A double-volume of plays by acclaimed playwright Will Arbery that explore communities of outsiders who strive to help one another persevere in the face of despair. In this two-play volume, acclaimed playwright Will Arbery explores the dynamics within tight-knit communities of outsiders working together to persevere against despair, whether intimate or cosmic. From wildly different angles, Corsicana and Evanston Salt Costs Climbing both examine the shape-shifting specters of grief, the pull of desire and dreams, and the universal human need for receiving and giving care.

A double-volume of plays by acclaimed playwright Will Arbery that explore communities of outsiders who strive to help one another persevere in the face of despair. In the small town of Corsicana, Texas, two half-siblings--a woman with Down Syndrome named Ginny and Christopher, an aspiring filmmaker--are adrift following their mother's recent death. When close family friend Justice introduces the siblings to a reclusive local artist named Lot, the four slowly form an unlikely yet powerful bond that reshapes them all in necessary and surprising ways. This delicate quartet examines the long-lasting scars of grief, as well as the universal human need to care and be cared for. In Evanston Salt Costs Climbing, Basil and Peter spend long nights during the winters in Evanston, IL driving a salting truck, passing the time by talking about the increasingly harsh weather outside and their own internal turmoil. Their supervisor Jane Maiworm tries to boost morale by reminding them of the quiet heroism of public service, but Jane herself is privately struggling with the possibility of adopting a new technology that would undoubtedly be better for the environment--but would also put Basil and Peter out of a job. A surreal and sensitive play that gazes unflinchingly into the chasm of despair, suggesting that crisis, both climatic and personal, can only be reckoned with when faced head-on.

“Flawless… A work of singular distinction, one for which the word ‘remark­able’ is an understatement. Arbery is a greatly talented writer who has given us a drama as exciting and challenging—nay, daring—as any new play I’ve ever reviewed.” —Terry Teachout, Wall Street Journal Finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Drama Night. Wyoming. Four young conservatives have gathered to toast the newly inducted pres­ident of their tiny Catholic college. Their reunion spirals into spiritual chaos and clashing generational politics, becoming less a celebration than a vicious fight to be understood. On a dark night, in the middle of America, Will Arbery’s haunting play speaks to the heart of a country at war with itself.

Winters keep getting worse in Evanston, IL, where salt truck drivers Peter and Basil battle the ice and snow and pass the time with jokes and stories. But what's with this creeping sense of dread? Is it because their boss Maiworm has noble visions of new green technology that would make their jobs obsolete? Or is there a more terrifying warning calling out from under these roads? At least they have each other, right? Pulitzer Prize finalist Will Arbery confronts humanity's darkest fears with humor, warmth, and the fortitude of municipal public servants in this play about climate and change. "Arbery is one of the theater's greatest listeners, able to hear and reproduce the subtle and deeply specific ways individuals reveal themselves and their relationships to others with language." - The New York Times Magazine "In a great piece of art, you'll have one moment where the truth will punch through. But in a profoundly generous piece of art, like Evanston - a play that is theoretical, painful, deep, and hysterically funny - those moments of truth keep punching through and through and through." - BOMB Magazine "A pitch-dark comedy... Arbery is the playwright of the moment... writing about issues that tend to lead to indulgent hopelessness. ...But what if looking right into the heart of catastrophe could actually get us to act?" - The New Yorker

Harry Kondoleon has said his plays are "sad, scary, funny." Though his work has been compared to that of Joe Orton and Oscar Wilde, John Guare and Christopher Durang, his acute and elegant voice has from the first been distinctively his own. Kondoleon's tragicomedies are peopled by extremists, their behavior bizarre. And yet these curious characters are driven by the most familiar of passions. Abandonment and betrayal define their pasts, shadow their present. They are needy and lonely and full of desire. They seek transcendence, and this impossible, fundamental longing takes forms both common and strange. These plays are not only jet-black comedies. They are fairy tales, fables, passion plays, masquerades. Kondoleon's intensely theatrical sensibility is, finally, romantic. He sees the contemporary world clearly; he also sees other worlds: prior, within, beyond. This volume also includes: Christmas on Mars, The Vampires, Slacks and Tops and Anteroom.

Someday is a powerful new play by award-winning playwright Drew Hayden Taylor. The story in Someday, though told through fictional characters and full of Taylor's distinctive wit and humour, is based on the real-life tragedies suffered by many Native Canadian families.Anne Wabung's daughter was taken away by children's aid workers when the girl was only a toddler. It is Christmastime 35 years later, and Anne's yearning to see her now-grown daughter is stronger than ever.When the family is finally reunited, however, the dreams of neither women are fulfilled.The setting for the play is a fictional Ojibway community, but could be any reserve in Canada, where thousands of Native children were removed from their families in what is known among Native people as the "scoop-up" of the 1950s and 1960s. Somedayis an entertaining, humourous, and spirited play that packs an intense emotional wallop.

The master of ancient Greek comic drama, Aristophanes combined slapstick, humour and cheerful vulgarity with acute political observations. In The Frogs, written during the Peloponnesian War, Dionysus descends to the Underworld to bring back a poet who can help Athens in its darkest hour, and stages a great debate to help him decide between the traditional wisdom of Aeschylus and the brilliant modernity of Euripides. The clash of generations and values is also the object of Aristophanes’ satire in The Wasps, in which an old-fashioned father and his loose-living son come to blows and end up in court. And in The Poet and the Women, Euripides, accused of misogyny, persuades a relative to infiltrate an all-women festival to find out whether revenge is being plotted against him.