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Arena Stage, DC, USA >>>

2007

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I don't think the play has been published but you could try abebooks.com
or the playwright direct where their email is shown at the top of the page

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Play/Drama

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Notes: -

Synopsis: The story is about a brilliant musicologist who is fascinated by Ludwig von Beethoven's seeming fixation on creating different 'variations' or musical patterns based on a rather trivial waltz. Despite debilitating health, Dr. Katherine Brandt (Jayne Atkinson) travels to Bonn, Germany to examine his music notebooks to understand his thought processes and musical decisions. Her tenderness in gently examining the pages wearing the required white gloves contrasts with her contrary and rather gruff approach to her daughter, with whom she has a testy relationship. Kaufman introduces themes, messages and scenes about mother/daughter interactions, passionate artistic pursuits, love and friendship, and ultimately, effects of illness, incapacitation and death. He weaves these scenes allowing fascinating interplay and connection of the messages in intricate zig-zag patterns that enter and exit rather like a musical fugue.
- Debbie Minter Jackson, DC Theatre Scene

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American Theatre Magazine, NY - November

1997

If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
(below) are AbeBooks for secondhand & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

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Play/Drama

9

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flexible casting

Notes: Methuen Drama, London >>>

Synopsis: In early 1895, the Marquess of Queensberry, the father of Wilde's young lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, left a card at Wilde's club bearing the phrase "posing somdomite." Wilde sued the Marquess for criminal libel. The defense denounced Wilde's art and literature as immoral, leading the prosecuting attorney to declare, "It would appear that what is on trial is not Lord Queensberry but Mr. Wilde's art!" In the end Queensberry was acquitted, and evidence that had been gathered against Wilde compelled the Crown to prosecute him for "gross indecency with male persons." With Wilde's arrest, his hit plays running in London's West End were forced to close, and Wilde was reduced to penury. A second trial ended in a hung jury with Wilde's impassioned defense of "the love that dare not speak its name," prompting a third trial. In the third and decisive trial, Wilde was convicted and sentenced to two years imprisonment at hard labor. He was separated forever from his wife and children, and wrote very little for the rest of his life. In addition to Wilde, Douglas and Queensberry, characters ranging from Queen Victoria to London's rent boys, to a present-day academic are assembled to explore how history is made and how it can be so timely revisited in the theatre.

Center Theatre, Denver, Co

2000

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Dramatists Play Service, NY

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If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
(below) are AbeBooks for secondhand & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

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Play/Drama

4

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flexible casting

Notes: Written by Moises Kaufman and members of the Tectonic Theater Project

Synopsis: In October 1998 a twenty-one-year-old student at the University of Wyoming was kidnapped, severely beaten and left to die, tied to a fence in the middle of the prairie outside Laramie, Wyoming. His bloody, bruised and battered body was not discovered until the next day, and he died several days later in an area hospital. His name was Matthew Shepard, and he was the victim of this assault because he was gay. Moisés Kaufman and fellow members of the Tectonic Theater Project made six trips to Laramie over the course of a year and a half in the aftermath of the beating and during the trial of the two young men accused of killing Shepard. They conducted more than 200 interviews with the people of the town. Some people interviewed were directly connected to the case, and others were citizens of Laramie, and the breadth of their reactions to the crime is fascinating. Kaufman and Tectonic Theater members have constructed a deeply moving theatrical experience from these interviews and their own experiences. THE LARAMIE PROJECT is a breathtaking theatrical collage that explores the depths to which humanity can sink, and the heights of compassion we are also capable of.