Play

Gypsy is a 1959 musical with music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and a book by Arthur Laurents. It is usually referred to as simply Gypsy. Gypsy is loosely based on the 1957 memoirs of Gypsy Rose Lee, the famous striptease artist, and focuses on her mother, Rose, whose name has become synonymous with "the ultimate show business mother." In particular, it follows the dreams and efforts of Rose to raise two daughters to perform onstage and casts an affectionate eye on the hardships...

The Cyclops is an Ancient Greek satyr play by Euripides, the only complete satyr play that has survived. It is a comical burlesque-like play on the same story depicted in book nine of The Odyssey by Homer. Odysseus has lost his way on the voyage home from the Trojan War. He and his hungry crew make a stop in Sicily at Mount Aetna, which is inhabited by Cyclopes. They come upon the Satyr and their father Silenus, who have been separated from their god Dionysus and enslaved by a Cyclops (named...

Hippolytus (also known as Hippolytos) is an Ancient Greek tragedy by Euripides, based on the myth of Hippolytus, son of Theseus. The play was first produced for the City Dionysia of Athens in 428 BC and won first prize as part of a trilogy. Euripides first treated the myth in Hippolytos Kalyptomenos (Hippolytus Veiled), now lost. Scholars are virtually unanimous in believing that the contents to the missing Kalyptomenos portrayed a shamelessly lustful Phaedra who directly propositions...

Prometheus Bound is an Ancient Greek tragedy. In Antiquity, this drama was attributed to Aeschylus, but is now considered by some scholars to be the work of another hand, perhaps one as late as ca. 415 BC. Despite these doubts of authorship, the play's designation as Aeschylean has remained conventional. The tragedy is based on the myth of Prometheus, a Titan who was punished by the god Zeus for giving fire to mankind. The play is composed almost entirely of speeches and contains little action...

Peace (Greek: Eiréne) is an Athenian Old Comedy written and produced by the Greek playwright Aristophanes. It was staged in 421 BC and was awarded second prize at the City Dionysia festival. As inmany of his plays, Aristophanes attacks and lampoons his contemporaries, including Euripides, Carcinus, and Cleon. The jubilant spirit of celebration, contrasting strongly with the sceptical tone of Aristophanes' other 'peace' plays (Lysistrata and The Acharnians), can be attributed to the fact it was...

Kanjinchō (勧進帳, The Subscription List) is a Japan kabuki play by Namiki Gohei III, based on the Noh play Ataka. It is one of the most popular plays in the modern kabuki repertory. Belonging to the repertoires of the Naritaya and Kōritaya guilds, the play was first performed in March 1840, at the Kawarazaki-za in Edo. Ichikawa Ebizō V, Ichikawa Kuzō II and Ichikawa Danjūrō VIII played the leading roles of Benkei, Togashi and Yoshitsune respectively. The lines of Ichikawa Danjūrō and Matsumoto...

The Suppliants (Greek "Hiketides", also translated as The Suppliant Maidens) is a play by Aeschylus. It was probably first performed sometime after 470 BC as the first play in a trilogy which included the lost plays The Egyptians and The Daughters of Danaus. It was once thought to be the earliest surviving play by Aeschylus due to the relatively anachronistic function of the chorus as the protagonist of the drama. However, recent evidence places it after The Persians as Aeschylus's second...

Andromache (c. 425 BC) is a play by Euripides. It follows Andromache during her life as a slave, years after the events of the Trojan War. During the Trojan War, Andromache's husband Hector was slain by Achilles. Their child Astyanax was dropped off the Trojan walls by the Greeks for fear that he would grow up and avenge his father and city. Andromache was made a slave of Neoptolemus, son of Achilles. These events are depicted in The Trojan Women, another play by Euripides. Years pass and...

No Exit is a 1944 existentialist play by Jean-Paul Sartre, originally published in French as Huis Clos (meaning In Camera or "behind closed doors"). English translations have also been performed under the titles In Camera, No Way Out, and Dead End. Huis Clos was first performed at the Vieux-Colombier in May 1944, just before the liberation of Paris in World War II. The play features only four characters (one of whom, the Valet, appears for only a very limited time), and one set. No Exit is...

Heracles or Hercules Furens is a play by Euripides (c. 416 BC). While Heracles is in the underworld obtaining Cerberus for one of his labors, his father Amphitryon, wife Megara, and children are sentenced to death in Thebes, Greece by Lycus. Heracles arrives in time to save them, however the goddesses Iris and Madness (personified) cause him to kill his wife and children in a frenzy. It is the second of two surviving plays by Euripides where the family of Heracles are suppliants (the first...

Oedipus the King (Greek , Oedipus Tyrannus, or "Oedipus the Tyrant"), also known as Oedipus Rex, is a Greek tragedy, written by Sophocles and first performed ca. 429 BC. The play was the second of Sophocles' three Theban plays to be produced, but comes first in the internal chronology of the plays, followed by Oedipus at Colonus and then Antigone. Over the centuries it has come to be regarded by many as the Greek tragedy par excellence. Much of the myth of Oedipus takes place before the...

Hamlet is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601. The play, set in Denmark, recounts how Prince Hamlet exacts revenge on his uncle Claudius, who has murdered Hamlet's father, the King, and then taken the throne and married Hamlet's mother. The play vividly charts the course of real and feigned madness—from overwhelming grief to seething rage—and explores themes of treachery, revenge, incest, and moral corruption. Despite much literary detective...

Seven Guitars is a 1995 play by August Wilson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning American playwright. It focuses on seven African American characters in the year 1948. The play begins and ends after the funeral of one of the main characters, showing events leading to the funeral in flashbacks. Seven Guitars represents the 1940s entry in Wilson's "Pittsburgh Cycle", a decade-by-decade anthology of African-American life in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania during the 20th century; Wilson would revisit the stories...

The Phoenician Women (also known by the Greek title, Phoenissae) is a tragedy by Euripides based on the same story as Aeschylus' play Seven Against Thebes. The title refers to the Greek chorus, which is composed of Phoenician women on their way to Delphi who are trapped in Thebes by the war. Unlike some of Euripides' other plays, the chorus does not play a significant role in the plot. Patriotism is a significant theme in the story, as Polynices talks a great deal about his love for the city of...

The Persians (, Persai) is a tragedy by the ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus. It is the oldest surviving play in the history of theater. It is also notable for being the only extant Greek tragedy based on contemporary events. The Persians was part of a trilogy produced in 472 BC that won the first prize at the dramatic competition in Athens’ City Dionysia festival. According to a hypothesis appended to a manuscript of the play, the first play in the trilogy was called Phineus, and it...