How far would you go for love? For art? What would you be willing to change? What price might you pay? Such are the painful questions explored by Neil LaBute in THE SHAPE OF THINGS. A young student drifts into an ever-changing relationship with an art major while his best friends' engagement crumbles, so unleashing a drama that peels back the skin of two modern-day relationships. Any shrewd chap who finds his artist girlfriend has a video-camera in the bedroom to film the cut and thrust of their sexual action might well fear he was destined to end up as her artistic fodder. But in THE SHAPE OF THINGS, Neil LaBute's absolutely chilling report from the sex war's frontline, where stratagems for sexual humiliations are planned, Adam, the shy chap concerned, takes the video-camera, so to speak, lying down. LaBute, the remarkable American movie director and playwright whose film In the Company of Men showed a sexually unappealing woman exploited by two vengeful pretend lovers, now returns to this theme. This time it's a man who's the victim of female guile ... LaBute meticulously plans that the shocking, climatic revelations should cast dark light upon his apparently average people. -Nicholas de Jongh, The Standard LaBute] continues to probe the fascinating dark side of individualism, whose ultimate evil is an inability to imagine the suffering of others ... LaBute's great gift is to live in and to chronicle that murky area of not knowing, which mankind spends much of its waking life denying. Where does truth end and fiction begin? Is the fiction more valuable than the truth? Do the results justify the means? -John Lahr, The New Yorker What is art? What are you permitted to do in its name? ... These questions are thrown up by a piece whose intricate layers of treachery are worthy of David Mamet ... -Paul Taylor, The Independent LaBute is a smart, ambitious writer who, at his best, dares to explore the ambivalence hiding under the weave of our social fabric. He always has a serious intellectual project in mind, and here he aims at no less than the subjectivity of love and the definition of art itself. THE SHAPE OF THINGS is compulsively watchable. -Gordon Cox, Newsday LaBute is the most gifted, intelligent and wittily moral American playwright since Wallace Shawn; that is high praise, believe me. And this play marks his theatrical maturity. It's a must see. -Michael Coveney, Daily Mail

ANGELS IN AMERICA has proved to be a watershed drama, the most lyrical and ambitious augury of an era since Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie.
John Lahr, The New Yorker

The most influential American play of the last two decades.
Patrick Healy, The New York Times

Daring and dazzling The most ambitious American play of our time: an epic that ranges from earth to heaven; focuses on politics, sex and religion; transports us to Washington, the Kremlin, the South Bronx, Salt Lake City and Antarctica; deals with Jews, Mormons, WASPs, blacks; switches between realism and fantasy, from the tragedy of AIDS to the camp comedy of drag queens to the death or at least absconding of God.
Jack Kroll, Newsweek

The greatest American play of the waning years of the twentieth century.
Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune

Star Trek and Star Wars step aside, because women are in command in this fantastic vision of the future. An epic space opera.

What if Neil Simon wrote a lovable comedy about a Muslim-American family trying to hold itself together amidst the misunderstandings that run amuck and the comedy that ensues when the generations collide? It would probably resemble something like the surprisingly enjoyable, charming and oftentimes hilarious TEN ACROBATS IN AN AMAZING LEAP OF FAITH.
Fabrizio O Almeida, New City Chicago

With TEN ACROBATS IN AN AMAZING LEAP OF FAITH, playwright Yussef El Guindi takes the genre (of the immigrant experience) to a new place--the Arab-American experience post September 11, 2001. With humor, passion and a lovely touch of whimsy, he's created a theatrical experience that's not to be missed.
Louis Weisberg, CFP

El Guindi's engrossing play...finds a workable balance between sharp humor and head-banging angst, which shapes his story effectively.
Mary Houlihan, Chicago Sun-Times

Woven into this complicated family drama are scenes of delightful humor. Humanity is the substance that ties not only all of the characters together but also binds the audience to them. This play beautifully serves the purposes of drama, comedy, the artistic theatrical process and, perhaps most importantly, demystifying the hate that comes from fear of unknown cultures.
Venus Zarris, Gay Chicago Magazine

The drama comes from an emotionally vivid story that captures a world of anger, joy, love and frustration as it plays out in a Muslim-American family. The appeal lies in Guindi's ability to transcend ethnicity while still writing a rich depiction of a Muslim family... The emotional difficulties could belong to any family of any (or no) religion... Smart, challenging, poignant, whimsical and at times, delightfully silly.
Catey Sullivan, Pioneer Press

ANGELS IN AMERICA has proved to be a watershed drama, the most lyrical and ambitious augury of an era since Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie.
John Lahr, The New Yorker

The most influential American play of the last two decades.
Patrick Healy, The New York Times

Daring and dazzling The most ambitious American play of our time: an epic that ranges from earth to heaven; focuses on politics, sex and religion; transports us to Washington, the Kremlin, the South Bronx, Salt Lake City and Antarctica; deals with Jews, Mormons, WASPs, blacks; switches between realism and fantasy, from the tragedy of AIDS to the camp comedy of drag queens to the death or at least absconding of God.
Jack Kroll, Newsweek

The greatest American play of the waning years of the twentieth century.
Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune

Moli re penned his final play, the slapstick comedy THE IMAGINARY INVALID more than 450 years ago, and it is not only amazing that this lesser-known play still stands the test of time, but how visionary this comedy, currently being seen in Constance Congdon's new adaptation at the American Conservatory Theatre, has become. Or should we really be surprised in this age of plentiful medication-as doctors scribble prescriptions faster than it takes to gulp a handful of pills down with a glass of water-that THE IMAGINARY INVALID feels as relevant today as it did when healers swore by snake oil and holy water rather than Nexium and Zoloft? Moreover, Congdon has folded in a healthy dose of present-day nuances and innuendos, as well as beefed up the plot. The result is an entertaining and jovial romp...The great Frenchman's last contribution to the world's stage-he died onstage while playing Argan-proves that time has stood still when it comes to the eternal nature of the hypochondriac. Tiffany Maleshefski, TheaterMania.com Lean, clean and comically bent...a bright evening of amusement and occasional hilarity. Dennis Harvey, Variety

During a record-breaking Los Angeles deluge, a man gives shelter to a beautiful, pregnant hitch-hiker who is searching for the father of her child. ... CLOUD TECTONICS, Jos Rivera's often enchanting new play ... Rivera has successfully mixed two styles in which he previously dabbled, realism and magic realism, to produce a naturalistic play interlaced with symbols and magical occurrences. In doing so, he has found a voice to probe the mystery of the kind of love that stops your heart as surely as it does your sense of time and space. And he does it without goo. -Laurie Winer, Los Angeles Times The operative phrase for Jos Rivera's work is 'magic realism, ' which doesn't mean much until you've been put under the spell of his brief and lovely play, CLOUD TECTONICS. It's a love story, an old boy-meets-girl story, but ... it's also a story of theatrical enchantment, in which the ordinary is suddenly transformed into the miraculous. On a fantastically rainy night in Los Angeles, the city of Angels, a plain Joe named Anibal de la Luna picks up and brings home with him a poor, bedraggled woman hitchhiker who calls herself Celestina del Sol. She is fifty-four years old, she says, and she has been pregnant two years. She is indeed a rare and heavenly creature, a mystic wanderer with no sense of time and an infinite capacity to love. Alone in his little house, sealed off from the wails of the decaying city outside, De la Luna and Del Sol come together, joining their bodies and their dreams. -Richard Christiansen, Chicago Tribune

Today and pre-1492 Spain come into collision in a twist on a Romeo & Juliet story (here Latina Catholic meets devout Muslim) in the highly poetic and beguiling PALOMA by Anne García-Romero.
Ross Haarstad, Ithaca Times

At its core, PALOMA is a love story. But Paloma also touches on topics such as religious conflict, coexistence and peace. They are noble ideas presented in cleverly poetic metaphors... García-Romero defies the usual gender dynamic with a female pursuer and a reticent male, and it proves a good decision.
Graham Gentz, New Mexico Daily Lobo

The evolving love between Ibrahim and Paloma is tender and true. Likewise, the underlying difficulties are also authentic... This is a powerful play that gets under the skin of religious tensions.
Rob Spiegel, Talkin' Broadway

Remember the excitement of each new production from the Ridiculous Theatrical Company? The company would offer a riff on a classic, shot through with enough satire to stand on its own. Vampire Cowboys Theater Company is channeling that energy in LIVING DEAD IN DENMARK, the hilarious and witty new play by Qui Nguyen. Nguyen, like Charles Ludlam before him, knows his Shakespeare. Using HAMLET as a jumping-off point, Nguyen throws in martial arts, horror movies, pop songs, puppetry, and comic books. Eat your heart out, Ed Wood.... A Backstage Critic's Pick!

Victor Gluck, Backstage

Qui Nguyen's comic book fantasia on Bardic themes takes characters from the main tragedies and throws them into an us-versus-zombies apocalyptic scenario, with enough rock-accompanied stage combat to keep an Elizabethan groundling satisfied. This gamely trashy treat is a perfect storm of theater-and horror-geek obsessions.

David Cote, Time Out New York

Fast-paced and riveting...be prepared to have your eyes opened, your own pre-conceived notions debunked, and your head left spinning...I highly recommend it.
Broadway World

HUMAN RITES...soars with mind-blowing ideas. Broad Street Review

When Westerners decry the practices of other cultures, and campaign for change, they may mean well. But are they really spreading enlightenment, or shame? Who gets to decide whether an initiation rite is barbaric or an exemplary form of bonding? Are there any cultural absolutes, or are all cultural norms equally valid? This constellation of questions animates Seth Rozin's crafty and invigorating play, HUMAN RITES.
Julia Klein, Philadelphia Inquirer

Plays like HUMAN RITES--thoughtfully written and thought-provoking--are what keep a lot of people, myself included, eagerly going to the theater.
WHYY-FM

It's so refreshing to experience a play that relentlessly challenges its audience to rethink its assumptions, about both big-picture issues and the human characters wrestling with them.
Indianapolis Business Journal

B F Fs Nicky and Isobel, home from their first year of college, spend the summer on Isobel's rooftop collecting both experiences and people while shooting a dogma-style reality film about their summer. But when they add Rexx to their collection, and their old friend Tiger returns from rehab, will this temporary paradise be lost? I am extremely taken and impressed with her work and find everything she writes to be infused with a most intriguing and original voice...I think Brooke is a first rate talent and will distinguish herself in the American theater. Christopher Durang Ms Berman has a vigorous interest in turning over the rocks in contemporary relationships to find what is growing underneath. The New York Times on A PERFECT COUPLE Twisted obsession is just one of the themes that Berman navigates with skill and humor. David Cote, Time Out New York on SMASHING Brooke Berman has proven herself a playwright to watch. Curtain Up on THE TRIPLE HAPPINESS

Set in the desert of Barstow, California, where Gabriela, the wife of career soldier Benito, dives into a surreal fantasy world during her husband's prolonged absences and imagines the mating rituals between a coyote and a cat. On a moonlit July night in Barstow, California, strange, seductive things can happen, especially if you talk to the moon, which is portrayed as an aging, violin-playing dandy in a Panama hat and white suit. Don't expect any literal answers from REFERENCES TO SALVADOR DALI MAKE ME HOT, Jos Rivera's surreal romance in which love, lust and longing mix it up, bewitching a twenty-seven year-old housewife awaiting the return of her soldier-husband from overseas. Rivera's intriguing fantasy ... celebrates the confusion that grows out of trying to understand not only the one you love but yourself as well. It is a meditation on the impossible, but told in a provocative manner by Rivera, a writer whose language manages to be poetic and earthy at the same time. -Michael Kuchwara, Associated Press ... marvelous and satisfying ... In DALI, Rivera ... imagines Gabriela's dream world as rigorously as he does her real world, striking a balance between the two with the affecting power of his language. ... a double-sided dream of intelligence and wit. -Gordon Cox, Newsday The writing fluctuates between faintly surreal poetry and wryly pointed prose, cocky fantasy and bittersweet earthiness. Rivera manages the latter adroitly, but even the former is not without its moments ... a genuine comedy-drama that rises above the specific into the ecumenical. Particularly praiseworthy is the evenhandedness with which Rivera articulates the husband's and the wife's dilemmas, and his ability to anchor Benito and Gabriela in both their Hispanic roots and their ultimate universality. Their language is credibly down-to-earth, but with flights of a more literary wit and lyricism that, after the initial stages, avoid striking false notes. -John Simon, New York

Ruth is a 74-year-old woman. Rowan is a 23-year-old man. They're in love. And Ruth's 43-year-old son is freaking the hell out.

No matter where you live, the ups and downs of married life are universal. For a middle-aged American couple traveling to Egypt on a business trip-slash-vacation, their relationship is put to the test when an old connection leads to new temptation. As the eager tourists strive to connect with Egyptian culture in an authentic way, they end up getting more than they bargained for as long-dormant marital issues begin to percolate. Drawing from the political, cultural, and religious realities of living in the region, this quick-witted dramedy set in the heat of Cairo pits loyalty against attraction as its characters grapple with the ever-changing struggle of staying committed to their partners.

A town ruled by a dragon and compelled to pay it tribute is rescued by Sir Lancelot, at a terrible price to himself. But the mayor and his son prove to be just as bad as the dragon, and Lancelot has to save the town again, this time judging it harshly.

Among the most imaginative works of the 20th century, Eric Overmyer's ON THE VERGE OR THE GEOGRAPHY OF YEARNING captivates with its abundant invention. Three Victorian lady travelers take it upon themselves to discover the mystery of things as they set out for Terra Incognita and discover the future.

Cross the wordplay of S J Perelman with the world-in-a-time-warp vision of Caryl Churchill and you might approximate the special flavor of ON THE VERGE. In Eric Overmyer's chimerical new comedy, three Victorian lady explorers set out on an adventure that takes them to darkest Africa, highest Himalaya and Terra Incognita ... Blending Tom Stoppard's limber linguistics with the historic overview of a Thornton Wilder, Mr Overmyer takes his audience on a mirthful safari ... spinning into time travel. Three 'sister sojourners', each a prototypical Victorian lady explorer, equipped with dialog as pithy as their helmets, thwack their machetes through the wilderness while telling tales of past jaunts among the natives. As intrepid trekkers, they put the lie to any charge that they are representatives of a weaker sex. Mr Overmyer has written a play that is joyfully feminist. Heroines to their heart, the explorers can accommodate themselves to any emergency (natural or man-made), although they are momentarily disoriented as they approach modern times. In their kaleidoscopic adventure, they journey through a rain forest of hundreds of artifacts from the future - household utensils, mechanical contrivances and a side-view automobile mirror that reads 'Objects in mirror may be closer than they appear.' How does one deal with such a chimera? ... In the play there is wit within the palaver. As one traveler says, 'I have seen the future and it is slang.' The author himself is an ecologist of language and a shrewd observer of our quest to control our environment - and the environment of others ... A frolicsome jaunt through a continuum of space, time, history, geography, feminism and fashion, Mr Overmyer's cavalcade is on the verge of becoming a thoroughly serendipitous journey. -Mel Gussow, The New York Times

High atop a railroad trestle that spans a bone dry creek, two teenagers plan to race across the bridge against an oncoming locomotive. At first their scheme adds excitement to life in a small factory town during the Great Depression, then sensual experience awakens dangerous passions in an era of stifled ambitions. With theatrical flourish and lyrical finesse, Naomi Wallace delves into a world where people struggle to change lives that bear down upon them. ... Naomi Wallace, the thirty-eight-year-old Kentucky playwright at work here, received a MacArthur 'genius grant' last week, and TRESTLE AT POPE LICK CREEK, her lovely, strikingly poetic Depression-era play ... certainly illustrates what makes her deserving ... the play sometimes seems like a blend of Ingmar Bergman and Horton Foote, with Thornton Wilder on the side ... TRESTLE is set in 1936 in a in a town so dull that the only thing young people can pit themselves against, the only thing greater than them, is the 7:10 train with its 153-ton engine and deafening roar. So we find Dalton and Pace, who becomes his girlfriend despite his repeated insistence that she is not pretty, making plans to test themselves by trying to outrun the train on a trestle a hundred feet above a dry creek bed. Another boy from their town tried it recently and died ... By the end, the play, like that train, has built up a full head of steam and we feel its power. -Anita Gates, The New York Times ... TRESTLE is an often poignant, nonlinear-narrative coming-of-age story that's set in 1936 in a 'town outside a city, somewhere in the United States ... TRESTLE is at once charming and haunting ... you'll view it with wonder along the way. -Sam Whitehead, Time Out ... The honor for the most original and memorable work of this year's 22nd Humana Festival goes to another Kentuckian, Naomi Wallace, for her brilliant THE TRESTLE AT POPE LICK CREEK ... After the two-act play ended with an erotic, gender-twisted climax, there was a moment in the darkness when I thought: 'This must be how it felt when people saw A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE for the very first time.' Like Tennessee Williams's daring play, Wallace's work introduces a new level of sexual honesty with a fresh mature voice. TRESTLE wraps its five characters in a metaphorical drama within a romantic and tragic mystery. It's a complicated, interwoven play that moves back and forth in time between past and present, with layers of meaning that overlap and build upon each other. Despite its depth of symbolism and clear political message, the play is neither stuffy nor strident. A bright ripple of humor funs through Wallace's play about two sexually charged young people who consider a game of chicken with an oncoming train. Wallace's keen psychological insights evoke compassion for her characters. Tears are shed and not only over the pathos of the play ... The actors stir the emotions with the tender way they expose the fragility and indomitable beauty of the human spirit, as revealed through Wallace's words ... If Wallace's plays were a visual art, ONE FLEA SPARE would be a baroque oil painting, while THE TRESTLE AT POPE LICK CREEK would be a 1930s American photograph with contrasting lights and shadows and its direct, unsentimental and uncensored gaze into the lives of the working class. -Judith Egerton, Courier-Journal, Louisville

A play about love, sex, ambition, and the Arab American experience, ROAR is the story of a Palestinian American family living in Detroit in the wake of the first Gulf War. Karema and Ahmed Yacoub work long hours in their liquor store while their teenage daughter, Irene, relentlessly pursues a career as a pop star. All hell breaks loose when a notoriously sexy and scandalous relative, Hala, gets thrown out of Kuwait and arrives on the doorstep without a return ticket. ROAR is part tender drama and part searing comedy. The young writer Betty Shamieh has the playwright's most essential gift: the passion for talk. Ms Shamieh's rich, urgent prose will catch you up, then fling you into a character's life as if it were your own. In ROAR, we meet two generations of Palestinian-Americans living in Detroit during the first Gulf War. Don't expect the grim worthiness of a 'problem play'; expect unpredictable events, relationships, and humor. -Margo Jefferson, The New York Times The words of this play first hum, then sing and ultimately roar into your consciousness and soul. -Theater Scene ROAR opened Off-Broadway and made an immediate impact. It deals with a family of outsiders who, like the Younger family in A RAISIN IN THE SUN, are also struggling with the concept of assimilation - but this family of uprooted Palestinians sees the world in a considerably different and far more complex way. Although it deals largely with the Palestinian experience, ROAR is fundamentally about the American dream. -Theater Mania ROAR is not at all the lightweight issue-oriented play it first appears, but rather a layered, family-oriented tragic drama in the tradition of THE GLASS MENAGERIE or LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT. If Shamieh's not quite ready to stake her claim as not only one of the best and most important playwrights of her generation but as a dramatist as significant in her way as Tennessee Williams and Eugene O'Neill were in theirs, ROAR certainly suggests the day that will happen is not far off. -Talkin' Broadway ROAR isn't just the story of Palestinian-Americans living in Detroit: it's an unsentimental look at family life in all its frustrating complexity. -Associated Press

Rural Central Texas, 1962. Dave, still lives in the old family home that his father built. The family is still the only Jewish family in this isolated country town. As his son Nathan faces the (to him) bizarre prospect of becoming Bar Mitzvah, his wife Rachel faces an even greater crisis of faith. As Dave encounters the remoteness of his community, and the even further distance from the faith of his father, his entire family faces the legacy left behind by their immigrant forebears: What do the Jews believe? This is a fictionalized account of the next generation of the family introduced in THE IMMIGRANT, and the second play in Mark Harelik's Texas saga of one Jewish-American family. The first full production of new play by Mark Harelik is a sequel to his previous successful drama, THE IMMIGRANT. This ongoing story of the Estanitskys, a Jewish family in Texas, slightly resembles, in its second installment, some aspects of Neil Simon's semi-autobiographical saga founded on his own early experiences - and with a precocious and talkative little lad serving as the author's presumed stand-in and mouthpiece as well ... Instead of spotlighting the psyche of some wunderkind, the playwright is probing (but never answering) ultimate posers dealing with life and death, God and man, Jew and Gentile, human suffering and eternal 'Why?' Harelik makes ideas confront each other with Shavian gusto, but he never lets the battle of words stray far from the passions and pain that provokes it ... THE LEGACY is as strong emotionally as it is cogitatively. -George Weinberg-Harter, Drama-Logue

In present day Los Angeles, Esmeralda, feisty with a capital F and frustrated, desperately wants out of her secretarial job. The escape act begins when Sam, a shy, literary accountant, asks her out. Amidst the poetry of Latin American and Spanish romantics and, well, mathematical equations, a comedic marriage of the minds ensues catapulting them out of their work-a-day lives and into an unforgettable lesson in how to love. García-Romero's witty, fast-paced play does give the (mismatched lovers) situation a new twist, focusing on two very individual and well-drawn characters in a particular cultural stratum that American theater hasn't handled often or well. -James Reel, Tucson Weekly García-Romero has a writing style that comfortably contains the literary spirit of Gabriel García Márquez, Jorge Luis Borges and others ... The conversations in this two-person play flow back and forth in gentle shapes. Even when there is much shouting, the words never feel jagged or abrupt. Like boxers they thrust and parry, shifting from offense to defense and back again, hoping to find an advantage. -Chuck Graham, Tucson Citizen ... García-Romero's voice is a vibrant one that has a love of language and storytelling ... there are some wonderful verbal images in this play - one, a blue bucket by a bed to catch tears, is particularly poignant. And García-Romero has an ear for rhythmic dialogue. -Kathleen Allen, Arizona Daily Star