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  Collaborators - A Play

  John Hodge

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  This “gripping, disturbing, and often blackly comic drama” explores the historic connection between Stalin and Russian author Mikhail Bulgakov (The Daily Telegraph, UK). 
   
  A “rare and special” play by the screenwriter of Trainspotting and Shallow Grave, Collaborators is inspired by the true story of another play: one that Mikhail Bulgakov was forced to write in commemoration Joseph Stalin’s sixtieth birthday (The Times, UK). 
   
  Moscow, 1938. Stalin has been in power for sixteen years and his purges are underway. Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita is lying unpublished in a desk drawer, and his latest play Molière has been banned following terrible reviews in Pravda. As a secret policeman dryly puts it, this has opened up a convenient “gap in his schedule.” This “gap” is to be filled by writing a play about Stalin’s life. 
   
  As Bulgakov loses himself in a world of secrets, threats, and paradoxes, he begins to fall ill from kidney disease. His feverish dreams of conversations with Stalin become reality in his mind, just as the state’s lies become truths in his play. Collaborators is a darkly comic portrait of the impossible choices facing an artist living under dictatorship, and a surreal journey into the imagination of a writer as he loses himself in the subject of his drama. 
   
  Winner of the 2012 Laurence Olivier Awards Best New Play

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  Elizabeth Barrett Browning and...

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning

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  Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861) and Christina Rossetti (1830–1894) were both regarded as the female poet laureates of their time, and between them their writings spanned almost the entire Victorian age, from the end of Romanticism to the beginnings of Modernism. This selection of their shorter works contains all the major themes that animated them – social justice, faith, love and mortality – and some of the best-loved poetry in English, including In The Deep Midwinter and How Do I Love Thee? These poems reflect the changing world in which they were composed, but they also reflect the complex passions of two extraordinary women.

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  Crocodiles (NHB Modern Plays)

  Lee Mattinson

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  Crocodiles brings to life a dystopian, modern-fairytale town where fact and fiction weave as tightly and snag as easily as granny's knitting.
  In a sleepy seaside town, Cornelia Glass is busy spinning yarn. Witches are burnt in the town centre. Crocodiles lurk in the shallows. Boys who go to the big city are skinned alive by roving tramps.
  Cornelia's oldest son, Rudolph, is being forced to give up his Punch and Judy show. Matilda, his wife, is secretly writing her first romantic novel. Their daughter, Lucy, can tell the future. But when Cornelia's younger son, Vincent, returns from his glitzy television job in the big city, the stories that once held the Glass family together are in danger of smashing them to smithereens.
  Lee Mattinson's Crocodiles was runner-up for the 2011 Verity Bargate Award, and premiered at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, in October 2014.
  'dark, funny and off the wall' - WhatsOnStage

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  Rosmersholm

  Henrik Ibsen

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  Rosmersholm is a play written in 1886 by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. In the estimation of many critics the piece is Ibsen's masterwork, only equalled by The Wild Duck of 1884. As expressed by the protagonist, Rosmer, the theme of the play is social and political change, in which the traditional ruling classes relinquish their right to impose their ideals on the rest of society, but the action is entirely personal, resting on the conduct of the immoral, or amoral, "free thinking" heroine, Rebecca, who sets herself to undermine Rosmer's religious and political beliefs because of his influential position in the community. Rebecca has abandoned not only Christianity but, unlike Rosmer, she has abandoned the whole ethical system of Christianity as well. Possibly she may be taken as Ibsen's answer to the question of whether or not Christian ethics can be expected to survive the death of the Christian religion. (Summary by Wikipedia)CastJohn Rosmer: Bruce PirieRebecca West: Elizabeth KlettKroll: Algy PugUlrik Brendel: David LawrencePeter Mortensgaard: Delmar H. DolbierMrs. Helseth: Carol BoxNarrator: SkylarkAudio edited by: Elizabeth Klett

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  Dreams By No One's Daughter -...

  Leslie Ullman

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  “Leslie Ullman traces through her speaker one woman’s attempt to find herself and then to live that discovered self within an alien wilderness that ranges from the indifferent to the frankly dangerous. This volume edges toward the growing certainty to plain chance and lucky or unlucky coincidence. Perhaps in response to the uncertain nature of the external world in Dreams by No One’s Daughter, Ullman’s are very much poems of metamorphosis, of becoming rather than static being.” —Stephen C. Behrendt

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  What Color Is Goodness?

  Emily Morrison

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  Inspired by the question of her cartwheeling five-year-old niece, “Emmy, What Color is Goodness?,” this poem was written to help readers find goodness in the most unexpected places.First-time author EMILY MORRISON offers a vision of kindness, acceptance, and understanding in unsettled times within this beautiful poem, featuring the delightful illustrations of accomplished artist PAM MCDONNELL. The book is a discovery of the infinite colors of goodness and all the places where it can be found. In its exploration, the tale takes the reader through all the colors of the rainbow, delving inside brown boxes and ribboned packages, in dark grey spaces, and even deep inside all of us. Goodness is found while dancing wildly, singing joyfully and in quiet spaces with almost no color. Morrison hopes to transport readers to a world where poetry tells a powerful story that relates to audiences of all ages. She believes lyrical poetry has the power to inspire emotions that can create change. What Color Is Goodness? explores friendships, vulnerability, mindfulness, gratitude, acceptance, and community, lessons that connect all generations.

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