The Retreating World
This play is included in the collection:
Play Description
THE RETREATING WORLD concerns an Iraqi bird keeper from Baghdad and his address before the International Pigeon Convention.
Production Info
Cast: 1 total (1 male)Short Drama (about 30 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
- Reviews
- About the Author(s)
- About the Book
- Special Notes
- Productions
Press Quotes
“Real political theater as I understand it: challenging, disorienting, and thought provoking.” —Nehad Selaiha, Al-Ahram Weekly
“Wallace refuses to judge her characters, choosing instead to explore the possibility of humanity in the most inhumane conditions. THE FEVER CHART is the best theatrical production of the year.” —Joseph Fahim, Daily News Egypt
“In Naomi Wallace’s THE RETREATING WORLD, the ghosts are so recent that you feel you might lean forward in your seat and touch their fingertips … THE RETREATING WORLD is the kind of short, stark and simple play that reminds us why we need theatre at a time like this, what the playwright can achieve that the journalist cannot.” —Lyn Gardner, The Guardian
“Extraordinarily powerful, it is a privilege to attend such a theatrically excellent event.” —The Independent
“Absolutely compelling theatre.” —The Evening Standard
“The theatrical event of my week. It brings home the meaning of war, makes it personal, refuses to let it slip into unreality … a taut, beautifully written elegy and it reaches out to us now like a prophecy.” —The Observer
Author(s)
Naomi WallaceNaomi Wallace is a playwright from Kentucky. Her plays — which have been produced in the United Kingdom, Europe, the United States, and the Middle East — include IN THE HEART OF AMERICA, SLAUGHTER CITY, ONE FLEA SPARE, THE TRESTLE AT POPE LICK CREEK, THINGS OF DRY HOURS, THE FEVER CHART: THREE VISION OF THE MIDDLE EAST, AND I AND SILENCE, THE HARD WEATHER BOATING PARTY, THE LIQUID PLAIN. Her stage adaptation of William Wharton's novel Birdy was produced on the West End in London. In 2009, ONE FLEA SPARE was incorporated in the permanent repertoire of the French National Theater, the Comédie- Francaise. Only two American playwrights have been added to La Comédie's repertoire in 300 years. Films: Lawn Dogs, The War Boys, Flying Blind (co-written with Bruce McLeod). Awards: Susan Smith Blackburn Prize (twice), Joseph Kesselring Prize, Fellowship of Southern Writers Drama Award, Obie Award, and the 2012 Horton Foote Award for most promising new American play. She is also a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts development grant. In 2013, Wallace received the inaugural Windham Campbell prize for drama and in 2015, an Arts and Letters Award in Literature.
Special Notes
If original stage producers credits appear in bold below, all licensees are required to include them in the following form on the title page in all programs distributed in connection with performances of the Play and in all advertising in which the full cast appears in size of type not less than ten percent (10%) of the size of the title of the Play:
In addition, the following must appear within all programs distributed in connection with performances of the Play:
by special arrangement with Broadway Play Publishing Inc, NYC
www.broadwayplaypub.com
Related Plays
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
A comedy about the Iran-Contra affair.
Production Info
Cast: 8 total (1 female, 7 male)Full Length Comedy (about 100 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
In this lyrical, searing one-act, an American soldier has an unexpected encounter with two Afghan sisters who are ready to embark on a new life. Their fates — and his — become entangled as the lines between their divergent realities become dangerously blurred.
Production Info
Cast: 3 total (2 female, 1 male)Full Length Drama (about 50 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
Leila and Rashid, Egyptian Americans, attempt to solve their relationship issues by inviting a relative stranger into their bedroom to engage in a threesome. What begins as a hilariously awkward evening soon becomes an experience fraught with secrets, raising issues of sexism, possession, and independence.
Production Info
Cast: 3 total (1 female, 2 male)Full Length Comedy (about 95 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
Peace among Muslims, Christians, and Jews? It happened once, in Spain, for several hundred years, why couldn’t it happen again? When NYU students Ibrahim and Paloma study an ancient Muslim treatise on the art and practice of love, they debate the complexities of romantic relationships while falling into one. After tragedy strikes this Muslim–Christian interfaith romance, it tests the limits of love in a post-9/11 world and Ibrahim must seek the help of his friend Jared, a young Jewish attorney, to clear his name.
Production Info
Cast: 3 total (1 female, 2 male)Full Length Drama (about 110 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$10.95–$15.00Play Description
In HOMEBODY/KABUL, Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Tony Kushner, author of ANGELS IN AMERICA, has turned his penetrating gaze to the arena of global politics to create this suspenseful portrait of a dangerous collision between cultures. Written before 9/11, this play premiered in New York in December 2001 and has had subsequent highly successful productions in London, Providence, Seattle, Chicago, and Los Angeles. This version incorporates all the playwright’s changes over the past two years and is now the definitive version of the text.
Production Info
Cast: 11 total (3 female, 8 male, multiethnic cast)Full Length Drama (about 215 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Contemporary Costumes
Play Description
BETWEEN THIS BREATH AND YOU takes place after hours in the waiting room of a clinic in West Jerusalem, where a Palestinian father confronts a nurse's aide, a young Israeli woman, about the meaning of the loss of his son and the impact it had on her life.
Production Info
Cast: 3 total (1 female, 2 male)Short Drama (about 30 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
A play about love, sex, ambition, and the Arab American experience, ROAR is the story of a Palestinian American family living in Detroit in the wake of the first Gulf War. Karema and Ahmed Yacoub work long hours in their liquor store while their teenage daughter, Irene, relentlessly pursues a career as a pop star. All hell breaks loose when a notoriously sexy and scandalous relative, Hala, gets thrown out of Kuwait and arrives on the doorstep without a return ticket.
Production Info
Cast: 5 total (3 female, 2 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
Darwin and Jo Smith, and their seventeen-year-old son, Ronnie, seem to be the typical Middle American conservative family. Darwin works as a systems analyst. Jo teaches community college. Ronnie is a high school baseball standout with big league aspirations. One night before dinner, they are paid a surprise visit from Commander Abraham Lincoln of Central Security, who claims to have information concerning their daughter, Lucy, an American soldier. Lincoln claims that Lucy was captured by the enemy in a foreign war and decapitated. But, thanks to the top-secret Operation Hydra, military doctors have been able to save her life by surgically reattaching her head. A combination of intense drama and surreal dark comedy, HOME FRONT explores the personal and social consequences of war.
Production Info
Cast: 5 total (2 female, 3 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$0.00–$15.95Play Description
East meets West meets mayhem in this Muslim-American family comedy evoking universal themes of faith, culture, belonging, and desire. TEN ACROBATS adds a new chapter to the American immigrant narrative.
Production Info
Cast: 10 total (4 female, 6 male)Full Length Comedy (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
Play Description
Four Arab women from across the ages meet in the afterlife. As these characters — who include the Biblical Delilah and a secular modern Arab-American — struggle to come to terms with their lives and their choices, this shockingly funny play skewers traditional views on sex, family, and terrorism.
Production Info
Cast: 4 total (4 female)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Single Set
Period Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
A brutal account of the effect of the Iraq war and past wars on soldiers and military families. What is the legacy of war on the home front? How do we best serve our country?
Production Info
Cast: 6 total (4 female, 2 male)Full Length Drama (about 90 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
Before heading off to war in Iraq, Casey Johnson neatly organizes her life into a box of lists, envelopes, and registration forms for her son's activities. Months later, she returns to Western Pennsylvania forever changed, with deep psychological scars that no amount of arranging seems to be able to fix.
Production Info
Cast: 7 total (3 female, 4 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes