Play

West Side Story is a musical written by Arthur Laurents (book), Leonard Bernstein (music), and Stephen Sondheim (lyrics). The story is based loosely on Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, which was, in turn, based on a narrative poem by Arthur Brooke entitled The Tragicall...

Gypsy is a 1959 musical with music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and a book by Arthur Laurents. It is usually referred to as simply Gypsy. Gypsy is loosely based on the 1957 memoirs of Gypsy Rose Lee, the famous striptease artist, and focuses on her mother...

Top Girls is a 1982 play by Caryl Churchill. It depicts the life of Marlene, a hard-bitten career woman who is employed at the 'Top Girls' employment agency, and her interactions with her family she left behind. Marlene left her working class background to pursue...

The Cyclops is an Ancient Greek satyr play by Euripides, the only complete satyr play that has survived. It is a comical burlesque-like play on the same story depicted in book nine of The Odyssey by Homer. Odysseus has lost his way on the voyage home from the Trojan...

Medea is a tragedy written by Euripides, based on the myth of Jason and Medea and first produced in 431 BC. Along with the plays Philoctetes, Dictys and Theristai, which were all entered as a group, it won the third prize (out of three) at the Dionysia festival. The...

Hippolytus (also known as Hippolytos) is an Ancient Greek tragedy by Euripides, based on the myth of Hippolytus, son of Theseus. The play was first produced for the City Dionysia of Athens in 428 BC and won first prize as part of a trilogy. Euripides first treated...

The play Henceforward... is the first comedy in which Alan Ayckbourn includes elements of science fiction. It concerns Jerome, a composer, who develops a plan to persuade his estranged wife Corrina that his home life is sufficiently stable for her to allow their...

Prometheus Bound is an Ancient Greek tragedy. In Antiquity, this drama was attributed to Aeschylus, but is now considered by some scholars to be the work of another hand, perhaps one as late as ca. 415 BC. Despite these doubts of authorship, the play's designation as...

Aristophanes' satirical play The Knights (Greek: Hippeîs) is an unbridled criticism of Cleon, one of the most powerful men in ancient Athens. Cleon had once brought Aristophanes up on charges of "embarrassing the city in front of foreigners" in response to one of his...

Peace (Greek: Eiréne) is a comedy written and produced by the ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes. It first appeared in 421 BC and was awarded second prize for that year in Athens. As with many of his plays, Aristophanes attacks and lampoons his contemporaries,...

Iphigenia at Aulis, written in 410 BC, is the last surviving work of the playwright Euripides. First produced four years after his death, the play won first place at the Dionysia. The play revolves around Agamemnon, the leader of the Greek coalition during the Trojan...

Kanjinchō (勧進帳, The Subscription List) is a Japan kabuki play by Namiki Gohei III, based on the Noh play Ataka. It is one of the most popular plays in the modern kabuki repertory. Belonging to the repertoires of the Naritaya and Kōritaya guilds, the play was first...

Lysistrata (Attic Greek: Λυσιστράτη Lysistratê, Doric Greek: Λυσιστράτα Lysistrata), loosely translated to "she who disbands armies", is a Greek comedy, written in 411 BC by Aristophanes. Led by the title character, Lysistrata, the story's female characters barricade...

The Suppliants (Greek "Hiketides", also translated as The Suppliant Maidens) is a play by Aeschylus. It was probably first performed sometime after 470 BC as the first play in a trilogy which included the lost plays The Egyptians and The Daughters of Danaus. It was...

The Bacchae (also known as The Bacchantes) is a tragedy by the ancient Greek playwright Euripides. It premiered posthumously at the Dionysia in 403 BC, where it won first prize. The Dionysus in Euripides' tale is a young god, angry that his mortal family, the royal...

Andromache (c. 425 BC) is a play by Euripides. It follows Andromache during her life as a slave, years after the events of the Trojan War. During the Trojan War, Andromache's husband Hector was slain by Achilles. Their child Astyanax was dropped off the Trojan walls...

The Trachiniae or The Women of Trachis (Greek: Τραχίνιαι) is a play by Sophocles, notable mainly for the unsympathetic portrayal of Heracles. As in the play Ajax, Sophocles has cast a well-known hero in a negative light. The story begins with Deianeira, the wife of...

No Exit is a 1944 existentialist play by Jean-Paul Sartre, originally published in French as Huis Clos (meaning In Camera or "behind closed doors"). English translations have also been performed under the titles In Camera, No Way Out, and Dead End. Huis Clos was first...

The Clouds (Nephelae,Νεφέλαι) is a comedy written by the Ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes lampooning the sophist and the intellectual trends of late fifth-century Athens. Although it took last place in the comic festival Aristophanes entered it in, it is one of...

Heracles or Hercules Furens is a play by Euripides (c. 416 BC). While Heracles is in the underworld obtaining Cerberus for one of his labors, his father Amphitryon, wife Megara, and children are sentenced to death in Thebes, Greece by Lycus. Heracles arrives in time to...

Iphigeneia in Tauris (in Greek: ) is a drama by the playwright Euripides, written sometime between 414 BC and 412 BC. It bears much in common with another of Euripides' plays, Helen, and is often described as a romance, a melodrama, or an escape play. Years before,...

Oedipus the King (Greek , Oedipus Tyrannus, or "Oedipus the Tyrant"), also known as Oedipus Rex, is a Greek tragedy, written by Sophocles and first performed ca. 429 BC. The play was the second of Sophocles' three Theban plays to be produced, but comes first in the...

The Sisters Rosensweig is a play by Wendy Wasserstein. The play was first performed on Broadway on March 18, 1993 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre and closed on July 16 1994. Original Broadway Cast The Internet Broadway Database entry for "The Sisters Rosenweig" ...

Hamlet is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601. The play, set in Denmark, recounts how Prince Hamlet exacts revenge on his uncle Claudius, who has murdered Hamlet's father, the King, and then taken the throne and married...

Euripides' Electra was probably written in the mid 410s BC, likely after 413 BC. It is unclear whether it was first produced before or after Sophocles' version of the Electra story. Years before, near the start of the Trojan War, the Greek general Agamemnon...

Seven Guitars is a 1995 play by August Wilson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning American playwright. It focuses on seven African American characters in the year 1948. The play begins and ends after the funeral of one of the main characters, showing events leading to the...

Orestes (408 BCE) is an Ancient Greek play by Euripides that follows the events of Orestes after he had murdered his mother. In accordance with the advice of the god Apollo, Orestes has killed his mother Clytemnestra to avenge the death of his father Agamemnon at her...

The Phoenician Women (also known by the Greek title, Phoenissae) is a tragedy by Euripides based on the same story as Aeschylus' play Seven Against Thebes. The title refers to the Greek chorus, which is composed of Phoenician women on their way to Delphi who are...

Ajax is a play by Sophocles. The date of its first performance is unknown, but most scholars regard it as early rather than late in Sophocles' career (J. Moore, 2). It chronicles the fate of the warrior Ajax after the events of the Iliad and the Trojan War. At the...

The Persians (Πέρσαι) is a tragedy by the ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus. It is the oldest surviving play in the history of theater. It is also notable for being the only extant Greek tragedy based on contemporary events. The Persians was part of a trilogy...