I will ever be grateful for the almost psychic gift that enabled me to write Blithe Spirit in five days during one of the darkest years of the war.' Written in 1941, Blithe Spirit remained the longest-running comedy in British Theatre for three decades thereafter. Plotted around the central role of one of Coward's best loved characters, a spirit medium Madame Arcati (originally performed by Margaret Rutherford) Coward's play is an escapist comedy about a man whose two previous wives return to haunt him. "A minor comic masterpiece of the lighter sort" Professor Allardyce Nicoll

"An exhilarating, multi-layered new play."—The Guardian "Stirring and stylishly told . . . McCraney's crispest and most confident work."—Daily News "Greatly affecting. . . . It takes a brave writer to set his language against the plaintive beauty of the hymns and spirituals . . . but McCraney's speech holds its own, locating poetry even in casual vernacular and again demonstrating his gift for simile and metaphor."—The Village Voice The Charles R. Drew Prep School for Boys is dedicated to the creation of strong, ethical black men. Pharus wants nothing more than to take his rightful place as leader of the school's legendary gospel choir, but can he find his way inside the hallowed halls of this institution if he sings in his own key? Known for his unique brand of urban lyricism, Tarrell Alvin McCraney follows up his acclaimed trilogy The Brother/Sister Plays with this affecting portrait of a gay youth trying to find the courage to let the truth about himself be known. Set against the sorrowful sounds of hymns and spirituals, Choir Boy premiered at the Royal Court in London before receiving its Off-Broadway premiere in summer 2013 to critical and popular acclaim. Tarell Alvin McCraney is author of The Brother/Sister Plays: The Brothers Size, In the Red and Brown Water, and Marcus; Or the Secret of Sweet. Other works include Wig Out!, set in New York's drag clubs, and The Breach, which deals with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. His awards include the 2009 Steinberg Playwrights Award and the Paula Vogel Playwriting Award.

Historians and students of American avant-garde cinema often overlook the films of the 1920s through the early 1940s, considering them mere derivatives of their European counterparts. In fact, the American films possess an eclecticism, innovation, and naivete all their own. Marshaling his broad cinematic and cultural knowledge, editor Jan-Christopher Horak has compiled in Lovers of Cinema a ground-breaking group of articles on this neglected film period. With one exception, all are original to this volume, and many are the first to treat comprehensively such early filmmakers as Mary Ellen Bute, Theodore Huff, and Douglass Crockwell.

Brings together key writings on American avant-garde cinema to explore the long tradition of underground filmmaking from its origins in the 1920s to the work of contemporary film and video artists.

THE STORY: The fifth play in a cycle of plays about the author's Irish family, THE STEWARD OF CHRISTENDOM is a freely imagined portrait of the author's great-grandfather, Thomas Dunne, the last Chief Superintendent of the Dublin Metropolitan Police