Search results for ""Author Arthur Miller""

The extraordinary story of the women's orchestra in Auschwitz, originally filmed for television with Vanessa Redgrave, and adapted for the stage by Miller himself. Fania Fénelon, a Parisian singer, is arrested by the Nazis and sent to Auschwitz. There, she finds herself swept into the orchestra, composed entirely of female prisoners and founded as entertainment for the camp commandants. As long as the orchestra continues to find favour, its members will be spared the gas chambers. But Fania is struggling with the corruption of what she holds most sacred in the world – her music – and the morals of the orchestra members are being ground down every day. They are, quite literally, playing for time. Arthur Miller's stageplay Playing for Time is adapted from the 1980 CBS television film, written by Miller himself, and based on acclaimed musician Fania Fénelon's autobiography The Musicians of Auschwitz. The television film starred Vanessa Redgrave as Fénelon. The stageplay was first staged at 1-Act Theatre, San Francisco, in 1985.

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"The greatest American dramatist of our age" Evening Standard This fifth volume of Arthur Miller's work contains two plays from the early nineties: his highly acclaimed The Last Yankee (1993), which the Guardian called "a fine and moving play . . . Like all Miller's best work, it effortlessly links private and public worlds by connecting personal desperation to insane American values"; and The Ride Down Mount Morgan (1991), which explores themes of bigamy and betrayal, described as "searching, scorching, harsh but compassionate" (Sunday Times). Also contained in the volume is Almost Everybody Wins, the original version of the screenplay Arthur Miller wrote for Karel Reisz's film, "Everybody Wins".

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"Listen to the dialogue: no other American dramatist has this feel for the ordinary talk of ordinary people, or the knowledge of what they do. This is more than a writer's craft, it is a psychological and moral openness to humanity, an act not of imitating, but of sharing". Sunday Times This fourth anthology features Arthur Miller's two early plays, The Golden Years, a historical tragedy about Montezuma's destruction at the hands of Cortez, and The Man Who Had All the Luck, a fable about human freedom and individual responsibility, are brought together in this volume. It also features two of his contemporary shorter plays, I Can't Remember Anything and Clara, first presented on a double bill as Danger! Memory. The latter focus on the importance and dangers of remembering the past, while the early plays, written at the time of the Second World War, mark the emergence of a drama in which public issues are rooted in private anxieties and chart the beginning of Miller's career that was one of the most distinguished in dramatic history. First produced in 1944 and revived in London in 2008, The Man Who Had All the Luck is a mesmerising drama in which the author's brilliance and characteristic qualities are already evident: The fourth volume of Miller's plays has been reissued with a new cover and features an introduction by the author and a chronology of his work.

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"The greatest American dramatist of our age" - Evening Standard In this second volume of collected works, four of Arthur Miller’s stage plays from the sixties and seventies are brought together in a new edition. Taking up the theme of individual responsibility from his earlier work, this volume also contains an introduction from Miller himself, along with two of his screenplays. One of Miller’s most personal plays, After the Fall (1964) takes place almost entirely inside the mind of the play's protagonist, who is often read as a stand-in for the playwright himself, and touches on themes of the Holocaust, McCarthyism and inherited sin. This was followed by Miller's largely forgotten masterpiece, Incident at Vichy (1964): a prescient examination of the evil that exists in us all, inspired by a real-life incident in France in which a Gentile gave a Jew his identity pass during a check. The Price followed in 1968, a touching and farcical presentation of American life beyond the Vietnam War and Great Depression, which earned Miller a Tony Award nomination for Best Play. In The Creation of the World and Other Business (1972), Miller offers a comedic retelling of the Book of Genesis, constructing a parable around the theme of good-versus-evil. Also included are two of the playwright’s most beloved screenplays: The Misfits, written for and filmed with Marilyn Monroe, and Playing for Time, televised with Vanessa Redgrave. Freshly edited and featuring a bold new design, this updated edition of Arthur Miller Plays 2 is a must-have for theatre fans and students alike.

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The Pulitzer Prize-winning tragedy of a salesman’s deferred American dream Ever since it was first performed in 1949, Death of a Salesman has been recognized as a milestone of the American theater. In the person of Willy Loman, the aging, failing salesman who makes his living riding on a smile and a shoeshine, Arthur Miller redefined the tragic hero as a man whose dreams are at once insupportably vast and dangerously insubstantial. He has given us a figure whose name has become a symbol for a kind of majestic grandiosity—and a play that compresses epic extremes of humor and anguish, promise and loss, between the four walls of an American living room.By common consent, this is one of the finest dramas in the whole range of the American theater. —Brooks Atkinson, The New York TimesSo simple, central, and terrible that the run of playwrights would neither care nor dare to attempt it. —Time

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The final volume in Methuen Drama's acclaimed series of work by Arthur Miller who, during his lifetime, was acknowledged as "the greatest American dramatist of our age" (Evening Standard). Featuring two plays from the 1990s and his final two plays (2002 and 2004), it offers the first ever publication of Miller's final play, Finishing the Picture. Inspired by his experience during the filming of The Misfits with his then wife Marilyn Monroe, the play was completed and produced at the Goodman Theatre, Chicago, just months before the playwright's death in February 2005. Broken Glass (1994) is set in Brooklyn in 1938 and intertwines a woman's obsession with the news from Germany that government thugs are smashing Jewish stores, with her strange relationship with her husband. "It balances private lives with public morality. . . it is also an amazingly full-blooded piece, bursting with pain and passion." (Daily Telegraph). Mr Peters' Connections (1998) is an unforgettable journey through one man's mind at a time of suspended consciousness, where the living and dead intermingle in his memory. Resurrection Blues (2002) is Miller's astonishing black comedy set in a South American banana republic, that satirises global politics and the predatory nature of a media saturated culture. The volume also features a chronology of the writer's work and an introduction by Enoch Brater, professor of English Literature at the University of Michigan.

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Quentin is a successful lawyer in New York, but inside his head he is struggling with his own sense of guilt and the shadows of his past relationships. One of these an ill-fated marriage to the charming and beautiful Maggie, who went from operating a switchboard to become a self-destructive star - a singer everyone wanted a piece of. With tremendous psychological acuity and depth, and a brilliant, dreamlike structure, After the Fall is a literary masterpiece, drawing on Miller's own life - the story of a man striving to comprehend his feelings for his friends, family and the women he has loved.

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A haunting examination of groupthink and mass hysteria in a rural community The place is Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692, an enclave of rigid piety huddled on the edge of a wilderness. Its inhabitants believe unquestioningly in their own sanctity. But in Arthur Miller's edgy masterpiece, that very belief will have poisonous consequences when a vengeful teenager accuses a rival of witchcraft—and then when those accusations multiply to consume the entire village.First produced in 1953, at a time when America was convulsed by a new epidemic of witch-hunting, The Crucible brilliantly explores the threshold between individual guilt and mass hysteria, personal spite and collective evil. It is a play that is not only relentlessly suspenseful and vastly moving but that compels readers to fathom their hearts and consciences in ways that only the greatest theater ever can.A drama of emotional power and impact —New York Post

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A car wreck on the slopes of Mount Morgan puts insurance tycoon Lyman Felt in the hospital. While Lyman recovers, two women meet in the hospital waiting room only to discover that they are both married to him. With his secrets exposed, Lyman tries to justify himself to the two women - the prim, cultured Theo and the restless, ambitious Leah - at the same time hoping to convince himself that he is blameless. Moving between broad farce and delicate tragedy, The Ride Down Mt. Morgan explores the struggle between honesty with others and honesty with oneself.

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This edition of Arthur Miller's classic tragedy 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 14-16 students. The brand new design ensures that the text and supporting materials are the clearest and most accessible available. Set during the Salem Witch Trials of 1692, The Crucible exposes the tensions caused by gossip and rumour within a tight-knit community, where eventually no one is safe from accusation and vengeance. Seen as a parallel to McCarthyism and the fear of communism in 1950s America, the play's themes of truth, justice, honour, mass hysteria and individuality still resonate with audiences around the world today.

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Arthur Miller's classic parable of mass hysteria draws a chilling parallel between the Salem witch-hunt of 1692 - 'one of the strangest and most awful chapters in human history' - and the American anti-communist purges led by Senator McCarthy in the 1950s. The story of how the small community of Salem is stirred into madness by superstition, paranoia and malice, culminating in a violent climax, is a savage attack on the evils of mindless persecution and the terrifying power of false accusations.A depiction of innocent men and women destroyed by malicious rumour, The Crucible is also a powerful indictment of McCarthyism and the 'frontier mentality' of Cold War America.

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Discover the cinema-novelization of Arthur Miller’s 1961 American western film, The Misfits, which was directed by John Huston and went on to be one of the most popular cult films of the 1960s. A story of four lost souls - the beautiful Roslyn who has never belonged to anyone or anything, and three other misfits who roam the open land existing on the little money made from riding in rodeos and rounding up wild horses - who meet in Reno to discover that freedom has its price, and the heart its rules. The Misfits starred Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe and Montgomery Cliff. Based on a short story of the same name, originally published in 1957, this cinema novel of the film includes an introduction by Arthur Miller himself.

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This edition of Arthur Miller's tragic 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 14-16 students. The brand new design ensures that the text and supporting materials are the clearest and most accessible available. Eddie Carbone is at first happy to help his wife's cousins, newly arrived in Brooklyn, New York, from Italy. However, as his niece begins to fall in love with one of them, family secrets are unearthed, loyalties are challenged, and Eddie himself is forced to play his part in the tragic finale.

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"The greatest American dramatist of our age" - Evening Standard In this third volume of collected works, three of Arthur Miller’s stage plays from the early 1980s are brought together in a new edition. Expanding on the themes and explorations of his earlier work, this volume also contains an introduction from the playwright himself, as well as an afterword by acclaimed Miller scholar Christopher Bigsby. A sweeping, hard-hitting look at the Great Depression of the 1930s, The American Clock(1982) is a vaudevillian celebration of American resilience and optimism in the face of national crisis, and was later performed on Broadway. Set in an Eastern European capital, The Archbishop's Ceiling (1984), examines the relationship between four writers, and the erosion of personal integrity during the cold war: a thrilling study of the effects of surveillance and political pressure on an individual's actions Also included is a revised version of Two-Way Mirror (1984): a double bill for a man and a woman, consisting of two short plays - Elegy for a Lady and Some Kind of Love Story. These fantastic two-handers explore the nuances in relationships, and have come to be come to be recognised as some sort of coded epitaph to the tumult and tragedy of Miller’s marriage to Marilyn Monroe Freshly edited and featuring a bold new design, this updated edition of Arthur Miller Plays 3 is a must-have for theatre fans and students alike.

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"The greatest American dramatist of our age." (Evening Standard) In this collected works, five of Arthur Miller's most-produced and popular plays are brought together in a new edition, alongside an exclusive introduction by Ivo van Hove, the celebrated contemporary director of Miller's works. All five plays were written by Miller within a ten-year period which began with his first Broadway hit, All My Sons, in 1947 which led Brooks Atkinson of the New York Times to state that 'theatre has acquired a genuine new talent.' This was followed in 1949 by his exploration of the American Dream in Death of a Salesman, which went on to win the Tony Award for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The Crucible followed in 1953, produced during the McCarthy era and becoming a parable of the witch-hunting practices of a government determined to root-out Communists. A View from the Bridge, originally performed in 1955, concerns the lives of longshoremen in the Brooklyn waterfront and has remained one of Miller's most produced plays. Originally presented as a one-act companion piece to A Memory of Two Mondays, both plays explore the dreams and working lives of ordinary Americans in the early decades of the 20th century. Freshly edited and featuring a bold new design, this updated edition of Arthur Miller Plays 1 is a must-have for theatre fans and students alike.

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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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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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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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'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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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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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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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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