Dan Lefranc

The Methuen Drama Book of New American Plays is an anthology of six outstanding plays from some of the most exciting playwrights currently receiving critical acclaim in the States. It showcases work produced at a number of the leading theatres during the last decade and charts something of the extraordinary range of current playwriting in America. It will be invaluable not only to readers and theatergoers in the U.S., but to those around the world seeking out new American plays and an insight into how U.S. playwrights are engaging with their current social and political environment. There is a rich collection of distinctive, diverse voices at work in the contemporary American theatre and this brings together six of the best, with work by David Adjmi, Marcus Gardley, Young Jean Lee, Katori Hall, Christopher Shinn and Dan LeFranc. The featured plays range from the intimate to the epic, the personal to the national and taken together explore a variety of cultural perspectives on life in America. The first play, David Adjmi's Stunning, is an excavation of ruptured identity set in modern day Midwood, Brooklyn, in the heart of the insular Syrian-Jewish community; Marcus Gardley's lyrical epic The Road Weeps, The Well Runs Dry deals with the migration of Black Seminoles, is set in mid-1800s Oklahoma and speaks directly to modern spirituality, relocation and cultural history; Young Jean Lee's Pullman, WA deals with self-hatred and the self-help culture in her formally inventive three-character play; Katori Hall's Hurt Village uses the real housing project of "Hurt Village" as a potent allegory for urban neglect set against the backdrop of the Iraq war; Christopher Shinn's Dying City melds the personal and political in a theatrical crucible that cracks open our response to 9/11 and Abu Graib, and finally Dan LeFranc's The Big Meal, an inter-generational play spanning eighty years, is set in the mid-west in a generic restaurant and considers family legacy and how some of the smallest events in life turn out to be the most significant.

HighTide Theatre Festival was founded in 2006 and has since become one of the most prolific homes of new writing. It has been described by the Telegraph as "one of the little gems of the artistic calendar in Britain" and by the Daily Mail as "famous for championing emerging playwrights and contemporary theatre".2016 marks ten years of HighTide, during which time numerous emerging playwrights and new plays have shot to prominence.This anniversary volume brings together four of the key plays that have come out of HighTide Theatre Festival's programme during this time: Ditch by Beth Steel is a clear-eyed look at how we might behave when the conveniences of our civilisation are taken away, and a frightening vision of a future that could all too easily be ours.peddling by Harry Melling is a poetic monologue about a young homeless man, which confronts whether it's a good thing to turn a blind eye and let people get on with their lives, or whether that's exactly how people fall through the cracks.The Big Meal by American writer Dan LeFranc is a deeply comic and touching drama that looks at love, marriage, raising children and the general onslaught of life.Lampedusa by Anders Lustgarten follows the day-to-day life of those whose job it is to enforce our harsh new rules on immigration: an Italian coastguard and a payday lender from Leeds. All now established in their own right, these four plays demonstrate HighTide's extraordinary role in identifying and nurturing writers tackling some of the biggest issues of today.The volume was published to coincide with HighTide's 10th annual festival in September 2016 and features an introduction by HighTide Artistic Director, Steven Atkinson.

The Methuen Drama Book of New American Plays is an anthology of six outstanding plays from some of the most exciting playwrights currently receiving critical acclaim in the States. It showcases work produced at a number of the leading theatres during the last decade and charts something of the extraordinary range of current playwriting in America. It will be invaluable not only to readers and theatergoers in the U.S., but to those around the world seeking out new American plays and an insight into how U.S. playwrights are engaging with their current social and political environment. There is a rich collection of distinctive, diverse voices at work in the contemporary American theatre and this brings together six of the best, with work by David Adjmi, Marcus Gardley, Young Jean Lee, Katori Hall, Christopher Shinn and Dan LeFranc. The featured plays range from the intimate to the epic, the personal to the national and taken together explore a variety of cultural perspectives on life in America. The first play, David Adjmi's Stunning, is an excavation of ruptured identity set in modern day Midwood, Brooklyn, in the heart of the insular Syrian-Jewish community; Marcus Gardley's lyrical epic The Road Weeps, The Well Runs Dry deals with the migration of Black Seminoles, is set in mid-1800s Oklahoma and speaks directly to modern spirituality, relocation and cultural history; Young Jean Lee's Pullman, WA deals with self-hatred and the self-help culture in her formally inventive three-character play; Katori Hall's Hurt Village uses the real housing project of "Hurt Village" as a potent allegory for urban neglect set against the backdrop of the Iraq war; Christopher Shinn's Dying City melds the personal and political in a theatrical crucible that cracks open our response to 9/11 and Abu Graib, and finally Dan LeFranc's The Big Meal, an inter-generational play spanning eighty years, is set in the mid-west in a generic restaurant and considers family legacy and how some of the smallest events in life turn out to be the most significant.

2m / Dramatic ComedyA moving car. A father and son. The father drives. The son's face is pressed against the rolled up window.A lifetime can pass in the sixty miles between a boy's soccer practice and his father's new apartment. In this moving play about family relationships we see just how much time and space can exist between the pleather seats of a father's used car.The world premiere of Sixty Miles to Silver Lake opened at Soho Rep New York City on January 15 2009."Nothing - and e