Plays /
This Library of America edition of Guare's dramatic works, chosen in consultation with the author, offers an indispensable one-volume retrospective of an essential American playwright. In one-act plays from the 1960s Guare explores on a small scale the key subjects that would preoccupy him thro...
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| Other Authors: | , , , |
| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
New York :
Library of America,
[2025].
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| Series: | Library of America ;
392. |
| Subjects: |
| Summary: | This Library of America edition of Guare's dramatic works, chosen in consultation with the author, offers an indispensable one-volume retrospective of an essential American playwright. In one-act plays from the 1960s Guare explores on a small scale the key subjects that would preoccupy him throughout his career, family relationships, the distortions of desire in consumer culture, the unruly coexistence of the absurd and the psychologically raw. These plays set the stage for the breakout Off-Broadway hit The House of Blue Leaves, a daring, darkly hilarious comedy about a papal visit to Queens that presciently takes aim at American celebrity worship. Filled with unexpected turns and revealing surprises, plays such as Rich and Famous and Landscape of the Body are funny, touching dramas about envy, yearning and a world that always leaves us wanting more. Works set in the past, such as the Lydie Breeze trilogy and the late masterpiece A Free Man of Color, take a broader historical view of America's utopian aspirations and racial hypocrisies. Guare's best-known work, Six Degrees of Separation, is an enduring landmark of the American stage, a stunning fusion of comic and tragic elements and an emotionally powerful investigation into the depths of deception and authenticity. This volume also prints, for the first time, Guare's short play 'Woman at a Threshold, Beckoning,' written in the aftermath of 9/11, as well as his acclaimed screenplay for Louis Malle's 1980 film Atlantic City. 'Guare,' writes John Lahr in this volume's foreword, 'has stories to tell, jokes to make, logic to challenge, phrases to turn, spells to cast, all of which comprise a funhouse-mirror reflection of American life's caprice and chaos in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Guare's theatrical career of over fifty years has ranged farther and wider than almost all his contemporaries. |
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| Physical Description: | xix, 849 pages ; 21 cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references. |
| ISBN: | 9781598538168 1598538160 |