Arjun Raina- Nine Contemporary Plays with stories from India, and the diaspora in Austria and Australia. This is the first-ever anthology of plays by a South Asian playwright and actor Arjun Raina. Arjun’s plays have been commissioned by, and performed at some of the finest theatre festivals of Europe, including the Zurich Specktakel, the Vienna Festwochen, Linz 09, the Bharat Rang Mahotsav, and the International theatre festival of Kerala. It encompasses a two-decade-long theatrical exploration of the lives of contemporary Indians, both in the home country, and in the diaspora of Austria and Australia. The works are a chronicle and critique of political, and contemporary social relationships in South Asia and the diaspora. The collection is bookended by plays concerned with two cataclysmic world events. The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre which is the backdrop for the first play, A Terrible Beauty is Born. Camp Darwin, the second last play in the anthology evokes a life lived in an Australian Quarantine Centre, during the present Coronavirus Pandemic. From the phenomenon of International Call Centres in India, to the political and economic fallout of a fast globalising India as played out over the bodies of its citizens, to the rise of Hindu Nationalism. Also the emotional trauma of Indian migrants in Austria, to issues of race and prejudice as experienced by the Indian Hawkers in 19th Century Australia. The authors own experience as a new migrant to Australia, the plays chronicle and critique the steady rise and increasing presence of South Asian/ Indian characters on the contemporary global creative consciousness. These Indian characters engage with American, Austrian, and Australian characters making for diverse and inclusive casts.

Jewish theatre—plays about and usually by Jews—enters the twenty-first century with a long and distinguished history. To keep this vibrant tradition alive, the National Foundation for Jewish Culture established the New Play Commissions in Jewish Theatre in 1994. The commissions are awarded in an annual competition. Their goal is to help emerging and established dramatists develop new works in collaboration with a wide variety of theatres. Since its inception, the New Play Commissions has contributed support to more than seventy-five professional productions, staged readings, and workshops. This anthology brings together nine commissioned plays that have gone on to full production. Ellen Schiff and Michael Posnick have selected works that reflect many of the historical and social forces that have shaped contemporary Jewish experience and defined Jewish identity—among them, surviving the Holocaust, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the lives of newcomers in America, Israel, and Argentina. Following a foreword by Theodore Bikel, the editors provide introductory explanations of the New Play Commissions and an overview of Jewish theatre. The playwrights comment on the genesis of their work and its production history.

Contains the scripts of nine significant plays of the modern theater, written between 1944 and 1975 by playwrights including Harold Pinter, Bertolt Brecht, Samuel Beckett, Friedrich Durrenmatt, Jean Genet, Eugene Ionesco, Slawomir Mrozek, Tom Stoppard, and David Mamet.

Here are six plays that stand as landmarks of the modern drama: Chekhov’s THREE SISTERS repeats, in terms of a handful of people, the spasms of a dying society. Isben’s THE MASTER BUILDER is the tragedy of the modern romantic, caught between desire and reality. Shaw’s MRS. WARREN’S PROFESSION shocked England and America; this play was the first honest attempt in our era to deal with prostitution. O’Casey’s RED ROSES FOR ME is about a Protestant worker of Dublin who is a symbol of the ravaging conflicts in Ireland—and in man. Williams’s THE GLASS MENAGERIE is a tender, despairing portrait of two women, one lost in the past, the other in herself. Miller’s ALL MY SONS is a biting though compassionate, indictment of success through moral betrayal. We call these plays “modern.” But the they are high art, and are written with devotion to truth, and those two qualities have already made them timeless.

Contemporary Plays from Iraq is a ground-breaking collection of Middle Eastern drama translated into English for the very first time. With works from both established and emerging male and female playwrights, written in country and in exile, this volume offers current Iraqi perspectives on a war and occupation that have significantly impacted the Middle East and the rest of the world. Dealing exclusively with contemporary plays originating from Iraq, this anthology gives under-studied Arabic political theatre the attention it deserves and provides a general introduction that sets the plays within their cultural and historical contexts. The plays are preceded by introductions from the playwrights themselves, further enriching each piece for the enjoyment and understanding of the reader. The volume is introduced and translated by James Al-Shamma, Assistant Professor at Belmont University, US, and A. Al-Azraki, an Iraqi playwright.

When Gloria passes away, it falls to her British-born children to host the traditional Jamaican Nine Night celebration. Family and friends, familiar and unfamiliar, arrive to celebrate the life of the woman who connects them all and deal with unfinished business along the way. Nine Night is at once moving and raucously funny. Gordon paints the rituals of grief, the tensions of family and the complexities of identity with an acute eye and razor-sharp wit.