Plays, Playscripts, Drama

James Baldwin turns a murder and its aftermath into an inquest in which even the most well-intentioned whites are implicated—and in which even a killer receives his share of compassion. In a small Southern town, a white man murders a black man, then throws his body in the weeds. With this act of...

Berlin, 1932. As political unrest grips Germany and the Nazi Party rises to power, a group of artists, activists, and intellectuals gathers in an apartment, struggling to understand the forces transforming their country. Bound by friendship, ideals, and a shared sense of unease, they watch as fear,...

A nation reeling from the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement and the Kennedy assassination. Caroline, a black maid, and Noah, the son of the Jewish family she works for, struggle to find an identity for their friendship after Noah's stepmother, unable to give Caroline a raise, tells Caroline that she...

Set in New York City during the height of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, Angels in America follows the intertwined lives of several individuals confronting illness, love, loss, politics, and profound personal change. As relationships fracture and unexpected connections form, each character is forced...

The History of the Devil takes place at the Devil's parole hearing, held in a remote court where a jury must decide whether Lucifer deserves to be released from his exile and allowed to return to Heaven. To determine his fate, witnesses are called to testify about the Devil's actions throughout...

A middle-aged English woman, fascinated by the history and culture of Afghanistan, becomes increasingly absorbed in a world she has never seen. After she unexpectedly disappears while traveling in Kabul, her husband and daughter journey to Afghanistan in search of answers, entering a country shaped...

Although Lillian Hellman and Mary McCarthy probably only met once in their lives, their names will be linked forever in the history of American literary feuds: they were legendary enemies, especially after McCarthy famously announced to the world that every word Hellman wrote was a lie, “including...

First produced in 1959, A Raisin in the Sun was awarded the New York Drama Critics Circle Award and hailed as a watershed in American drama. Not only a pioneering work by an African American playwright—Lorraine Hansberry’s play was also a radically new representation of black life, resolutely...

First staged in 1964, The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window is the probing, hilarious, and provocative story of Sidney, a disenchanted Greenwich Village intellectual, his wife Iris, an aspiring actress, and their colorful circle of friends and relations. Set against the shenanigans of a stormy...

In the early days of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the residents of a small co-op community outside of Kyiv find themselves in increasingly desperate circumstances, surrounded by occupying Russian forces. Pinched between Bucha and Borodianka, cut off from aid, and unable to escape, their...

After one night together in the desert, Grace uproots their life to chase after Brahm, a person who is slowly becoming a cactus. Not known for having a green thumb, Grace tends to Brahm and the seeds of their own doubt. Can the desert be a place for love to grow, or are they both just waiting for...

Claudia Rankine’s first published play, The White Card, poses the essential question: Can American society progress if whiteness remains invisible? Composed of two scenes, the play opens with a dinner party thrown by Virginia and Charles, an influential Manhattan couple, for the up-and-coming...

In her stage-writing debut, celebrated novelist and essayist Zadie Smith brings to life a comedic and cutting twenty-first century translation of Geoffrey Chaucer’s classic The Wife of Bath. The Wife of Willesden follows Alvita, a Jamaican-born British woman in her mid-50s, as she tells her life...