Titles

It’s a new year, which means it’s time for new reads!

As the year quickly comes to a close, we’ve chosen some of our favorite new plays that Samuel French has published over the past 12 months.

I was watching television coverage at my grandmother’s when Lee Harvey Oswald was murdered before our eyes. Like many Americans, that image ripped into my memory. I would see it in my dreams. I remember my grandmother said, “I don’t care whether he lives or dies.” That moment is in Act Two of Mama’s Boy.

Adam Bock looks life straight in the eye. The truth has got to be there somewhere, doesn’t it?

Ryan McGlone discusses the enduring relevance of Harvey Fierstein’s unflinching Torch Song Trilogy.

Arib Arbus observes Wilder’s prescience in 2017.

Jenny Rachel Weiner reveals what she learned writing Kingdom Come.

Very few plays come to mind that explore the professional world of sports, even fewer that delve into the specifics of the business poised on making money off of the literal blood and sweat of other people. Fernanda Coppel’s King Liz does just that, without pulling any punches.

The latest play by acclaimed playwright Rosary Hartel O’Neill, Wishing Aces, was performed via a workshop reading at the Gallery Players theater in Brooklyn, New York, on October 9th, 2017. Rosary recently discussed this play and her anticipations regarding its future via an exclusive interview.

Diep Tran discusses Jiehae Park’s Hannah and the Dream Gazebo.

Ben Coleman interviews Andrew Hinderaker, playwright of Colossal.

by Christina Malcolmson, Professor Emerita of English at Bates College.

Did you know today is #FamilyDay? In celebration, we’ve compiled a Top Ten list of our plays and musicals that capture the complex, tumultuous, and beautiful relationships that come with being a part of a family.

Scott Miller at New Line Theatre, St. Louis talks about their experience performing The Sweet Smell Of Success.

We’ve created a list of 10 musicals that are each a perfect, and unique, showcase for your school or community’s most talented leading ladies!

Political theatre doesn’t always break records at the box office. We’ve got to keep the lights on and often rely on commercial, well-known works to sell tickets. So where do we turn? Perhaps now is a good moment to look again at Loot by Joe Orton.

White Room has the unique ability to bring you into that world with ease and keep you there as the story unfolds on many levels.

Deepwater Horizon had just blown up, killing 11 crewmen and gushing oil into the Gulf. It was all anyone was talking about.The Gulf. The Gulf. The Gulf. I thought to myself, what a great name for a play.

Scott Miller explores what he learned when working on Sweet Smell of Success.

Treem reminds us that the underlying problem still lurks: could it be that, no matter how hard Amanda works, or how talented she is, she will always come in second, simply for being female?

“America is not a country, but a world,” Wilde said admiringly. It was a world that welcomed him and gave him an audience, that allowed him to develop his nascent thoughts on art, that gave him the opportunity to travel and live off his considerable wits, and that took him seriously and produced his first play.

Happy Embrace Your Geekness Day! For those out there who have a passion for World of Warcraft, enjoy live action role play, or are a Comic Con enthusiast, here is a list of our top eight plays and musicals for you!

Happy Fourth of July! For the star-spangled occasion, we’ve compiled a list of our top ten favorite plays and musicals that celebrate and reflect on American life

I had that chill, just as I had experienced in the Library of Congress reading room. There was this palpable feeling that I was connecting, being pulled towards another time and place.‘Rumor has it a woman has come in here after her man.’

We have compiled a list of some Samuel French titles that may surprise you when you learn that they were the source for some well-known or otherwise musicals.

Janice Goldberg, one half of the writing team behind Rose Colored Glass reflects on creating and mounting the touching play.

“The Night of the Iguana is a play,” Tennessee Williams said, “whose theme, as clearly as I can put it, is how to live beyond despair and still live.”

2017 has left many Americans stunned by our nation’s politics, and artistic communities around the country are finding ways to get politically involved on a local level. Today we chat with playwright, professor, and theatre historian Helen Richardson. Richardson is an authority on most things theatrical, and she joins us today to talk about her adaptation of Alfred Jarry’s seminal play, Ubu.

In this article you’ll find a list of eight screen-to-stage, stage-to-screen and page-to-stage adaptations that we’ve been obsessing over lately. A few are from the last few years, while others stretch back 50 years or more. What other adaptations would you add to the list?

Theatre has always provided a wealth of great roles for women of all ages, but especially for those who’ve outgrown the role of ingénue.

Nearly 18 years ago when Frank Haney, Carol Kimball, and Dave Stratton got together to write a country-western musical set in a trailer park, they knew that the loss of jobs due to corporate outsourcing had to be central to the story.

From the start, Rosary envisioned this play as a tour de force of obsession, rooted in the real life of the famous first great American novelist, based on detailed and shocking facts from her life.