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  Bessie Dunlop the Witch o Dalry

  John Hodgart

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  Based on the historical record of Bessie’s ‘confession’ to witchcraft in sixteenth-century Scotland, the episodic structure of the play shows the many characters and events that supposedly made up the catalogue of her crimes, but which in fact testify to her innocence and goodness. Bessie Dunlop, the Witch o Dalry introduces students to different levels and varieties of Scots and English and contains teaching notes, suggestions for classroom activities, and questions for discussion or writing. The original version of Bessie Dunlop, the Witch o Dalry was written by John Hodgart and Martin Clarke in 1977. Hodgart rewrote the play for an EIS Drama competition before revising it again for Hodder and Staunton who published it as a school text in 1995. This 2021 shorter edition is the fourth version of the play.

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  Essay on Man An - Pope is one of...

  Alexander Pope

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  Alexander Pope was born on May 21st, 1688 in London into a Catholic family.   
  His education was affected by the recent Test Acts, upholding the status of the Church of England and banning Catholics from teaching.  In effect this meant his formal education was over by the age of 12 and Pope was to now immerse himself in classical literature and languages and to, in effect, educate himself.    
  From this age too he also suffered from numerous health problems including a type of tuberculosis (Pott’s disease) which resulted in a stunted, deformed body.  Only to grow to a height of 4’ 6”, with a severe hunchback and complicated further by respiratory difficulties, high fevers, inflamed eyes and abdominal pain all of which served to further isolate him, initially, from society.  
  However his talent was evident to all. Best known for his satirical verse, his translations of Homer and the use of the heroic couplet, he is the second-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare.  
  With the publication of Pastorals in 1709 followed by An Essay on Criticism (1711) and his most famous work The Rape of the Lock (1712; revised and enlarged in 1714) Pope became not only famous but wealthy.  
  His translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey further enhanced both reputation and purse.  His engagement to produce an opulent new edition of Shakespeare met with a mixed reception.  Pope attempted to "regularise" Shakespeare's metre and rewrote some of his verse and cut 1500 lines, that Pope considered to be beneath the Bard’s standard, to mere footnotes.  
  Alexander Pope died on May 30th, 1744 at his villa at Twickenham (where he created his famous grotto and gardens) and was buried in the nave of the nearby Church of England Church of St Mary the Virgin.   
  Over the years and centuries since his death Pope’s work has been in and out of favour but with this distance he is now truly recognised as one of England’s greatest poets.

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  Corrina Corrina (NHB Modern Plays)

  Chloë Moss

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  Corrina, following in her seafaring father's footsteps, boards a cargo ship set for Singapore. Not everyone is pleased to have her aboard – and not everyone will make it to their final destination.
  Set in the claustrophobic cabins and corridors of a container ship at sea, Chloë Moss's play Corrina, Corrina is a story of power dynamics, superstitions and revenge, exploring what happens when we think no one is watching.
  This gripping thriller premiered at Liverpool Everyman in 2022, as a co-production between Headlong and Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse, directed by Holly Race Roughan.

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  frank - sonnets

  Diane Seuss

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  WINNER OF THE 2022 PULITZER PRIZE IN POETRY 
   
   
   
  WINNER OF THE 2021 NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR POETRY 
   
   
   
  WINNER OF THE 2022 PEN/VOELCKER AWARD FOR POETRY COLLECTION 
   
   
   
  WINNER OF THE 2021 LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE FOR POETRY 
   
   
   
  A resplendent life in sonnets from the author of Four-Legged Girl, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize 
   
   
   
  "The sonnet, like poverty, teaches you what you can do / without," Diane Seuss writes in this brilliant, candid work, her most personal collection to date. These poems tell the story of a life at risk of spilling over the edge of the page, from Seuss's working-class childhood in rural Michigan to the dangerous allures of New York City and back again. With sheer virtuosity, Seuss moves nimbly across thought and time, poetry and punk, AIDS and addiction, Christ and motherhood, showing us what we can do, what we can do without, and what we offer to one another when we have nothing left to spare. Like a series of cels on a filmstrip, frank: sonnets captures the magnitude of a life lived honestly, a restless search for some kind of "beauty or relief." Seuss is at the height of her powers, devastatingly astute, austere, and—in a word—frank.

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  Your Therapist Says It’s Magical...

  Sadie McCarney

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  Sadie McCarney’s Your Therapist Says It’s Magical Thinking is a buoyant second collection that playfully navigates the turbulent waters of life with mental illness and neurodivergence. In much of the book, history and science are treated the way they are often viewed by a brain in mental turmoil: places and events get switched around, facts get rewritten, and the fantastical reigns supreme. Through poems ranging from didactic (the horrible “self-care” advice received by the poet when she was struggling most) to historical fiction (patients in an asylum in 1800s England), to the quirky and unexpectedly fantastical (a rainbow carpool unicorn, a young child’s timeline reversing each morning, and an everything bagel that includes competing theories of time), McCarney digs deep into the muck of her own lived experience. She resurfaces with, if not gold, at least an old time capsule and a few treasured hunks of bone. Your Therapist Says It’s Magical Thinking highlights the sometimes dubious (but always jubilant) inner workings of a mentally unwell brain at play — especially within the context of a larger society that frequently seeks to tamp down this weird and rare form of magic.

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  Interview with the Sphinx -...

  Jack Matthews

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  In this provocative & immensely irritating comic play, the Sphinx from ancient Greece is interviewed in modern times as though she were a celebrity pop star. The problem is she never answers any questions — never directly anyway. Instead she prefers just dishing the dirt on everybody. ON HOMER: “I never was exactly sure which one Homer was. I’m positive he wasn’t the blind one, though; that was just a silly story they started telling a few centuries later”. ON OEDIPUS: “Eddie was terribly conceited, you know … of course he was smart and handsome and, oh, just had a way of carrying himself that impressed everybody. In spite of his foot.” Bit by bit the Interviewer learns that what happens in Greek legend didn’t happen exactly the way Sophocles described it. Fortunately, the Sphinx offers the Interviewer another riddle … if only he could figure out what exactly it is! This witty 67 minute audio play stars Jill Brumer as the Sphinx and Neal Gage as the Interviewer. Part Tom Stoppard, part Monty Python, part Oscar Wilde, this play by Jack Matthews combines philosophical paradoxes with fast-paced verbal pyrotechnics. It offers the perfect antidote to people who remembered ancient literature as nothing but stuffy and melodramatic characters with hard-to-pronounce names.  
  Neal Gage  is a Houston actor and teacher who has appeared in several features and comic sketch videos on  Funny or Die. Jill Brumer has an MFA in Media & Performing Arts and teaches theater at Houston colleges. Jack Matthews (1925-2013) was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, playwright and former professor in Ohio. 
  The play was first published & performed in 1992; later it was revised & expanded for the 2013 audio production.

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