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| neil labute: Neil Labute: Plays 3 Neil LaBute, 2025-01-30 Bash Three darkly brilliant one-act plays, unblinking portraits of the evils abroad in everyday life, first performed in 1999. 'You don't need to be familiar with Greek tragedy to admire LaBute's ability to illuminate the dark corners of the human mind . . . He writes with unblinking candour, unvarying incisiveness and the ear and eye for the tiny, telling fact that reveals a character floundering on the edge.' The Times Reasons to Be Pretty Nominated for the Tony Award for Best Play, Reasons to Be Pretty explores love, language and power with fresh wit and insight. 'Neil LaBute at his best. It says things about love and betrayal that are rarely put on stage . . . The play has the transfixing nastiness that has made LaBute one of the most disturbing theatrical presences of the last decade. Yet it also has an unexpected ingredient: a beating heart.' Observer Now collected with its sequel, which follows the same four loveable characters - Reasons to Be Happy 'A richly entertaining shard of tragicomedy . . . a snap survey of American masculinity in crisis.' Daily Telegraph If I Needed Someone A drunken first date becomes an acutely observed dance of desire, expectation and consent. 'For all of its misunderstandings, misperceptions, and bristles, for all the insecurities and past hurt it opens for both characters, If I Needed Someone is the kind of first date that people looking for love dream of having.' Broadway World How to Fight Loneliness A married couple call on a third man to help them make a desperate decision, in this compelling and unsettling drama. How to Fight Loneliness received its UK premiere at the Park Theatre, London, in April 2025. 'A play that will force you to consider your own sense of mortality . . . starkly devastating.' Spectrum |
| neil labute: Reasons to be Pretty Neil LaBute, 2009 THE STORY: A love story about the impossibility of love, REASONS TO BE PRETTY introduces us to Greg, who really, truly adores his girlfriend, Steph. Unfortunately, he also thinks she has a few physical imperfections, and when he casually mentions t |
| neil labute: The Way We Get By Neil LaBute, 2017-03-16 Meet Beth and Doug, two people who have no problems getting dates with their partners of choice. After a drunken party and a hot night, 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. It’s very awkward—and it also leads the pair to ponder how much they really know about each other, and how much they really care about what other people think. THE WAY WE GET BY is a play about love and lust and the whole damn thing. |
| neil labute: The Mercy Seat Neil LaBute, 2016-10-18 Set on September 12, 2001, THE MERCY SEAT continues Neil LaBute's unflinching fascination with the often-brutal realities of the war between the sexes. In a time of national tragedy, the world changes overnight. A man and a woman explore the choices now available to them in an existence different from the one they had lived just the day before. Can one be opportunistic in a time of universal selflessness? There is no playwright on the planet these days who is writing better than Neil LaBute ... THE MERCY SEAT is ... the work of a master. --John Lahr, The New Yorker An intelligent and thought-provoking drama that casts a less-than-glowing light on man's dark side in the face of disaster ... The play's energy lies in LaBute's trademark scathing dialogue. --Robert Dominguez, Daily News Though set in the cold, gray light of morning in a downtown loft with inescapable views of the vacuum left by the twin towers, THE MERCY SEAT really occurs in one of those feverish nights of the soul in which men and women lock in vicious sexual combat, as in Strindberg's DANCE OF DEATH and Edward Albee's WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? --Ben Brantley, The New York Times [A] powerful drama ... LaBute shows a true master's hand in gliding us amid the shoals and reefs of a mined relationship. --Donald Lyons, New York Post Uncomfortable yet fascinating ... THE MERCY SEAT makes for provocative theater -- sharp, compelling and more than a little chilling. --Michael Kuchwara, Newsday LaBute's intriguing [new play] is most compelling when it is daring to look into [a] character's heart to explore the way self-interest, given the opportunity, can swamp all our nobler instincts. --Charles Isherwood, Variety In THE MERCY SEAT ... LaBute has given us his most compelling portrait of male inner turmoil. --Brendan Lemon, Financial Times LaBute [is] the dark shining star of stage and film morality. --Linda Winer, Newsday Sharply funny and incisive SEAT is not a response to September 11, but a response to the response to September 11 -- an emotionally jarring consideration of the self-serving exploitation of tragedy for personal gain ... Perhaps it's time we stop thinking of LaBute as a mere provocateur, a label that condescends to an artist of grand ambition and a nimble facility with language. With this gripping ... new drama, he probes deeper than he ever has before. --Jason Zinoman, Time Out New York A nihilistic yet brutally honest work ... As complex and unfathomable as human motivations ... THE MERCY SEAT is haunting. --David A. Rosenberg, Backstage LaBute risks offending contemporary sensibilities by using a historic tragedy as his turning point for a drama regarding a morally empty American ... [THE MERCY SEAT is] controversial and compelling. --Michael Sommers, The Star-Ledger LaBute ... is holding up a pitiless mirror to ourselves. We may not like what we see, but we can't deny that -- if only in some dark corner of our soul -- it is there. --Jacques le Sourd, The Journal News |
| neil labute: Fat Pig Neil LaBute, 2004-11-29 Cow. Slob. Pig. How many insults can you hear before you have to stand up and defend the woman you love? Tom faces just that question when he falls for Helen, a bright, funny, sexy young woman who happens to be plus sized-and then some. Forced to explain his new relationship to his shallow (although shockingly funny) friends, finally he comes to terms with his own preconceptions of the importance of conventional good looks. Neil LaBute's sharply drawn play not only critiques our slavish adherence to Hollywood ideals of beauty but boldy questions our own ability to change what we dislike about ourselves. |
| neil labute: Neil LaBute Gerald C. Wood, 2006-09-11 Neil LaBute: A Casebook is the first book to examine one of the most successful and controversial contemporary American playwrights and filmmakers. While he is most famous, and in some cases infamous, for his early films In the Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbors, Labute is equally accomplished as a playwright. His work extends from the critique of false religiosity in Bash to examinations of opportunism, irresponsible art, failed parenting, and racism in later plays like Mercy Seat, The Shape of Things, The Distance From Here, Fat Pig, Autobahn, and the very recent This Is How It Goes and Some Girls. Like David Mamet, an acknowledged influence on him, and Conor McPhereson, with whom he shares some stylistic and thematic concerns, LaBute tends to polarize audiences. The angry voices, violent situations, and irresponsible behavior in his works, especially those focusing on male characters, have alienated some viewers. But the writer's religious affiliation and refusal to condone the actions of his characters suggest he is neither exploitive nor pornographic. This casebook explores the primary issues of the writer's style, themes, and dramatic achievements. Contributors describe, for example, the influences (both classical and contemporary) on his work, his distinctive vision in theater and film, the role of religious belief in his work, and his satire. In addition to the critical introduction by Wood and the original essays by leading dramatic and literary scholars, the volume also includes a bibliography and a chronology of the playwright's life and works. |
| neil labute: Bash Neil LaBute, 2014-12-01 Evil wears an all-American glow in Neil LaBute's BASH: LATTERDAY PLAYS ... The characters in this transfixing evening of monologues have that sheen of idealized, corn-country wholesomeness that Madison Avenue has always put such a premium on: clear skin, sparkling eyes and teeth to make an orthodontist cheer. To look at, they're the human equivalents of a glass of milk. But if you know anything about Mr. LaBute ... you probably know already that the milk is laced with arsenic. The stories told in BASH, even the one that occurs beneath a police-interrogation light, all begin with a comforting air of familiarity that goes down bland and easy. Then comes a moment when the taste turns sour, and you feel like gagging. It's as though characters from Ozzie and Harriet had suddenly pulled a shiv on you ... For all its ostensible cynicism, BASH is informed with an earnest, probing moralism as fierce as that of Nathaniel Hawthorne ... That's what Mr. LaBute does best, finding the acid in the blandest substances. -Ben Brantley, The New York Times |
| neil labute: The Shape of Things Neil LaBute, 2001-11-15 How far would you go for love? For art? What would you be willing to change? Which price might you pay? Such are the painful questions explored by Neil Labute in The Shape of Things. A young student drifts into an ever-changing relationship with an art major while his best friends' engagement crumbles, so unleashing a drama that peels back the skin of two modern-day relationships, exposing the raw meat and gristle that lie beneath. The world première of The Shape of Things was presented at the Almeida, London, in May 2001. |
| neil labute: Autobahn Neil LaBute, 2005-01-03 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 LaBute Be 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 set within the confines of the front seat, the playwright employs his signature plaintive insight to great effect, investigating the inchoate apprehension that surrounds the steering wheel. Each of these seven brief vignettes explore the ethos of perception and relationship--from a make-out session gone awry to a kidnapping thinly disguised as a road trip, a reconnaissance mission involving the rescue of a Nintendo 64 to a daughter's long ride home after her release from rehab. The result is an unsettling montage that gradually reveals the scabrous force of words left unsaid while illuminating the delicate interplay between intention and morality, capturing the essence of middle America and the myriad paths which cross its surface. |
| neil labute: Reasons to be Happy Neil LaBute, 2016-05-09 Reasons to Be Happy features the same four characters--Greg, Steph, Carly, and Kent--picking up their lives three years later, but in different romantic pairings as they each search desperately for that elusive object of desire: happiness. New York City's MCC Theater will produce the world premiere in May 2013. |
| neil labute: Neil LaBute: Plays 1 Neil LaBute, 2014-07-31 Filthy Talk for Troubled Time is one of LaBute's earliest plays. A downbeat night at a topless bar exposes the gulf between the twitchy clientele and the waitresses who serve but despise them. The Mercy Seat examines a couple who, on the day after a world-changing atrocity, toy with exploiting it to start a new life. Some Girl(s) follows a young writer's panicked retreat from his imminent wedding as he seeks out old girlfriends and opens new wounds, while in This Is How It Goes the breakdown of a seemingly successful marriage is complicated by submerged bigotry. The collection also includes two short plays about relationships in crisis - A Second of Pleasure and Helter Skelter - which are in equal part tender and chilling. Together these plays form a complex and compelling portrait of the sexes - sometimes warring, sometimes loving, but never fully at peace. |
| neil labute: Filthy Talk for Troubled Times Neil LaBute, 2010-06-15 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—seldom allowed production by the author since—provides a compelling look at the early thinking and evolution of one of our great theater artists. Also in this collection is a series of new, short works, some never before produced. They include “The New Testament,” a showbiz satire that takes a close look at the perils of color-blind casting, and “The Furies,” in which a woman helps navigate her brother’s breakup with his out—and then perhaps in-the-closet again—lover. “There is something of the sinister menace of Pinter in LaBute’s work (along with David Mamet, he is very much the heir apparent to that master).” —Hedy Weiss, Chicago Sun-Times “There is no playwright on the planet these days who is writing better than Neil LaBute.” —John Lahr, The New Yorker |
| neil labute: In a Forest, Dark and Deep Neil LaBute, 2016-05-09 She's a college professor with a prim demeanor, and he's a carpenter with a foul mouth and violent streak. Betty has a history of promiscuity that Bobby won't let her forget, and from their first taunting exchanges there are intimations also of the history between them. Yet on the night when Betty urgently needs help to empty her cabin in the woods--the cabin she's been renting to a male student--she calls on Bobby. In this exhilarating play of secrets and sibling rivalry, which had its premiere in London's West End in 2011, Neil LaBute unflinchingly explores the dark territory beyond, as Bobby sneeringly says, the lies you tell yourself to get by. |
| neil labute: Lovely Head and Other Plays Neil LaBute, 2016-05-09 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 2012-13 as part of Theatre Uncut; The Wager, the stage version of the film Double or Nothing starring Adam Brody; the two-handers A Guy Walks Into a Bar, Over the River and Through the Woods, and Strange Fruit; and two powerful new monologues, Bad Girl and The Pony of Love. |
| neil labute: Neil LaBute: Plays 2 Neil LaBute, 2017-09-05 'LaBute takes us to shadowy places we don't like to talk about, sometimes even to think about.' Newsday Obsession with surface and secrets runs through this second collection of Neil LaBute's work. The Shape of Things peels back the skin of modern-day relationships to ask how far someone might change themselves for love, or for art. In Fat Pig, a man confronts his friends' - and his own - fixation with Hollywood ideals of beauty when he falls for a 'plus size' young woman. In a Dark Dark House and In a Forest, Dark and Deep are twin tales of sibling conflict. In the first, estranged brothers must reconcile conflicting memories, after one asks for corroboration of childhood abuse. In the second, a man's offer to help his sister clear out her cottage brings a terrible confession into the light. The Shape of Things 'What initially seems a touching study of student romance develops instead into a passionate discussion about the way art feeds on life.' Daily Telegraph Fat Pig 'As large as Helen is, the tender heart of the play is easily twice as big.' Variety In a Dark Dark House 'LaBute toys with expectations and takes pleasure in our discomfort... The play does lead to a pretty dark place - but the ending is not without hope.' Daily Mail In a Forest, Dark and Deep 'It is billed as being about sibling rivalry, but in fact majors on far deeper, dangerous things: the yearning to be understood, female manipulation, and fascinated male disgust at a sister's lurid sexuality.' The Times |
| neil labute: The Break of Noon Neil LaBute, 2012 THE STORY: Amidst the chaos and horror of the worst office shooting in American history, John Smith sees the face of God. His modern-day revelation creates a maelstrom of disbelief among everyone he knows. A newcomer to faith, John urgently searche |
| neil labute: The Way We Get By Neil LaBute, 2015-05-19 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 tale of a very modern romance—a sharp, sexy, fresh look at love and lust and the whole damn thing. |
| neil labute: In a Dark Dark House Neil LaBute, 2008-03-04 Two 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 request releases barely-hidden animosities between the two: Is he using these repressed memories to save himself while smearing the name of his brother's friend? Through pain and acknowledged betrayal, the brothers come to grips with and begin to understand the legacy of abuse, both inside and outside their family home. In a Dark, Dark House is the latest work from Neil LaBute, American theater's great agent provocateur. The play will have its world Premiere in May 2007, Off Broadway at New York's MCC Theater. |
| neil labute: Seconds of Pleasure Neil LaBute, 2007-12-01 Stories from the award-winning director and playwright. “Labute’s smart, edgy offering delivers pleasures well beyond the time frame his title suggests.”—Booklist In 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 provocative, each potent and pithy tale in Seconds of Pleasure finds men and women exploiting—or at the mercy of—the hidden fault lines that separate them: In “Time Share,” a woman leaves her family at their vacation home after discovering her husband in a compromising situation; a middle-aged man obsesses over a scab on the calf of a pretty young girl in “Boo-Boo”; and a vain Hollywood actor gets his comeuppance in “Soft Target.” LaBute infuses Seconds of Pleasure with his trademark wit and black humor and unleashes his imagination in stories that offer unflinching insight into our very human shortcomings and impure urges with shocking candor. “LaBute’s usual sleazy suspects are prepared to risk family, love, career, and freedom for the momentary satisfaction of their sometimes brutal desires. It will end badly, we know, and that’s what makes each dark tale as irresistible as good gossip. Fallibility and weakness, LaBute has demonstrated once again, have their own allure.”—Black Book “Seconds captures in print both the nuanced rhythms of contemporary speech and the pitfalls of dark I-Me-Mine gratification.”—LA Weekly “LaBute is a master at crafting shocking situations and nasty characters.”—Publishers Weekly |
| neil labute: The Money Shot Neil LaBute, 2017-03-16 Karen and Steve are glamorous movie stars with one thing in common: desperation. It’s been years since either one’s had a hit, but a hot-shot European director could change that with his latest movie. The night before filming a big scene that will undoubtedly bring them back onto the pop culture radar, Karen and her partner, Bev, meet with Steve and his aspiring actress wife, Missy, in order to make an important decision. How far will they let themselves go to keep from slipping further down the Hollywood food chain? THE MONEY SHOT is a hilarious and insightful comedy about ambition, art, status, and sex in an era—and an industry—where very little is sacred and almost nothing is taboo. |
| neil labute: The Distance from Here Neil LaBute, 2003-03-25 His films In the Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbors both gained critical renown for their biting satire and caustic wit. Now, with The Distance from Here, he has written his most riveting play yet, an intense look at the dark side of American suburbia. With little to occupy their time other than finding a decent place to hang out—the zoo, the mall, the school parking lot—Darrell and Tim are two American teenagers who lack any direction or purpose in their lives. When Darrell’s suspicion about the faithlessness of his girlfriend is confirmed and Tim comes to her defense, there is nothing to brake their momentum as all three speed toward disaster. |
| neil labute: This Is How It Goes Neil LaBute, 2005-03-05 Belinda and Cody Phipps appear a typical Midwestern couple: teenage sweethearts, children, luxurious home. Typical except that Cody is black--rich, black, and different, in the words of Belinda, who finds herself attracted to a former (white) classmate. As the battle for her affections is waged, Belinda and Cody frankly doubt the foundation of their initial attraction, opening the door wide to a swath of bigotry and betrayal. Staged on continually shifting moral ground that challenges our received notions about gender, ethnicity, and even love itself, This Is How It Goes unblinkingly explores the myriad ways in which the wild card of race is played by both black and white in America. |
| neil labute: Exhibit 'A' Neil LaBute, 2015-12-15 Neil LaBute has earned international acclaim for his provocative body of work for the stage. His bold vision is amply evident in this new collection of daring and stylishly realized short plays and monologues. |
| neil labute: How to Fight Loneliness Neil Labute, 2018-02-22 Brad and Jodie need Tate to do them a favour. A really big favour. Brad is married to Jodie. Jodie went to school with Tate. Tate doesn't trust Brad. Brad and Jodie are at a life-changing crossroads and struggling to make a monumental decision about their life and love, and Tate--just maybe--has been there before. In this timely, dark, and dazzling new play, Neil LaBute takes a penetrating, point-blank look at a couple confronting the hardest decision of their lives and the aftermath of that decision. How To Fight Loneliness is Neil LaBute's most shocking, and also most tender, play yet. |
| neil labute: Some Girl(s) Neil LaBute, 2006-06-27 Your career as a writer is blossoming, your beautiful, young fiancee is waiting to get married and rush off to Cancun by your side—so what is your natural reaction? Well, if you're a man, it's probably to get nervous and start calling up old girlfriends. And so begins a single man's odyssey through four hotel rooms as he flies across the country in search of the perfect woman (that he's already broken up with). Some Girl(s) is the latest work from Neil Labute, American theater's great agent provocateur. In grand LaBute fashion, this by turns outrageously funny and deadly serious portrait of the artist as a young seducer casts a truthful, hilarious light on a typical young American male as he wanders through the heart of darkness that is himself. This edition includes a deleted scene. |
| neil labute: Filthy Talk for Troubled Times Neil LaBute, 2010-06-10 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—seldom allowed production by the author since—provides a compelling look at the early thinking and evolution of one of our great theater artists. Also in this collection is a series of new, short works, some never before produced. They include “The New Testament,” a showbiz satire that takes a close look at the perils of color-blind casting, and “The Furies,” in which a woman helps navigate her brother’s breakup with his out—and then perhaps in-the-closet again—lover. “There is something of the sinister menace of Pinter in LaBute’s work (along with David Mamet, he is very much the heir apparent to that master).” —Hedy Weiss, Chicago Sun-Times “There is no playwright on the planet these days who is writing better than Neil LaBute.” —John Lahr, The New Yorker |
| neil labute: Neil LaBute: Plays 3 Neil LaBute, 2025-05-15 Bash Three darkly brilliant one-act plays, unblinking portraits of the evils abroad in everyday life, first performed in 1999. 'You don't need to be familiar with Greek tragedy to admire LaBute's ability to illuminate the dark corners of the human mind . . . He writes with unblinking candour, unvarying incisiveness and the ear and eye for the tiny, telling fact that reveals a character floundering on the edge.' The Times Reasons to Be Pretty Nominated for the Tony Award for Best Play, Reasons to Be Pretty explores love, language and power with fresh wit and insight. 'Neil LaBute at his best. It says things about love and betrayal that are rarely put on stage . . . The play has the transfixing nastiness that has made LaBute one of the most disturbing theatrical presences of the last decade. Yet it also has an unexpected ingredient: a beating heart.' Observer Now collected with its sequel, which follows the same four loveable characters - Reasons to Be Happy 'A richly entertaining shard of tragicomedy . . . a snap survey of American masculinity in crisis.' Daily Telegraph If I Needed Someone A drunken first date becomes an acutely observed dance of desire, expectation and consent. 'For all of its misunderstandings, misperceptions, and bristles, for all the insecurities and past hurt it opens for both characters, If I Needed Someone is the kind of first date that people looking for love dream of having.' Broadway World How to Fight Loneliness A married couple call on a third man to help them make a desperate decision, in this compelling and unsettling drama. How to Fight Loneliness received its UK premiere at the Park Theatre, London, in April 2025. 'A play that will force you to consider your own sense of mortality . . . starkly devastating.' Spectrum |
| neil labute: Some Velvet Morning Neil LaBute, 2016-05-09 He tells her he’s finally left his wife to be with her, news to Velvet since she hasn’t seen him in years and is now friends with Fred’s recently married son. Hopes dashed, Fred engages Velvet in a mesmerizing conversation brimming with passion, remorse, humor, and anger. As power shifts and tension mounts, the young and beautiful Velvet and the older, volatile Fred revisit a shared history, and the twisted heart of their relationship is slowly revealed in a stunning climax. In this provocative two-hander, Neil LaBute continues to explore the nuances of gender relationships, creating a powerful work of sharp and subtle contrasts. |
| neil labute: reasons to be happy Neil LaBute, 2015-01-01 THE STORY: Three years after a contentious break-up, Steph and Greg are wondering if they can make a fresh go of it. Trouble is, she's married to someone else and he's just embarked on a relationship with Steph's best friend, Carly, a single mom whose jealous ex-husband, Kent, has trouble articulating his feelings. Navigating the rocky landscape of conflicting agendas and exploding emotions isn't going to be easy for any of them. REASONS TO BE HAPPY is a funny, surprising, and poignant play about the choices and sacrifices we are willing to make in the pursuit of that often elusive ideal: happiness. |
| neil labute: My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me Kate Bernheimer, 2010-09-28 The fairy tale lives again in this book of forty new stories by some of the biggest names in contemporary fiction, science fiction, fantasy, and magical realism. Neil Gaiman, “Orange” Aimee Bender, “The Color Master” Joyce Carol Oates, “Blue-bearded Lover” Michael Cunningham, “The Wild Swans” These and more than thirty other stories by Francine Prose, Kelly Link, Jim Shepard, Lydia Millet, and many other extraordinary writers make up this thrilling celebration of fairy tales—the ultimate literary costume party. Spinning houses and talking birds. Whispered secrets and borrowed hope. Here are new stories sewn from old skins, gathered by visionary editor Kate Bernheimer and inspired by everything from Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen” and “The Little Match Girl” to Charles Perrault’s “Bluebeard” and “Cinderella” to the Brothers Grimm’s “Hansel and Gretel” and “Rumpelstiltskin” to fairy tales by Goethe and Calvino and from China, Japan, Vietnam, Russia, Norway, and Mexico. Fairy tales are our oldest literary tradition, and yet they chart the imaginative frontiers of the twenty-first century as powerfully as they evoke our earliest encounters with literature. This exhilarating collection restores their place in the literary canon. |
| neil labute: Reasons to Be Pretty Neil LaBute, 2008-06-24 In Reasons to Be Pretty, Greg's tight-knit social circle is thrown into turmoil when his offhand remarks about a female coworker's pretty face and his own girlfriend Steph's lack thereof get back to Steph. But that's just the beginning. Greg's best buddy, Kent, and Kent's wife, Carly, also enter into the picture, and the emotional equation becomes exponentially more complicated. As their relationships crumble, the four friends are forced to confront a sea of deceit, infidelity, and betrayed trust in their journey to answer that oh-so-American question: How much is pretty worth? Neil LaBute's bristling new comic drama puts the final ferocious cap on a trilogy of plays that began with The Shape of Things and Fat Pig. America's obsession with physical beauty is confronted headlong in this brutal and exhilarating work. |
| neil labute: Bash Neil LaBute, 1999-11-01 Neil LaBute burst onto the American theater scene with the premiere of BASH at NYC’s Douglas Fairbanks Theater in 1999 in a wildly praised production that featured Calista Flockhart, Paul Rudd, and Ron Eldard. It went on to play at the Almeida Theatre in London and since then has seen hundreds of productions across the U.S. and around the world. These three provocative one-act plays examine the complexities of evil in everyday life and thrillingly exhibit LaBute’s signature raw lyrical intensity. Ablaze with the muscular dialogue and searing artistry that immediately established him as a major playwright, BASH is enduringly brilliant—classic and essential Neil LaBute. In Medea Redux, a young woman relates her complex and ultimately tragic relationship with her high school English teacher; in Iphigenia in Orem, a businessman confides to a stranger in a Las Vegal hotel room about a chilling crime; and in A Gaggle of Saints, a young couple separately recounts the violent events of an anniversary weekend in New York City. |
| neil labute: Pimps, Wimps, Studs, Thugs and Gentlemen Elwood Watson, 2010-03-22 With essays ranging in topic from the films of Neil LaBute to the sexual politics of Major League Baseball, this diverse collection of essays examines the multi-faceted media images of contemporary masculinity from a variety of perspectives and academic disciplines. The book's first half focuses on the issue of racialized masculinity and its various manifestations, with essays covering, among other topics, the re-imagining of Asian American masculinity in Justin Lin's Better Luck Tomorrow and the ever-present image of black male buffoonery in the neo-minstrel performances of VH1's Flavor of Love. The book's second half explores the issue of contemporary mediated performance and the cultural politics of masculinity, with essays focusing on popular media representations of men in a variety of gendered roles, from homemakers and househusbands to valorous war heroes and athletic demigods. |
| neil labute: Some Girl(s) Neil LaBute, 2006-06-27 Your career as a writer is blossoming, your beautiful, young fiancee is waiting to get married and rush off to Cancun by your side—so what is your natural reaction? Well, if you're a man, it's probably to get nervous and start calling up old girlfriends. And so begins a single man's odyssey through four hotel rooms as he flies across the country in search of the perfect woman (that he's already broken up with). Some Girl(s) is the latest work from Neil Labute, American theater's great agent provocateur. In grand LaBute fashion, this by turns outrageously funny and deadly serious portrait of the artist as a young seducer casts a truthful, hilarious light on a typical young American male as he wanders through the heart of darkness that is himself. This edition includes a deleted scene. |
| neil labute: Reasons to Be Pretty Happy Neil LaBute, 2018-08-14 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 eternal question: Have I become the person I wanted to be? In this essential new American play, Neil LaBute concludes his brilliant and penetrating “Reasons trilogy with perfect clarity and enormous heart, capturing and refracting that moment in his characters’ lives—and in our own as well—when they finally land on a “pretty good version of happiness.Reasons To Be Pretty Happy had its world premiere at MCC Theater in a benefit reading that featured Paul Rudd, Amber Tamblyn, Norbert Leo Butz, Jennifer Mudge and was directed by Neil LaBute. |
| neil labute: Plays Two Neil LaBute, 2017 'LaBute takes us to shadowy places we don't like to talk about, sometimes even to think about.' Newsday Obsession with surface and secrets runs through this second collection of Neil LaBute's work. The Shape of Things peels back the skin of modern-day relationships to ask how far someone might change themselves for love, or for art. In Fat Pig, a man confronts his friends' - and his own - fixation with Hollywood ideals of beauty when he falls for a 'plus size' young woman. In a Dark Dark House and In a Forest, Dark and Deep are twin tales of sibling conflict. In the first, estranged brothers must reconcile conflicting memories, after one asks for corroboration of childhood abuse. In the second, a man's offer to help his sister clear out her cottage brings a terrible confession into the light. The Shape of Things 'What initially seems a touching study of student romance develops instead into a passionate discussion about the way art feeds on life.' Daily Telegraph Fat Pig 'As large as Helen is, the tender heart of the play is easily twice as big.' Variety In a Dark Dark House 'LaBute toys with expectations and takes pleasure in our discomfort... The play does lead to a pretty dark place - but the ending is not without hope.' Daily Mail In a Forest, Dark and Deep 'It is billed as being about sibling rivalry, but in fact majors on far deeper, dangerous things: the yearning to be understood, female manipulation, and fascinated male disgust at a sister's lurid sexuality.' The Times |
Internet Roadtrip - Neal.fun
0 drivers online. Map 0
Neal.fun
Games, visualizations, interactives and other weird stuff. Hi! I'm Neal. This is where I make stuff on the web. Obligatory links:
Space Elevator - Neal.fun
Take a trip to space and explore the atmosphere in the world's only space elevator.
Universe Forecast - Neal.fun
See what the future of the universe will look like. Scroll past as the sun explodes and Andromeda collides with the Milky Way.
Internet Artifacts - Neal.fun
Created by Neil Cicierega under the pseudonym "Lemon Demon", with Flash animation by Shawn Vulliez, the animation showcases a fantastical, century-long battle in Tokyo.
The Deep Sea - Neal.fun
The Japanese Spider Crab is the largest known crab with a maximum leg span of 3.8m.
Infinite Craft - Neal.fun
A crafting game where you can make anything. No really it's pretty much endless I think. Start with Water, Fire, Wind, and Earth and branch out to the rest of the universe.
Progress - Neal.fun
Visualizing the world with progress bars
Let's Settle This - Neal.fun
Internet debates have raged for too long. It's time to settle the big questions so we can move on.
Rocks - Neal.fun
Stack rocks I guess
Internet Roadtrip - Neal.fun
0 drivers online. Map 0
Neal.fun
Games, visualizations, interactives and other weird stuff. Hi! I'm Neal. This is where I make stuff on the web. Obligatory links:
Space Elevator - Neal.fun
Take a trip to space and explore the atmosphere in the world's only space elevator.
Universe Forecast - Neal.fun
See what the future of the universe will look like. Scroll past as the sun explodes and Andromeda collides with the Milky Way.
Internet Artifacts - Neal.fun
Created by Neil Cicierega under the pseudonym "Lemon Demon", with Flash animation by Shawn Vulliez, the animation showcases a fantastical, century-long battle in Tokyo.
The Deep Sea - Neal.fun
The Japanese Spider Crab is the largest known crab with a maximum leg span of 3.8m.
Infinite Craft - Neal.fun
A crafting game where you can make anything. No really it's pretty much endless I think. Start with Water, Fire, Wind, and Earth and branch out to the rest of the universe.
Progress - Neal.fun
Visualizing the world with progress bars
Let's Settle This - Neal.fun
Internet debates have raged for too long. It's time to settle the big questions so we can move on.
Rocks - Neal.fun
Stack rocks I guess
