In The Adopted Child, Sir Bertrand with his cohort Le Sage seeks to seize ownership of Milford Castle. The rightful (hereditary) owner, Sir Edmund, had died from an accident at sea; his son had been saved from that accident by the honest innkeeper Michael, who did not know the identity of Edmund and his son. As Edmund lies dying on the beach to which Michael has hauled his drowning body, he entrusts Michael with a locked trunk containing the secret of the boy’s identity. Michael of course leaves the secret locked in the trunk; he raises the boy as if he were his own son. When Bertrand and Le Sage arrive, the daughter of Sir Edmund (Clara) is living in a convent, and so the only occupants of Milford Castle are Mr. Record the steward and Lucy, a servant. A minion of Bertrand (named Spruce) arrives first; Record locks him in a room in the castle and goes to the honest innkeeper Michael for help and information. In his absence, Lucy releases Spruce and a flirtation ensues. Meanwhile, at the inn, Michael has revealed the secret of the boy’s identity to his wife Nell. When Record returns, Lucy hides the flirtatious Spruce in a suit of black armor. During the emergency of this threatened usurpation by Bertrand, Michael has lodged the boy in the convent where his sister Clara resides. Bertrand’s minion Flint is on his way to that convent to seize the boy, but Michael intercepts him, learns that Bertrand plans to send the boy and the girl over the sea, and disguises himself in the garments of the minion whom he has waylaid. Michael takes the boy from the convent to Milford Castle where Clara is confronting Bertrand. On Michael’s arrival, disguises are removed, secret documents are produced revealing Bertrand’s plot and Edmund’s will, the castle is restored to its heir, and “tenants of the estate” (villagers) arrive to defend the hereditary heir. The play closes in a happy song of restoration.

First in The Alfred Trilogy and of the seven-play cycle The Quannapowitt Quartet, Alfred The Great introduces us to Alfred L. Webber as he begins his journey back home after greatly succeeding as a businessman. Alfred comes home to untangle a crime and finds himself reweaving a past; one filled with murder, incest, impotence and touches of humor. Alfred Webber visits his old family home where Margaret, his ex-girlfriend of many years ago, and her husband, Will, now live. Margaret still carries a torch for Albert, driving Will to extremes of jealousy. Even the child Alfred and Margaret share, who had been given up for adoption, still permeates Margaret’s psyche and her marriage. Alfred uses all these neurosis, plus some of his own, to find out the truth about his brother’s mysterious murder. Though the murder happened years ago, Alfred has his hunches about Will, and on the pretext of coming to visit his father’s grave, stays in the old homestead and catches up on old times. When Alfred’s wife, Emily, shows up, her presence throws the visit into disarray, but also provides Alfred with the strength to set Will up for a confession to the murder. Through deception, seduction, revelation and even torture, Alfred discovers his father is really alive, Margaret reveals a suppressed past, and a confession of murder is dragged out of Will. The facts are sketchy, but Will pays the ultimate sacrifice when Alfred kills him, prompting Margaret to give up hope of any more illusions and kill herself. Alfred and Emily are left to explain the carnage and pay the price of this tragedy.

Mommy and Daddy sit in a barren living room making small talk. Mommy, the domineering wife, is grappling with the thought of putting Grandma in a nursing home. Daddy, the long-suffering husband, could not care less. Grandma appears, lugging boxes of belongings, which she stacks by the door. Mommy and Daddy can’t imagine what’s in those boxes, but Grandma is well aware of Mommy’s possible intentions. Mrs. Barker, the chairman of the women’s club, arrives, not knowing why she is there. Is she there to take Grandma away? Apparently not. It all becomes evident when Grandma reveals to Mrs. Barker the story of the botched adoption of a “bumble of joy” twenty years ago by Mommy and Daddy. Mrs. Barker appears to have figured it out when Young Man enters. He’s muscular, well-spoken, the answer to Mommy and Daddy’s prayers: The American Dream. Grandma convinces him to assist in her master plan. She puts one over on everybody and escapes the absurdly realistic world which she finds so predictable.

A single woman’s desire to experience motherhood without a husband at her side sends her through the world of adoption. Her path leads her through an array of characters and situations rife with drama. Settling on private adoption through an attorney she suffers an unfathomable heartbreak at the death of her newborn son. She is somehow able to rise out of despair to try again and meets Elizabeth who is looking for someone to adopt her unborn child. A new family is forged through the courage of two very brave women.

From the Publisher: Fran and Molly are best friends; Molly is already a mother and is expecting again, but Fran is approaching 40 and has yet to find a potential father, let alone husband, amid a comic slew of failed suitors and blind dates, each of whom we hear about in hysterically funny and embarrassing detail during Fran and Molly’s frequent days out together. When Molly delivers, Fran is so moved and slightly envious that she sets out to explore the possibilities of single motherhood, eventually winding up with a shady lawyer who will arrange for Fran to adopt an unwanted baby if she’ll cover the mother’s medical costs. Meanwhile, the mother, an Indiana teenager named Jen, is debating her decision to give up the baby. When the baby is born, Fran makes the mistake of showing up at the hospital where she accidentally runs into Jen and begins to realize that she’s just taken part in an illegal adoption. After she’s returned to the city with the baby, Fran has dreams about the baby’s natural mother that haunt her, along with the doubts about the impact of what she’s done, even as baby Tara sustains her.

First produced in New York by the Women’s Project.

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About the Author: Kathleen Tolan started out acting with Andre Gregory’s Manhattan Project in the early seventies. Since then she has appeared in many plays and in film and TV. Her plays include A Weekend Near Madison, performed first at Actors Theatre of Louisville, at the Astor Place Theatre, and around the country and in Europe. Kate’s Diary was performed at Playwrights Horizons and the Public Theatre.

From the Publisher: The scene is the Morley farm, in the prairie country of Saskatchewan, Canada. Margaret and Walter Morley have been estranged for fourteen years, ever since his encounter with a “water witch” resulted in the arrival of his illegitimate daughter, Lily Agnes, and led to Walter’s banishment to the smokehouse. Margaret has remained in the main house, with Lily Agnes (whom she has raised as her own), and her father, Gramps. They are joined for the summer by Gibson McFarland, Gramps’ adopted son, now a college professor, who is recovering from a mild nervous breakdown. Gibson’s return reopens old wounds and desires, and it is soon apparent (and so reported by two gossipy bachelor neighbors) that Margaret’s needs for culture and affection are now being satisfied at last. As summer wanes so must the idyll of Gibson and Margaret, but her transgression, in Walter’s eyes, evens the score between them—and as the play ends it is clear that the Morley household, so long divided, will once again know the harmony and love that anger and stubborn pride have so long denied.

First presented by the noted Long Wharf Theatre, in New Haven, Connecticut starring Colleen Dewhurst, and then produced in New York by the Manhattan Theatre Club

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About the Author: Joanna McClelland Glass was born in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Her plays have been produced in many North American regional theatres, as well as in England, Ireland, Australia, and Germany. Ms. Glass has written two novels, Reflections on a Mountain Summer, published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1975, and Woman Wanted, published by St. Martin’s Press in 1984, and adapted both novels into screenplays, for Lorimar Studios and Warner Bros. She was playwright-in-residence at Yale Repertory Theatre. Ms. Glass resides in suburban Chicago.

Brian and Tom ask their liberal and forward-thinking parish priest, Father Raymond, to witness and bless their vows to each other. Although Father Raymond understands their affection for each other, he holds that they must live a celibate life if they wish to be part of the Church. Brian is outraged. Tom becomes reflective, as Father Raymond’s words strike a chord in him. Brian’s sister, Irene, a concert pianist, is single and pregnant from an affair. Brian has convinced her to have the baby, which he and Tom will adopt. Irene, desiring nothing more than her brother’s happiness and security, tries to mediate between Brian and Tom and Father Raymond. Much to her surprise she discovers a deep attraction to Father Raymond. The attraction turns out to be mutual, forcing Father Raymond to reexamine his life of commitment and loneliness. In the meantime, Brian’s and Irene’s mother, Rose, works very hard through her confessor, Father Nash (who is also Father Raymond’s confessor), to come to terms with her son’s and daughter’s “exotic” lifestyles. As Tom begins to pull away from Brian, Father Raymond moves closer to Irene. Tom’s and Brian’s catalytic request creates five separate and linked spiritual journeys, each seeking to balance passion and faith.

From the Publisher: The Baby Dance is the story of two couples. Richard and Rachel, a well-off California couple has everything except a child. They locate Wanda and Al, a desperately poor couple in Louisiana who have agreed to let them adopt their soon-to-be-born fifth child. The dance these couples do during the weeks before the baby’s birth is fraught with friction. Through a lawyer, the L.A. couple begin the process, arranging everything from a doctor for the delivery of the baby to the cost of an air-conditioner for the pregnant couple’s trailer. Both parties do their best to make the arrangement work but the class differences create unbearable tensions. When it is discovered that the baby possibly suffered brain damage during the difficult birth, her husband backs away but Rachel wants wants the baby regardless. In the end, the childless couple leaves the baby’s parents with another mouth to feed. Occasionally funny but never easy, The Baby Dance explores class, motherhood, prejudice, loss, and the ways our individual expectations bring us together and tear us apart.

The Baby Dance premiered in 1990 at the Pasadena Playhouse in Pasadena, California. It was subsequently presented Off Broadway in 1991 at the Lucille Lortel Theatre in New York City. The play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and is regularly performed in regional, college, and community theatre productions.

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About the Author: Jane Anderson is an American actress turned award-winning playwright, screenwriter and director. Her plays have been produced Off-Broadway and in theatres around the US, including Actors Theater of Louisville, Arena Stage, Williamstown, The McCarter Theater, Long Wharf, and The Pasadena Playhouse.

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Compiler’s Note: The author also adapted her play for the screen in 1998.

The Bandele Project of the Spaulding Institute in Detroit, MI, partnered with faith-communities not only to find homes for waiting African American children, but also to provide an outlet for social and artistic activities for these children. Started in 1992 by Spaulding for Children, Bandele (an African boy’s name meaning “follow me home” or “born away from home”) involved 15 churches and 15 agencies. A Bandele play, Bandele, helped the children develop self-esteem and showcased their talents and personalities to prospective adoptive families. Bandele staff learned that membership in the religious community and/or developing cultural competence in the faith community’s rules and goals resulted in a successful collaboration.

In 1939, a childless couple in the Smokey Mountain Valley of Tennessee bring a baby into their home and must question their surroundings when facing unexpected obstacles from their friends and neighbors.

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Compiler’s Note: Produced in 1994 at The Theater, 224 Waverly Place, in New York City, through October 29th, under the direction of Alison Summers, and featuring Lois Robbins, Michael Pion-Tek, Kevin Greer, Schuyler Grant, Maduka Steady, and James Doerr.

Joe Henderson, a hard-working but rather close-fisted widower, lives with his daughter, Mary, in the grimy, English mill town of Brimley. Joe’s two married sisters, Alice and Jane, also reside in Brimley, as have all of their family—with the exception of three black sheep uncles who were asked to leave town some fifty years earlier. But now one of the uncles, Robert Oldfield, has written to announce his intention of coming back to Brimley to end his days and Joe, learning that the old man has amassed a fortune, decides to offer him a home. His sisters are easily hoodwinked into letting Joe take over the “family obligation,” until they too find out about Uncle Robert’s money—at which point the bickering begins. When the old gentleman arrives he finds that he is to be shuttled back and forth from home to home, but the mood of energetic cordiality rapidly dissipates when it is discovered that their guest is not Uncle Robert at all, but his ne’er do well brother, Emmanuel. A promise being a promise Joe takes the old man in, but begins to fume as his money, his liquor, his cigars and his wardrobe are blithely usurped by his boarder. Joe has had all about he can stand when Uncle Emmanuel obligingly falls down the steps of a pub and expires—but excitement flares up again when the real Uncle Robert arrives shortly afterwards. Again the competition for hospitality (and anticipated inheritance) begins, much to the increasing distaste of Joe’s daughter, Mary, who wants only to marry her fiance, Peter (Jane’s adopted son), and leave Brimley and her petty relatives forever. Mary and Peter dream of buying a farm in Cornwall, but they have no money and Peter is saddled with the running of his foster father’s mill. But Uncle Robert (who is really not rich at all) saves the day by deftly swindling the necessary money from his avaricious kin, after which he dies and leaves it to the lovers. So all works out happily—marred only by the announcement that uncle number three has just arrived from Australia!

Bye Bye Baby is a dramatic comedy inspired by Elyse Gasco’s multi-award-winning book Can You Wave Bye Bye, Baby? and marks her debut as playwright. The play follows one woman’s journey to discover the truth about her birth mother as she struggles to make sense of her own life and identity. Bye Bye Baby has a shockingly tactile quality that hits you right between the eyes with its brazen probing of the human heart. The play’s protagonist, Elle, is a seductive, witty, and immediately recognizable character. The sumptuously vivid images of her womanhood, the intimate realities of her early pregnancy, and her rage at the uncertainty that is her legacy are woven together as Elle navigates her way through the reams of bureaucratic red-tape which link her to the truth of her origins. As the plot twists in this part-mystery part-thriller, various suspects (the elusive birth mother, the chatty imaginary friend, the adoptive mother, the social worker) make their intentions clear and argue a justifiable defence for their presence or absence in Elle’s life. About the Author: Elyse Gasco was born in Montreal. She received a B.A. in Creative Writing from Concordia University and an M.A. in Creative Writing from New York University. Her award-winning collection of short stories, Can You Wave Bye Bye, Baby? was published in 1999 and was the recipient of the QSPELL/FEWQ First Book Award and a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for Fiction, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and the Danuta Gleed Literary Award.

A writer, Simone, falls in love with an artist, Connor, while collaborating on a picture book for children. He is a single parent of a three-year-old son, Malik; Simone never wanted to have children, but is irresistibly drawn to the pair. As their intimacy grows, Connor confesses to Simone that he was abused as a child. Adopted by a white family as an infant, Connor was “returned” to the adoption agency at age five when his adoptive parents divorced. He then spent the next thirteen years moving from one foster home to another. Although he reconnected with his white adoptive brother later in life, Connor resents the family who rejected him because of his race. As Connor goes through the process of recovery, Simone grows uncomfortable with Connor’s close relationship with his son. Doubting her own ability to be a good mother, she breaks off her engagement with Connor and foolishly shares her fears with her agent, who contacts Children’s Services; when his son is taken into protective custody, Connor loses his battle with depression and commits suicide. The play begins on the day of Connor’s funeral. His former adoptive mother, Elinore, arrives with her two grown biological children, Michael and Deborah. Michael resents his mother for reversing her adoption of Connor; when her marriage failed, Elinore chose to take her own children from Connecticut to California to build a new life. Deborah is determined to take custody of Malik, but she is challenged by Simone, who is now reconsidering her position on parenting and has the backing of Connor’s birth mother, Marva. Connor’s sudden death forces the people who loved him to confront each other, the past, and the guilt that fuels their fierce struggle over his child. Her fourth full-length play, Connor’s Boy was staged in January 2008 as part of two new play festivals: in Cleveland, OH, as part of Karamu House’s R. Joyce Whitley Festival of New Plays, Arenafest; and in New York City as part of Maieutic Theatre Works’ Newborn Festival. About the Author: Zetta Elliott was born and raised outside of Toronto, Canada, but has lived and taught in Brooklyn for over ten years. An educator and a writer, Elliott has published numerous works of poetry, plays, essays, and children’s books, including Bird, her critically acclaimed picture book, which was released in 2008.

A two-act comic drama that won several awards when it debuted in a 2004 production by the Collingwood RSC, including the Southern Daily Echo Curtain Call award for Production of the Year and Best Original Stage Play in the Royal Navy Theatre Festival, Denim asks the question, Do adopted adults have fears that need to be addressed before they can form long-lasting relationships? Maybe with a little help, fears can be faced. Giles is adopted and lives in fear of dating his sister. His father Stuart, is trying to fill the hole left in his life by the death of his wife. Zoe and Pete are looking for love in their own “unique” ways. Everyone’s life is set for a change of direction when a birthday party takes the pub by storm, assisted by two ethereal characters attempting to influence the course of Giles’ life. Denim (the title is a play on the homophonic words “genes” and “jeans”) explores what truly makes a parent, how the sexes influence each other and unspoken fears of adopted adults. About the Author: After joining the Royal Navy at the Rank of Lieutenant in 1996, Jay Saunders became embroiled in the world of theatre assisting the long-standing Royal Navy Theatre Association. After staging a number of productions, he was called upon to rescue a Naval theatre with severe financial problems. This prevented the normal routine of purchasing rights or producing any period play or a play with costumes that would have to be rented. As a result, Jay wrote, directed and stared in Prime Directive which was entered into a GoDA theatre festival. The GoDA adjudicator awarded Jay the prize for Best Original Stage Play and advised him that it had commercial potential. Spurred on by this encouragement, Jay called upon his personal experiences and wrote Denim to much critical acclaim—notably the award of Production of the Year in the Daily Echo’s Curtain call awards. Still writing and gaining productions, Jay has been promoted to the Rank of Lieutenant Commander, has become a Committee member of the Royal Navy Theatre Association and resides in Portsmouth with his wife and two children.

From the Back Cover: 1975, Lethbridge Alberta. When the Monoghan sisters lose their parents in a car accident, Deirdre remains as the sole caregiver to her older sister, Isabelle. Adopted as an infant from the neighbouring Blood Indian Reserve, Isabelle is loving, joyous, and severely affected by fetal alcohol syndrome in a time before this disorder had a name. Just as Deirdre is poised to enter university and begin exploring, for the first time, her own future and independence, she must choose how much of her own life she will sacrifice for the love of Isabelle. Deirdre is barely staying afloat under the strain of this reality, when hope arrives in the form of a gorgeous vacuum cleaner salesman Freddie Seven Horses. Both sisters find in Freddie a new world of unexplored emotions and ideas, where Freddie is a port in a storm.

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About the Author: Of Ntlaka’pamux (Thompson River Salish) and Irish Canadian heritage, Tara Beagan was born and raised in Alberta. She has found an artistic home in Toronto. Beagan wrote her first play, Thy Neighbour’s Wife (UnSpun Theatre) in 2004 as a means of enabling her to stretch her acting muscles. The play went on to win the 2005 Dora Mavor Moore Award (Outstanding New Plav, Independent) with Beagan receiving an acting nomination for her role in the production. In addition to Dreary and Izzy, which premiered through Native Earth Performing Arts at the Factory Studio Theatre, her works to date include: TransCanada (also for NEPA) at Harbourfront Centre; Here, boy! for halfbreed productions and the 28th annual Rhubarb! Festival at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre; Mom’s Birthday for Nightwood Theatre’s Groundswell Festival; Bad As I Am for the 2006 Tarragon Playwright’s Unit; “133 Skyway,” a short film for Big Soul Productions; and Home Time for CBC Radio One. Tara also embraces the delicious madness of working on collective creations such as: Ever Sick (Tonto’s Nephews and NEPA), Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump (UnSpun), Suck and Blow (Absit Omen), and the ambitious, multi-disciplinary site-specific Fort York with Crate Productions.

Jean and Henry Farrell, after years of unsuccessfully attempting to have a baby of their own, decide to adopt. Emma, the birth mother, approves of the couple. Now a new waiting game begins: awaiting the birth of their child. To help Jean through, her best friend Franny comes for a visit, but brings more baggage than a normal traveler as she is separating from her husband, Sam. When the time arrives it is not a happy occasion however, as the baby, Robin, is born hydrocephalic, and will not live long. It was agreed that Jean and Henry would only accept a healthy infant, but Jean’s investment in the waiting game was too intense and she falls for this child. The attention she pays to Robin not only threatens to tear her marriage apart—sending Henry away on a camping trip with the estranged Sam in a male bonding scene not to be missed—but causes trouble at the hospital as well: Jean has no parental rights, even though Emma has disappeared, and the administrators (despite what the nursing staff have to say) are wary. Eventually, after making some progress, Robin succumbs to his condition, leaving Jean and Henry, not only having to repair their marriage, but right back where they started—interviewing with a new birth mother.

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Compiler’s Note: Partially excerpted in The Best Women’s Stage Monologues of 1995 (p. 37) (1996, Smith & Kraus).

Expecting Isabel is a comedy about the adventures of a New York couple trying to have a baby—by any means necessary. Their difficulties in conceiving lead them on an “Alice in Wonderland-esque” odyssey through the booming baby business as they negotiate the fertility trade, the adoption industry and their own families.

How do you say “farewell” to someone who never appears in the first place? Let the action speak for itself: the time is 1915; the place a shabbily genteel basement apartment on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Its denizens are Gert and Minnie Povis, the former quite correct and slightly formidable, the later not above sneaking a clandestine bottle of beer or reliving her brief but happy days as a member of a third-rate opera company. The sisters supplement a small income by turning out handpainted greeting cards, which Cousin Peonie merchandises through her acquaintances in the “outside world.” One of these is Chuck Bailey, who is in love with Peonie but out of favor with Gert. He does move a lot of greeting cards, however, which means more money for the growing fund in the “Visit to Eugene Box.” Brother Eugene, we might add, has been off in Africa for a rather long time doing nobody knows what. All this, of course, has its complications, which runs something like this: Gert manages to break up Peonie’s romance; Peonie vanishes; a baby is left on the doorstep; the authorities take the baby away despite the pleas of Gert and Minnie. But then the pendulum swings back: Chuck redeems himself; Peonie returns; Minnie gets slightly tiddly on liqueur-filled chocolates; Chuck and Peonie decide to get married and adopt the baby. As for brother Eugene, he is exposed for the worm he is by a certain letter not meant for his sisters’ eyes, and they decide not to visit him after all—so it is farewell, and perhaps good riddance too.

After the sudden death of her adoptive mother, a rich New York City dancer embarks on a search for her birth mother’s home. She longs for a family connection but ends up with a family crisis. In an impoverished farmhouse in rural upstate New York, her fifteen-year-old half-sister is pregnant—and wants to give up her baby. Her mother—a stubborn, introverted woman who carves rough rock sculptures as a way to express her frustrations—wants her to keep it. Her grandmother wants to be boss. Armed with good intentions and a desire to help her new family, the dancer arrives at their door. When she’s met with a volatile mixture of envy, regret and resentment, her assumptions about identity, biological ties and what it “means” to be a mother are turned upside down.

From the Back Cover: 400 Kilometres is the third play in Drew Hayden Taylor’s hilarious and heart-wrenching identity-politics trilogy. Janice Wirth, a thirty-something urban professional, having discovered her roots as the Ojibway orphan Grace Wabung in Someday, and having visited her birth family on the Otter Lake Reserve in Only Drunks and Children Tell the Truth, is pregnant, and must now come to grips with the question of her “true identity.”

Her adoptive parents have just retired, and are about to sell their house to embark on a quest for their own identity by “returning” to England. Meanwhile, the Native father of her child-to-be is attempting to convince Janice/Grace that their coming child’s future lies with their “own people” at Otter Lake.

Which path for the future is Janice/Grace to choose, for herself, her families and her child, having spent a lifetime caught between the question of “what I am” and “who I am”?

400 Kilometres was first produced by Two Planks and a Passion Theatre on March 19, 1999, in Wolfeville, Nova Scotia, as part of the Atlantic Theatre Festival.

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About the Author: Hailed by the Montreal Gazette as one of Canada’s leading Native dramatists, Drew Hayden Taylor writes for the screen as well as the stage and contributes regularly to North American Native periodicals and national newspapers. His plays have garnered many prestigious awards, and his beguiling and perceptive storytelling style has enthralled audiences in Canada, the United States and Germany. One of his most established bodies of work includes what he calls the Blues Quartet, an ongoing, outrageous and often farcical examination of Native and non-Native stereotypes.

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By the Same Author: Someday (1993, Fifth House Ltd.) and Only Drunks and Children Tell the Truth (1998), among others.

Dr. Lorraine Livingstone leads women’s tours to ancient, sacred sites of goddess worship. She and five members of her tour are gathering at an inn on the Burren of Western Ireland for a tour of Celtic sites. The guests include a feuding lesbian couple on their way to China to adopt a baby, a celebrated author of best-selling murder mysteries, a frivolous divorcée, and a mysterious last-minute arrival. It’s February 2, Imbolc—the Celtic celebration that marks the end of winter and the beginning of spring. It’s also the season when, according to legend, the Greek earth-mother goddess Demeter emerges from the Underworld with her rescued daughter Persephone. The theme of lost daughters haunts the inn and its inhabitants, as mysterious voices and artifacts point to the murder of a girl-child, and each of the guests admits to some form of betrayal of the sacred mother-daughter bond. Lorraine is haunted by the memory of the out-of-wedlock child she was forced to relinquish at sixteen. The divorcée laments her failure to fight harder for the custody of her children. The lesbian partners, still bedeviled with the demons of their own childhoods, debate the wisdom of becoming mothers. The inn harbors a secret that is shared by the mysterious innkeeper Bridie and her nemesis, the author. Their history unfolds as a backdrop to the secret history between Lorraine and her mysterious latecomer. This is a murder mystery with all the classic ingredients: the dark and stormy night, the remote location, the strangers at the inn with their mysterious pasts, the ghostly intrusions, the attempted murder, and the obligatory gathering of the guests in the parlor for the final dénouement.

Production History: Read at the Venus Theater’s wRiting Woman series in February 2007; produced at Thorny Theater, Palm Springs, CA, in 2007; read in 2008 at Catamaran Theatre, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH; and produced at 2009 Maine Playwrights Festival, Acorn Productions, Portland and Peaks Island, ME.

Truman Capote’s first novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms, was the literary sensation of 1948, not only in America but in England and on the Continent as well. Wherever books were talked about, its merits were endlessly debated. Now, in his long-awaited second novel, he has found a theme and a group of characters even better adapted to his gift for evoking moods and for heightening the tragicomic elements in life.

The Grass Harp is the story of three odd and endearing characters who attempt to find their own brand of freedom by running away to live in a tree house on the edge of the woods. There they are joined by two more rebels from the humdrum life of their small town.

This tale of the sweet and hazardous hours in the tree house and the effect of this defiance of society on the villagers and on the tree dwellers is told with such a gift for the magical phrase and the nuances of character and emotion that the reader will close the book with an overwhelming sense of truth and reality, and with the conviction that The Grass Harp is Truman Capote’s most exciting achievement to date.

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About the Author: Truman Capote was born in New Orleans twenty-six years ago. A first novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms, established him in the front rank of younger American writers. His stories, eight of which are collected in A Tree of Night, have appeared in the better periodicals here and abroad, and are frequently anthologized. Last year Random House published Local Color, a book of Mr. Capote’s travel pieces. His work is widely known in Europe, where he has lived the last several years.

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Compiler’s Note: The story was adapted as a stage play by the author in 1952; and in 1995 as a major motion picture from Fine Line Features, starring Sissy Spacek, Walter Matthau, Piper Laurie, and Nell Carter, with a screenplay by Sterling Silliphant.

Comprised of a series of interrelated scenes, the play traces the coming of age of Heidi Holland, a successful art historian, as she tries to find her bearings in a rapidly changing world. Gradually distancing herself from her friends, she watches them move from the idealism and political radicalism of their college years through militant feminism and, eventually, back to the materialism that they had sought to reject in the first place. Heidi’s own path to maturity involves an affair with the glib, arrogant Scoop Rosenbaum, a womanizing lawyer/publisher who eventually marries for money and position; a deeper but even more troubling relationship with a charming, witty young pediatrician, Peter Patrone, who turns out to be gay; and increasingly disturbing contacts with the other women, now much changed, who were a part of her childhood and college years. Eventually Heidi comes to accept the fact that liberation can be achieved only if one is true to oneself, with goals that come out of need rather than circumstance. As the play ends she is still “alone,” but having adopted an orphaned baby, it is clear that she has begun to find a sense of fulfillment and continuity that may well continue to elude the others of her anxious, self-centered generation.

Lauren Weedman was adopted. When she got curious about her birth parents, her adoptive mother organized a conspiracy to track them down. Weedman has made a one-woman play, “Homecoming,” from the saga.

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About the Author: Lauren Weedman was born in Terre Haute, Indiana, in 1969. She, too, like her main character in Homecoming, was adopted. She, too, like the main character in the play, is named Lauren, almost as if she’d forgotten to change the names and details of the play to protect the innocent.

Ms. Weedman is not overly formally educated: one year at DePaul Theatre School in Chicago, a year at Indiana University studying film, and then off to Amsterdam for the next five years. It was during her “coming down” years in Seattle that she began to write and perform solo theater.

Besides Homecoming, her solo work includes: If Ornaments Had Lips, a Christmas musical with music by James Palmer originally produced at On the Boards; Hun at A Contemporary Theater (ACT); Amsterdam, a play with music, also by James Palmer at the Empty Space Theatre, and in the fall of 2002, the Empty Space Theatre premiered her latest solo work, RASH, with music by David Russell, which is scheduled to go Off Broadway in the fall of 2003.

Ms. Weedman is a regular on NPR’s Rewind with Bill Radke and is a correspondent on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

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By the Same Author: Miss Fortune: Fresh Perspectives on Having It All from Someone Who is Not Okay (2016, Plume) and A Woman Trapped in a Woman’s Body: Tales from a Life of Cringe (2007, Sasquatch Books).

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Compiler’s Note: The play was also published in Women Playwrights: The Best Plays of 2002 (2003, Smith & Kraus).

Jennifer is just an average girl who re-engineers obsolete missile components for the U.S. Army from her bedroom. When she decides to meet her birth mother in China, she uses her technological genius to devise a new form of human contact. Rolin Jones’ irreverent “techno-comedy” chronicles one brilliant woman’s quest to determine her heritage and face her fears with the help of a Mormon missionary, a pizza delivery guy, and her astounding creation called Jenny Chow.

From the Back Cover: In 1938, seven-year-old Eva Schlesinger is put aboard a train filled with other Jewish children and carried away from Nazi Germany in a little-known rescue operation called “Kindertransport.” More than four decades later, she has become a quintessential Englishwoman who hides her origins from everyone, including her own daughter. Here in Kindertransport her past and present collide. We see the terrified child who possesses only two gold rings and a Star of David hidden in the heel of her shoe to link her to the parents she left behind. And we watch the grown woman who has tried to forget the Kindertransport at the moment when her daughter discovers a storage box of papers. As her daughter questions her, a shattering truth emerges about Eva’s identity, the true cost of survival, and the future that grows out of a traumatized past. A stunning dramatic creation, Kindertransport tells of a miracle amid unimaginable horror and probes the complexity of emotions in those who must lose everything they love ... to live.

Winner of the 1992 Verity Bargate Award, this modern classic was first staged by the Soho Theatre Company, London, and subsequently at the Manhattan Theatre Club, New York. ... This edition also includes several personal memoirs by German-born children whose lives were saved, and transformed by the Kindertransport.

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About the Author: Diane Samuels was born in Liverpool. She now lives in London where she has been writing extensively as a dramatist and author since the early 1990s.

Kindertransport won the Verity Bargate and Meyer-Whitworth Awards, and was first produced by Soho Theatre Company in 1993. Subsequently it has been translated into many languages, performed in the West End, Off-Broadway and all over the world, and revived in 2007 in a highly acclaimed production by Shared Experience Theatre Company. Her other plays include The True Life Fiction of Mata Hari (Watford Palace Theatre, 2002) and Cinderella’s Daughter (Trestle Theatre tour, 2005). She has also written widely for BBC radio, plays including Swine, Doctor Y, Watch Out for Mister Stork and Hen Party.

For younger audiences, her plays include One Hundred Million Footsteps (Quicksilver Theatre Company); Chalk Circle and How to Beat a Giant (Unicom Theatre). Diane has wide experience of teaching creative writing, lecturing at the universities of Birmingham, Reading, Oxford and Goldsmiths College, London. She runs a regular writers’ group and is writer-in-residence at Grafton Primary School in Islington, north London.

Diane was one of a creative team awarded a Science on Stage and Screen Award by the Wellcome Trust in 2001. The resulting work, PUSH, was performed at The People Show Studios in London in June 2003. Her short story, “Rope,” was one of the winners in BBC Radio 4’s online short story competition, broadcast in 2002. As Pearson Creative Research Fellow 2004/5 at the British Library, she completed research into magic and her booklet A Writer’s Magic Notebook was published in 2006. Diane regularly reviews books for the Guardian.

From the Dust Jacket: Larry Larkin, the self-inflated creator of “Snips and Runty”—a comic strip with Social Significance—is all set to marry Dunreath Henry, his beautiful secretary. Dunreath is making a hideous mistake—at least in the eyes of Francis X. (for Xerxes) Dignan, the young ghost cartoonist hired by Larkin to draw the strip while he and Dunreath are honeymooning. Dignan, a young man with a high sense of duty and a low nauseating point, is determined to save Dunreath from what he terms the fate worse than the fate worse than death. And into the midst of this burgeoning isosceles appears Norman, an eight-and-a-half-year-old orphan whom Larkin has decided to adopt as a sort of walking laboratory for producing Snips-isms.

And so the stage is set for one of Broadway’s happiest hits. King of Hearts is one of those rare plays that reads as well as it watches. There are chuckles in every line and shouts of laughter on every page. If you saw it at the Lyceum and missed some of the fast-flying funnies because of the guffaws around you, here’s your chance to have the last—and best—laugh all to yourself.

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Compiler’s Note: The play was subsequently adapted for the screen in 1956 as That Certain Feeling, starring George Sanders, Eva Marie Saint, Bob Hope, and Jerry Mathers, among others.

A collection of ten of Gage’s hardest-hitting one-act plays, including: “Black Eye,” “The Ladies’ Room,” “The A-Mazing Yamashita and the Millennial Gold-diggers,” “A Labor Play,” “Heterosexuals Anonymous,” “The Boundary Trial of John Proctor,” “The Evil That Men Do: The Story of Thalidomide,” “The Gage and Mr. Comstock,” “The P.E. Teacher,” and “The Rules of the Playground.” “A Labor Play” is a satirical piece about what might happen if surrogate mothers become a commodity in the corporate world. The two chief executive officers are concerned about the bad publicity which might result from a worker’s desire to gain control over the distribution of the goods. (The mother has decided to keep the baby.) The collision of male dominance with the women’s value system is violent, and the scenario, in light of the “Baby M” case, might not be as far-fetched as it seems.

Laura Dennis lives with Lena Abernathy in Harrison, Texas. Her mother left Harrison years ago, after her father killed his cousin then died when Laura was very young. Writing to her mother, who now lives in far away South Dakota, Laura is convinced that once her mother realizes how grown up and ready for the world Laura is, she will want Laura to visit, or better yet, come live with her. Laura’s uncle comes to visit once in a while, supplying the much needed money for Laura’s upbringing and trying to care the best he can though he really doesn’t want to be a big part of her life. Laura loves her home in Harrison and the woman who cares for her, but is restless. A high school senior, she is discovering herself, her burgeoning sexuality and wondering about life ahead; all these things are confusing and exciting. A polite, sweet girl, Laura also hears stories about her family’s past: why her mother left and her father killed a man. She discovers an acquaintance across the street, Velma, is really a distant cousin, which both intrigues and repels her as Velma is a dependent, sometimes raving alcoholic, yet she may know the history of her family no one else will tell her. Over the course of several weeks, while Laura waits for an answer from her mother, she learns of her mother’s infidelities and her father’s jealousies. Parallel lives and stories also fill Laura’s world as she begins dating Stewart, who abruptly drops her to go to visit his old girlfriend who has moved to Atlanta. Another classmate, Harvey, seems also involved with that girl when he is accused of making her pregnant; the reason she moved away. Denying he is the father and revealing any number of the boys could have been, he is forbidden out of the house since the girl’s father has threatened to kill him. A quiet, sensitive boy, Harvey has expressed interest in Laura and wanted to ask her to the school dance. He is forbidden to do so, not because of past indiscretions or present threats, but because, as finally revealed to him by his adoptive parents, he is Laura’s half-brother by her mother and her father’s cousin, the one her father killed. Shaken by all that’s happened to him Harvey disobeys his parents and takes a walk in town. In front of the movie house he is shot and killed by the pregnant girl’s father. Laura hears the news about Harvey’s death and her connection to him, just after she receives a letter from her mother saying she wants nothing to do with her. Feeling she lost her mother, and a brother she never knew well, Laura is devastated. Yet, she tries to find something in the day to sustain her. She accepts what help she can get from those who love her through what is now a crossroads in her young, now saddened life.