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"Each play I see by Phyllis Nagy confirms me in the belief that she is the finest playwright to have emerged in the 1990s" (Alistair Macaulay, Financial Times) Weldon Rising: Downtown New York. The temperature is soaring. In the meat-packing district, Natty Weldon's lover is casually butchered by a homicidal homophobe. The witnesses do not intervene. Natty flees in terror, two lesbians watch from their apartment window and a flamboyant transvestite prostitute cowers in the street below. But life changes for them after the murder. Disappeared: Sarah Casey, a travel agent who has never been anywhere, meets the mysterious Elston Rupp in a bar in New York's Hell's Kitchen. They walk out together and she is never seen again. Was she murdered, has she escaped from the city of loners, or has she simply vanished? Nagy is "the laconic laureate of this spiritual wasteland" (Paul Taylor, Independent)

Published to coincide with the world premiere of Phyllis Nagy's new play at the Hampstead Theatre, this book contains 2 of her previously written plays, Weldon Rising, her stunning debut, and Disappeared, which won the 1992 Mobil Playwriting competition.

"Young playwrights don't come much hotter than Phyllis Nagy" (Daily Telegraph) Includes her three Royal Court -performed plays Weldon Rising "Here is the best new play I have seen in many months...This play is exciting because it is well written, unusually constructed and morally serious." (Financial Times); in Butterfly Kiss "Nagy captures the texture of a life and writes short, vivid, often disturbingly erotic scenes...it's a play that leaves me proclaiming Nagy a writer of real talent" (Guardian), Disappeared (winner of the Mobil Prize,1995) "A piece that gets right under your skin...There's no neat solution to Nagy's conundrum, just a fog of fear, despair, and most remarkably of all, a final mirage of escape. Spine-tingling stuff" (Daily Telegraph) The Strip, "kaleidoscopic and hugely accomplished dissection of fate, love and chance" (Independent) "Each play I see by Phyllis Nagy confirms me in the belief that she is the finest playwright to have emerged in the 1990s" (Financial Times)

Theatre in Crisis? Performance Manifestos for a New Century is a wide-ranging look at the state of contemporary theater practice, economics, and issues related to identity, politics, and technology. The volume offers a snapshot dissection of where theater is, where it has been and where it might be going through the voices of established and emerging theater artists and scholars from the UK, US, and elsewhere. Contributors: Maria M. Delgado & Caridad Svich • Oliver Mayer, Jorge Cortiñas, Neena Beber, & Craig Lucas • Jim Carmody • Roberta Levitow • Peter Lichtenfels & Lynette Hunter • Michael Billington • Claire H. Macdonald • Anna Furse • Phyllis Nagy • Max Stafford-Clark • Len Berkman • DD Kugler • Tori Haring-Smith • John London • Kia Corthron • Alice Tuan • Ricardo Szwarcer • Peter Sellars • Dragan Klaic • Lisa D’Amour • Paul Heritage • Matthew Causey • Andy Lavender • Jon Fosse • Erik Ehn • Matthew Maguire • Shelley Berc • Ruth Margraff • Martin Epstein • Mac Wellman • Goat Island

A bitterly funny and chillingly surreal look at the soulless poverty of urban life.

Discussing more than 80 full-length plays, this volume provides an overview of the most important and memorable theatrical works of crime and detection produced between 1975 and 2000. Each entry includes a plot synopsis, production data, and the opinions of well-known and respected critics and scholars.

"Each play I see by Phyllis Nagy confirms me in the belief that she is the finest playwright to have emerged in the 1990s" (Alistair Macaulay, Financial Times) Nagy's latest play is a blend of chilling humour and surrealism, interconnected issues of sex, truth, sincerity, psychology and mystery. "Whereas much contemporary playwriting is egregious, anorexic, short-winded and uncluttered, Nagy writes sinuously and elegantly, working towards a theatrical coalescence of plot, dialogue and swiftly changing scenic representation that is as exciting as it is unusual" (Michael Coveney)

Blasted: Cast gender - mixed; number - 2 males, 1 female (total 3); size - small; ages - adults; length - 5 scenes. Depiction of rape, torture and violence in civil war.

Alternatives Within the Mainstream II follows from the first volume’s dedication to a critical appreciation of and a tracing of trajectories of the theatres of our Others on the British stage. The first volume Alternatives Within the Mainstream: British Black and Asian Theatres traced a history of Black and Asian British plays, playwrights, theatre companies and theatre voices. The two volumes celebrate the plurality on the post-war British stage in terms of class, gender, race and sexualities. Alternatives Within the Mainstream II: Queer Theatres in Post-war Britain is an introduction to queer sexualities and their presence on the post-war British stage. From an introduction which addresses the possibilities of an undoing of repressiveness in desiring another, this volume charts a history of queer on the British stage, from a climate of sexual repressiveness and criminalisation, to a period of legal acceptance of homosexual desire. It covers gay, les, trans and queer British theatres, the influence of American queer theatre, AIDS consciousness, black queer theatre and television drama. Alternatives Within the Mainstream II: Queer Theatres in Post-war Britain is aimed as an introductory text which introduces the several plays, playwrights, theatre companies and queer theorists to students and scholars of contemporary queer British theatres. This book is dedicated to Anthony Blair and the Labour government for bringing in the Civil Partnerships Act.

"Joe Penhall belongs to the new wave of dramatists that has flooded British theatre with exciting work in recent years . . . I have a hunch that his might prove the more enduring talent" (Daily Telegraph) Some Voices: 'The most thrilling playwriting debut in years. . .The writing is razor-sharp, sensitive, quietly eloquent, full of the touchingly drab poetry of lost lives' (Sunday Times); Pale Horse: 'His second Court play is as compelling and extraordinary as his first . . .as taut, tight and atmospheric as Macbeth' (Observer)