, these highly original plays share a commitment to formal experimentation that places them beyond the psychological clichés of the majority and the cold condescension of postmodernism. The anthology includes Interim by Barbara Cassidy; Tragedy: a tragedy by Will Eno; Nine Come by Elana Greenfield; Shufu-Sachiko and Enoshima Island by Madelyn Kent; The Appeal by Young Jean Lee; The Vomit Talk of Ghosts by Kevin Oakes; Ajax (por nobody) by Alice Tuan; Apparition, an uneasy play of the underknown by Anne Washburn; Demon Baby by Erin Courtney. Mac Wellman is the author of numerous plays and the recipient of three Obie awards, most recently in 2003 for lifetime achievement. He is professor of playwriting at Brooklyn College. Young Jean Lee is a playwright and director, and member of the Obie award-winning company 13P. Jeffrey M. Jones is a playwright and curator of the Obie award-winning Little Theater at Tonic in New York.

More Scripts:

[amazonify]1555540686[/amazonify] Includes: Motherhood 2000 by Adrienne Kennedy, The Law of Remains by Reza Abdoh, Pangean Dreams: A Shamanic Journey by Rachel Rosenthal, Enter The Night by Maria Irene Fornes, Two Altars, Ten Funerals (All Souls) by Erik Ehn, A Girl’s Guide to the Divine Comedy by Shelley Berc, Frank Dell’s The Temptation of St. Antony by The Wooster Group, The Mind King by Richard Foreman and Cellophane by Mac Wellman.
[amazonify]0970904622[/amazonify] Clubbed Thumb, the Obie Award-winning downtown theatre company, has made it their mission since 1996 to produce funny, strange, and provocative new plays. This anthology contains seven thought-provoking, edgy, and entertaining works that have been developed and produced by Clubbed Thumb. Playwrights include Adam Bock, Sheila Callaghan, Erin Courtney, Lisa D’Amour, Rinne Groff, Anne Marie Healy, and Carson Kreitzer.
[amazonify]0933826451[/amazonify] This best-selling volume contains several of the German author’s most controversial dramas, in which he radically questions how culture, myth, art, and social relations create history. Includes:Hamletmachine, Correction, The Task, Quartet, Despoiled Shore, and Gundling’s Life. One of the most original theatrical minds of our time, Müller, who resided in East Berlin before his death in 1995, was a frequent collaborator of Robert Wilson.

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Caden Manson is a director, media artist, and teacher. He is co-founder of the media ensemble bigartgroup.com and network, blog, and publisher, contemporaryperformance.com. He has co-created, directed, video- and set designed 18 Big Art Group productions. Manson has shown video installations in Austria, Germany, NYC, and Portland; performed PAIN KILLER in Berlin, Singapore and Vietnam; Taught in Berlin, Rome, Paris, Montreal, NYC, and Bern; the ensemble has been co-produced by the Vienna Festival, Festival d’Automne a Paris, Hebbel Am Ufer, Rome’s La Vie de Festival, PS122, and Wexner Center for The Arts. Caden is a 2001 Foundation For Contemporary Art Fellow, is a 2002 Pew Fellow and a 2011 MacDowell Fellow. Writing has been published in PAJ, Theater Magazine, and Theater der Zeit. Caden is currently an associate professor and graduate directing option coordinator of The John Wells Directing Program at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Drama.

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