Shinn Plays: 2: Now Or Later; Four; Picked; On The Mountain

Description

Ten years after the publication of Shinn Plays: One comes this second volume of his plays, bringing together some of the playwright's most acclaimed work to date. The volume includes: Now Or Later (Royal Court, London, 2008) examines religion, freedom of expression and personal responsibility, focused around a US presidential election. Four (Royal Court, London 1998) is set on the 4th July public holiday and is about four isolated young people searching for connection. Picked (Vineyard Theatre, New York, 2011) takes as its centre a young actor who is selected to star in a major movie and the impact this then has on his life and identity. On The Mountain (South Coast Rep, Costa Mesa, 2005) is about a teenager whose mother is starting out on a new relationship, while both are battling with the memories of the past. The anthology also features an introduction by the author.

Christopher Shinn is an American playwright from New York. His plays include Now or Later (shortlisted for the Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Play), Dying City (Pulitzer Prize finalist), Where Do We Live (winner of an Obie in Playwriting), An Opening In Time, Teddy Ferrara, Picked, Four, What Didn't Happen, On the Mountain, Other People, and The Coming World. His adaptation of Hedda Gabler premiered on Broadway (American Airlines Theatre), and he has written short plays for Naked Angels (Democracy Project), the 24 Hour Plays on Broadway, the Bush Theatre (Sixty-Six Books), and Headlong (Decade). His work has been premiered by Lincoln Center Theater, Manhattan Theatre Club, Playwrights Horizons, the Vineyard Theatre, South Coast Rep, the Goodman, the Royal Court, and the Soho Theatre, and later produced around the world. Christopher Shinn's awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship in Playwriting, a grant from the NEA/TCG Residency Program, an Obie in Playwriting and the Robert Chesley Award. He is Assistant Professor of Playwriting in the School of Drama at The New School, New York.

Now or Later is as potent as David Mamet's Oleanna in its exposure of how liberal creeds can - one way or another - be murkily tied in with intolerance * Independent on "Now or Later" * The play keeps delivering small shocks and aches that end in a standoff, or maybe in that pause between despair, resignation, and a twinge of hope. Haunting. * New York Times on "Four" * Surprising nuance and sudden surges of emotion. The play offers several outstanding monologues, some tender, some searing, and one unforgettable * New Yorker on "On the Mountain" * Better than any play I've seen at finding the natural existential anxiety in the frustration and powerlessness of being a movie actor. Offers ample evidence of this dramatist's singular gift for presenting human murkiness with precisely shaded clarity. Impeccably observed. * New York Times on "Picked" * Shinn opens a window into lives that we rarely see on stage * Broadway World * A playwright who writes with unshowy depth and unforced menace on a challenging subject * New York Magazine * Shinn territory is a land of bruised souls sharing awkward silences, their subtext and inchoate impulses placed carefully between them. A dramatist who writes from an intensely interior zone * Time Out New York *