Principia Scriptoriae with Between East and West
Collection Description
This collection includes two full-length plays: PRINCIPIA SCRIPTORIAE and BETWEEN EAST AND WEST. In PRINCIPIA SCRIPTORIAE, two young writers meet in prison under an unnamed right-wing Latin American regime. Fifteen years later they find themselves on opposite sides of a conference table. BETWEEN EAST AND WEST portrays a middle-aged Czech émigré couple struggling to adapt to a new country.
Plays in This Collection
- Reviews
- About the Author(s)
- About the Book
Press Quotes
PRINCIPIA SCRIPTORIAE
“… PRINCIPIA SCRIPTORIAE, a powerful and intelligent new play by the American Richard Nelson, which explores the brutal and bloodied relationships between politics and art, and between literature and life in a Latin American country fifteen years ago and today …” —Michael Ratcliffe, The Sunday Observer
“Modern American plays rarely confront public issues head-on: Indeed, after a year in New York, a colleague came home muttering darkly about the prevalence of what he termed ‘diaper-drama.’ But Richard Nelson’s rich and stimulating PRINCIPIA SCRIPTORIAE — now at The Pit (The Royal Shakespeare Company) after playing at the Manhattan Theater Club this April — is a genuine play of ideas. It deals with the fate of the writer under left- and right-wing regimes, with the complex motivation behind creation, and indeed with the abiding consolation of literature itself …” —Michael Billington, The Guardian
BETWEEN EAST AND WEST
“The title of Richard Nelson’s unsettling new play is deliberately misleading. East-West politics do, however, provide the backdrop and premise of the play: It concerns the experience of a Czech couple forced for political reasons to emigrate to New York. The problems they face in exile, Nelson suggests, have as much to do with the residual gap between America and Europe as with that between East and West. But the focus is on the conflict between Gregor and Erna, the two exiles, themselves. In his careful study of their relationship, Nelson reminds us that power and freedom cannot be understood in purely political terms.” —Sally Laird, Times Literary Supplement
“Its subject is homesickness: that love which cannot bear to speak its name because it’s more private than any other emotion. The setting is a one-room flat in New York, but the real setting is the no-man’s land between the home they lost and the one they’ll never really find … I liked this painful, moving, compassionate play; I liked the way it stated its point obliquely, but with a hard, unsentimental edge. I liked its wise humor, and its shrewd sense of what it’s like to be middle-aged, uprooted, resentful, determined, and difficult.” —John Peter, London Sunday Times
Author(s)
Richard NelsonRichard Nelson's plays include the four-play series, THE APPLE FAMILY (THAT HOPEY CHANGEY THING, SWEET AND SAD, SORRY, REGULAR SINGING (Nominated for Outstanding Play in Drama Desk Awards 2014; Public Theater, 2010 – 2013), NIKOLAI AND THE OTHERS (Lincoln Center Theater, 2013), FAREWELL TO THE THEATRE (Hampstead Theatre, 2012), HOW SHAKESPEARE WON THE WEST, (Huntington Theater, 2008), CONVERSATIONS AT TUSCULUM (Public Theater, 2008), FRANK'S HOME (Goodman Chicago, Playwrights Horizons, 2007), RODNEY'S WIFE (Playwrights Horizons, 2004), WHERE I COME FROM (National Theatre Connections), MADAME MELVILLE (which ran in the West End starring Macaulay Culkin and Irene Jacob and opened in May 2001 Off-Broadway); GOODNIGHT CHILDREN EVERYWHERE (winner of Olivier Award for Best New Play, 2000), KENNETH'S FIRST PLAY (with Colin Chambers, RSC), THE GENERAL FROM AMERICA (at the RSC and the Lucille Lortel Theatre, New York), NEW ENGLAND (RSC and Manhattan Theater Club), MISHA'S PARTY (with Alexander Gelman, RSC and Williamstown Theater Festival), TWO SHAKESPEAREAN ACTORS (Tony nomination for Best Play, RSC and Broadway), COLUMBUS AND THE DISCOVERY OF JAPAN (RSC Barbican), SOME AMERICANS ABROAD (Olivier nomination, Best Comedy; RSC, Lincoln Center and Broadway), LEFT, BETWEEN EAST AND WEST (Hampstead), PRINCIPIA SCRIPTORAE (winner of Time Out Award, RSC and Manhattan Theater Club), THE RETURN OF PINOCCHIO, AN AMERICAN COMEDY, BAL, CONJURING AN EVENT, RIP VAN WINKLE, JUNGLE COUP, THE KILLING OF YABLONSKI, THE VIENNA NOTES (Obie Award). His musicals include JAMES JOYCE'S THE DEAD (starring Christopher Walken and Blair Brown; Playwrights Horizons, Belasco Theatre, Broadway, Ahmanson Theatre, Los Angeles, Kennedy Center, Washington; for which he received a Tony Award in 2000 for Best Musical Book), CHESS (the book for the Broadway musical), PARADISE FOUND (dir: Harold Prince and Susan Strohman), MY LIFE WITH ALBERTINE (with Ricky Ian Gordon; Playwrights Horizons), UNFINISHED PIECE FOR A PLAYER PIANO (with Peter Golub). His translations and adaptations include TYNAN starring Corin Redgrave (with Colin Chambers, RSC and West End), LOLITA with Brian Cox (National), Molnar's THE GUARDSMAN (Kennedy Center), Carriere's THE CONTROVERSY (Public Theater), Fo's ACCIDENTAL DEATH OF AN ANARCHIST (Broadway), Strindberg's THE FATHER with Frank Langella (Broadway) and MISS JULIE (Yale Rep), Beaumarchais' THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO (the Guthrie and Broadway); Molière's DON JUAN, Ibsen's WILD DUCK and ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE, Pirandello's ENRICO IV, Goldoni's IL CAMPIELLO, Erdmann's THE SUICIDE. With the esteemed translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, he was co-translated Chekhov's THE CHERRY ORCHARD, Gogol's THE INSPECTOR, Turgenev's A MONTH IN THE COUNTRY and Bulgakov's DON QUIXOTE. Films: Hyde Park on Hudson, staring Bill Murray and Laura Linney (Dir: Roger Michell), Ethan Frome, starring Liam Neeson (Dir: John Madden); Sensibility and Sense, staring Elaine Stritch and Jean Simmons (Dir: David Jones). Television: The End of a Sentence with Edward Herrmann (Dir: David Jones). Radio Plays include: HYDE PARK ON HUDSON, LANGUAGES SPOKEN HERE (Giles Cooper Award), EATING WORDS (Giles Cooper Award), ADVICE TO EASTERN EUROPE, AN AMERICAN WIFE (all BBC).