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Miss Julie
By August Strindberg
CHARACTERS
MISS JULIE, 25 years old
JEAN, her father's valet, 30 years old
KRISTINE, her father's cook, 35 years old
SETTING. A large kitchen, the ceiling and side walls of which are
hidden by draperies. The rear wall runs diagonally from down left to
up right. On the wall down left are two shelves with copper, iron, and
pewter utensils; the shelves are lined with scalloped paper. Visible
to the right is most of a set of large, arched glass doors, through
which can be seen a fountain with a statue of Cupid, lilac bushes in
bloom, and the tops of some Lombardy poplars. At down left is the
corner of a large tiled stove; a portion of its hood is showing. At
right, one end of the servants' white pine dining table juts out;
several chairs stand around it. The stove is decorated with birch
branches; juniper twigs are strewn on the floor. On the end of the
table stands a large Japanese spice jar, filled with lilac blossoms.
An ice box, a sink, and a washstand. Above the door is an old-
fashioned bell on a spring; to the left of the door, the mouthpiece of
a speaking tube is visible.
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Time-The Present.
ACT I
SCENE: Morning room in ALGERNON'S flat in Half Moon Street. The room
is luxuriously and artistically furnished. The sound of a piano is
heard in the adjoining room.
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Pygmalion
A Romance in Five Acts
By George Bernard Shaw
ACT I
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A VAGRANT
THE STALLION MASTER
A POST-OFFICE CLERK
DUNYASHA, a maid
VISITORS, SERVANTS
ACT I
A room, which has always been called the nursery. One of the doors
leads into ANYA'S room. Dawn, sun rises during the scene. May, the
cherry trees in flower, but it is cold in the garden with the frost of
early morning. Windows closed.
Enter DUNYASHA with a candle and LOPAHIN with a book in his hand.
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THE FATHER
THE BOY
THE MOTHER
THE CHILD
THE STEP-DAUGHTER
THE SON
(The last two do not speak)
MADAME PACE
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SCENE-SHIFTERS
ACT I
The spectators will find the curtain raised and the stage as it
usually is during the day time. It will be half dark, and empty, so
that from the beginning the public may have the impression of an
impromptu performance.
Prompter's box and a small table and chair for the manager.
Two other small tables and several chairs scattered about as during
rehearsals.
The ACTORS and ACTRESSES of the company enter from the back of the
stage: first one, then another, then two together; nine or ten in all.
They are about to rehearse a Pirandello play: Mixing It Up. Some of
the company move off towards their dressing rooms. The PROMPTER who
has the "book" under his arm, is waiting for the manager in order to
begin the rehearsal.
The ACTORS and ACTRESSES, some standing, some sitting, chat and smoke.
One perhaps reads a paper; another cons his part.
Finally, the MANAGER enters and goes to the table prepared for him.
His SECRETARY brings him his mail, through which he glances. The
PROMPTER takes his seat, turns on a light, and opens the "book."
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PREFACE
J.M.S.
21st January 1907.
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CHRISTOPHER MAHON
SHAWN KEOGH, her cousin, a young farmer
PHILLY CULLEN AND JIMMY FARRELL, small farmers
MICHAEL JAMES FLAHERTY (called MICHAEL JAMES), a publican
MARGARET FLAHERTY (called PEGEEN MIKE), his daughter
SARA TANSEY, SUSAN BRADY, AND HONOR BLAKE, village girls
A BELLMAN
SOME PEASANTS
WIDOW QUIN, a woman of about thirty
The action takes place near a village, on a wild coast of Mayo. The
first Act passes on an evening of autumn, the other two Acts on the
following day.
ACT I
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The Verge
By Susan Glaspell
ANTHONY
TOM EDGEWORTHY
HARRY ARCHER, Claire's husband
ELIZABETH, Claire's daughter
HATTIE, the maid
ADELAIDE, Claire's sister
CLAIRE
DR EMMONS
DICK, Richard Demming
ACT I
The Curtain lifts on a place that is dark, save for a shaft of light
from below which comes up through an open trap- door in the floor.
This slants up and strikes the long leaves and the huge brilliant
blossom of a strange plant whose twisted stem projects from right
front. Nothing is seen except this plant and its shadow. A violent
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wind is heard. A moment later a buzzer. It buzzes once long and three
short. Silence. Again the buzzer. Then from below-his shadow blocking
the light, comes ANTHONY, a rugged man past middle life;-he emerges
from the stairway into the darkness of the room. Is dimly seen taking
up a phone.
ANTHONY: Yes, Miss Claire? - I'll see. (he brings a thermometer to the
stairway for light, looks sharply, then returns to the phone) It's
down to forty-nine. The plants are in danger - (with great relief and
approval) Oh, that's fine! (hangs up the receiver) Fine!
(He goes back down the stairway, closing the trapdoor upon himself;
and the curtain is drawn upon darkness and wind. It opens a moment
later on the greenhouse in the sunshine of a snowy morning. The snow
piled outside is at times blown through the air. The frost has made
patterns on the glass as if-as Plato would have it-the patterns
inherent in abstract nature and behind all life had to come out, not
only in the creative heart within, but in the creative cold on the
other side of the glass. And the wind makes patterns of sound around
the glass house.
The back wall is low; the glass roof slopes sharply up. There is an
outside door, a little toward the right. From out- side two steps lead
down to it. At left a glass partition and a door into the inner room.
One sees a little way into this room. At right there is no dividing
wall save large plants and vines, a narrow aisle between shelves of
plants leads off This is not a greenhouse where plants are being
displayed, nor the usual workshop for the growing of them, but a place
for experiment with plants, a laboratory. At the back grows a strange
vine. It is arresting rather than beautiful. It creeps along the low
wall, and one branch gets a little way up the glass. You might see the
form of a cross in it, if you happened to think it that way. The
leaves of this vine are not the form that leaves have been. They are
at once repellent and significant.
A moment later the glass door swings violently in, snow blowing in,
and also MR HARRY ARCHER, wrapped in a rug.)
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Desire Under the Elms
By Eugene O’Neill
CHARACTERS
EPHRAIM CABOT
SIMEON, PETER and EBEN his sons
ABBIE PUTNAM
YOUNG GIRL, two FARMERS, the FIDDLER, a
SHERIFF, and other folk from the
neighboring farms.
The action of the entire play takes place in, and immediately outside
of, the Cabot farmhouse in New England, in the year 1850. The south
end of the house faces front to a stone wall with a wooden gate at
center opening on a country road. The house is in good condition but
in need of paint. Its walls are a sickly grayish, the green of the
shutters faded. Two enormous elms are on each side of the house. They
bend their trailing branches down over the roof.
There is a path running from the gate around the right comer of the
house to the front door. A narrow porch is on this side. The end wall
facing us has two windows in its upper story, two larger ones on the
floor below. The two upper are those of the father's bedroom and that
of the brothers. On the left, ground floor, is the kitchen-on the
right, the parlor, the shades of which are always drawn down.
PART I
Scene 1
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glows, but the house is in shadow, seeming pale and washed out by
contrast.
A door opens and EBEN CABOT comes to the end of the porch and stands
looking down the road to the right. He has a large bell in his hand
and this he swings mechanically, awakening a deafening clangor. Then
he puts his hands on his hips and stares up at the sky. He sighs with
a puzzled awe and blurts out with halting appreciation
EBEN: God! Purty! (His eyes fall and he stares about him frowningly.
He is twenty-five, tall and sinewy. His face is well-formed, good-
looking, but its expression is resentful and defensive. His defiant,
dark eyes remind one of a wild animal's in captivity. Each day is a
cage in which he finds himself trapped but inwardly unsubdued. There
is a fierce repressed vitality about him. He has black hair, mustache,
a thin curly trace of beard. He is dressed in rough farm clothes. He
spits on the ground with intense disgust, turns and goes back into the
house. SIMEON and PETER come in from their work in the fields. They
are tall men, much older than their ha brother (SIMEON is thirty-nine
and PETER thirty-seven built on a squarer, simpler model, fleshier in
body, more bovine and homelier in face, shrewder and more practical.
Their shoulders stoop a bit from years of farm work. They clump
heavily along in their clumsy thick-soled boots caked with earth.
Their clothes, their faces, hand bare arms and throats are earth-
stained. They smell of earth. They stand together for a moment in
front of th house and, as if with the one impulse, stare dumbly up at
the sky, leaning on their hoes. Their faces have a compressed,
unresigned expression. As they look upward, this softens.)
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Our Town
By Thornton Wilder
STAGE MANAGER
DR. GIBBS
JOE CROWELL
HOWIE NEWSOME
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MRS. GIBBS
MRS. WEBB
GEORGE GIBBS
REBECCA GIBBS
WALLY WEBB
EMILY WEBB
PROFESSOR WILLARD
MR. WEBB
WOMAN IN THE BALCONY
MAN IN THE AUDITORIUM
LADY IN THE BOX
SIMON STIMSON
MRS. SOAMES
CONSTABLE WARREN
SI CROWELL
THREE BASEBALL PLAYERS
SAM CRAIG
JOE STODDARD
ACT I
No curtain.
No scenery.
Presently the STAGE MANAGER, hat on and pipe in mouth, enters and
begins placing a table and three chairs downstage left, and a table
and three chairs downstage right. He also places a low bench at the
corner of what will be the Webb house, left.
"Left" and "right" are from the point of view of the actor facing the
audience. "Up" is toward the back wall. As the house lights go down he
has finished setting the stage and leaning against the right
proscenium pillar watches the late arrivals in the audience.
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Act I
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SPRING, 1624. General Oxenstjerna recruits troops in Dalarna for the
Polish campaign. The canteen woman, Anna Fierling, known as MOTHER
COURAGE, loses a son.
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CHARACTERS
PEGGY ROGERS
MRS. LILY MORTAR
EVELYN MUNN
HELEN BURTON
LOIS FISHER
CATHERINE
ROSALIE WELLS
MARY TILFORD
KAREN WRIGHT
MARTHA DOBIE
DOCTOR JOSEPH CARDIN
AGATHA
MRS. AMEUA TILFORD
A GROCERY BOY
SCENE
ACT I
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unpretentious room used as an afternoon study-room and at all other
times as the living room.
A large door Left Center faces the audience. There is a single door
Right. Against both back walls are bookcases. A large desk is at
Right; a table, two sofas, and eight or ten chairs. It is early in an
afternoon in April.
Seven girls, from twelve to fourteen years old, are informally grouped
on chairs and sofa. Six of them are sewing with no great amount of
industry on pieces of white material. One of the others, EVELYN MUNN,
is using her scissors to trim the hair of ROSALIE, who sits,
nervously, in front of her. She has ROSALIE'S head bent back at an
awkward angle and is enjoying herself. The eighth girl, PEGGY ROGERS,
is sitting in a higher chair than the others. She is reading aloud
from a book. She is bored and she reads in a singsong, tired voice.
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Endgame
A Play in One Act
By Samual Beckett
THE CHARACTERS
NAGG
NELL
HAMM
CLOV
Bare interior.
Grey light.
Left and right back, high up, two small windows, curtains
drawn.
Front right, a door. Hanging near door, its face to wall, a picture.
Front left, touching each other, covered with an old sheet, two
ashbins.
Brief tableau.
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CLOV goes and stands under window left. Stiff; staggering walk. He
looks up at window left. He turns and looks at window right. He goes
and stands under window right. He looks up at window right. He turns
and looks at window left. He goes out, comes back immediately with a
small step-ladder, carries it over and sets it down under window left,
gets up on it, draws back curtain. He gets down, takes six steps (for
example) towards window right, goes back for ladder, carries it over
and sets it down under window right, gets up on it, draws back
curtain. He gets down, takes three steps towards window left, goes
back for ladder, carries it over and sets it down under window left,
gets up on it, looks out of window. Brief laugh. He gets down,
takes one step towards window right, goes back for ladder, carries it
over and sets it down under window right, gets up on it, looks out of
window. Brief laugh. He gets down, goes with ladder towards ashbins,
halts, turns, carries back ladder and sets it down under window right,
goes to ash- bins, removes sheet covering them, folds it over his arm.
He raises one lid, stoops and looks into bin. Brief laugh. He closes
lid. Same with other bin. He goes to HAMM, removes sheet covering him,
folds it over his arm. In a dressing gown, a stiff toque on his head,
a large blood- stained handkerchief over his face, a whistle hanging
from his neck, a rug over his knees, thick socks on his feet, HAMM
seems to be asleep. CLOY looks him over. Brief laugh. He goes to door,
halts, turns towards auditorium.
(Pause.)
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Rhinoceros
A Play in Three Acts and
Four Scenes
By Eugène Ionesco
CHARACTERS
JEAN
BERENGER
THE WAITRESS
THE GROCER
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THE GROCER'S WIFE
THE OLD GENTLEMAN
THE LOGICIAN
THE HOUSEWIFE
THE CAFE PROPRIETOR
DAISY
MR. PAPILLON
DUDARD
BOTARD
MRS. BOEUF
A FIREMAN
THE LITTLE OLD MAN
THE LITTLE OLD MAN’S WIFE
And a lot of Rhinoceros heads
ACT I
The sound of church bells is heard, which stop a few moments before
the curtain rises. When the curtain rises, a woman carrying a basket
of provisions under one arm and a cat under the other crosses the
stage in silence from right to left. As she does so, the GROCER'S WIFE
opens her shop door and watches her pass.
GROCER'S WIFE: Oh that woman gets on my nerves! (To her husband who is
in the shop) Too stuck-up to buy from us nowadays.
(The GROCER'S WIFE leaves; the stage is empty for a few moments.
JEAN enters right, at the same time as BERENGER enters left. JEAN is
very fastidiously dressed: brown suit, red tie, stiff collar, brown
hat. He has a reddish face. His shoes are yellow and well-polished.
BERENGER is unshaven and hatless, with unkempt hair and creased
clothes; everything about him indicates negligence. He seems weary,
half-asleep; from time to time he yawns.)
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