Nora Helmer is coddled by her complacent husband Torvald, who treats her as an adorable but scatter-brained child. She is actually leading a life bordered on desperation. Seven years previously she had forged her father's name in order to obtain a secret loan to finance a trip necessary for Torvald's health. Nora is being blackmailed by an employee of the bank and is in danger of being exposed. When Torvald receives a letter telling of her forgery, he treats her badly not realizing her selfless effort. She leaves him and her doll house life.
Ibsen Ghosts
Oswald Alving has returned home to visit his mother on one of the occasional visits he has made since leaving home as a young boy. He was sent away to prevent him from becoming morally contaminated by his father, Captain Alving, who subsequently died of syphilis. This time, however, he intends to stay and marry the maid, Regine; he is unaware that Regine is his half-sister, sired by the profligate Captain Alving. Parson Manders, the mother's former lover, also visits and reprimands Mrs. Alving for not living a more conventional life and rearing her son. In the play's climax, Oswald reveals that he, too, is suffering from syphilis and will inevitably develop dementia. To make up for the past and to prove her love, Oswald asks his mother to give him a fatal dose of morphine when signs of dementia appear. At the end of the play it is not clear what she will do.
Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest
A comedy with a fantastic plot deliberately devised to display the wit of its author, who called it his, "somewhat farcical comedy." It concerns the amorous misadventures of two carefree young gentlemen: John Worthing, inventor of a fictitious brother, "Ernest," whose wicked ways afford John an excuse to leave his country home from time to time and journey to London; and Algernon Moncrieff, his bosom friend and confidant, with whose cousin, Gwenldolyn, John is deeply in love with.
Shaw Saint Joan
A epilogue in which Joan of Arc, a young girl who led France to victory over the English, emerges as an unlettered country girl gifted with masterful will and innate intelligence. Shaw has removed all overt elements of the supernatural and romantic from her personality; her visions and miracles are associated with the intuitive nature of her apprehension of reality and her historical mission. Joan helps France to win the war and is warned that if she is captured neither the King nor the church would come to her aid. She is caught and tried and is supposed to be burned at the stake.
Shaw Major Barbara
Social satire with three acts. With one daughter, Barbara, engaged to Adolphus Cusins, a professor of Greek, and the other, Sarah, to Charles, a young man-about- town, Lady Britomart asks her estranged husband to help support the young people after their marriages. The father's money is earned in a tainted way and when he tries to give it to the Salvation Army where Barbara works, she takes off her badge and pins it on him assuming he bought it. She is disappointed the Army would take his money. Later, she learns that he makes the Salvation Army a better place for everyone.
Shaw The Devil's Disciple
Comedy set in Websterbridge, N.H. during the American Revolution. Richard Dudgeon, reacting against his puritanical mother has abjured Christianity and claims to be a follower of the devil. Called home at his father's death, he finds himself heir to the family property and legal guardian of his illegitimate niece. Richard is mistaken for another man by mistake but he remains mute in order to save the man in question. Unfortunately, the man he is mistaken for is to be hanged.
Chekhov The Cherry Orchard
After five years widowed and abroad, Mme. Ranyevskaya returns to her estate to find it heavily mortgaged to pay for her extravagances and learns that it is to be auctioned. A merchant whose father was once a serf for the family suggests cutting down the famous cherry orchard and dividing the land into plots for summer cottages. The idea is observed as sacrilege. The merchant wins the house at the auction and carries out his plan with the cherry orchard.
Chekhov The Sea Gull
A comedy of frustrated lives. A successful, but aging actress, visits the country estate of her brother, Sorin. Mme. Arkadina's son, hoping to impress his mother, has his sweetheart stage one of his plays. His mother's thoughtless remarks prompt him to leave the stage in a rage. The story goes on with much conflict and the sweetheart tries to steal Mme. Arkadina's lover. In the end, Mme. Arkadina's son is so depressed by the loss of his sweetheart that he decides to commit suicide.
Pirandello Six Characters in Search of an Author
Comedy in which the creations of art and the reality of life are seen in turn as both illusory and real. A rehearsal is interrupted by a father and his family who explain that they are characters from an unfinished dramatic work and they ask to reenact a crucial moment in their lives, a moment from which the actors can fashion a finished play. The Father explains that, having found his wife was in love with another man, he had generously made it possible for the two of them to go off together. His wife contends that he forced her into the arms of another and she is angry about being separated from their son.
Synge The Playboy of the Western World
Christy Mahon, a cloddish shy young farmer appears at the local pub in a village on the wild east coast of Mayo, bearing that he has recently murdered his father with only a spade while digging potatoes. He is hailed as a hero to this town to which he is a stranger. He is pursued by two women and is about to claim Pegeen, when his father, bloody but alive, appears. Now Christy is the butt of all of the jokes. Unwilling to accept this, he downs his father for a second time. This time he is to be hanged. And the father is still alive.
O'Casey Juno and the Paycock
A tragic comedy of the tenement dwellers in Dublin in 1922, a world invaded by the cruelties of war. While Captain Jack Boyle struts around from pub to pub, his long suffering wife, Juno struggles to make ends meet. Their daughter, Mary, having joined a workers strike, is no longer providing money for food. Their son Johnny, armless and lame, from his part in the battle for independence, has become timid and afraid, especially when he hears violence in the street. Mary's suitor entitles them to much money and property. However, she is pregnant by another man and her new suitor cannot accept that. The family loses all once more.
T.S. Eliot Murder in the Cathedral
A religious play, T.S. Eliot tells us the story of Thomas Becket. After having been exiled for seven years, Thomas returns to Canterbury. Four Tempters try to persuade Thomas to to do the King's bidding, but Thomas refuses and turns down all of their persuasive gifts. In rejecting martyrdom, Thomas displays true saintliness.
O'Neill The Hairy Ape
One of the foremost achievements of expressionism on the American stage presenting a demonstration of man's alienation within the very environment he has helped to shape. Yank Smith, a stoker of a transatlantic liner says that he belongs to the age of steam, power, and speed until a simple look of revulsion from a slumming passenger topples his confidence and self-respect. Yank decides to destroy the society in which he feels he is a misfit.
O'Neill A Long Day's Journey Into Night
Autobiographical drama spanning eighteen tortuous hours in the fog bound summer home of the Tyrone family in August, 1912. On this day, each member of the family confronts his own failures and guilts. Presiding over the tension filled home is James Tyrone. Helpless, unable to fix the guilt of their situation, they decide to sit and watch Mary, James' wife, sink further into her world of depression and hallucinations.
Brecht Galileo
A drama loosely based on the astronomer's life and indicating various paradoxes within it. Galileo, using a Dutch telescope, which he claims is his own invention, tries to prove that the earth is only one of many planets and not the center of the universe. The church deems Galileo's discovery heretical. Galileo fears being burned at the stake, so he remains silent for eight years. During those eight years, Galileo completes a new foundation of physics. One of his followers takes the work out of Italy so that someone will discover the truth in Galileo's findings.
Brecht The Caucasian Chalk Circle
Parable play based on the Chinese drama The Circle of Chalk proclaiming that ownership should be decided by merit, not by law. Members of two Soviet communes meet in a war-shattered village to discuss who should have a certain valley. Strife breaks out on Easter Sunday in feudal Grusinia between the Grand Duke and his princes. The Grand Duke's governor is murdered, and his wife flees to from the palace leaving her baby son behind. After the war is over she goes back to reclaim her son in order to get her husband's estate. A circle of chalk is drawn on the floor and Azdak orders the child be placed in it. The woman who pulls the child out of the circle will be granted the child.