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At the Donmar Warehouse starring Elena Rogers
Piaf
Pam Gems
From the streets of Paris to worldwide fame, Edith Gassion (known to all as 'Piaf', the sparrow) continues to be remembered and revered for her exceptional voice and extraordinary, troubled life.
In this new version of Piaf, Pam Gems has reworked her classic 1978 play, vividly capturing the glamour and squalor, the rise and fall of this complex, fragile and enigmatic performer.
Price (UK): £8.99 | Paperback | ISBN: 9781840028751
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From Word To Play
Cicely Berry
Widely regarded as one of the most significant voice teachers in the world, Cicely Berry, the Royal Shakespeare Company's Voice Director, has been working alongside some of Britain's greatest actors and directors for over fifty years.
From Word to Play draws on Cicely's extensive experience of working with theatre companies across the globe. It is her manifesto for a return to the words themselves: for moving away from and over-conceptualised, over-literal view of language and rediscovering the meaning in its sounds and rhythms.
At the heart of this book is a concise, practical guide for directors in rehearsal, setting out work strategies that help bring out both the shape and the details within all kinds of text - whether verse or prose, seventeenth-century or contemporary.
Foreword by Michael Boyd, Artistic Director of the RSC.
Price (UK): £14.99 | Paperback | ISBN: 9781840026016
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Wesker's Monologues
Arnold Wesker
Arnold Wesker's plays, written over a period of more than fifty years, offer actors, male and female, a remarkable source of monologues covering themes such as friendship, death, old age, political disillusion, failed love, and self-discovery fuelled by emotions ranging through anger, joy, hope, fear, outrage, love, bewilderment, guilt, and comic irony. This is Wesker's own selection of them.
Includes definitive versions of famous monlogues such as Paul's speech from The Kitchen and Beatie Bryant's triumphant speech from the end of Roots, with synopses of all the plays from which the monologues come.
Price (UK): £12.99 | Paperback | ISBN: 9781840027921 |
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Wesker's Love Plays
Arnold Wesker
Spanning three decades of impassioned and inspiring work, the three plays in this volume show in cross-section Arnold Wesker's development as one of the key figures of late-twentieth-century drama.
Each play grapples with the timeless problems accmompanying two people in love. The most intimate and personal of relationships are placed under uncompromising scrutiny. The Four Seasons depicts the ebb and flow of a couple's relationship over the course of its year-long life. In we witness the late-blooming love of a woman for her dying husband. Lady Othellogets right to the heart of an urgent, all-consuming affair.
Price (UK): £14.99 | Paperback | ISBN: 9781840027914 |
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Two Immorality Plays
The Pimpand Solitude
Dic Edwards
The two plays in this collection ring fascinating new changes on the well-worn contrast bretween a writer's life and work.
The Pimp is an elegant dance of death for four characters: the poet Charles Baudelaire, his mixed-race mistress, his respectable but repressed mother and his hypocritical legal adviser.
In the brilliant, often surreal Solitude, the blocked writer Trecci wishes to be left alone on his barge, only stepping out for an occasional sexual encounter with his neighbour's one-legged wife. But when his only friend brings round a potential conquest - an attractive young amn who turns out to be an attractive young woman - Trecci is unwillingly drawn back into the world outside.
Price (UK): £9.99 | Paperback | ISBN: 9781840028133
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Two new volumes now available
Plays Three
Plays Four
Howard Barker
Howard Barker is one of the most significant and controversial dramatists of his time. His plays challenge, unsettle and expose.
Plays Three features a range of Barker's work from the last 20 years, beginning with his first major work for the stage, Claw, alongside Ursula, He Stumbled and The Love of a Good Man.
Plays Four includes I saw Myself, recently performed by The Wrestling School at the Jerwood Vanburgh Theatre, The Dying of Today, Found in the Ground and The Road, The House, The Road.
Plays Three - Price (UK): £14.99 | Paperback | ISBN: 9781840028515
Plays Four - Price (UK): £14.99 | Paperback | ISBN: 9781840026764
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Plays One
Dennis Kelly
The four plays in this collection by Dennis Kelly are linked by their characters' desperate need to believe that there is more to life than the often brutal worlds in which they find themselves. Debris finds humour and pathos in a spectactularly dysfunctional family unit. The harrowing Osama the Hero shows a group of neighbours taking ill-defined revenge on an odd-ball teenager in a climate of fear. In After the End a woman discovers she has been rescued from Armageddon by a paranoid ex-colleague, and in a fractured narrative, Love and Money portrays a marriage driven to brutal destruction by financial pressures.
'A dramatist blessed with both rare skill and a profound understanding of the way we live now" - Charles Spencer, Daily Telegraph
Price (UK): £14.99 | Paperback | ISBN: 9781840028034 |
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Six new plays by black British playwrights
Hidden Gems
edited by Deirdre Osborne
This distinctine new volume of drama by black British playwrights exemplifies how experiments with form, subject-matter and genre can seve to centralise the experiences of black people in local, national and international contexts of culture, politics and performance. Each play is critically introduced, to create an anthology of interactions - between the people who have long championed the work through teaching and writing about it and the people who produce, perform and explain their intention behind it.
Includes the plays B is for Black by Courttia Newland, Moj of the Antarctic by Mojisola Adebayo, The Sons of Charlie Proba by Lennie James, Brown Girl in the Ring by Valerie Mason-John, Something Dark by Lemn Sissay and 35 Cents by Paul Anthony Morris.
Price (UK): £14.99 | Paperback | ISBN: 9781840028430 |
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Three Testimonial Plays from South Africa
Theatre as Witness
Yael Farber
foreword by Archbishop Desmond Tutu
Yael Farber's trilogy of plays bears powerful testimony to the personal truths of those who lived through the brutal Apartheid regime in south Africa. Woman in Waiting tells of Thembi Mtshali's separation from her mother as a child, only to contune this legacy of waiting when forced to leave her own baby to mind other children in the white suburbs. Amajuba is a moving tapestry of different personal perspectives on growing up under Apartheid. He Left Quietly is the harrowing experience of Duma Kumalo, one of the wrongly accused Sharpeville Six, on South Africa's Death Row; preparations made for his death and ultimate reprieve.
Price (UK): £14.99 | Paperback | ISBN: 9781840028201 |
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New plays for children with free downloadable resources
Oscar Wilde: Three Plays for Children
adapted for the stage by Phil Clark
Oscar Wilde's much loved stories, The Devoted Friend, The Happy Prince and The Selfish Giant, have been enchanting children for over a century. Said to have been written for his own two sons, each tale transports us to a vividly imagined world in which princes, giants, children and animals face important decisions and learn the true value of friendship, kindness and generosity.
Suitable for children aged 3 to 7.
The Devoted Friend is accompanied by a Teachers' Resource Pack for the Early Years and Key Stage 1, downloadable free by clicking here
Price (UK): £9.99 | Paperback | ISBN: 9781840028164 |
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Accompanying the recent smash-hit National Theatre production
The Horse's Mouth
Staging Morpurgo's War Horse
Mervyn Millar
The latest in the series 'The National Theatre at Work' follows the production of War Horse from early concept workshops, through the design and development of the magnificent life-size horse puppets, rehearsals with the ensemble, and onto the Olivier stage. Mervyn Millar's unique perspective as a member of the creative team and a puppeteer gives an extraordinary insight into the way this stage version of Michael Morpurgo's novel takes audiences on a journey through history.
Price (UK): £12.99 | Paperback | ISBN: 9781840027655 |
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Actors Speaking
edited by Lyn Haill
with an introduction by Peter Gill
In the late 1980s, Peter Gill, first director of the National Theatre Studio, sent a group of young actors and directors to interview some of the most respected actors of the time about speaking on stage. These conversations, with actors such as Alec Guinness, Rex Harrison and Robert Stephens, are collected here for the first time.
Price (UK): £12.99 | Paperback | ISBN: 9781840027761 |
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How To Do Accents
Edda Sharpe and Jan Haydn Rowles
In this groundbreaking text book, two of Britain's leading voice coaches set out a wholly new way of learning the art of accents based on seeing, hearing and feeling the way they are put together. Includes a CD containing detailed exercises and sample sentences, along with eleven extended recordings of voices from the USA, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England.
'At last! A really practical and fun guide to accent training. I recommend it to all actors and voice teachers.' - Jeannette Nelson, Head of Voice, National Theatre
Price (UK): £18.99 | Paperback with CD | ISBN: 9781840026009 |
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Secret Bankside
Walks in the Outlaw Borough
John Constable
On the south bank of the Thames, Bankside has long been known as a hotbed of creativity, dissent and loose living. With its brothels and bear-pits, its prisons and its pubs, the area has inspired the nation's greatest writers - Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dickens, Keats and Blake - and been home to its most famous theatres - The Globe, The Rose, The Old Vic and The National. John Constable's unique description of nine walks around this historic area combines geography, history and gossip with a literally step-by-step guide to navigating this ancient and fascinating part of London.
Price (UK): £12.99 | Paperback | ISBN: 9781840027433 |
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| Christopher Fry Centenary Year Editions |
To commemorate the 100th anniversary of his birth, Oberon Books is publishing Christopher Fry's complete works over three volumes. Includes his most famous play The Lady's Not For Burning - recently voted one of the 100 most influential plays of the 20th century - alongside lesser known works and one-act plays. Together they demonstrate Fry's unique blend of humour and humanity, his mastery of verse and prose, and the remarkable contemporary feel that his plays still possess.
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Christopher Fry's most famous work, The Lady's Not For Burning - 'Spring' in his set of 'Seasonal Plays' - is joined by the 'Summer' play A Yard of Sun, and a previously unpublished early play, Siege, based on the story of Aucassin and Nicolette.
Price (UK): £14.99 | Paperback
ISBN: 9781840027716
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Fry's 'Autumn' and 'Winter' plays - Venus Observed and The Dark is Light Enough - are joined by the historical play Curtmantle, about Henry II. All three focus on a compelling central character who dominates those around them.
Price (UK): £14.99 | Paperback
ISBN: 9781840027723
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This third volume brings together Fry's only fully-fledged tragedy - The Firstborn, based on the biblical story of the plagues of Egypt - and his six one-act plays: The Boy With a Cart, A Phoenix Too Frequent, Thor with Angels, A Sleep of Prisoners, Caedmon Construed and A Ringing of Bells.
Price (UK): £14.99 | Paperback
ISBN: 9781840027730
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Click on the image to download our current catalogue in PDF format |
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| Oberon titles at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2008 |
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At the Traverse Theatre
Deep Cut
Philip Ralph
18 year old Private Cheryl james from LLangollen was one of four young soldiers who died from gunshot wounds at Deepcut Barracks between 1995 and 2002.
Cheryl's parents wanted answers from the people responsible for their daughter's care. But how do you begin to grieve when no-one seems to have a proper explanation? What would give you the determination to continue asking awkward, demanding questions?
Taken from original source material and powerful first-hand testimonies, Deep Cut is a bold and compelling account of one family's journey through a time they thought they'd never experience, to places they hoped they'd never be.
Price (UK): £8.99 | Paperback | ISBN: 9781840028744
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At the Assembly Rooms, George Street
The Magic Tree
Ursula Rani Sarma
Which comes first, loneliness or violence? This is the story of love born ina a very dark pace between a man who wants to belong and a woman who wants to be forgotten. On a stormy night, they shelter in an abandoned summer home and tentatively discover what it is that they have in common. But just when it seems something beautiful might emerge, the opposite appears.
The Magic Tree is an exploration into human behaviour at a time when humanity seems to endlessly repeat the mistakes of the past. It looks at why good people are capable of doing bad things and asks if love alone can save us.
Price (UK): £8.99 | Paperback | ISBN: 9781840028669
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At the Pleasance Courtyard
Lie of the Land
Torben Betts
'We have inherited a house. A house in the country. A house by the sea.'
Inspired by a nightmare Betts had shortly after moving out of London, this savagely funny poetic drama deals with a young couple who relocate to a remote rural wilderness to escape the rat race and the rising anarchy of city life. But will a desolate house by the sea provide them with the happiness and peace of mind they seek?
Price (UK): £8.99 | Paperback | ISBN: 9781840028775
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At the Underbelly
Happy Savages
Ryan Craig
'Nothing changes. Everything just gets worse. What's the point of that?'
Two couples trample on friends and lovers in their search for happiness. The dialogue crackles with desperation and raw humour as the foursome see their tangled webs unravel.
'Craig knows all about pain, and he knows how to articulate the inarticulate sense of loss and emptiness people can feel at that age: he can portray youthful anguish without sliding into melodrama.' - John Peter, Sunday Times, on the original production of Happy Savages (1998)
Price (UK): £8.99 | Paperback | ISBN: 9781840028782
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At the Assembly Rooms, George Street
Lies Have Been Told
An Evening With Robert Maxwell
Rod Beacham
On 5 November 1991, Robert Maxwell's bloated corpse was found floating in the South Atlantic. the official verdict was accidental drowning, but the sudden and mysterious death of this infamous newspaper tycoon provoked no less rumour, speculation, anger and outrage than his headline-grabbing life.
But was Maxwell simply a monster, or was he the victom of racism and snobbery? What drove a penniless Czechoslovakian Jew, who lost almost his entire family in the Holocaust, to such heights and such depths? In this punchily written, confrontational monologue, Maxwell gets his own say, providing a fascinating case study in power and charm, insecurity and greed.
Price (UK): £7.99 | Paperback | ISBN: 9781840026580
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On The Rocks
Amy Rosenthal
Spring 1916. DH Lawrence and his wife Frieda have found a new life for themselves in the remote Cornish village of Zennor. Rejuvenated by the wild beauty around them, they persuade close friends Katherine Mansfield and John Middleton Murry to join the m in their idyll. But no soober have Katherine and Jack arrived than the long-simmering tensions bubble to the surface, and Lawrence's dream of communcal living starts unravelling before his eyes...
Price (UK): £8.99 | Paperback | ISBN: 9781840028591
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The Diver
Hideki Noda and Colin Teevan
A woman is found wandering the streets of Fuchu City, Japan, her hands burnt and raw, her identity a mystery. Following the success of their 2006 hit The Bee, Hideki Noda and Colin Teevan’s new play, The Diver, ingeniously links the ancient Japanese Tales of Genji with a Noh theatre play and a contemporary murder.
Price (UK): £8.99 | Paperback | ISBN: 9781840028683
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Moonlight and Magnolias
Ron Hutchinson
Hollywood, 1939: semi-indpendent mogul David O. Selznick has just shut down production on the most eagerly anticipated movie in history - his megabudget version of Margaret Mitchell's bestselling novel Gone With the Wind - scrapping the original script and sacking the director in the process. Determined to produce a rewrite in five days. With his reputation on the line, he locks himself in his office with two reluctant collaborators and a stockpile of peanuts and bananas, and a marathon creative session begins...
Price (UK): £8.99 | Paperback | ISBN: 9781840028102
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DNA
Dennis Kelly
‘So we’re all peggin them. Laughing. And his face, it’s just making you laugh harder and harder, and they’re getting nearer and nearer. And one hits his head. And the shock on his face is so…funny. And we’re all just…’
A group of teenagers do something bad, really bad, then panic and cover the whole thing up. But when they find that the cover-up unites them and brings harmony to their once fractious lives, where’s the incentive to put things right?
Price (UK): £7.99 | Paperback | ISBN: 9781840028409
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The Miracle
Lin Coghlan
When the canal bursts its banks and a holy statue arrives through her bedroom floor, no one is more surprised than 12-year-old Veronica. Soon the entire population of the town finds itself yearning unknowingly for something magical to come into their lives. With best friend Zelda at her side, Ron sets about using her new-found skills to heal her ailing community. In the play’s dramatic conclusion, only she will have the power to turn things around and change them for the better.
Price (UK): £7.99 | Paperback | ISBN: 9781840028416
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Where's Vietnam?
Alice Nutter
Banks worships the Kray twins and believes that all he needs is a knife, while Arthur discovers the truth in the Lennon cliche: All you nned is love. A revenge comedy set in 1968, the year that politics and youth culture merged and resulted in worldwide revolution. The play deals with family tensions and the pressure to follow in an older brother's footsteps - even when that brother is a violent gangster in a wheelchair. attempts to shine a light on what happened to working class people's lives when politics and pop combined.
Price (UK): £8.99 | Paperback | ISBN: 9781840028706
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Topless Mum
Ron Hutchinson
When a soldier returns home after serving in Afghanistan he tempts a newspaper editor with personal photos that seem to expose outrageous acts of brutality. But when their authenticity is questioned, how far can the story be spun to stop the real truth leaking out...? A powerful new satire on the media's manipulation of the images of war.
Price (UK): £8.99 | Paperback | ISBN: 9781840028638
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The English Game
Richard Bean
"I've wasted the whole of my life playing this game. It's claimed my knees and it occupies every spare synapse in my brain. I'm not even sure I like it anymore..."
The Nighwatchmen: an amateur London cricket team, making up for in enthusiasm what they lack in ability. As they gather on a sunny Sunday to face Bernard and his ethnically diverse and highly talented squad, Will, Thiz, Clive and their team-mates spend the day smoking, drinking tea and discussing love, politics and the correct interpretation of the LBW law...
Price (UK): £8.99 | Paperback | ISBN: 9781840028539
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Running the Silk Road
Paul Sirett
Conceived by David Tse Ka-Shing
In the year of the Beijing Olympics, a group of friends from London set themselves an epic challenge - to run the ancient Silk Road trading route to China, carrying an 'alternative' Olympic flame. Once on the road, complications and conflict test friendships and soon threaten their chances of success. Exhilarating, refreshing and richly visual, Running the Silk Road blends East and West, telling a modern story mixed with Chinese myths.
Price (UK): £8.99 | Paperback | ISBN: 9781840028577
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The Lady of Burma
Richard Shannon
In her cell in Rangoon's Insein prison, Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi tells her story. Richard Shannon's powerful and moving one woman play vividly portrays the life and message of the world's most famous prisoner of conscience.
"Rarely is a show so powerful"The Independent
Price (UK): £8.99 | Paperback | ISBN: 9781840027860
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Familyman
Rikki Beadle-Blair
Caesar Ramsay works hard for his family. But the news his son Nelson reveals sends Caesar's seemingly ordinary life rapidly spinning out of control! How do you learn to be a dad when yours left before you were two? How do you take on responsibility for a child before you're legally responsible for yourself? Fast, furious and very funny, Familyman asks such vital questions as these, and confirms what many of us know only too well - parenting is messy!
Price (UK): £8.99 | Paperback | ISBN: 9781840028548
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Two Plays for Young People
The Flying Machine
Smashed Eggs
Phil Porter
Life isn't much fun for the children trapped on Ward One of St Ruth's Hospital for Damaged Eyes in The Flying Machine. But then a new boy arrives who is soon leading a revoilt against Nurse Cakebread's hard regime, turning everything on the ward upside down. A play of despicable schemes and acts of amazing bravery.
In Smashed Eggs, Titus and Miranda are being driven crazy by their mum's ridiculous rules. One day, Miranda leads Titus on a journey which changes the way they look at the world forever. What would happen if they disobey Mum? Winner of the Arts Council Children's Award in 2003.
Price (UK): £8.99 | Paperback | ISBN: 9781840028645
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How To Tell the Monsters from the Misfits
Paul Lucas
Twoi dead dentists covered in lipstick - quite a week for the bumbling Detective Edwards. He gathers together a crack team of police minds to help him solve a case that seems to strike at the very heart of Middle England. But as more and more bodies show up in ever more bizarre circumstances, it's not too long before the crack team begins to, well...crack. A touching and heart-warming new black comedy about murderous mayhem.
Price (UK): £8.99 | Paperback | ISBN: 9781840028621
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Meet the Mukherjees
Tanika Gupta
Aaron and Anita are in lust. They're the last to think there could be any long-term future in the relationship. At thirty, Anita is, according to her mother Chitra, past her sell-by date, whilst Aaron is, according to his mother Leticia, a heartless ladykiller. But desipte their own uncertainties, the couple can't help but fall for each other. As their relationship deepens, Aaron and Anita come face to face with the prejudices and fears of both sets of in-laws who seem to group together in opposition to their union. Will their love survive the test?
Price (UK): £8.99 | Paperback | ISBN: 9781840028614
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