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Awarded the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Annie Baker's The Flick demonstrates Baker's standing as one of the top contemporary playwrights. Set in a rundown movie theater in central Massachusetts, the play features three underpaid employees who sweep up popcorn in the empty aisles and tend to one of the last thirty-five-millimeter projectors in the state. With keen insight and a ceaseless attention to detail, The Flick pays tribute to the power of movies and paints a heartbreaking portrait of three characters and their working lives. A critical hit when it premiered Off-Broadway, this comedy, by one of the country's most produced and highly regarded young playwrights, was also awarded the coveted 2013 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and an Obie Award for Playwriting.
Recent recipient of the MacArthur Genius Grant, Samuel D. Hunter is known for his bighearted, funny and sensitive plays -- including the two published in The Whale/A Bright New Boise. The Whale tells the story of a six-hundred-pound shut-in's last chance at redemption and of discovering beauty in the most unexpected places when he reaches out to his long-estranged and severely unhappy daughter. Hunter's second piece, the Obie Award-winning A Bright New Boise, is a philosophical investigation of faith and search for meaning in rural Idaho where a disgraced evangelical is forced to take a minimum-wage job at the local Hobby Lobby craft store in an effort to reunite with his estranged son.
Tony Award winner Hugh Jackman returns to Broadway in The River, a spellbinding new play by Jez Butterworth, directed by Ian Rickson, the collaborators behind the international hit play Jerusalem. The thriller is set on a moonless night in August when the sea trout are ready to run, and a man brings his new girlfriend to the remote family cabin where he has come for fly-fishing since he was a boy. But she's not the only woman he has brought here, or indeed the last. The River asks: when we find each other, are we trying to recapture someone we once lost?
TCG's third title from Amy Herzog, Belleville, is her most suspenseful yet. Abby and Zack, young American newlyweds, have abandoned a comfortable postgraduate life in the states for Belleville, a bustling, bohemian, multicultural Parisian neighborhood. But as secrets both minor and monumental are revealed, their fraught relationship begins to unravel.
Revered theatre director Peter Brook's new title from TCG,
The Quality of Mercy, is a sequence of essays -- all but one published for the first time -- in which he debates such questions as who was the man who wrote Shakespeare's plays, why Shakespeare is never out of date, and how actors should approach Shakespeare's verse. He also revisits some of the plays which he has directed with notable brilliance, such as King
Lear, Titus Andronicus and, of course, A Midsummer Night's Dream. Taken as a whole, this short but immensely wise book offers an illuminating and provocative insight into a great director's relationship with our greatest playwright.
Storefront Church is TCG's latest play from Academy Award- and Pultizer Prize-winning playwright John Patrick Shanley. Concluding the "Church and State" trilogy of plays that began with
Doubt and Defiance, Storefront Church tells the story of a Bronx Borough President who is forced by the mortgage crisis into a confrontation with the local minister. Blending earthy humor and philosophical reflection, this compassionate morality tale is an exploration of the often thorny relationship between spiritual experience and social action. The play was originally performed at Atlantic Theater Company in New York City in 2012, with a subsequent production in the fall of 2013 at San Francisco Playhouse.
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An exciting new TCG talent: Hunter finds himself on the playwright fast-track, receiving the prestigious MacArthur Genius Grant
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Photo by John M. Baker
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September proved to be an exciting month for playwright Samuel D. Hunter. Days after TCG published The Whale/A Bright New Boise, its first book of Hunter's work, he was awarded the "Genius Grant" fellowship from The MacArthur Foundation. The grant provides its fellows with creative and financial support in the form of a$625,000 stipend.
In an interview conducted by the MacArthur foundation, Hunter discussed his initial reaction to the announcement: "When I first got the call from the MacArthur Foundation...I had this feeling like I was looking down on myself thinking, 'Wow, this is a really narcissistic dream I'm having right now; I should wake up,'" said Hunter.
The 33-year-old playwright's work can be seen on numerous stages across the country during the 2014-2015 season. Hunter was one of the Top 20 Most Produced Playwrights, as tallied and announced in American Theatre's October Season Preview issue.
Hunter's newly published plays: The Whale/A Bright New Boise can be purchased here from the TCG bookstore.
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100 (monologues)
Author Signing with Eric Bogosian
November 13th; 6pm - 8pm
Drama Book Shop; New York, NY
 100 (monologues) collects all of Eric Bogosian's monologues, originally performed as part of his six off-Broadway solo shows, including Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll; Pounding Nails in the Floor with my Forehead; Wake Up and Smell the Coffee; Drinking in America; Funhouse; Men Inside and selections from his play Talk Radio. For these solo shows, first performed between 1980 and 2000, Bogosian was awarded three Obie awards and a Drama Desk Award-earning him living icon status in the downtown theater scene. Come meet the acclaimed actor and playwright, hear him read a monologue or two, and get your own signed copy of 100 (monologues)!
To purchase a copy of 100 (monologues), click here.
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 Each month, a TCG staff member selects a TCG Books title that holds a special meaning -- whether it's a show the staffer performed in, a dog-eared acting resource, a writer that continually inspires or simply a favorite play -- and we offer a special 50% discount off that title for the month. For October, Anna Troiano, marketing associate, has selected Cloud 9 by Caryl Churchill, and here's why.
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TCG Bestsellers
September 2014
by Annie Baker
2. Actor and the Target
by Declan Donnellan
by Tony Kushner
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TCG Titles Currently in Production in
October
by John Patrick Shanley,
by Sarah Ruhl,
by Quiara Alegrķa Hudes,
by Caryl Churchill,
by Nilo Cruz,
by Tracy Letts,
by Hugh Wheeler and Stephen Sondheim,
by Brian Yorkey and Tom Kitt, by Charles Ludlam,
by August Wilson,
by Alfred Uhry, by Donald Margulies,
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"The Flick and the Joy of Reading Plays"
article in Slate about the advantages of reading plays, specifically through reading TCG's recent release, Annie Baker's The Flick.
Current Broadway Play Highlights Several TCG Authors
Terence McNally's
It's Only a Play, the currently-running star-studded Broadway play, lends a shout-out to 11 TCG playwrights, including Lynn Nottage, Will Eno, Tracy Letts, and more.
Hugh Jackman is Fly-Fishing?
Hugh Jackman and fellow co-stars of Jez Butterworth's
The River, soon to be on Broadway, are photographed
fly-fishing to help them prepare for the upcoming production.
Marin Ireland, Vincent D'Onofrio and others join previously released monologues performed by Jeremy Sisto, Michael Shannon, Jessica Hecht and more.
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