The Methuen Drama Book of New American Plays is an anthology of six outstanding plays from some of the most exciting playwrights currently receiving critical acclaim in the States. It showcases work produced at a number of the leading theatres during the last decade and charts something of the extraordinary range of current playwriting in America. It will be invaluable not only to readers and theatergoers in the U.S., but to those around the world seeking out new American plays and an insight into how U.S. playwrights are engaging with their current social and political environment. There is a rich collection of distinctive, diverse voices at work in the contemporary American theatre and this brings together six of the best, with work by David Adjmi, Marcus Gardley, Young Jean Lee, Katori Hall, Christopher Shinn and Dan LeFranc. The featured plays range from the intimate to the epic, the personal to the national and taken together explore a variety of cultural perspectives on life in America. The first play, David Adjmi's Stunning, is an excavation of ruptured identity set in modern day Midwood, Brooklyn, in the heart of the insular Syrian-Jewish community; Marcus Gardley's lyrical epic The Road Weeps, The Well Runs Dry deals with the migration of Black Seminoles, is set in mid-1800s Oklahoma and speaks directly to modern spirituality, relocation and cultural history; Young Jean Lee's Pullman, WA deals with self-hatred and the self-help culture in her formally inventive three-character play; Katori Hall's Hurt Village uses the real housing project of "Hurt Village" as a potent allegory for urban neglect set against the backdrop of the Iraq war; Christopher Shinn's Dying City melds the personal and political in a theatrical crucible that cracks open our response to 9/11 and Abu Graib, and finally Dan LeFranc's The Big Meal, an inter-generational play spanning eighty years, is set in the mid-west in a generic restaurant and considers family legacy and how some of the smallest events in life turn out to be the most significant.

HighTide Theatre Festival was founded in 2006 and has since become one of the most prolific homes of new writing. It has been described by the Telegraph as "one of the little gems of the artistic calendar in Britain" and by the Daily Mail as "famous for championing emerging playwrights and contemporary theatre". 2016 marks ten years of HighTide, during which time numerous emerging playwrights and new plays have shot to prominence. This anniversary volume brings together four of the key plays that have come out of HighTide Theatre Festival's programme during this time: Ditch by Beth Steel is a clear-eyed look at how we might behave when the conveniences of our civilisation are taken away, and a frightening vision of a future that could all too easily be ours. peddling by Harry Melling is a poetic monologue about a young homeless man, which confronts whether it's a good thing to turn a blind eye and let people get on with their lives, or whether that's exactly how people fall through the cracks. The Big Meal by American writer Dan LeFranc is a deeply comic and touching drama that looks at love, marriage, raising children and the general onslaught of life. Lampedusa by Anders Lustgarten follows the day-to-day life of those whose job it is to enforce our harsh new rules on immigration: an Italian coastguard and a payday lender from Leeds. All now established in their own right, these four plays demonstrate HighTide's extraordinary role in identifying and nurturing writers tackling some of the biggest issues of today. The volume was published to coincide with HighTide's 10th annual festival in September 2016 and features an introduction by HighTide Artistic Director, Steven Atkinson.

Typescript, undated. Unmarked typescript used for Samuel French edition of a play directed by Anne Kaufman that had opened Jan. 15, 2009, at Soho Rep, 46 Walker Street, New York, N.Y.

Set in the fictional suburb of Rancho Viejo, a couple cant bear the thought of their son and daughter-in-laws marriage troubles. No more than they can bear their awkward neighbors, or life in general. Dan LeFrancs anxious comedy ponders lifes big questions while his characters try to avoid existential exhaustion.

Somewhere in America, in a typical suburban restaurant on a typical night, Sam and Nicole first meet. Sparks fly. And so begins an exhilarating story that takes five generations of a modern family on a rollercoaster ride through life, from first kiss to final goodbye. A stunning, big-hearted play that whizzes through nearly eighty years, this is the extraordinary story of an ordinary family. The Big Meal had its world premiere on 7 February 2011 at American Theater Company, Chicago, US. Playwrights Horizons, Inc. produced its New York City premiere Off-Broadway in 2012. It received its European premiere in a production directed by Michael Boyd in a co-production between HighTide and Theatre Royal Bath Productions.

Typescript, dated 4/12/12. Unmarked script was used for a Playwrights Horizons presentation at the Peter Sharp Theater, 416 West 42nd Street, New York, N.Y., which opened March 21, 2012.