New Downtown Now: An Anthology Of New Theater From Downtown New York

At a time when most serious drama being written and produced for the American stage aspires only to mainstream acceptance and high-toned mediocrity, an innovative new generation of playwrights based in New York City has emerged, crafting works that challenge and undermine the conventional structure, language, and characterization of commercial theater while rejecting outdated notions of the avant-garde. New Downtown Now brings together ten new works that exemplify the playfulness, excitement, and possibilities of the theater. Characterized by fragmenting structure, hypnotic rhythms, kaleido-scopic imagery, unpredictable characters, and lyrical language, these plays resemble puzzles from which the writers are teasing revelations. Though disparate in subject matter and style, with characters ranging from a sushi chef to a soldier and settings from a taxicab to a live television broadcast, these highly original plays share a commitment to formal experimentation that places them beyond the psychological clichés of the majority and the cold condescension of postmodernism. The anthology includes Interim by Barbara Cassidy; Tragedy: a tragedy by Will Eno; Nine Come by Elana Greenfield; Shufu-Sachiko and Enoshima Island by Madelyn Kent; The Appeal by Young Jean Lee; The Vomit Talk of Ghosts by Kevin Oakes; Ajax (por nobody) by Alice Tuan; Apparition, an uneasy play of the underknown by Anne Washburn; Demon Baby by Erin Courtney.Mac Wellman is the author of numerous plays and the recipient of three Obie awards, most recently in 2003 for lifetime achievement. He is professor of playwriting at Brooklyn College. Young Jean Lee is a playwright and director, and member of the Obie award-winning company 13P. Jeffrey M. Jones is a playwright and curator of the Obie award-winning Little Theater at Tonic in New York.

Literature & Fiction

Lee, Young Jean

Wellman, Mac

Dramas & Plays

Univ. of Minnesota Press

At a time when most serious drama being written and produced for the American stage aspires only to mainstream acceptance and high-toned mediocrity, an innovative new generation of playwrights based in New York City has emerged, crafting works that challenge and undermine the conventional structure, language, and characterization of commercial theater while rejecting outdated notions of the avant-garde. New Downtown Now brings together ten new works that exemplify the playfulness, excitement, and possibilities of the theater. Characterized by fragmenting structure, hypnotic rhythms, kaleido-scopic imagery, unpredictable characters, and lyrical language, these plays resemble puzzles from which the writers are teasing revelations. Though disparate in subject matter and style, with characters ranging from a sushi chef to a soldier and settings from a taxicab to a live television broadcast, these highly original plays share a commitment to formal experimentation that places them beyond the psychological clichés of the majority and the cold condescension of postmodernism. The anthology includes Interim by Barbara Cassidy; Tragedy: a tragedy by Will Eno; Nine Come by Elana Greenfield; Shufu-Sachiko and Enoshima Island by Madelyn Kent; The Appeal by Young Jean Lee; The Vomit Talk of Ghosts by Kevin Oakes; Ajax (por nobody) by Alice Tuan; Apparition, an uneasy play of the underknown by Anne Washburn; Demon Baby by Erin Courtney.Mac Wellman is the author of numerous plays and the recipient of three Obie awards, most recently in 2003 for lifetime achievement. He is professor of playwriting at Brooklyn College. Young Jean Lee is a playwright and director, and member of the Obie award-winning company 13P. Jeffrey M. Jones is a playwright and curator of the Obie award-winning Little Theater at Tonic in New York.

The Difficulty of Crossing a Field: Nine New Plays

<div>Known for his verbal invention and radical experimentation, Mac Wellman is one of America's most original and essential dramatists. Since seizing the spotlight with 7 Blowjobs in the early nineties, Wellman has charted an ambitious artistic course. As a fixture on the downtown New York theater scene, and now with his work being staged around the world, he has challenged directors, designers, producers, actors, audiences, and readers for nearly three decades. In this new book, Wellman brings together nine recent plays, including some of his most provocative work, Antigone, Infrared, and The Invention of Tragedy. With their feisty heroines, crisp dialogue, and noir influences, the works in The Difficulty of Crossing a Field reveal a playwright at the peak of his powers, and the collection concludes with Speculations, Wellman's bold theatrical vision presented as lyrical prose.</div>

Thomas, Buddy

Harms Way

Broadway Play Pub

Two profane aliens have landed in the Southern town of Hillsbottom. Is God watching? Does he care? Is God a He? Mac Wellman addresses these and other questions in this Obie Award-winning play that skewers the social malignancy of ignorance. In 2003, The Village Voice gave a Lifetime Achievement Award to Mac Wellman: "... [he] has long situated himself on the frontier of new forms. He's not only an experimental dramatist of the first rank, but also an eloquent champion of the avant-garde ... Like Beckett's characters, the figures in his work inhabit both a purely theatrical world and a space that will not let you forget the social realities compounding the existential mystery." "In SINCERITY FOREVER, Mac Wellman's savage comedy about everyday lunacies in America, two adolescent girls in a dirt-poor Southern town calmly accept the order of the universe. God must have a plan, says one, or why else would He keep both of them 'ignorant forever in absolute sincerity.' Like everyone else in Hillsbottom, the two are wearing Ku Klux Klan costumes. They are blissful in their brainlessness, confessing they cannot tell good art from bad art and do not know why junk bonds are junky. The conversation dwells on important matters like boyfriends rather than on child abuse or the plutonium-poisoned water that is killing their community. Mr Wellman's view of contemporary society is dire but not doleful. In his headlong search for social and political commentary, he never neglects his comical instincts, starting with the fact that the play is dedicated to Jesse Helms ... The framework of the play is fantasy. A 'mystic furball' has infected Hillsbottom. What, you may ask, are furballs? They are foul-mouthed aliens that look like partly plucked chickens. The two who have landed (or have emerged from Hell) are played in full comic plumage ... Because of the play's graphic language and its approach to piety, some theatergoers may find SINCERITY FOREVER offensive, a fact that should please the playwright. Mr Wellman does not play anything safe as he does his danse macabre far out on the cutting edge." -Mel Gussow, The New York Times

Sincerity Forever

Broadway Play Publishing, Incorporated

HARM'S WAY takes place in a mythical American West where every action is more than it seems. These are the fantastical adventures of Santouche, a very angry person, as he attempts to make sense of his understanding of law and order in a world of other angry persons. The action does not unfold in any specific time or place. However, all the characters drink from the same poisoned well, which is recognizably American and western. The time might be anytime in the last seventy years, or even not impossibly in the next.

Harm's Way

Satires

Humor & Satire

New Rivers Pr

Fiction. A CHRONICLE OF THE MADNESS OF SMALL WORLDS is Mac Wellman's first collection of short stories. Each story in A CHRONICLE OF THE MADNESS OF SMALL WORLDS is set on a different asteroid. But this is not standard science fiction fare. Consider this first sentence: "If you are to gain a correct impression of how we operate, and how the MerryThought works, you might logically begin with the observation that all of us on Wu have the same name: Mary Carnivorous Rabbit." Another story is set on a hairball. Best known as a playwright, Mr. Wellman has always written poetry and fiction, including two novels. In 2003, he was the recipient of a lifetime achievement Obie award.

A Chronicle of the Madness of Small Worlds

Contemporary

Trip Street Press

Drama. Poetry. From three-time Obie Award-winner Mac Wellman comes this complex and provocative play about two simple events. Yamaha Nazimova drops a glove. Jewel Beckett picks it up. Between these two occurrences, a band of moths, fingers, demons, and all-too-human pronouns sing 27 choruses rich with puns, reversals, exclamations, whisperings, cries of loss, cries of victory, arguments, and resolutions. Turning dramatic convention on its head, LEFT GLOVE offers a profound view of a mishap and its ramifications in the public and private sphere. "Chorus of One Resolved, that: LEFT GLOVE will fit thee like a glove if thou relishest the sort of play in which the most awe-inspiring acrobatic feats are performed by no other character than language. A left glove may have been lost, but here thou shall encounter dexterous play bountifully. And that is that. YEA"—Mónica de la Torre. Front cover art and design by Jonathon Rosen.

Left Glove

Solid Objects

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Books by Wellman, Mac

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Wellman, Mac. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

New Downtown Now: An Anthology Of New Theater From Downtown New York

New Downtown Now: An Anthology Of New Theater From Downtown New York

The Difficulty of Crossing a Field: Nine New Plays

The Difficulty of Crossing a Field: Nine New Plays

Harms Way

Sincerity Forever

Harm's Way

Satires

A Chronicle of the Madness of Small Worlds

Left Glove