Stories from the award-winning director and playwright. "Labute's smart, edgy offering delivers pleasures well beyond the time frame his title suggests."— BooklistIn Seconds of Pleasure, Neil LaBute brings to the page his cutting humor and compelling take on the shadowy terrain of the human heart. Best known for his controversial plays and films, his short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker and Playboy. Seductive and provocat...

What they do have, however, is a very awkward encounter after spending one hot night together following a drunken wedding reception they attend. They wake up to a blurry morning where the rules of attraction, sex and society are waiting for them before their first cup of coffee, leading them to ponder how much they really know about each other and how much they really care about what other people think.Slyly profound and irresistibly passionate, The Way We Get By is Neil LaBute's audacious...

"Neil LaBute manages to make [an old idea] surprisingly surprising, a drama full of tension and secrets, revealing his wicked ear for contemporary talk." —Toby Zinman, The Philadelphia InquirerTwo brothers meet on the grounds of a private psychiatric facility. Drew has been court-confined for observation and has called his older brother, Terry, to corroborate his claim of childhood sexual abuse by a young man from many summers ago. Drew's...

A man and his mistress ponder their futures the day after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in this play by the author of Reasons to Be Pretty ."Neil LaBute is the first dramatist since David Mamet and Sam Shepard—since Edward Albee, actually—to mix sympathy and savagery, pathos and power." —Donald Lyons, New York PostIn a time of national tragedy, the world cha...

"Sitting in an automobile was where I first remember understanding how drama works...Hidden in the back seat of a sedan, I quickly realized how deep the chasm or intense the claustrophobia could be inside your average family car." --Neil LaButeBe it the medium for clandestine couplings, arguments, shelter, or ultimately transportation, the automobile is perhaps the most authentically American of spaces. In Autobahn, Neil LaBute's provocative new collection of one-act plays ...

St. Louis Actors' Studio (STLAS) and esteemed film director, screenwriter and playwright Neil LaBute publish a new book, "Unlikely Japan and Other Plays: Ten One-Acts from Ten Years of the LaBute New Theater Festival". Since 2014, STLAS has worked with LaBute to produce the annual festival bearing his name celebrating new works by emerging professional and high school playwrights, as well as a new piece penned each year by LaBute himself. In honor of a decade of this successful collaborati...

Four friends confront America's obsession with physical beauty in this brutal and exhilarating comic drama by the acclaimed author of In the Company of Men ."LaBute takes us to shadowy places we don't like to talk about, sometimes even think about." — NewsdayIn Reasons to Be Pretty, Greg's tight-knit social circle is thrown into turmoil when his offhand remarks a...

In the title play, Exhibit ‘A’, an artist pushes the boundaries of his art to a previously untouched frontier, challenging the very definition of “art.†? 10K explores the territory where fantasy and desire merge, as a man and woman share secrets while traversing a suburban jogging path. Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush is a tense confrontation between two men in a park. In Happy Hour, a guy and a gal meet cute in a bar. I’m Going To Stop Pretending (That I Didn’t Break Your Heart) lays b...

After five years in New York City, Greg and Steph return to their hometown for their 20th high school reunion and to a dramatic encounter with Kent and Carly, the friends they left behind. Old secrets and new lies become increasingly difficult to hide as the evening (and the drinking) goes on. With Reasons To Be Pretty Happy, Neil LaBute revisits the characters first introduced in Reasons To Be Pretty (2009 Tony Award-nominated Best Play) and Reasons To Be Happy as they grapple with that e...

It’s been years since either one’s had a hit, but the latest movie by a hot-shot European director could change that. The night before filming a big scene (that will undoubtedly assure them a spot back on the pop culture radar), Karen, her partner Bev, Steve, and his aspiring actress wife Missy meet in order to make an important decision: how far will they let themselves go to keep from slipping further down the Hollywood food chain? Sexy, daring, darkly hilarious—and Neil LaBute’s first o...

A collection of early work and new short pieces from “the bad boy of American theater” (Time).Neil LaBute burst onto the American theater scene in 1989 with his controversial debut Filthy Talk for Troubled Times. Set in a barroom in Anytown, USA, and populated by a series of everymen (and two beleaguered everywomen), this series of frank exchanges explores the innumerable varieties of American intolerance. A unique snapshot of the times, the play—...

The title play, which had its American premiere at La MaMa in 2012, rivetingly explores the relationship between a nervous older man and a glib young prostitute, as their evening together drives toward a startling conclusion. Also included is the one-act play The Great War, which looks at a divorcing couple and the ground they need to cross to reach their own end of hostilities; In the Beginning, which was written as a response to the Occupy movement and produced around the world in 2012-1...