Bücher von Sheila Callaghan

Sheila Callaghan is one of the most distinctive playwrights working in the theater today. Fiercely political, unblinkingly experimental, yet emotionally true, her writing is a refreshing combination of the compelling and the controversial.This volume collects three of her most recent plays to date. It includes: Lascivious Something, a heart-rending and disturbing exploration of failed love and shattered idealism at the dawn of the Reagan era, it follows a lapsed activist’s attempt to start life anew on a vineyard in Greece and what happens when the woman he left behind tracks him down; Roadkill Confidential, a noir-ish meditation on brutality and the intersection between fear and art, focused on an artist who uses the corpses of dead animals found on the side of the road as the medium for her creations; and That Pretty Pretty; Or, the Rape Play, which imagines our girls gone wild culture spiraling out to its most extreme ends while exploring issues of beauty, objectification, perversity, and naturalism in current society.

Full Length, Comic Drama / 3m, 4f / Unit Set It's June 16, 2004. Samantha Blossom, a chipper woman in her 40s, wakes up one June morning in her Upper East Side apartment to find her life being narrated over the airwaves of public radio. She discovers in the mail an envelope addressed to her husband from his lover, which spins her raw and untethered into an odyssey through the city.... a day full of chance encounters, coincidences, a quick love affair, and a fixation on the mysterious Jewel Jupi

Victor is a ruthless fashion designer in the 1970s at the top of his game. Esme, his glamorous protégé and muse, is pushed aside when an ordinary Midwestern woman inspires Victor to make his artistry accessible to the masses. A generation later, a woman grappling with a healthy dose of self-loathing must wrestle her own family demons to find her way through the world of fashion that won''t give a woman her size a second look. Skipping back and forth in time, Everything You Touch is a viciously

Dramtic Comedy / 1-2m, 3f / Simple SetAnima's sphere of desperation and self-destruction is invaded by the arrival of her perky new roommate, Christa. Moved by a particularly malevolent statue of the Virgin Mary and a houseplant named Susan, Anima and Christa soon enter into a profound and intimate friendship that incurs traumatic results."Brilliantly and poetically rendered...[Callaghan's] playful sense of language and her attunement to her characters are enthralling." - Time Out Chicago

A possibly rogue G-man stalks a stalled-out artist with a suspicious affinity for accident victims. Traps are set, traps are sprung, and everyone gets caught.

Comedy Characters: 3 male, 3 female, flexible castingChained to his desk in the basement of customer service hell, Segis suddenly finds himself set free in the CEO's penthouse-but is it a dream? This raucous reinvention of Pedro Calderón de la Barca's Life is a Dream gleefully skewers corporate America with razor-sharp wit"Enjoyably stylish [with an] antic pace and witty aesthetic" - Washington Post"Ambitious, often uproarious." - City Paper"A pi

Characters: 1 male, 3 femaleSingle Set On a secluded Greek island, an American ex-pat pursues his passions: winemaking and his breathtaking young wife. Then, on the eve of Reagan's inauguration, the first tasting of the new wine is interrupted by the unexpected arrival of August's former lover. Inspired by Greek tragedy, Lascivious Something combines evocative language with sympathetic yet deeply flawed characters straight out of Euripides. "Definitely worth spending an unde

Comedy / 2m, 3f / Simple SetA scream is heard throughout the stratosphere. It is the voice of the lamp. Louise is selling this expensive family heirloom to keep her daughter April in school and cease her more sordid "consultant" profession. April rushes home with lover in tow to halt the proceedings and save the lamp, but it has been intercepted by a quiet and bizarre middle-aged couple with a haunting secret.Attempts to reclaim the lamp are made, as a misplaced father slowly fades to white in the background. "...A gutsy writer with a gift for creating vivid images rooted in the emotional life of her characters." - The New York Times"...Troubled and precocious college dropout April is described to her mother, Louise, as 'stunningly brilliant' - a line that fits her creator, Sheila Callaghan. The odd characters populating Crawl, Fade to White frantically eat dirt and twist menacingly. Audiences trying to process this engagingly quirky new play might find themselves gaping 'like they're watching the cosmos disrobe.'"- Time Out New York

Comedy / Characters: 2m, 3fA pair of radical feminist ex-strippers scour the country on a murderous rampage against right-wing pro-lifers, blogging about their exploits in gruesome detail. Meanwhile, a scruffy screenwriter named Owen tries to bang out his magnum opus in a hotel room as his best friend Rodney ("The Rod") holds forth on rape and other manly enterprises. When Owen decides to incorporate the strippers into his screenplay, the boundaries of reality begin to blur, and only a visit f

Comedy / 1m, 2f / Simple SetEver since their school blew up, Moth and Belly have taken to stalking an illegal internet café in the hopes o/ f one day being allowed in. They take particular interest in Leather, a skittish older man doing research in the café.Leather is a self-proclaimed "freelance scholar" from a foreign land with a sketchy past and a sticky secret. Leather begins to fall head over heals in love with Moth... but what about Belly? This play explores the effects of rampant ca