Search results for ""author arthur miller""

'A beautifully structured narrative: tough, very moving, a political testimony of considerable force' - Harold Pinter 'As wise and witty and funny and brave as any of his plays' - Louis Auchincloss 'Wholly admirable' - Anthony Burgess ______________ Arthur Miller's plays have held the world's stages for almost half a century. Among them are Death of a Salesman, The Crucible, and All My Sons, which have been read and performed countless times across the world. His memoir, Timebends, shows that the life of the man is as compelling as his plays. With passion, wit and candour, Miller recalls his childhood in Harlem and Brooklyn in the 1920s and the Depression; his successes and failures in the theatre and in Hollywood; the formation of his political beliefs that, two decades later, brought him into confrontations with the House Committee of Un-American Activities; and his later work on behalf of human rights as the president of PEN International. He writes with astonishing perception and tenderness of Marilyn Monroe, his second wife, as well as the host of famous and infamous characters that have intersected with his adventurous life. Revealing and deeply moving, Timebends is Miller's love letter to the twentieth century: its energy, its humour, its chaos and moral struggles.

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Arthur Miller's penultimate play, Resurrection Blues, is a darkly comic satirical allegory that poses the question: What would happen if Christ were to appear in the world today? In an unidentified Latin American country, General Felix Barriaux has captured an elusive revolutionary leader. The rebel, known by various names, is rumoured to have performed miracles throughout the countryside. The General plans to crucify the mysterious man, and the exclusive television rights to the twenty-four-hour reality-TV event have been sold to an American network. An allegory that asserts the interconnectedness of our actions and each person's culpability in world events, Resurrection Blues is a comedic and tragic satire of precarious morals in our media-saturated age.

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This edition of Arthur Miller's award-winning masterpiece brings the play alive for students whether in the classroom or drama studio. With activities that target exactly the right level plus in-depth biographical and contextual information to deepen students' understanding of the play, this edition provides comprehensive, relevant and engaging support for 16-18 students. The brand new design ensures that the text and supporting materials are the clearest and most accessible available. Exploring the disintegration of WIlly Loman's mind and his inevitable drift towards suicide, Arthur Miller's dramatisation of the failure of the American Dream remains as poignant and relevant today as when it was first published in 1949.

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In Vichy France, 1942, a group of men sit outside an office, waiting to be interviewed. The reason they have been pulled off the street and taken there is obvious enough. They are, for the most part, Jews. But how serious an offence this is, and how they are to suffer for it, is not clear, and they hope for the best. But as rumours pass between them of trains full of people locked from the outside and furnaces in Poland, and although they reassure themselves that nothing so monstrous could be true, their panic rises.Arthur Miller's claustrophobic play of how the inconceivable becomes allowed to pass, Incident at Vichy is one of the most indispensable, moving pieces of art about the Holocaust.

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A reticent personnel manager living with his mother, Mr Newman shares the prejudices of his times and of his neighbours - and neither a Hispanic woman abused outside his window nor the persecution of the Jewish store owner he buys his paper from are any of his business. Until Newman begins wearing glasses, and others begin to mistake him for a Jew.Arthur Miller's chilling novel displays the same searing moral precision and emotional intensity of his plays, as the intensity of anti-Semitism in 1945 New York mounts, and the prejudices Newman shares begin to turn threateningly against him.

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Victor, a New York cop nearing retirement, moves among furniture in the disused attic of a house marked for demolition. Cabinets, desks, a damaged harp, an overstuffed armchair - the relics of a lost life of affluence he's finally come to sell. But when his brother Walter, who he hasn't spoken to in years, arrives, the talk stops being just about whether Victor's been offered a fair price for the furniture, and turns to the price that one and not the other of them paid when their father lost both his fortune and the will to go on ...Fraught, but cut through with humour, The Price is one of Arthur Miller's finest plays.

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Arthur Miller's extraordinary masterpiece, Death of a Salesman changed the course of modern theatre, and has lost none of its power as an examination of American life. 'A man is not an orange. You can't eat the fruit and throw the peel away'Willy Loman is on his last legs. Failing at his job, dismayed at his the failure of his sons, Biff and Happy, to live up to his expectations, and tortured by his jealousy at the success and happiness of his neighbour Charley and his son Bernard, Willy spirals into a well of regret, reminiscence, and A scathing indictment of the ultimate failure of the American dream, and the empty pursuit of wealth and success, is a harrowing journey. In creating Willy Loman, his destructively insecure anti-hero, Miller defined his aim as being 'to set forth what happens when a man does not have a grip on the forces of life'.

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When an essay is due and dreaded exams loom, here's the lit-crit help students need to succeed! SparkNotes Literature Guides make studying smarter, better, and faster. They provide chapter-by-chapter analysis, explanations of key themes, motifs, and symbols, a review quiz and essay topics. Lively and accessible, SparkNotes is perfect for late-night studying and paper writing.

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Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang! How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name! In a small tight-knit community, gossip and rumour spread like wildfire, inflaming personal grievances until no-one is safe from accusation and vengeance. The Crucible is Arthur Miller's classic dramatisation of the witch-hunt and trials that besieged the Puritan community of Salem in 1692. Seen as a chilling parallel to the McCarthyism and repressive culture of fear that gripped America in the 1950s, the play's timeless relevance and appeal remains as strong as when the play opened on Broadway in 1953. This new edition includes an introduction by Soyica Diggs Colbert, that explores the play's production history as well as the dramatic, thematic, and academic debates that surround it; a must-have resource for any student exploring The Crucible.

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For Arthur Miller's centennial year, The Library of America and editor Tony Kushner present the final volume in the definitive collected edition of the essential American dramatist. Here are eleven masterful, haunting, funny, and provocative later plays, from the double-bill Danger: Memory (1987) to Finishing the Picture (2004), Miller’s final stage work, based loosely on events around the filming of The Misfits, in 1960, with Marilyn Monroe. In between, Miller revisits the perennially rich themes that define his work—the vagaries of fate and chance, the press of public events on private lives—with such plays as The Ride Down Mt. Morgan, The Last Yankee, Broken Glass, Mr. Peters’ Connections, and Resurrection Blues. Also presented in the volume are the early play The Golden Years, about the conquest of Mexico, which Miller revised for its first production in 1987; several shorter one-act plays and never-before-published early works and radio plays; and a selection of Miller’s incisive prose reflections on his art, among them “On Screenwriting and Language” and “About Theatre Language.”LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

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Arthur Miller's version of Ibsen's most explosive play. An Enemy of the People tells the story of an idealistic doctor, Stockmann, who discovers that the waters from which his native spa town draws its wealth are dangerously contaminated. As the citizens realise the financial implications, Stockmann comes under increasing pressure to keep silent. This version of Ibsen's An Enemy of the People by Arthur Miller was first performed at Broadhurst Theatre, New York, in December 1950.

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The Pulitzer Prize-winning tragedy of a salesman’s deferred American dreamA Penguin Classic Since it was first performed in 1949, Arthur Miller's Pulitzer Prize-winning drama about the tragic shortcomings of an American dreamer has been recognized as a milestone of the theater. Willy Loman, the protagonist of Death of a Salesman, has spent his life following the American way, living out his belief in salesmanship as a way to reinvent himself. But somehow the riches and respect he covets have eluded him. At age 63, he searches for the moment his life took a wrong turn, the moment of betrayal that undermined his relationship with his wife and destroyed his relationship with Biff, the son in whom he invested his faith. Willy lives in a fragile world of elaborate excuses and daydreams, conflating past and present in a desperate attempt to make sense of himself and of a world that once promised so much. This Penguin Classics edition features an introduction by Christopher W. E. Bigsby.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

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The law is nature. The law is only a word for what has a right to happen. When the law is wrong it's because it's unnatural, but in this case it is natural and a river will drown you if you buck it now. Let her go. And bless her. Set among Italian-Americans on the Brooklyn waterfront, A View from the Bridge is the story of longshoreman Eddie Carbone. When his wife's cousins arrive as illegal immigrants from Italy, he is honoured to take them into his house. But when his niece begins to fall in love with one of them, Eddie grows increasingly suspicious, eventually precipitating his violation of the moral and cultural codes of his community and leading to the play's tragic finale. With its examination of the themes of sexuality, responsibility, betrayal and vengeance, A View from the Bridge is Miller at his best and a modern classic. This new edition includes an introduction by Julie Vatain-Corfdir that explores the play's production history as well as the dramatic, thematic, and academic debates that surround it; a must-have resource for any student exploring A View from the Bridge.

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Why am I trying to become what I don’t want to be … when all I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am. Willy Loman is an ageing travelling salesman haunted, driven and yet held back by empty dreams of prosperity and success. Justly celebrated as one of the most famous dramatisations of the failure of the American Dream, the play's moral and political purpose is perfectly counterbalanced by a powerful and moving human drama of a man trying to make his way in the world and of the human flaws that lead to the shattering of his family and of their figurehead. Death of a Salesman is Miller's tragic masterpiece and considered one of the greatest plays of the twentieth century. Awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1949, the play remains a classic work of literature and drama that is studied and performed around the world. This new edition includes an introduction by Claire Conceison that explores the play's production history as well as the dramatic, thematic, and academic debates that surround it; a must-have resource for any student exploring Death of a Salesman.

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It is a very short list of 20th-century American plays that continue to have the same power and impact as when they first appeared—57 years after its Broadway premiere, Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire is one of those plays. The story famously recounts how the faded and promiscuous Blanche DuBois is pushed over the edge by her sexy and brutal brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski. Streetcar launched the careers of Marlon Brando, Jessica Tandy, Kim Hunter and Karl Malden, and solidified the position of Tennessee Williams as one of the most important young playwrights of his generation, as well as that of Elia Kazan as the greatest American stage director of the '40s and '50s. Who better than America's elder statesman of the theater, Williams' contemporary Arthur Miller, to write as a witness to the lightning that struck American culture in the form of A Streetcar Named Desire? Miller's rich perspective on Williams' singular style of poetic dialogue, sensitive characters, and dramatic violence makes this a unique and valuable new edition of A Streetcar Named Desire. This definitive new edition will also include Williams' essay "The World I Live In," and a brief chronology of the author's life.

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In Joe and Kate Keller's family garden, an apple tree - a memorial to their son Larry, lost in the Second World War - has been torn down by a storm. But his loss is not the only part of the family's past they can't put behind them. Not everybody's forgotten the court case that put Joe's partner in jail, or the cracked engine heads his factory produced which caused it and dropped twenty-one pilots out of the sky ...

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‘When the play focuses on the self-entrapment of the characters, Mr. Miller can be tender as well as trenchant’ NEW YORK TIMES Two strangers meet in a New England psychiatric clinic, each visiting their admitted, depressed wife: one is a humble carpenter with seven children, the other a successful businessman in a childless marriage; both have been forgotten by the promise of the American Dream. Described by Miller as 'a comedy about a tragedy', this one-act play highlights the devastating consequences for those who fail to achieve the purported riches of the American Dream; a reality many face. This Methuen Drama Student Edition is edited by Ciarán Leinster, with commentary and notes that explore the play's production history (including excerpts from an interview with director David Thacker) as well as the dramatic, thematic and academic debates that surround it.

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Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire is the tale of a catastrophic confrontation between fantasy and reality, embodied in the characters of Blanche DuBois and Stanley Kowalski. This Penguin Modern Classics edition includes an introduction by Arthur Miller.'I have always depended on the kindness of strangers'Fading southern belle Blanche DuBois is adrift in the modern world. When she arrives to stay with her sister Stella in a crowded, boisterous corner of New Orleans, her delusions of grandeur bring her into conflict with Stella's crude, brutish husband Stanley Kowalski. Eventually their violent collision course causes Blanche's fragile sense of identity to crumble, threatening to destroy her sanity and her one chance of happiness.Tennessee Williams's steamy and shocking landmark drama, recreated as the immortal film starring Marlon Brando, is one of the most influential plays of the twentieth century.Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) was born in Columbus, Mississippi. When his father, a travelling salesman, moved with his family to St Louis some years later, both he and his sister found it impossible to settle down to city life. He entered college during the Depression and left after a couple of years to take a clerical job in a shoe company. He stayed there for two years, spending the evenings writing. He received a Rockefeller Fellowship in 1940 for his play Battle of Angels, and he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1948 and 1955. Among his many other plays Penguin have published The Glass Menagerie (1944), The Rose Tattoo (1951), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), Sweet Bird of Youth (1959), The Night of the Iguana (1961), and Small Craft Warnings (1972).If you enjoyed A Streetcar Named Desire, you might like The Glass Menagerie, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.'Lyrical and poetic and human and heartbreaking and memorable and funny'Francis Ford Coppola, director of The Godfather'One of the greatest American plays'Observer

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Arthur Miller's play A View from the Bridge is a tragic masterpiece of the inexorable unravelling of a man, set in a close-knit Italian-American community in 1950s New York. Eddie Carbone is a longshoreman and a straightforward man, with a strong sense of decency and of honour. For Eddie, it's a privilege to take in his wife's cousins, Marco and Rodolpho, straight off the boat from Italy. But, as his niece Catherine begins to fall for one of them, it's clear that it's not just, as Eddie claims, that he's too strange, too sissy, too careless for her, but that something bigger, deeper is wrong - and wrong inside Eddie, in a way he can't face. Something which threatens the happiness of their whole family.This Penguin Classics edition includes an introduction by the author and a new foreword by actor Philip Seymour Hoffman.

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‘His drama is a piece of expert dramatic construction. Mr. Miller has woven his characters into a tangle of plot that springs naturally out of the circumstances of life today.’ NEW YORK TIMES Three years on from the disappearance of his son, successful businessman Joe Keller has made a comfortable life for his family in America’s Midwest: despite being accused of supplying defective aircraft equipment in World War 2, he is altogether happy. But, when a shadowy figure from Joe’s past returns, his hidden truths are revealed, and the price of the American Dream is laid bare. Miller's first successful play on Broadway, All My Sons launched his career and established him as one of America’s greatest dramatists, also winning him the 1946 Tony Award for Best Author. An incisive indictment of greed, capitalism and self-interest, All My Sons is remembered as one of the playwright’s greatest works. This Methuen Drama Student Edition is edited by Clare Gleitman, with commentary and notes that explore the play's production history (including excerpts from an interview with director Jeremy Herrin) as well as the dramatic, thematic and academic debates that surround it.

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"It's moral vision, as well as the Miller voice, which remains as strong and unrelenting as a prophet's, that distinguish Broken Glass." - The New York Times When Sylvia Gellburg, a young Jewish woman living in Brooklyn, becomes partially paralyzed from the waist down, her husband Phillip is shocked: what could’ve caused this sudden condition? The answer is Kristallnacht, the horrific, anti-Semitic event occurring halfway around the world. As the Gellburgs reckon with this pogrom and with the breakdown of their own marriage, a terrifying thought emerges: will the Jewish people ever be able to avoid persecution? Broken Glass is one of Miller’s most moving and personal works, touching on themes of Jewish identity and anti-Semitism, winning him the Olivier Award for Best New Play in 1994. This Methuen Drama Student Edition is edited by Ambika Singh, and Nupur Tandon, with commentary and notes that explore the play's production history (including excerpts from an interview with director David Thacker,) as well as the dramatic, thematic and academic debates that surround it.

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‘It is Mr. Miller's notion, potentially a great one, that the Baums' story can help tell the story of America itself during that traumatic era.’ NEW YORK TIMES When the stock market crashes, the once-financially comfortable Baum family lose everything and are forced to leave their lofty home in Manhattan to live with relatives in Brooklyn: how can their pride, purpose and artistic endeavours survive such a sudden and shocking reversal of fortune? A sweeping, hard-hitting look at the Great Depression of the 1930s, The American Clock is a vaudevillian celebration of American resilience and optimism in the face of national crisis, and was performed on Broadway in 1980. This Methuen Drama Student Edition is edited by Jane K. Dominik, with commentary and notes that explore the play's production history (including excerpts from interviews with designers of the 1980 Broadway production) as well as the dramatic, thematic and academic debates that surround it.

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‘Mr. Miller knows his audience… he is letting us know, the devil will have his due.’ NEW YORK TIMES When insurance agent Lyman Felt is hospitalised following a near-fatal car crash, both of his wives show up at his bedside and his duplicitous bigamy is revealed. As his shocked spouses – the prim Theo and the assertive Leah – reel from this revelation and their husband’s hypocrisy, an outrageous question is presented: is marriage actually easier this way? Touching on themes of betrayal, crisis and reconciliation, The Ride Down Mt. Morgan is one of Miller’s more controversial works, and was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Play in 1991. This Methuen Drama Student Edition is edited by Thiago Russo, with commentary and notes that explore the play's production history (including excerpts from an interview with director David Esbjornson) as well as the dramatic, thematic and academic debates that surround it.

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‘A gentle, lyrical, Chekhovian evocation of the past, with that special unpretentious charm that special works sometimes have.’ NEW YORK TIMES At an auto-parts warehouse in Brooklyn, life seems frozen in time: as workers of every age commute in, nothing ever seems to change. Newcomer Bert, only 18 years old, hopes to escape this world, earnestly saving his wages for college… but can such a dream survive his workplace’s haze of hopelessness, despondency and alcoholism? A vivid rendering of life under the Great Depression, A Memory of Two Mondays perfectly captures the anxieties and concerns of the 1930s, autobiographically reflecting Miller’s own experience as an 18-year-old in this period. This Methuen Drama Student Edition is edited by Stephen Marino, with commentary and notes that explore the play's production history (including excerpts from an interview with director Rob Roznowski) as well as the dramatic, thematic and academic debates that surround it.

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"The Price is one of the most engrossing and entertaining plays that Miller has ever written." - The New Uork Times When patriarch of the Franz family dies, his two sons return home to dispose of the furniture crammed in his attic: one is a successful surgeon, the other gave up everything to support their father following the Great Depression. As the pair sort through these abandoned belongings, frustrations, secrets and surprise guests are uncovered. With its touching and farcical presentation of American life beyond the Vietnam War and Great Depression, The Price is widely recognised as one of Miller’s major works, earning him a Tony Award nomination in 1968. This Methuen Drama Student Edition is edited by Yuko Kurahashi, with commentary and notes that explore the play's production history (including excerpts from interviews with the director and designers of the 2017 Arena Stage production) as well as the dramatic, thematic and academic debates that surround it.

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