TCG Books: 2023 Holiday Gift Guide

TCG BOOKS HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE 2022

HOT NEW TCG BOOKS TITLES

HALFWAY BITCHES GO STRAIGHT TO HEAVEN

BY STEPHEN ADLY GUIRGIS

Stephen Adly Guirgis brings his prodigious gifts for exploring the lives of social outcasts to new heights in this play about the inner workings of a women’s halfway house in New York City. By turns harrowing, humorous, and heartbreaking, Halfway Bitches Go Straight to Heaven roaringly brings to life the experiences of women who society has tried to shuffle out of sight and out of mind.

$16.95

ISBN: 978 1 55936 989 3

IS GOD IS / WHAT TO SEND UP WHEN IT GOES DOWN

BY ALESHEA HARRIS

An explosive epic that examines the cyclical nature of violence, Is God Is follows twin sisters who undertake a dangerous journey to exact revenge upon their father at the behest of their dying mother

What to Send Up When It Goes Down is a play pageant ritual response to anti Blackness in America. It is a challenge to us all: to heal through expression, expulsion, and movement.

This volume collects two essential plays by one of America's most promising dramatists.

$16.95

ISBN: 978-1-55936-963-3

HOLY GROUND: THE NATIONAL

BLACK THEATRE FESTIVAL ANTHOLOGY

EDITED BY MICHAEL D. DINWIDDIE

This new collection brings together plays and monologues from the National Black Theatre Festival, including Maid's Door by Cheryl L Davis, Berta, Berta by Angelica Chéri, and Looking for Leroy by Larry Muhammad. This collection also includes seventeen monologues and scenes selected from each year of the Festival, along with a manifesto by Dr. Maya Angelou

$25.00

ISBN: 978-1-63670-003-8

TROUBLE IN MIND BY ALICE CHILDRESS

Alice Childress' classic play follows the rehearsal process of an anti lynching play preparing for its Broadway debut When Wiletta, a Black actress and veteran of the stage, challenges the play's stereotypical portrayal of the Black characters, unsettling biases come to the forefront and reveal the ways so called progressive art can be used to uphold racist attitudes This edition, the first to publish the play as a stand alone volume, includes an introduction by Branden Jacobs Jenkins, editor of TCG Books’ new Illuminations series.

$15.95

ISBN: 978-1-63670-015-1

GARY: A SEQUEL TO TITUS ANDRONICUS

BY TAYLOR MAC

In Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus, Taylor Mac's singular worldview intersects with William Shakespeare's first tragedy, Titus Andronicus. Set during the fall of the Roman Empire, Mac's lewd and hilarious play picks up where Shakespeare's blood soaked tale left off: the coup has ended, the country has been stolen by madmen, and there are casualties everywhere. Two lowly servants, Gary and Janice, are charged with cleaning up the bodies. It's the year 400 but but it feels like the end of the world

$15.95 ISBN: 978-1-55936-982-4

EURYDICE

BY SARAH RUHL

Sarah Ruhl's beloved play tells the story of Orpheus and Eurydice from the perspective of its heroine. Dying too young on her wedding day, Eurydice journeys to the underworld, where she reunites with her beloved father and struggles to recover lost memories of her husband and the world she left behind. Eurydice is both achingly poetic and thrillingly theatrical.

$15.95 ISBN: 978-1-63670-009-0

GET INTO THE HOLIDAY SPIRIT WITH PAULA VOGEL!

A CIVIL WAR CHRISTMAS

BY PAULA VOGEL

Paula Vogel's contemporary classic A Civil War Christmas applies her signature theatrical style to create a Christmas pageant unlike any you've ever seen. Mixing fictional characters with historical figures like Mrs. and President Lincoln and period era hymns, Christmas songs, and spirituals, A Civil War Christmas tells a story of companionship and communal hope arising from one of our nation's darkest hours.

$15.95 ISBN: 978-1-55936-378-5

THE LONG CHRISTMAS RIDE HOME

BY PAULA VOGEL

This humorous and heart wrenching "puppet play with actors" combines techniques of Japanese Noh and Bunraku with influences from the work of Thornton Wilder In the play, the minor annoyances of a Christmas day family car trip becomes a metaphor for deeper issues burbling under the surface. The Long Christmas Ride Home is a moving and memorable study of the American family careening near the edge of oblivion

$16.95 ISBN: 978-1-55936-249-8

CELEBRATE INDIGENOUS VOICES

THE THANKSGIVING PLAY / WHAT WOULD CRAZY HORSE DO? BY LARISSA FASTHORSE

In Larissa FastHorse's satire The Thanksgiving Play, a group of well intentioned white teaching artists scramble to create an ambitious “woke” Thanksgiving pageant. This hilarious and eye opening play is essential reading for anyone grappling with the ways the traditional Thanksgiving celebration sidelines Native stories and promotes a colonialist point of view

This volume also includes FastHorse's fascinating and unsettling play What Would Crazy Horse Do? $16.95 ISBN: 978-1-55936-961-9

FOR THE MUSICAL LOVER IN

YOUR LIFE

CAROLINE, OR CHANGE BOOK AND LYRICS

BY TONY KUSHER, MUSIC BY JEANINE TESORI

Tony Kushner and Jeanine Tesori's beloved musical tells the story of the fraught relationship between Caroline, a Black maid, and Noah, the son of the Jewish family she works for. Set against the backdrop of the Civil Rights Movement, Caroline, or Change asks profound and timely questions about race, class, culture, and community.

$15.95 ISBN: 978-1-55936-248-1

A STRANGE LOOP

BY MICHAEL

R. JACKSON

Michael R. Jackson's Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winning musical tells the story of Usher, a gay Black musical theatre nerd who works as an usher and is writing a musical about a gay Black musical theatre nerd named Usher who works as an usher. A Strange Loop is a profane and profound meditation on identity and art making

$15.95

ISBN: 978-1-55936-993-0

THE BAND'S VISIT MUSIC AND LYRICS

BY DAVID YAZBEK, BOOK BY ITAMAR MOSES

After a mix up at the border, Egypt's Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra, bound for the cosmopolitan Israeli city Petah Tikvah, is stranded in a small desert town. With no transportation until the next day, the band is taken in by the locals. By morning, the lives of visitors and hosts are forever altered. This adaptation of the acclaimed 2007 film is one of the most touching and singular musicals of recent memory.

$14.95 ISBN: 978-1-55936-586-4

DEAR EVAN HANSEN BOOK BY STEVEN LEVENSEN, MUSIC AND LYRICS

BY BENJ PASEK AND JUSTIN PAUL

A letter that was never meant to be seen, a lie that was never meant to be told, a life he never dreamed could be his. Evan Hansen is about to get the one thing he's always wanted: a chance to belong Deeply personal and profoundly universal, Dear Evan Hansen is a groundbreaking American musical about truth, fiction, and the price we're willing to pay for the possibility to connect.

$15.95 ISBN: 978-1-55936-560-4

FOR THE SONDHEIM COMPLETIST

FOR THE BEGINNING DIRECTOR

STAGING STORY: FIVE FUNDAMENTALS FOR THE BEGINNING STAGE DIRECTOR

BY ROBERT MOSS AND WENDY DANN

By focusing on five fundamentals for staging a play Story, Intention, Character, Space, and Theme veteran theater directors Robert Moss and Wendy Dann help stage directors learn how to build their own practice and begin to master the daunting task of staging a story. This book is the perfect gift for beginning directing students, or for anyone interested in the technique of telling stories on stage.

$16.95 ISBN: 978-1-55936-997-8

TIP OF THE TONGUE: REFLECTIONS ON LANGUAGE AND MEANING

BY PETER BROOK

In groundbreaking director Peter Brook's final book, the author of The Empty Space revisits that key topic, reflects on the differences between the English and French languages, and provides insight into Shakespeare gleaned from a long and productive career interpreting The Bard's work for the stage.

$16.95

ISBN: 978-1-63670-177-6

PULITZER PRIZEWINNING TITLES

TOPDOG/UNDERDOG

BY SUZAN LORI PARKS

A darkly comic fable of brotherly love and family identity, Topdog/Underdog is a modern classic and was named the best play of the past twenty five years by The New York Times.The play tells the story of Lincoln and Booth, two brothers whose names were given to them as a joke, foretelling a lifetime of sibling rivalry and resentment. Haunted by the past, the brothers are forced to confront the shattering reality of their future Suzan Lori Parks's masterpiece returns to Broadway this fall, twenty years after its celebrated 2002 Broadway debut.

$15.95 ISBN: 978-1-55936-201-6

BETWEEN RIVERSIDE AND CRAZY

BY STEPHEN ADLY GUIRGIS

Written with humor, tenderness, and grit, and by acclaimed playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis, Between Riverside and Crazy is an extraordinary play: a dark comedy about a man trying to maintain control as the world unravels around him. Guirgis's beloved play makes its Broadway debut this fall in a production starring Stephen McKinley Henderson and rapper and actor Common.

$15.95 ISBN: 978-1-55936-515-4

COST OF LIVING

BY MARTYNA MAJOK

Cost of Living deftly challenges the typical perceptions of those living with disabilities and delves deep into the ways class, race, nationality, and wealth can create gulfs between people, even as they long for the ability to connect. Eddie, an unemployed truck driver, and his estranged ex wife, Ani, find themselves unexpectedly reunited after a terrible accident leaves her quadriplegic John, a brilliant PhD student with cerebral palsy, hires Jess, a first generation recent graduate who has fallen on desperate times, as his new aide. Cost of Living recently completed its Broadway run in a production The New York Times called "worth its weight in gold "

$15.95

ISBN: 978-1-55936-597-0

SWEAT

BY LYNN NOTTAGE

Lynn Nottage's Sweat, her second play to win the Pulitzer Prize, centers on the employees in a Pennsylvania steel mill, who gather at their local bar to complain about work, speculate on their plant's future, reminisce about better days, and argue over politics. When the plant locks them out in an attempt to force them to accept lower pay, resentment towards the immigrant workers who take their place boils over into irreversible tragedy. This play speaks powerfully to the intersections of class, race, and gender in America's industrial heartland.

$15.95

ISBN: 978-1-55936-532-1

NICK HERN BOOKS

MRS DELGADO

BY MIKE BARTLETT

This new play by prolific playwright Mike Bartlett (Cock, Charles III) is a funny and uncomfortable look at the psychological strain of the Covid pandemic. Helen, along with sixty seven million other people, is in lockdown Unfortunately, Helen's neighbor, Mrs. Delgado, is not. Bartlett's tale of the frustrations of those who stringently followed Covid regulations only to witness neighbors flouting them will strike a chord with readers on both sides of the Atlantic. This edition also includes Bartlett's monologue Phoenix

$20.95 ISBN: 978-1-83904-054-2

A CHRISTMAS CAROL

BY JACK THORNE, ADAPTED FROM CHARLES DICKENS

One bitter Christmas Eve, a cold hearted miser is visited by four ghosts. Transported to worlds past, present and future, Ebenezer Scrooge witnesses what a lifetime of fear and selfishness has led to, and sees with fresh eyes the lonely life he has built for himself. Can Ebenezer be saved before it's too late?

Jack Thorne's adaptation of Dickens' Christmas classic premiered at The Old Vic, London in 2017 and has since become a staple of their holiday programming.

$20.95 ISBN: 978-1-84842-828-7

PLAYWRIGHTS CANADA PRESS

THE EMPIRE: A TRILOGY OF MODERN EPICS

BY SUSANNA FOURNIER

Fournier's trilogy of plays is a fantasy epic stretching across centuries of war, plague, and revolution, but with a decidedly modern take: the monsters in these plays are not dragons, they are toxic masculinity, opioid addiction, and religious bigotry. For fans of Game of Thrones, The Handmaid's Tale, and The Mists of Avalon, The Empire is both foreign and shockingly familiar, leaving you asking, how did we get here, and where are we going?

$24.95 ISBN: 978-0-36910-275-1

FORGET ME NOT

BY RONNIE BURKETT

Ronnie Burkett's dark comedy play with puppets takes readers to "The New Now," a time and place where written language has been banned, and dissidents learn cursive from its few surviving practitioners. Forget Me Not is animated by a gothic/comic sensibility that will appeal to fans of Tim Burton or Edward Gorey, with Vancouver Presents calling it "a poetic turn down the rabbit hole and into the mind of Ronnie Burkett."

$19.95 ISBN: 978-0-36910-157-0