DRAMA GIANTS OF THE 21ST

CENTURY

August Osage County

August: Osage County is

set on the plains of modern day,

middle-class Oklahoma. The

Weston family members are all

intelligent, sensitive creatures who

have the uncanny ability of

making each other absolutely

miserable. When the patriarch of

the household mysteriously

vanishes, the Weston clan gathers

together to simultaneously support

and attack one another.

Clybourne ParkClybourne Park is a play written by Bruce

Norris. The first act takes place in 1959. He questions

Russ's health and new office. Russ feels uncomfortable

when Jim asks how he is doing personally and tries to

engage him about his son. Russ uses foul language,

which makes the situation tense.

The second act takes place fifty years later in

2009, in the same house. Lindsey and Steve bought it

and want to tear it down, which has created problems.

Kathy, their lawyer, helps to define vocabulary. Tom

leads the group in their discussions. Kevin and Lena are

neighbors representing the Home Owner's Association.

Her great aunt lived in the Clybourne Street house after

the Stollers, from Act 1.

Kathy is trying to help her Caucasian friends

who bought the house. Her parents are Betsy and Karl,

who tried to dissuade the Stollers from letting African

Americans move into it.

ProofProof. It is a 2000 play by the

American playwright David Auburn. The

play concerns Catherine, the daughter of

Robert, a recently deceased mathematical

genius in his fifties and professor at the

University of Chicago, and her struggle with

mathematical genius and mental illness.

Upon Robert's death, his ex-

graduate student Hal discovers a paradigm-

shifting proof about prime numbers in

Robert's office. The title refers both to that

proof and to the play's central question: Can

Catherine prove the proof's authorship?

Doubt, A ParableBased upon a few circumstantial

details and a lot of intuition, the ultra-stern

nun, Sister Aloysius Beauvier believes that

one of the priests at the St. Nicholas

Catholic Church and School has been

molesting a 12-year-old boy named Donald

Muller, the school's only African American

student.

The point of John Patrick

Shanley's Doubt is, the realization that all

of our beliefs and convictions are part of a

facade we build to protect ourselves. We

often choose to believe in things: a person's

innocence, a person's guilt, the sanctity of

the church, the collective morality of

society.

RuinedOn one of her usually busy days

running her bar / brothel, Mama Nadi is visited

by Christian, a regular customer who also

serves as a go-between for Mama and

merchants who supply her with cigarettes, rare

luxuries like lipstick and chocolate, and one of

the tools of Mama’s trade – girls who, for

various reasons, are forced to enter a life of

prostitution.

As time passes, Mama’s bar is visited

by leaders of both the government army and the

rebels. She makes sure to keep them both happy

so that she can retain their business and also

prevent them from attacking her.