Contains five psychological dramas by the Swedish playwright which rely upon atmosphere and mood to convey meaning

Caryl Churchill's spare and resonant version of Strindberg's enigmatic masterpiece. Written in 1901, a mysterious amalgam of Freud, Alice in Wonderland and Strindberg's own private symbolism, A Dream Play follows the logic of a dream: A young woman comes from another world to see if life is really as difficult as people make it out to be. Characters merge into each other, locations change in an instant and a locked door becomes an obsessive recurrent image. As Strindberg wrote in his preface, he wanted 'to imitate the disjointed yet seemingly logical shape of a dream. Everything can happen, everything is possible and probable. Time and place do not exist.' This version of A Dream Play, from a literal translation by Charlotte Barslund, is by leading playwright Caryl Churchill. It was first performed in the Cottesloe auditorium of the National Theatre, London, in February 2005, in a production directed by Katie Mitchell, with additional material by Katie Mitchell and the company. Also included is an introduction by Caryl Churchill.

Playing for time explores connections between theatre time, the historical moment and fictional time. Geraldine Cousin persuasively argues that a crucial characteristic of contemporary British theatre is its preoccupation with instability and danger, and traces images of catastrophe and loss in a wide range of recent plays and productions. The diversity of the texts that are examined is a major strength of the book. In addition to plays by contemporary dramatists, Cousin analyses staged adaptations of novels, and productions of plays by Euripides, Strindberg and Priestley. A key focus is Stephen Daldry's award-winning revival of Priestley's An Inspector Calls, which is discussed in relation both to other Priestley 'time' plays and to Caryl Churchill's apocalyptic Far Away. Lost children are a recurring motif: Bryony Lavery's Frozen, for example, is explored in the context of the Soham murders (which took place while the play was in production at the National Theatre), whilst three virtually simultaneous productions of Euripides' Hecuba are interpreted with regard to the Beslan massacre of schoolchildren.

Tennessee Williams' plays are performed around the world, and are staples of the standard American repertory. His famous portrayals of women engage feminist critics, and as America's leading gay playwright from the repressive postwar period, through Stonewall, to the growth of gay liberation, he represents an important and controversial figure for queer theorists. Gross and his contributors have included all of his plays, a chronology, introduction and bibliography.

This book is an exploration of the linguistic, structural, historical, and thematic relationships of religion and drama. It is not an attempt to sacralize drama so that it becomes a substitute for religion, nor will it reduce religion to its aesthetic dimension. What does religion tell us about drama, and what does drama tell us about religion? What have been their inter-actions in our tradition? The conversation between religion and culture, drama and Christianity, needs to be ongoing. This book is a contribution to the dialogue, asking questions, pointing towards possible answers, and encouraging others to join in the conversation.

The plays in this volume are one-act dramas based on human situations as conceived and interpreted by Strindberg at a time when he was convinced human beings are essentially selfish, self-centered creatures. All of them have been presented successfully in Swedish and other Scandinavian theaters. The situations are surely typical: people's willingness to claim credit for a fellow human being's success, a mother's manipulation of her daughter's life, a wife's inddiference to her mate except when others obviously wan him, denigration of a mate for one's own purposes, indifference to rationalization of one's sins, playing with one's own and others' emotions, and the unhesitant destruction of a fellow human being, at least partly in the name of religion. Written toward the end of his pre-Inferno period, Strindberg labelled these plays "one-acters out of cynical life." ["En aktare. Ur det chniska livet"]. Translations of two other plays--The Stronger and The Bond--which belong to this group were included in Pre-Inferno Plays (University of Washington Press, 1970). In translating these plays, Walter Johnson has presented American versions, faithful to the original and expressed in languages as idiomatic and natural as the original Swedish.