The seven one-act plays in this collection were first performed in the New Plays Festival at Gardner-Webb University in 2004. The Festival is an initiative of the theater program at GWU dedicated to developing new plays and encouraging early-career playwrights. Different Dialects is a dance-inspired exploration of a married couple's journey into mid-life. Equal Opportunity Employer is an eccentric tale of mayhem and madness in the life of a talent agent. Good Help employs a film noir motif to spoof the end of the world. Around the Horn is a tale of second chances played out on the baseball diamond. Seaglass is an existential comedy about two bums on life's journey to find meaning. Doctors Like Boats is a riotous comedy of wit and dialogue set in a Doctor's office. The Translation explores the human aspects of privacy invasion in a new age of terror and electronic surveillance.

Max Forrestal is going to fail biology if he doesn't complete a 20-page paper on extinction by 2pm on Tuesday, but his mother, Lily, is dying of cancer, and school is the last thing on his mind. His father, Ellery, a biologist obsessed with saving a rare Bolivian insect, is incapable of dealing with his wife's impending death, or his son's distress. Max's biology teacher, Khim Phan, tries to figure out why Max is failing the class. Helping Max, however, pushes Khim into a magical journey of his own, from the Cambodian fields of his youth into the undiscovered country beyond.

The six one-act plays in this collection were first performed in the New Plays Festival at Gardner-Webb University in 2005. The Festival is an initiative of the theater program at GWU dedicated to developing new plays and encouraging early-career playwrights. Belt Play is a serious exploration of the aftermath of child abuse. The dark comedy Chess Club is an eccentric tale of survival and cannibalism. Brainstorm spoofs the world of corporate business and its excessive investment in stupidity. Small, Medium, Large is a riotous comedy exposing the folly behind coffee shop cup sizes. Curiosity Kills is a ridiculous comedy about friendship and the untimely death of a cat. The Old Man and His Will explores the meaninglessness of a man's life devoted to the pursuit of money.

His films In the Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbors both gained critical renown for their biting satire and caustic wit. Now, with The Distance from Here, he has written his most riveting play yet, an intense look at the dark side of American suburbia. With little to occupy their time other than finding a decent place to hang out—the zoo, the mall, the school parking lot—Darrell and Tim are two American teenagers who lack any direction or purpose in their lives. When Darrell’s suspicion about the faithlessness of his girlfriend is confirmed and Tim comes to her defense, there is nothing to brake their momentum as all three speed toward disaster.

Abby, a precocious emo-goth teenager, orchestrates a surprise reunion for her mother Tanya and birth father Tom, with the help of her mom's fiance/healer John. Hoping to provoke long-lasting reconciliation between her parents before her high school graduation, Abby's plans completely derail when Tom arrives with his new girlfriend Alisha. Can this family confront their past traumas, "deal and heal?"

Earth Matters on Stage: Ecology and Environment in American Theater tells the story of how American theater has shaped popular understandings of the environment throughout the twentieth century as it argues for theater’s potential power in the age of climate change. Using cultural and environmental history, seven chapters interrogate key moments in American theater and American environmentalism over the course of the twentieth century in the United States. It focuses, in particular, on how drama has represented environmental injustice and how inequality has become part of the American environmental landscape. As the first book-length ecocritical study of American theater, Earth Matters examines both familiar dramas and lesser-known grassroots plays in an effort to show that theater can be a powerful force for social change from frontier drama of the late nineteenth century to the eco-theater movement. This book argues that theater has always and already been part of the history of environmental ideas and action in the United States. Earth Matters also maps the rise of an ecocritical thought and eco-theater practice – what the author calls ecodramaturgy – showing how theater has informed environmental perceptions and policies. Through key plays and productions, it identifies strategies for artists who want their work to contribute to cultural transformation in the face of climate change.

Based at Shepherd University, in West Virginia, the Contemporary American Theater Festival is nationally and internationally recognized as a home for playwrights and the development and production of new plays. The Festival makes it a priority to celebrate and produce playwrights with strong, distinct voices, with a core value to tell diverse stories. This anthology of work provides plays that speak to one of the most compelling virtues of artists everywhere – freedom of speech. A necessary volume of women playwrights' work, ranging from a two-time Obie Award-winning author to emerging writers just beginning their careers, it represents a group of women who vary in age, race and sexual orientation and offers an invitation to artistic leaders, scholars and students to embrace gritty, thought-provoking new dramatic work. Edited by The Festival's Producing Directors Peggy McKowen and Ed Herendeen, this anthology features an introduction by Pulitzer Prize-winner Lynn Nottage. Each of the five powerful plays is followed by an informative and discursive playwright interview conducted by Sharon J. Anderson that contextualizes and develops the works within the wider context of the annual festival. The plays include: Gidion's Knot by Johnna Adams The Niceties by Eleanor Burgess Memoirs of a Forgotten Man by D.W Gregory Dead and Breathing by Chisa Hutchinson 20th Century Blues by Susan Miller