Famous Americans

Famous Americans
Author: Liza Schafer
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Total Pages: 204
Release: 1994-12
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9780590494748

Ben Franklin...Harriet Tubman...Lewis and Clark.... Share their inspiring stories through these fact-based, original plays. Includes background information, discussion questions, extension activities, and literature links. For use with Grades 4-8.

Laugh Lines

Laugh Lines
Author: Eric Lane
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 528
Release: 2008-12-10
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 0307487326

This one-of-a-kind anthology features thirty-six hilarious short plays by major American playwrights and emerging new voices, all guaranteed to send readers and audiences into peals of laughter. From the surrealistic wit of Steve Martin's "The Zig-Zag Woman" to the biting political satire of Steven Dietz's "The Spot," from Christopher Durang's wonderfully loopy "Wanda's Visit" to Shel Silverstein's supremely twisted "The Best Daddy," there's something in here to make everyone laugh. There are plays for casts of all sizes, from monologues to large ensembles, with diverse and challenging roles for actors of every age and type. Even the titles are funny: Mark O'Donnell's "There Shall Be No Bottom (a bad play for worse actors)," Elaine May's "The Way of All Fish," and Alan Ball's "Your Mother's Butt." A bonanza for theatergoers, performers, and comedy fans, Laugh Lines will bring down the house. From the Trade Paperback edition.

The Indian Wants the Bronx

The Indian Wants the Bronx
Author: Israel Horovitz
Publisher: Dramatists Play Service Inc
Total Pages: 52
Release: 1968-10
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 9780822205685

THE STORY: An East Indian gets lost on his first day in New York as two teenage punks find him waiting at a lonely bus stop. He cannot understand English, and the boys have some fun with him-at least it starts out as fun. But little by little, as the minutes go by and the bus doesn't come, they get bored; then annoyed; then vicious. It is the very pointlessness of their brutality that makes the play-with its awful final image of the Indian jabbering into a dead phone-so disturbing. We are convinced that this is exactly what would happen at this particular bus stop on this particular night; we see, again, that violence in the big city is as much a child of ennui as of anger. And, as the nightmare spell of the play takes hold, and the boys torture their victim with increasing relish, we are brought to a shocking awareness of how thin the veneer of civilization can be-of how close beneath the surface of all men lurks the primitive impulse to hurt and humiliate those whose very helplessness and inability to communicate can only frustrate and enrage.