CLOSURE: Central Library will be closed Tuesday, July 21, through Saturday, July 25, while emergency repairs are made to the building’s cooling system. We expect to reopen Monday, July 27. Click for more details on holds, program schedules, and returns during the closure. 

Notice of Public Meeting: Kalamazoo Public Library Board of Trustees | July 27 | 5:30 pm | Central Library/Van Deusen Room. The packet of information for the meeting can be found on the library’s website. 

NOTICE: Due to a power outage, Oshtemo Branch Library is closed Tuesday, July 21 until further notice.  

Book

Plays

Call Number

  • 812 G914 (CEN)

Browse similar titles by call number

Publication Information

New York, NY : The Library of America, [2025]

Physical Description

xix, 849 pages ; 21 cm.

Summary

"This Library of America edition of Guare's dramatic works--chosen in consultation with the author--offers an indispensable one-volume retrospective of an essential American playwright. In one-act plays from the 1960s Guare explores on a small scale the key subjects that would preoccupy him throughout his career: family relationships, the distortions of desire in consumer culture, the unruly coexistence of the absurd and the psychologically raw. These plays set the stage for the breakout Off-Broadway hit The House of Blue Leaves, a daring, darkly hilarious comedy about a papal visit to Queens that presciently takes aim at American celebrity worship. Filled with unexpected turns and revealing surprises, plays such as Rich and Famous and Landscape of the Body are funny, touching dramas about envy, yearning, and a world that always leaves us wanting more. Works set in the past, such as the Lydie Breeze trilogy and the late masterpiece A Free Man of Color, take a broader historical view of America's utopian aspirations and racial hypocrisies. Guare's best-known work, Six Degrees of Separation, is an enduring landmark of the American stage, a stunning fusion of comic and tragic elements and an emotionally powerful investigation into the depths of deception and authenticity. This volume also prints, for the first time, Guare's short play 'Woman at a Threshold, Beckoning,' written in the aftermath of 9/11, as well as his acclaimed screenplay for Louis Malle's 1980 film Atlantic City. 'Guare,' writes John Lahr in this volume's foreword, 'has stories to tell, jokes to make, logic to challenge, phrases to turn, spells to cast, all of which comprise a funhouse-mirror reflection of American life's caprice and chaos in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Guare's theatrical career of over fifty years has ranged farther and wider than almost all his contemporaries'"--

Contents

  • Something I'll tell you Tuesday
  • The loveliest afternoon of the year
  • A day for surprises
  • The house of blue leaves
  • Rich and famous
  • Landscape of the body
  • Bosoms and neglect
  • Atlantic City
  • In fireworks lie secret codes
  • Lydie Breeze trilogy. Part 1. Cold Harbor ; Part 2. Aipotu ; Part 3. Madaket Road
  • Six degrees of separation
  • Woman at a threshold, beckoning
  • A few stout individuals
  • A free man of color.

Subjects

Genres

Drama.