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  Pass Over - A Play

  Antoinette Nwandu

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  A startling play examining the cyclical ravages of racial injustice and violence on two young black men, by an extraordinary voice in American theater. Moses and Kitch stand around on the corner—talking shit, passing the time, and hoping that maybe today will be different. As they dream of their promised land, a stranger wanders into their space with his own agenda and derails their plans. Emotional and lyrical, Pass Over crafts everyday profanities into poetic and humorous riffs, exposing the unquestionable human spirit of young men stuck in a cycle that they are desperately trying to escape. Spike Lee directed a film version of the play that premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival and South by Southwest, and was produced by Amazon Studios. A provocative riff on the Book of Exodus and Waiting for Godot, Pass Over is a remarkable work of politically-charged theater by a bold new American voice.Praise for Pass Over “Searing. . . . Blazingly theatrical. . . . Moses and Kitch are a dispossessed team like [Beckett’s] Vladimir and Estragon, stuck in an existential cycle of hopelessness they try to master with gallows humor and jags of deluded optimism. . . . Creates a vivid world of injustice while riffing on earlier. . . . Resonates as a powerful tragedy.” ―New York Time “Chilling. . . . Combines daring near-experimental form and brutal content: what’s at work is not some mysterious cosmic existentialism à la Beckett, but very real, very tangible racism.” ―New Yorker “In the insanity of a city filled with guns, and people ready and willing to use them whenever temperatures rise, waiting isn’t so much a malaise as a badge of survival. That’s one of the takeaways of Antoinette Nwandu’s Pass Over, a very potent and promising play. . . . The language in the work is thrilling, poetical.” ―Chicago Tribune

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  Harm (NHB Modern Plays)

  Douglas Maxwell

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  A father and son wait in a new 'self-harming unit'. As the clock ticks by, the father begins to pour out his guilt, anger and concern to his son.
  This short play was first staged at the Tron Theatre, in 2006.

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  The Lays of Ancient Rome

  Thomas Babington Macaulay

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  The Lays of Ancient Rome comprise four narrative poems comprised by Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay: recalling popular episodes from Roman historical-legends that were strongly moral in tone: exemplifying Roman virtue against Latine perfidy.The four poems are:- Horatius - Horatius and two companions seek to hold back a large invading Etruscan force at the far end of a bridge over the Tiber River. The trio are willing to lay down their lives so as to prevent the Etruscans crossing and sacking the otherwise ill-defended Rome: it is a desperate gamble to buy enough time for the Romans to destroy the bridge in advance of the hostile army. But will their efforts succeed?- The Battle of Lake Regillus - The Romans take arms against the powerful Latine league headed by the expelled Tarquin nobles. The fighting is desperate and bloody: the event is decided only after the arrival upon the battlefield of the twin gods Castor and Pollux.- Virginia - Virginia is the daughter of Virginius - a poor, honest Roman farmer-citizen. In former years Virginius enlisted as a legionary and shed his blood to fight Rome's enemies: now Virginius - like other Romans of the humbler sort - suffer the usurious exactions of noblemen like the wicked Appius Claudius. Appius Claudius uses spurious legal means to take possession of Virginia as his "runaway slave": action guaranteed to succeed given the incumbent corrupt magistracy. So what can Virginius do? To what extremes is the father forced to protect his only child?- The Prophecy of Capys - Romulus and Remus return triumphant to the home of their grandfather Capys. When they arrive, Capys - blind and well advanced in years - is seized by a prophetic frenzy: Capys declaims a series of portents describing the future battles and victories destined as the lot of Romulus' descendants.(Introduction by Godsend)

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  Tooth and Claw

  Michael Hollinger

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  In an emotional ecosystem as complex as that of our planet, is life nothing more than survival of the fittest? Michael Hollinger based his probing work on the real-life giant tortoise named ‘Lonesome George’, and the efforts to preserve his species that threatened the livelihood of the native fishermen on the Galàpagos Islands.
  
  An L.A. Theatre Works full cast performance featuring:
  
  Jaime Alvarez as Pedro/Chico
  Stephanie Beatriz as Ana Ortega
  Daniel Chacón as Park Official/Tour Guide/Alberto
  Richard Gallegos as Tito/Bernardo
  Daniel Guzman as Gonzalo Reyes
  Justin Huen as Jorge/Manuel
  Jay Montalvo as Miguel Mendoza
  W. Morgan Sheppard as Malcolm Geary
  Jos Viramontes as Carlos Zavala
  Cynthia Watros as Schuyler Baines
  
  Original music by Mark Holden and Wes Dewberry.
  
  Includes interviews with playwright Michael Hollinger and Carol Ann Bassett, the author of Galápagos at the Crossroads: Pirates, Biologists, Tourists, and Creationists Battle for Darwin’s Cradle of Evolution.
  
  Directed by Jessica Kubzansky. Recorded in Los Angeles before a live audience at The James Bridges Theater, UCLA in July of 2012.
  
  Tooth and Claw is part of L.A. Theatre Works’ Relativity Series featuring science-themed plays. Major funding for the Relativity Series is provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, to enhance public understanding of science and technology in the modern world.

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  Gone to Earth (NHB Modern Plays)...

  Helen Edmundson

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  A vivid, emotional stage version of Mary Webb's novel of rural passion, premiered by Shared Experience Theatre Company.
  Incorporating traditional dances and folk songs, Gone to Earth tells the story of Hazel, an innocent and free-spirited seventeen-year-old child of nature living in rural Shropshire. But when both the wicked squire and the altruistic minister fall in love with her, she is drawn into a world of earthly passions which threatens to destroy her – as simply and relentlessly as a Greek tragedy.
  Helen Edmundson's stage adaptation of Mary Webb's 1917 novel Gone to Earth was first staged by Shared Experience on UK tour in 2004, including performances at the Lyric Hammersmith, London, from May 2004.
  'It takes a special kind of company to follow the award-winning success of After Mrs Rochester with a piece as powerful as this. Long may we share in the experience' - Evening Standard
  'Goes right to the heart of the work, capturing its fervid, glowering atmosphere' - Observer
  'Balancing the real and the dreamlike without losing the authenticity of either, Helen Edmundson has distilled the book into an echo chamber of themes... Mary Webb's novel [is] brought brilliantly to life' - Time Out

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  Poems of William Blake

  William Blake

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  Songs of Innocence and of Experience: Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul are two books of poetry by the English poet and painter, William Blake. Although Songs of Innocence was first published by itself in 1789, it is believed that Songs of Experience has always been published in conjunction with Innocence since its completion in 1794.Songs of Innocence mainly consists of poems describing the innocence and joy of the natural world, advocating free love and a closer relationship with God, and most famously including Blake's poem The Lamb. Its poems have a generally light, upbeat and pastoral feel and are typically written from the perspective of children or written about them.Directly contrasting this, Songs of Experience instead deals with the loss of innocence after exposure to the material world and all of its mortal sin during adult life, including works such as The Tyger. Poems here are darker, concentrating on more political and serious themes. Throughout both books, many poems fall into pairs, so that a similar situation or theme can be seen in both Innocence and Experience. Many of the poems appearing in Songs of Innocence have a counterpart in Songs of Experience with opposing perspectives of the world. The disastrous end of the French Revolution caused Blake to lose faith in the goodness of mankind, explaining much of the volume's sense of despair. Blake also believed that children lost their innocence through exploitation and from a religious community which put dogma before mercy. He did not, however, believe that children should be kept from becoming experienced entirely. In truth, he believed that children should indeed become experienced but through their own discoveries, which is reflected in a number of these poems. Blake believed that innocence and experience were "the two contrary states of the human soul", and that true innocence was impossible without experience.The Book of Thel is a poem by William Blake, dated 1789 and probably worked on in the period 1788 to 1790. It is illustrated by his own plates, and is relatively short and easy to understand, compared to his later prophetic books. The metre is a fourteen-syllable line. It was preceded by Tiriel, which Blake left in manuscript. A few lines from Tiriel were incorporated into The Book of Thel. This book consists of eight plates executed in illuminated printing. 15 copies of original print of 1789-1793 are known. Two copies have watermark of 1815, which are more elaborately colored than the others. (Summary from Wikipedia)

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