LibGuides: Music Theatre Performance: Plays and Musicals

Featured Works

Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes cover art

Guards at the Taj and Mr. Wolf by Rajiv Joseph cover art

Indian Act Residential School Plays edited by Donna-Michelle St. Bernard cover art

The Ferryman by Jez Butterworth cover art

Plays and Musicals

Plays and Musicals
Canadian Content

The Convert by Danai Gurira
Publication Date: 2017

A young Shona girl escapes an arranged marriage by converting to Christianity, becoming a servant and student to an African Evangelical. As anti-European sentiments spread throughout the native population, she is forced to choose between her family's traditions and her newfound faith.
Girl from the North Country by Conor McPherson, Bob Dylan
Publication Date: 2017

In Girl from the North Country, Conor McPherson beautifully weaves the iconic songbook of Bob Dylan into a show full of hope, heartbreak and soul.
Hot Thespian Action! 10 Premiere Plays from Walterdale Playhouse by Robin Whittaker
Publication Date: 2014

Robin Whittaker makes an important contribution to Canadian theatre studies with the first critical anthology of Canadian plays first performed by the Walterdale Theatre Associates, Edmonton's historic amateur theatre company.
Indecent by Paula Vogel
Publication Date: 2017

When Sholem Asch wrote God of Vengeance in 1907, he didn't imagine the height of controversy the play would eventually reach. Performing at first in Yiddish and German, the play's subject matter wasn't deemed contentious until it was produced in English, when American audiences were scandalized by the onstage depiction of an amorous affair between two women. Paula Vogel's 'Indecent' traces the trajectory of the show's success through its tour in Europe to its abrupt and explosive demise on Broadway in 1923-including the arrest of the entire production's cast and crew.
King Charles III: a future history play by Mike Bartlett
Call Number: PR6102 .A7838 K56 2015

Publication Date: 2015

"Queen Elizabeth II is dead. After a lifetime of waiting, her son ascends the throne. A future of power. But how to rule? This controversial 'future history play' explores the people beneath the crowns, the unwritten rules of our democracy, and the conscience of Britain's most famous family."
Modern Jewish Plays by Jason Sherman
Call Number: PN6120.J4 M63 2006

Publication Date: 2006

Six plays, six playwrights, six takes on Israel:
Masada by Arthur Milner; The Murder of Isaac by Motti Lerner; The Trials of John Demjanjuk: A Holocaust Cabaret by Jonathan Garfinkel; Hand in Hand by Simon Block; Shooting Magda (The Palestinian Girl) by Joshua Sobol; Reading Hebron by Jason Sherman
Ruined by Lynn Nottage
Call Number: PS3564.O795 R85 2009

Publication Date: 2009

A rainforest bar and brothel in the brutally war-torn Congo is the setting for Lynn Nottage's extraordinary play. The establishment's shrewd matriarch, Mama Nadi, keeps peace between customers from both sides of the civil war, as government soldiers and rebel forces alike choose from her inventory of women, many already "ruined" by rape and torture when they were pressed into prostitution.
Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee
Call Number: PS3501.L178 W5 1964

Publication Date: 1964

Audiences and critics alike could not get enough of Edward Albee's masterful play. A dark comedy, it portrays husband and wife George and Martha in a searing night of dangerous fun and games. By the evening's end, a stunning, almost unbearable revelation provides a climax that has shocked audiences for years.

Beatdown : three plays by Joseph Jomo Pierre
Call Number: PS8631.I475 B42 2006

Publication Date: 2006

Joseph Jomo Pierre's world is one of fatherless children, where boys turn to drugs and guns while girls turn to motherhood at the blink of an eye, where the colour of your skin dictates the course your life will take, where your brothers are as likely to pull you back down, as to help you get up.
Includes: Born Ready a.k.a. Black on Both Sides; BeatDown a.k.a. Life; Pusha-Man a.k.a. The Seed
Canadian mosaic : 6 plays
Call Number: PS8315 .C36 1995

Publication Date: 1995

The plays in this anthology have been selected to reflect the wide spectrum of ethnic communities in this country, and to illuminate the often painful world their members inhabit as outsiders to mainstream Canadian life. The plays explore cultural values, dual loyalties, and problems of adjustment: (1.) Path with no Moccasins by Shirley Cheechoo; (2.) The tale of a Mask by Terry Watada; (3.) Dance like a butterfly by Aviva Ravel; (4.) Just a kommedia by Nika Rylski; (5.) No man's land by Rahul Varma; (6.) Going down the river by Kevin Longfield
Creeps by David Freeman
Call Number: PS8561.R4 C7

Publication Date: 1971

Creeps was the first play to ever feature stories about people with disabilities and the dysfunction bred of the silence and denial they frequently face.
Eight Men Speak : A Play by Oscar Ryan Et Al by Oscar Ryan et al
Publication Date: 2013

This volume comprises a reprinting and gloss of the original text of the 1933 Communist play Eight Men Speak. The play was banned by the Toronto police after its first performance, banned by the Winnipeg police shortly thereafter and subsequently banned by the Canadian Post Office. The play can be considered as one stage–the published text–of a meta-text that culminated in 1934 at Maple Leaf Gardens when the (then illegal) Communist Party of Canada celebrated the release of its leader, Tim Buck, from prison.
Maggie and Pierre; The Duchess by Linda Griffiths
Publication Date: 2014

'Maggie and Pierre' (1979) is a two-act monologue about the tortured relationship between Canada's brainy but aloof prime minister and his young flower child wife.
'The Duchess' (1998) enters the audacious world of Wallis Simpson, shedding light on the infamous woman for whom King Edward VIII would eventually abdicate his throne.
Voices of the Land by Katherine Koller; Anne Nothof (Introduction by)
Publication Date: 2012

Katherine Koller invokes the Prairie setting as a central character in each of the four plays in Voices of the Land. Serving a supportive and, at other times, antagonistic role, the landscape acts upon the characters, driving and intensifying their transformation.