Gay Plays 5: Playing by the Rules; Plague of Innocence; Beautiful Thing; Snow Orchid

Description

Volume 5 in Methuen Drama's highly successful series of Gay Plays provides another outstanding selection by playwright Michael Wilcox. Included here is the George Devine winner, Jonathan Harvey's Beautiful Thing: 'deliciously upbeat . . . seldom has there been a play which so exquisitely and joyously depicts what it's like to be sixteen, in the first flush of love and optimism. Truly a most unusual and beautiful thing.' (Guardian) Playing by the Rules by Rod Dungate: 'There's such humour in it, such affection and such energy . . . the action is swift, sharp and ebullient.' (Plays and Players) Snow Orchid by Joe Pimtauro: 'Primal confrontations, spilled guts and emotional wound-openings show the seismic upheavals that occur within an Italian-American family when Rocco, the father, returns home after two years in a lunatic asylum.' (Independent)

Michael Wilcox began writing plays in 1974, formerly he was a teacher. His original works include, 'The Boy Who Cried Stop!', 'Grimm Tales', 'The Atom Bomb Project', 'Roar Like Spears', 'Rents', 'The Blacketts of Bright Street', 'Mowgli', 'Pioneers', 'Phantom of the Fells', 'Accounts', 'Lent', '78 Revolutions', 'Massage', 'Tornrak', 'Green Fingers', 'Time Windows', 'Cullercoats Tommy', 'The Reluctant King', 'Rock 'N Roll and Barbirolli' and 'Mrs Steinberg And The Byker Boy'. He has won a Thames Television Award, a George Devine Award, a Pye TV Award and 2 TRIC Awards. Rod Dungate is a Birmingham based playwright. He studied at Bristol University where he earned a BA in Drama, before gaining an MA in Playwriting studies at Birmingham University. His plays include A Little Light Orienteering, Masque of New Hope, King James' Ear, First Past the Post, an adaptation of Jonson's Epicoene, WormsEye ReView (co-author), and for radio, Now You See Me. He is actively involved in developing cultural policy in Birmingham, and regularly reviews and contributes to Plays and Players and Tribune. His Playing by the Rules was published in Gay Plays 5 by Methuen Drama in 1994. Noel Greig (1944-2009) was a British playwright, widely known for his work in the radical gay theatre. For many years he was closely associated with Gay Sweatshop and his plays for that company include: The Dear Love of Comrades, Poppies and (with Drew Griffiths) As Time Goes By. He also wrote regularly for companies performing to children and young adults. His play about Sir Roger Casement, Raising Roger, was commissioned by the Royal National Theatre. Jonathan Harvey is an award-winning playwright, whose plays include The Cherry Blossom Tree (Liverpool Playhouse Studio), which won him the 1987 National Girobank Young Writer of the Year Award; Wildfire (Royal Court Theatre); Beautiful Thing (Bush Theatre, London and Donmar Warehouse/Duke of York's Theatre), winner of the John Whiting Award 1994; Babies (Royal National Theatre Studio/Royal Court Theatre), winner George Devine Award 1993 and Evening Standard's Most Promising Playwright Award 1994; Boom Bang-A-Bang (Bush Theatre); Rupert Street Lonely Hearts Club (English Touring Theatre/Contact Theatre Company, Donmar Warehouse/Criterion Theatre); Swan Song (Pleasance/Hampstead Theatre); Guiding Star (Liverpool Everyman/National Theatre); Hushabye Mountain (English Touring Theatre/Hampstead) and Out in the Open (Hampstead Theatre/Birmingham Rep). Television and film work includes: West End Girls (Carlton); Love Junkie (BBC); Beautiful Thing (Channel Four/Island World Productions); Gimme Gimme Gimme (BBC). Joe Pintauro was born in Ozone Park, New York, in 1930. He graduated from Fordham University, NY with an M.A. in American Literature before studying Theology for four years at Niagara University. He has published ten books of poetry, as well as a novel, Cold Hands (1979). He currently lives in Sag Harbor Village, NY. He is best known for works such as Raft of the Medusa, Beside Herself, Cacciatore and Men's Lives. Plays by Joe Pintauro, a collection of twenty-two of his one-act plays was published in New York in 1989. His plays have been included in the Methuen collections Gay Plays 4 and 5.