Plays For Today

Contents: TI-JEAN AND HIS BROTHERS, AN ECHO IN THE BONE and MAN BETTER MAN

Plays for Today by Women A wide-ranging collection of plays by women dealing with contemporary subjects such as sexual abuse, recession, war, poverty and the complexity of modern women’s lives. Many roles for women and girls provided. Suitable for study or for performance or as part of courses in Women’s Studies or Feminist Theatre Studies. All the plays have been produced and performed in the UK to acclaim and are written by commissioned playwrights. “The expanse of subjects this short collection covers shows that women are not just writing about the kitchen sink, the claim so often levelled. This collection (provides) a snapshot of an exciting time for female writers” @17percent The Plays For A Button by Rachel Barnett: comic two hander about two friends and the lengths one will go to, to remain best friends. Yours Abundantly, From Zimbabwe by Gillian Plowman: a middle-aged woman decides to leave her comfy life in the UK and work in a school in Zimbabwe. Welcome To Ramallah by Sonja Linden and Adah Kay: two Jewish sisters are forced to confront the reality of what their forefathers have done to the Palestinians. From The Mouths Of Mothers by Amanda Stuart Fisher: a verbatim drama detailing the distressing stories of mothers who learned that their child has been abused. The Awkward Squad by Karen Young: a three-generational drama involving Northern women who are trying to live and work in recessionary Britain. Sweet Cider by Emteaz Hussain: In a rundown park, two teenage runaways Tazeem and Nosheen hang out, chatting to the boys and an old bag lady, trying to reconcile being British with their Pakistani cultural traditions. About the editors Cheryl Robson is an award-winning playwright and publisher who founded Aurora Metro Books over 20 years ago to develop and publish new writers in drama and fiction. She also established The Virginia Prize for Fiction in 2009 to promote emerging women novelists. Previously, she worked for the BBC, ran a theatre company and taught in higher education. Rebecca Gillieron is an editor and musician with various releases on independent labels in the US and UK. Keen to raise the profile of women and the arts, she has worked in publishing for fifteen years moving from Virgin and Penguin Books into independent publishing via The Womens Press, Marion Boyars and now Aurora Metro Books.

The standard location tool for full-length plays published in collections and anthologies in England and the United States since the beginning of the 20th century, Ottemiller's Index to Plays in Collections has undergone seven previous editions, the latest in 1988, covering 1900 through 1985. In this new edition, Denise Montgomery has expanded the volume to include collections published in the entire English-speaking world through 2000 and beyond. This new volume lists more than 3,500 new plays and 2,000 new authors, as well as birth and/or death information for hundreds of authors. Representing the largest expansion between editions, this updated volume is a valuable resource for libraries worldwide.

This anthology consists of ten plays from countries involved in the First World War, including plays from Germany and France never before available in translation. Representing a range of dramatic forms, from radio play to street-epic, from comic sketch to musical, this anthology includes plays from: Gertrude Stein, Muriel Box, Marion Wentworth Craig, Dorothy Hewett, Berta Lask, Marie Leneru, Wendy Lill, Alice Dunbar Nelson, and Christina Reid. Highly successful in their day, these plays demonstrate how women have attempted to use theatre to achieve social change. The collection explores the historical development of theatrical conventions and genres and the historical context of social and gender issues.

Ti-Jean and his Brothers was Derek Walcott's first venture into musical plays and is still his most popular work. A lilting St Lucian folk-tale, it tells the story of a poor family who dwell on the edge of a magical forest haunted by the devil's spirits. The brilliance of Walcott's writing draws us into the realms of fantasy where the actual and the miraculous collide. Dennis Scott's An Echo in the Bone is set during a traditional Nine-Night Ceremony held to honour the spirit of the dead. Shattering sequential time in a series of dreamlike episodes the play takes us back to the time of plantations and slavery - and the savage murder of the white estate owner. Who killed Mr. Charles? The answers lie deep in the racial memory, they 'echo in the bone'. The giddy atmosphere of carnival is the setting for Errol Hill's Man Better Man, a rumbustious, colourful comedy musical about stickfighters. With dance and song the battling troubadours and the calypsonian weave a tale of braver, superstition and fraudulence. When first performed the Times described it as 'a blazing electrifying feast of rhythm and colour'.