Our curated collection of titles celebrates the universal themes of love, loss, family, and belonging, exploring the poignant journey of discovering that what was once home may now be found elsewhere. Explore our collection today and bring these unforgettable stories to life on your stage!
Clybourne Park by
Photo by Mark Douet, 2022 Park Theatre production
Winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the 2012 Tony Award® for Best Play
Clybourne Park explodes in two outrageous acts set fifty years apart. Act One takes place in 1959, as white community leaders anxiously try to stop the sale of a home to a black family. Act Two is set in the same house in the present day, as the now predominantly African-American neighborhood battles to hold its ground in the face of gentrification.
Sojourners by
Photo by Chasi Annexy, 2016 Off-Broadway production
Sojourners is Part One of the Ufot Cycle, Udofia’s sweeping, nine-part saga which chronicles the triumphs and losses of Abasiama Ufot, a Nigerian immigrant, and her family. Abasiama came to America with high hopes for her arranged marriage and her future, intent on earning a degree and returning to Nigeria. But when her husband is seduced by America, she must choose between the Nigerian or American Dream.
Act One by James Lapine, from the autobiography by Moss Hart
Growing up in an impoverished family in the Bronx, Moss Hart dreamed of being part of the glamorous world of the theatre. Forced to drop out of school at age thirteen, Hart’s famous memoir Act One is a classic Hortatio Alger story that plots Hart’s unlikely collaboration with the legendary playwright George S. Kaufman. Tony Award-winning writer and director James Lapine has adapted Act One for the stage, creating a funny, heartbreaking, and suspenseful play that celebrates the making of a playwright and his play Once in a Lifetime. ACT ONE offers great fun to a director to utilize over fifty roles, which can be played by a cast as few as twelve, and in a production that can be done as simply or elaborately as desired.
Crimes of the Heart by
2023 Penobscot Theatre Company production
Winner of the 1981 Pulitzer Prize and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best American Play
The scene is Hazlehurst, Mississippi, where the three Magrath sisters have gathered to await news of the family patriarch, their grandfather, who is living out his last hours in the local hospital. Lenny, the oldest sister, is unmarried at thirty and facing diminishing marital prospects; Meg, the middle sister, who quickly outgrew Hazlehurst, is back after a failed singing career on the West Coast; while Babe, the youngest, is out on bail after having shot her husband in the stomach. Their troubles, grave and yet, somehow, hilarious, are highlighted by their priggish cousin, Chick, and by the awkward young lawyer who tries to keep Babe out of jail while helpless not to fall in love with her. In the end the play is the story of how its young characters escape the past to seize the future—but the telling is so true and touching and consistently hilarious that it will linger in the mind long after the curtain has descended.
Appropriate by
Photo by Joan Marcus, 2023 Broadway production
Winner of the 2024 Tony Award® for Best Revival of Play
Winner of the 2014 Obie Award for Best New American Play
Every estranged member of the Lafayette clan has descended upon the crumbling Arkansas homestead to settle the accounts of the newly-dead patriarch. As his three adult children sort through a lifetime of hoarded mementos and junk, they collide over clutter, debt, and a contentious family history. But after a disturbing discovery surfaces among their father’s possessions, the reunion takes a turn for the explosive, unleashing a series of crackling surprises and confrontations.
Coming Home by
Photo by T. Charles Erickson, 2009 Long Wharf Theatre production
Years ago, Veronica Jonkers departed for the big city in the brave New South Africa, set on making her dreams of fame and fortune come true. In Coming Home, Veronica returns to Nieu Bethesda several years later to die of AIDS, but she is determined to first secure a future for her child, bright word-loving little Mannetjie. After a rocky beginning, Veronica’s childhood playmate and school friend Alfred agrees to marry Veronica and take care of Mannetjie, but Mannetjie resents Alfred’s intrusion into the close relationship he has with his mother. The ghost of old Buks Jonkers, Veronica’s beloved grandfather, appears to Veronica and to Mannetjie, teaching them how to appreciate the miracle of life, how it is part of God’s Plan and that one has to take the good with the bad and learn to survive. With his elders’ guidance, Mannetjie will, in turn, learn that the harsh realities of life can be softened by hope and redemption.
The House That Will Not Stand by
Photo by Carol Rosegg, 2014 Yale Repertory Theatre production.
Winner of a 2019 Obie Awards for Playwriting
In early nineteenth-century New Orleans, a widowed mother, Beartrice, struggles to manage her headstrong daughters after the death of her second husband. But as the matriarch takes her place as head of the household, a more ominous transfer of power transpires in the region. The French-owned Louisiana Territory is about to be acquired by the United States, threatening the liberty of the free people of color residing on the land. A gripping examination of intersecting captivities, The House That Will Not Stand follows four women in mourning as they look ahead to an uncertain and haunting future.
Deep Blue Sound by
On a picturesque island in Puget Sound, we find a town in a crisis: The whales have gone missing. While (unofficial) Mayor Annie searches for a solution, Chris tries to get back together with Mary; John reaches out to help Homeless Gary; Leslie longs for a faraway pen pal; Ali has come home to care for her mother; and Ella has a secret she only wants to share with local journalist Joy Mead, who she barely knows. But what about the whales? Is their absence just a seasonal glitch, or is it a sign of our collective failure to take care of the Earth? DEEP BLUE SOUND is a funny and moving play about the connections we make—and the ones we long to make—to other people, and to the world around us.
Dividing the Estate by
Photo by Sara Krulwich, 2008 Broadway production
Matriarch Stella Gordon is determined not to divide her 100-year-old Texas estate, despite her family’s declining wealth and the looming financial crisis. But her three children have another plan. Old resentments and sibling rivalries surface as the members of this hilariously dysfunctional family go head to head to see who might claim the biggest piece of the pie in Dividing the Estate.
Included in Broadway Book Club’s Competition Pack
The Glass Menagerie by
Amanda Wingfield is a faded remnant of Southern gentility who now lives in a dingy St. Louis apartment with her son, Tom, and her daughter, Laura, who has a physical handicap and debilitating shyness. The father has left home; Tom supports his mother and sister with a shoe-factory job he finds unbearable. When Amanda convinces Tom to bring home from his workplace a “gentleman caller” for Laura, the illusions that Tom, Amanda, and Laura have each created in order to make life bearable collapse about them.
George Washington Slept Here by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman
The story chronicles the trials and tribulations of Newton Fuller who craves—and gets—”a little place in the country to call his own.” Newton and his wife, Annabell, and their daughter, Madge, are hypnotized into taking over one of those windowless, waterless, almost roofless houses that dot the countryside. The ensuing troubles may be summed up by a search for water, a quarrel with a neighbor who owns not only the brook but the very road that leads from the highway to the house, the attempted elopement of the daughter with a summer-theatre actor, and the usual invasion of the weekend guests, including a prodigal uncle who is assumed to be rich but turns out to be just another bankrupt. It is discovered that the neighbor really doesn’t own Newton’s roadway, and that Newton’s wife, who began by showing disgust over her husband’s idiocy in wanting to live in the country, decides that he was right all along.
The Curious Savage by
Mrs. Savage has been left ten million dollars by her husband and wants to make the best use of it, in spite of her grown-up stepchildren’s efforts to get their hands on it. Knowing that the widow’s wealth is now in negotiable securities, and seeing they cannot get hold of the fortune, the stepchildren commit her to a sanatorium hoping to “bring her to her senses.” In the sanatorium Mrs. Savage meets various social misfits, men and women who just cannot adjust themselves to life, people who need the help Mrs. Savage can provide. In getting to know them, she realizes that she will find happiness with them and plans to spend the rest of her life as one of them. But when the doctor tells her there is no reason why she should remain, she hesitates to go out into a hard world where people seem ready to do anything for money. The self-seeking stepchildren are driven to distraction by their vain efforts to browbeat Mrs. Savage, but she preserves her equanimity and leads them on a merry chase. At last her friends conspire to get rid of her stepchildren, and through their simple belief in the justice of her cause, they enable Mrs. Savage to carry out her plans to establish a fund to help others realize their hopes and dreams. The dominant mood is high comedy, and the audience is left with a feeling that the neglected virtues of kindness and affection have not been entirely lost in a world that seems at times motivated only by greed and dishonesty.
The House of Bernarda Alba by Federico García Lorca, adapted by Emily Mann
Photo by Johan Persson, 2012 Almeida Theatre
A masterpiece of the modern theater, The House of Bernarda Alba was written in 1936, just before the start of the Spanish Civil War. The play takes place in a small village in southern Spain following the funeral of Bernarda Alba’s second husband. After the mourners depart, the tyrannical matriarch announces to her five daughters that their period of mourning will last eight years. Obsessed with family honor, Bernarda rules the household with an iron fist, but all of her daughters secretly harbor a passion for Pepe el Romano, the handsomest man in the village. The eldest daughter is engaged to him, but the arrangement is a financial one, and it is the youngest daughter, Adela, who becomes his lover. When the truth finally breaks through the atmosphere of suppressed desire, jealousy, anger, and fear, the consequences are tragic. Adela takes her own life and Bernarda makes a desperate attempt to maintain control of her shattered household.
The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures, or iHo by
In the summer of 2007, Gus Marcantonio, a retired longshoreman, summons his sister and his three children (who in turn bring along spouses, ex-spouses, lovers and more) to a most unusual family reunion in their Brooklyn brownstone. With humor and passion, the play examines the importance of connectedness and belonging—to a family, a community, a group, an ideology, a marriage—and what happens when those connections are lost.
All Because of Agatha by
Being a cartoonist, Duff O’Hara can live where he chooses and, at the urging of his young bride, Joan, this turns out to be historic Salem, Massachusetts. They are both taken by the charming old house that is shown to them; although Duff evinces misgivings when the real estate man reluctantly admits that the house has one rather bizarre feature which has discouraged previous tenants from staying on—it is visited each year by a slightly destructive witch named Agatha Forbes. But Joan wants the house, witch and all, so they settle in. Things go so well that by the time Agatha’s annual visitation is due Duff and Joan decide to make a party of it, and hopefully a farewell one for Agatha. Joan’s Aunt Thelma comes to visit in time for the festivities for which the next door neighbors, Dr. Randolph and his mother (a medium who calls herself Madame La Solda), are also invited. Inasmuch as Agatha is a local legend the newspaper sends its star reporter, Flip Cannon, along to cover the affair, but the atmosphere of gaiety soon vanishes when the witch herself arrives in a cloud of smoke and bad temper. Impatient from the outset, Agatha makes no bones about the fact that she wants everyone out of the house, although she does mellow to the extent of admitting that if she had a choice she would rather forego her enforced yearly visits and stay wherever it is witches live out eternity. She even goes along with Madame La Solda’s occult attempts to dissolve the commitment that binds her, but when this fails Agatha loses patience and repeats her evacuation order. As no one will cooperate, she then exercises her special powers and casts a spell which, to every one’s dismay, makes them actually become, temporarily, as they secretly wish themselves to be. The results are uproarious. But Joan, fortunately, keeps her wits about her and solves the riddle of how to free Agatha from her house-haunting obligation—which she does in the nick of time and to the relief of all.
