George Bernard Shaw demanded truth and despised convention. He punctured hollow pretensions and smug prudishness—coating his criticism with ingenious and irreverent wit. In Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Arms and the Man, Candida, and Man and Superman, the great playwright satirizes society, military heroism, marriage, and the pursuit of man by woman. From a social, literary, and theatrical standpoint, these four plays are among the foremost dramas of the age...

South Point survived the siege. But survival isn't the same as understanding.In the smoke-filled aftermath, veteran journalist Thomas Snow and his editor wife Zay can't stop pulling threads. The church that didn't burn. The machete-wielding man they called The Beast. The mysterious stranger who appeared at exactly the right moment and vanished just as quickly. The missing girls - including their own daughter Megan - still out there somewhere, still in the hands of ...

First published in 1967 The Theatre of Commitment presents miscellaneous collection of seven essays written over fifteen years. Eric Bentley deals with themes like is the drama an extinct species; the American drama; what is theatre; the pro and con of political theatre; letter to a would-be playwright and the theatre of commitment. For most people, theatre of commitment is political theater, though Bentley indicates that the word commitment is broad enough to embrace the work of ...

A chilling reenactment of the federal government’s anti-Communist investigationsThe testimony that Eric Bentley has gleaned for this book from the thirty-year record of the House Un-American Activities Committee focuses on HUAC’s treatment of artists, intellectuals, and performers. This highly dramatic and compelling collection of significant excerpts from the hearings shows with painful clarity how HUAC grew from a panel that investigated possible subversive activities in a “digni...

A chilling reenactment of the Federal government’s anti-Communist investigationsEric Bentley has chosen highlights from the thirty-year record of the House Un-American Activities Committee to demonstrate HUAC’s focus on artists, intellectuals, and performers. Volume 2: 1951–1952 includes the testimonies of Clifford Odets, Edward G. Robinson, Elia Kazan, Jose Ferrer, Bud Schulberg, Sterling Hayden, Abe Burroughs, Lillian Hellman, and many others. Thirty Years of Treason...

A chilling reenactment of the federal government’s anti-Communist investigationsThe testimony that the author has gleaned for this book from the thirty-year record of the House Un-American Activities Committee focuses on HUAC’s treatment of artists, intellectuals, and performers. This highly readable and absorbing collection of significant excerpts from the hearings shows with painful clarity how HUAC grew from a panel that investigated possible subversive activities in a “dignifie...

A chilling reenactment of the federal government’s anti-Communist investigationsEric Bentley has chosen highlights from the thirty-year record of the House Un-American Activities Committee to demonstrate HUAC’s focus on artists, intellectuals, and performers. Volume 1: 1938–1948 includes the testimonies of Hallie Flanagan, Ayn Rand, Adolphe Menjou, Robert Taylor, Ronald Reagan, Gary Cooper, Bertolt Brecht and many others. Thirty Years of Treason serves as a warnin...

In the mid-1950’s, the House Un-American Activities Committee began investigating the communist influence in the entertainment industry. This searing docudrama from actual transcripts of the hearings reveals how decent people were persuaded to “name names,” and the steep price paid by those who refused.An L.A. Theatre Works full cast performance featuring: René Auberjonois, Edward Asner, Bonnie Bedelia, Jack Coleman, Bud Cort, Richard Dreyfuss, Hector Elizondo, Robert Foxworth, Har...

A Tale of Two Cities is an 1859 historical novel by Charles Dickens, set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution. The novel tells the story of the French Doctor Manette, his 18-year-long imprisonment in the Bastille in Paris and his release to live in London with his daughter Lucie, whom he had never met. The story is set against the conditions that led up to the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror.Dickens’ best-known work of historical fiction, with over 2...

Dorian Gray is the subject of a full-length portrait in oil by Basil Hallward, an artist who is impressed and infatuated by Dorian's beauty; he believes that Dorian’s beauty is responsible for the new mode in his art as a painter. Through Basil, Dorian meets Lord Henry Wotton, and he soon is enthralled by the aristocrat's hedonistic worldview: that beauty and sensual fulfilment are the only things worth pursuing in life...

As the manager of the Performance sits before the curtain on the boards and looks into the Fair, a feeling of profound melancholy comes over him in his survey of the bustling place. There is a great quantity of eating and drinking, making love and jilting, laughing and the contrary, smoking, cheating, fighting, dancing and fiddling; there are bullies pushing about, bucks ogling the women, knaves picking pockets, policemen on the look-out, quacks (OTHER quacks, plague take them!) bawling in...

The Pickwick Papers - a novel by Charles Dickens, an English writer who is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era.The novel's protagonist Samuel Pickwick, Esquire is a kind and wealthy old gentleman, the founder and perpetual president of the Pickwick Club. He suggests that he and three other "Pickwickians" should make journeys to places remote from London and report on their findings to the other members of the club. Their travels throughout the English cou...