Play Groups Books

I have found this play very exciting to read, but the getting in was a little bit difficult. But I admire the variety of the vocabulary that Shaffer made use of. He handled a couple of topics, which are very interesting: I.e. the existence of god, different cultures and their organisation, religion and a motive that goes through the whole story: The word. Shaffer encourages the reader to make his own opinion about questions like: «Is it justified to break the word if you act in consciousness and for the good of your crew?»

Pizarro's problem as an illegitimate son and his existential questions are not discussed. Something that makes this play very special is the fact that Old Martin occurs time after time and tells about his experiences and the happenings, when he had been in Peru.

In short: + Interesting play with a demanding vocabulary - Hard to get in

A great play about the slaughter of the Incas, idealism lost, compromise and corruption. Excellent characterizations. Interesting subtext covers the pitfalls of imperialism. both Incan and Spanish.

Caveat: Longman Literature version (Editor: Graham-Adriani and Series Editor Blatchford, ISBN 0-582-06014-1) should be avoided. Vital and if not merely enriching stage directions are not included in this publication/edition.

Royal Hunt Of The Sun contains three tragedies: One of destruction of the great Inca empire; the tragedy of Pizarro, who destroys something for which he has been searching all his life, and the tragedy of Martin Ruiz, whose youthful idealism is destroyed by his experience in Peru. The main theme of this play which concerns the search for religion. All through the play Shaffer contrasts the beauty and high values of the Incas and the greed and ugliness of the Spanish.

I bought this because the Irish brogues were sometimes a little hard to understand on-stage, plus I wanted to relive that delicious second-act card game again (the only way to do that with a play is to read the script). It's great seeing how the actors brought scenes and words to life. I've already loaned this book to others who saw the play before it closed on Broadway this month.

The living rooms in "The Homecoming" by Harold Pinter, "The Lieutenant of Inishmore" by Martin McDonagh, and in this play, "The Seafarer" by Conor McPherson are as scroungy, grotty, and disreputable as the males who inhabit these dumpy premises. The house is north of Dublin. Some plays can be read and enjoyed as a partial substitute for seeing a live performance, but after reading this one, I realize it is essential to see a live presentation to get the full import of this play. It is an actor's dream for the current five man ensemble on Broadway because the stage business is as powerful as the lines.
There is a Faustian pact element to the story. The central focus is on Sharky, a loser, who lives with his blind brother. Two visitors and a mysterious fifth man, Mr. Lockhart, gather together Christmas Eve day and night and get extremely drunk. They play cards, money is lost, and the story opens up to the audience. Some of this is familiar territory, and the plot is not too complicated. Lockhart probably has the best lines, but the other characters would be a joy to watch. There is great comedy here along with the more serious stuff. The characters are beautifully crafted, and they are a decidedly odd bunch. Each one a piece of work in his own peculiar way.
As in most plays, secrets from the past are unearthed and become grist for the dramatist's mill. When Lockhart and Sharky are alone, Lockhart reminds him of a card game they had in the past. For these two and the audience the game of cards becomes a transforming experience. The play is well worth a read but try to see it on stage if at all possible. It would make a great movie or television play, but, I think, the audience would be limited.
Nine Lives Too Many
The Daemon in Our Dreams
The Rice Queen Spy
Clawed Back from the Dead

Sharky lives with his older brother Richard and a crony named Ivan in a coastal village north of Dublin. Richard and Ivan are constantly drunk; Sharky is uneasily sober. On Christmas Eve, they are visited by beer-swilling Nicky and his guest, Mr. Lockhart. Mr. Lockhart is the Devil. We know this because he tells us so. ("I'm the son of the morning. I'm the snake in the garden."). Twenty-five years ago he helped Sharky escape a manslaughter charge. Now he has come to collect his payment: Sharky's soul. Sharky can avoid damnation only by beating Mr. Lockhart in a poker game.

If you thought that Ingmar Bergman's conceit of a man playing chess with Death was self-conscious, portentous and cheap (and you were right), you may not be much more receptive to a man playing poker with Satan. This marriage of Faust and Friel doesn't work, not least because the author is more interested in the crapulous antics of Richard, Nicky and Ivan than in the state of Sharky's soul. Sharky's character and history are so sketchy that one wonders why the Devil should covet such a nebulous figure, or why we in the audience should care about his fate. As for the supposedly hilarious drunkards, they become tiresome after three minutes.

When I read A Woman of No Importance, I realized that I have read it before. Though, not by the same author. It is drastically similar to the French Play Le Fils Naturel, by Alexandre Dumas, jr. Though, it was a really nice play, it dragged in many places.

I've just started re-reading this play and I think it is one of the most beautiful works Wilde ever wrote. Mrs. Arbuthnot's speech at the end of Act Four, beginning "men don't know what mothers are" is one of the most beautiful pieces I've ever read in Wilde. It's a very ironic speech, considering it was written by a man, but it shows what a wonderful insight into women Wilde had. The play is essentially about morality and the conflict between a person's own, private sense of morality and the moral values imposed on us by society. Ultimately, Mrs. Arbuthnot is the character who most deserves our respect, precisely because she refuses to buy into the moral values of those around her. Reading it, I can just imagine how it would be performed, I even find myself acting the play out in my head, such is the power and force of Wilde's dialogue. This is a truly beautiful work which I highly recommend

I received the news of the availability of this rarely seen or recorded early Wilde morality play with great joy; in reading along with it at home and pencilling out the many parts omitted by Mr. Jarvis (who also reads Lord Illingworth in a George Sands purr) I arose in outrage at the fraud.

We have come to expect in every recording of Oscar Wilde an undue amount of abridgement, from the BBC productions in The Oscar Wilde Collection (The Importance of Being Earnest / The Picture of Dorian Gray / An Ideal Husband / Lady Windermere's Fan) whose most recommendable selection lies in his revelations concerning stock swindling and insider trading among the aristocracy in An Ideal Husband, despite its own abridgement, to the absolutely unwatchable Hollywood versions such as The Importance of Being Earnest (a Victorian woman receiving a posterior tattoo??) and An Ideal Husband.

Unfortunately Mr. Wilde is dimly misremembered and taught as light drawing room comedy and curious one liners, but this is not the case, as those were only a pretty icing upon a very deep and substantial cake of scathing and indeed revolutionary social commentary, as Mr. Wilde was a subversive and secret Irish nationalist using the British aristocracy's own language to undermine it, much as the Cherokee warrior Jimi destroyed a colonialist and anglo generation with their own rock and roll in vengeance for the brutal destruction of his own nation. But that is certainly another story for another day.

The reality of Wilde's opus clashes with our prejudices and thus we trim Mr. Wilde to fit our own poor misunderstanding. But most incomprehensible in this, Jarvis's present butchery of the Wildean substance is the loss of the well known and immortal line: "Moderation is a fatal thing, Lady Hunstanton. Nothing succeeds like excess."

The safest thing for properly understanding this play is to read it yourself, for instance, in the very convenient Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Collins Classics).

We begin here with an abridged radio play presentation before a rather stiff and crusty live audience. The opening passages remind one of Kierkegard's famous reference to death by trampling by geese as we hear the indistinguishable squawks of women imagining they are producing the honking sounds of the British aristocracy of one hundred and a quarter years ago. Indeed the cacophony grows so profuse and confused that the abridger finds the need to not only excise the best of Wilde's social commentary, but also to insert inappropriately into the mouths of his characters the stage directions and other addresses in order to indicate who is speaking when and where. Sir John would never tell his wife (she of the many ex's) directly he preferred sitting with Lady Stutterfield (of the characteristic repetitious manner of speech). Please follow this with book in hand at all times in order to avoid wandering lost.

And these are not the only insertions, as Jarvis finds it necessary to add brutally the word Chicago where it is not indicated in the script, but only alluded to, as if we might not know now of the great Chicago Exhibition. He excises classical allusions the modern hearer might not have learned and thus would feel put out or looked down upon (Wilde had after all won prizes for classical studies throughout his educational career), as in the Archdeacon's reference to Dorcas, here exiled as now unknown. The archdeacon, by the way is the most listenable and talented of any of these actors. Jim Norton of the equally criminally abridged and overwrought recording of James Joyce's Ulysses (Abridged) here appears as the pretentiously preaching Kelvil, MP.

Jarvis's greatest crime of all is the alteration of the ending and the insertion there of the final word from Lord Illingworth, and the concurrent reversal of Mrs. Arbuthnot's response. If Jarvis wished to alter the ending, why not take up on the Lord's sincere offer to reform from the life he took up, lost after losing the lady of his love as she left him, and his sincere promise to treat Mrs. Arbuthnot with all due deference and respect and form a happy family with her and her son. That would be a modern ending satisfactory to all, if you must alter the ending, Mr. Jarvis.

Indeed, the overlooked mystery of this play is that the Lord is always pictured as the villian, yet he had indeed twenty years earlier offered to marry her, and his mother had indeed offered to support her, but she had fled, as she again does now, and yet she is the sympathetic character. What is Wilde telling us in a deeply inscrutable manner?

Please read this play in its entirety. At the time matters of child custody and single moms were not as common as now, and quite distractingly shocking, and so this play has much to tell us now. It is indeed a source of discussion for a great many moral and social and gender issues. Unfortunately Jarvis excises nearly all reference to the servants and their comings and goings and their direct mistreatment by the aristocracy, so all reference to class struggle is heard here only in pretty little speeches rather than in action.

In sum: READ THE BOOK!

At first glance it seems to be somewhat daunting choosing which game to select for a given occasion. However, this book has proved to be an invaluable resource in creating hours of fun, laughter and overcoming those quiet moments in which a group is still in the "getting to know" stages. I would recommned it to teachers, youth pastors or anyone who deals with large groups of people with whom rapport is crucial.

As an activity director for a camping and cottage resort, I found this book to feature one crowd pleaser after another. Not only are the activities enticing, the format (activities grouped for large and small groups as well as indoor and outdoor play) is particuarly user-friendly. A great buy and a great sequel to Play It!

Don't dismiss the complexity of these "simple" poems too early. Jo Carson's STORIES I AIN'T TOLD NOBODY YET gives voice to an often misunderstood culture, and when we listen to this voice, we learn that economic differences are overshadowed by similarities of dreams, wants, and concerns. Carson's collection of poems might be described as an oral history in verse. These aren't the rhyming poems of greetings cards or the poised verse of classic poetry anthology. These are poems in the style of someone talking to you, or, perhaps even more powerfully, the style of overhearing others in a candid conversation. (Carson gives credit to overhearing many of these dialogues.) The result is simple language addressing complex themes. Loosely divided into main sections like Family and Work, the poems center on rural peoples' perspectives. Sure, economic hardship is a common theme, but more universal themes of family, responsibility, and dignity are also addressed. Yes, the simple language of the poems allows for a quick read. But a reader would be wise to give the collection a second read. And a third. And so on. There are layers to these simple dialogues, and even lessons to be learned. Literature can sometimes bridge the gap of misunderstanding between groups, cultures, etc. Although simple in language, this is literature that can do just that.

Jo Carson lives and works in East Tennessee, and her work, in this book, has been taking overhard conversations around her, modifying the language into something that approximates folk poetry, and writing it down. Normally, this is a recipe for disaster. However, Carson's ear is finely-tuned enough that what comes out more often than not does resemble both rural dialect and poetry. And that in itself is more than enough reason to consider this a noteworthy book. But every once in a while, the stories she tells are the kind that tug at the heart without the naked appeal of obvious emotional manipulation (though there's certainly some of that here, too; if you go into this not expecting to find the cliched "boy, I wish people wouldn't treat East Tennessee folk like hicks," you're going to be disappointed-- but Carson does amnage to keep it to a minimum). A good, solid volume that's worth a quick read. ***

Regrettably, this book purports to have inside knowledge of the television industry but its own content belies that assertion. Much of the material is self-indulgent, a direct reflection on both the author and members of VQT. As a television insider myself, who has had numerous run-ins with these self-proclaimed arbiters of "quality", their uninformed perspectives turn what should be a book about the strength of the little guy into a skewed narrative by a wanna-be outsider pretending to be an insider. Readers looking for true insights into the world of television are better off with another piece of material.

This book tells how the television industry has failed to make quality programming a priority and what viewers may do about this. This book presents true and successful stories of how viewers banded together to demand superior television shows. This is not the story of how groups with political agendas sought to acheive their interests. It shows how viewers may praise quality and make their views known to the television industry so they will keep producing superior shows. The book's descriptions of how a few outraged people made a positive difference is enlightening. These were people upset that excellent shows such as "Cagney and Lacey", "Designing Women", "Seinfeld" and "China Beach" began with such low ratings that they were set for cancellation. It is remarkable to see how just a few people can organize many others to write television network executives and convince them to keep good TV shows. It is very rewarding to see the successes of their efforts, as these shows remained for several successful seasons. This is a great book. People interested in the television industry, case studies of successful organizing, and in reading how one person can make a difference will admire "The Story of Viewers for Quality Television".

Caro y además el libro vino un poco manchado y manoseado, sin la portada y contraportada con la imagen en la foto. Directamente el libro negro.

WOW! This book is absolutely electrifying. I was first turned on to Sam Shepard from reading "True West", one of his later amazing plays. As I read more and more I thought I had a good understanding of his writing: until I read this book. This book contains many of Shepard's earlier plays from the time he first landed in New York and, as his roommate Charles Mingus Jr. has said "Would go into a room with a ream of paper and come out two hours later with a finished play". If you have really enjoyed some of Shepard's later stuff, I definetly recommend this book to give you a fresh perspective on someone who literally turns "conventional theatre" upside down. If you are new to Shepard, you might want to tryhis later works first, only because they are easier to follow. These earlier works are very much like the "Beat generation"- throwing out speeches and sentences without punctuation, with tons of craziness happening on every inch of the stage. Sometimes the plays may be hard to follow, or confusing, but if you really "get" what Shepard is doing, you will love this book. Just be warned that all the plays are far from conventional theatre. If you are an "Our Town" type of person this isn't for you. If you enjoy Albee and Beckett, if you enjoy equal parts peace and chaos on stage, then check this book out.

Here is New York street Americana...
a tragedy of the black shattered family.
Two brothers abandoned by their father and mother
who have shifted and grafted on their own.
Lincoln shot by brother Booth...
Cain killed by Abel.
It reminded me very much of the Steinbeck short novel.
This play is a work not lovable but true.
John Steinbeck of Mice and Men

Ms. Park's play is one of the best plays I have read in a long time. her character's jump out at you and from the first page you are hooked into their lives. It focuses on the relationship between two bothers named Lincoln and Booth. The play has twists and turns and there is always a sense of danger looming. She develps both the characters and story in a very cleaver way, and uses metaphors for what a black man in today's white America may sometimes feel. As a white women I do not know what those feelings are like, but this play taught me what they may be like. read this play. It says something very important that we all should know.

ok, the first 90 or so pages of this play are great, i like the dynamics, the writting is good, the relationship between the brothers is well portrayed. Now this is a contemporary shakespearean tragedy, so the ending is pretty obvious, and your supposed to figure out what happens pretty early in the play, if you still dont want to know however stop reading.

THE ENDING SUCKS, it reminds me of the orignal ending of clerks, in which Dante dies in a robbery, Kevin Smith discovered that the only reason he ended it that way was because he didnt know how to end his movie and wasnt tallented enough to write a good ending yet. Now i think parks is tallented, but this could have been better. The manner in which everything unravells is just not believeable. Anyone can end a tragic play with the guy everyone knew was going to die dying. Now it takes much more tallent to not kill him off. When a main character dies in the last couple moments it sends an emotional wave at the audience, death always has that effect, they dont take the time to analyze things because they are overwhelmed with the emotion of the experience. Just because it evicts an emotion everyone comes to the conclussion that it was good, smart. Killing off a character is a great way to end a trajedy if you arent inspired enough to think of anything more tragic than death. I just finished reading 20 minutes ago so im not going to trash it anymore, upon further review i might warm up to it. As for now though, there is one major error in contintuity really that ruined the ending for me, if you catch it youl probably be left scratching your head too, and unless a light bulb goes off and i figure out what just happened, i cant suggest this book.

Parks' play is a well crafted drama about two brothers' lives smoothly built around their relationship with 3-card monte. She does a strong job of handling the darker aspects of sibling rivalry, poverty, and family. I mostly enjoyed Topdog/Underdog for its raw toughness and the way the two-character structure brought out the inner workings and different demons of the two brothers. While not the greatest play ever, it is a good, solid dramatic work and definitely worth reading.

About the only thing I wanted to do after seeing this was demand my money back. This has to be one of the most unimaginative plays I have ever seen. It reminded me of a really bad Saturday night live parody meets Friday part 2 but at the end the writer tried to make it poingnant by adding a death. I don't know why this was even printed. If I was a tree that lost my life to print this play I would come back as a ghost a haunt the publisher till his dying day.

It's interesting to see Mailer's take on the Hollywood witchhunts, directors testifying before Congress and forced to name names, and the goings-on of the Hollywood rich and famous. But the first-person framing device is tiresome and cliched, and Mailer has done much much better. Read this if you are a big Mailer fan or love Hollywood in the 50s, otherwise I'd take a pass and move on to greener pastures.

At one time, as with Ernest Hemingway, I tried to get my hands on everything that Norman Mailer wrote. In his prime he held out promise to match Hemingway as the pre-eminent male American prose writer. Mailer certainly had the ambition, ego and skill to do so. In his inevitable search to write the great American novel, at least for his generation, I do not believe, that he was successful. The Deer Park is an early attempt to tackle that goal and while there are flashes of brilliance there is far too much self-consciousness on making a great American novel. That most dramatically got reflected in the tinniness of his characters, male and female, and reduced the book to a fairly ordinary look at a slice of the American pie.

Certainly the subject matter of the novel is an almost surefire way to get attention. Put Hollywood-types in 'exile' in the desert, add wayward movie stars, starlets and wannabes, and a male lead character who is not sure what he wants to be but is sure that the stars shine for him somewhere and you have the makings of a great American novel. Throw in, almost obligatory for a `fifties' novel and for a self-described leftist like Mailer , the tensions surrounding the `red scare', Hollywood- style, and the cultural clamp down that imposed on American society and one should be onto something. But, strangely, Mailer gets bogged down in the sexual escapades of the main characters and never gets to the heart of the real question that the novel poses- How the hell does one safeguard his or her creative expression without selling out to every conceivable pressure that comes along? It did not work, but nice try Norman.

I have to hand it to Mr. Mailer. A dose of respect that is. His ambitions were large, and his skill at wrapping my mind around them has proven energetic, unguarded and detailed. The Deer Park was only the second of his works I've read (the other being The Gospel According to the Son)and one that I am glad to have finished. It took a while. Too long.
For every notion that the Palm Springs-like resort he created in Desert d'Or was a bold Hollywood vision of our pre-celebrity tabloid saturated world of unending scandal and duplicity, there was a lack of interest in the very meat of his message. The depraved and the damned may be seen as the mighty among us, but their interior doesn't fare very well through Mailer's extensive, overwritten prose. Passages are brilliantly evocative, tense and emotionally resonant, but they are separated by swathes of self-consciousness hoping to impress.
The heart of the matter is fickle, I didn't care for the characters, their doings were not very interesting, I wondered more if these people were based on real things, and the name Sergius O'Shaughnessy, self given, symbolic and absurd poses a hiccup every time.
But I still plan on reading more of Mr. Mailer. R.I.P.

I agree with the reviewer who said that this novel is lacking any form of life. It is boring and trite and I couldn't finish it either. I usually always finish a book even if I'm not particularly enjoying it but this was beyond endurance. This is the only one of Mailer's novels I have attempted to read. I had seen Mailer interviewed a few times and this book confirmed my suspicion that he is a bag of wind. Mailer is an overblown, immature, egotistical narcissist.

This unfortunate book suffers from an acute case of aphoristic intoxication, evidenced in such pithy morsels as: "like most cynics he was profoundly sentimetal about sex" and "our marriage was the meeting of zero and zero."

Although such modestly entertaining observations kept me plodding along, the book is a lame attempt at armchair beat philosophizing, ensnarled in a wholly unengaging plot and unbelievably boring characters. I first read about this greatest of books in Joe Ezterhas's biography, and it makes sense that he would consider its shallow machisimo the stuff of masterpieces.

Avoid this. Reread Day of the Locust. Recommended for only the most die-hard of Hollywood historians or cultural completists.

full of emotions. if you've ever gone through. ..anything. . .in your life there will be a monologue to accentuate those feelings for an audience. if nothing else the monologues themselves are quite interesting to read, so simply looking through it for a suitable monologue should be enjoyable.

This book has interesting monologues to read; but as far as using it to find audition material. . .forget it. It is not clearly organized. I like monologue books that are divided into serious, comedic, etc, so I can go straight to the type of monologue I want. But this book is full of monologues with obscure chapter headings that make absolutely no sense. This is not a resourceful book. . .I would use it only for entertainment purposes, but then again, if I time for that, I'd rather read the entire play, rather than an excerpt.

I'm just beginning acting classes and I just picked this book by simply leafing through. When I got home and actually looked through it, I became so nervous because I couldn't find anything I felt I could use. If you have the chance, look at the book before you buy it.