Plays that Changed the World

Read, Watch, Listen, Research

Preferred Version

Medea by Euripides & Ben Power
Ben Power's version of Euripides' tragedy Medea premiered at the National Theatre, London, in July 2014.

Translations & Adaptations

Black Medea (Contemporary Indigenous Plays)
Blending the cultures of Ancient Greek and indigenous storytelling to weave a bold and breathtaking commentary on contemporary Black experience.
Euripides' Medea by Michael Ewans
This book offers a new, accurate and actable translation of one of Medea, with a commentary which provides insight into the challenges it sets for production and suggestions for how to solve them.
Euripides' Medea. Translated by Diane Rayor
Diane Rayor's translation reflects the play's inherent theatricality and vibrant poetry.
Theatrebabel's Medea by Euripides & Liz Lochhead
Liz Lochhead’s Medea brings a contemporary Scottish flavour to Euripides' story. Commissioned and performed by Theatre Babel at The Old Fruitmarket, Glasgow, 2000.
Medea - A New Translation by Charles Martin
Poet Charles Martin captures the rhythms of Euripides's original text through contemporary rhyme and meter.
Medea - A New Version by Rachel Cusk
Medea - Translated by Diane Arnson Svarlien & Anthony Podlecki
This translation is faithful to Euripides’ poetry, including diction, tone, connotation, context, echo, image, euphony, and meter.
Medea: A Radical New Version from the Perspective of the Children
Kate Mulvany presents the tragedy from the children's perspective.

Awarded five Sydney Theatre Awards in 2013, including Best Direction, Best Mainstage Production and Best New Australian Work.

Performances

Helen McCrory in a version by Ben Power. Directed by Carrie Cracknell, music by Will Gregory and Alison Goldfrapp. 2014

The "Olivia Sutherland Medea." Directed by James Thomas, translation by Peter Arnott . It includes the romantic scenes with Aegis, all the poetic choral odes, and the triumphant ending. 2016.

Scholarship

Playscripts

A Midsummer Night's Dream
The Arden Shakespeare (Third Series) version.
A Midsummer Night's Dream
The annotated Yale University Press version.
A Midsummer Night's Dream
The Harold Bloom version

Watch

Midsummer Night's Dream adapted for television by Russell Davies. Directed by David Kerr. Starring John Hannah.

Nominated: 2017 BAFTA Awards, Wales - Best Sound, Best Costume Design, Best Feature/Television Film. Nominated: 2017 Broadcasting Press Guild Awards - Best Single Drama. Won: 2016 New Zealand Cinematographers Society Bronze Award - Telefeatures. Won: 2016 Royal Television Society, UK, RTS Craft & Design Award - Best Picture Enhancement.

Emma Rice's first production as Artistic Director brings the "Dream" crashing into the Globe's magical setting.

ShakespeaRe-told: A Midsummer Night's Dream, adapted by Peter Bowker Directed by Ed Fraiman. 2005.

DVD only. On level 3 of the KG Library, Call Number 822.33 P7 1 /B

Produced by Jonathan Miller, directed by Elijah Moshinsky. Starring Helen Mirren, Peter McEnery, Phil Daniels. 2005.

Adaptations and Retellings

A Midsummer Night's Dream (in print only)
The entire, unabridged play as a full-color graphic novel.

On level 3 of the KG Library, Call Number 822.33 P7 20
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Another graphic novel version
Celtic Night: A Fifteen-Year-Old Girl's Modern Retelling of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream
The Shakespearean storyline depicts an adolescent's breakthrough from outsider status to membership in an enchanted society.
The Indian Boy
Written for the Royal Shakespeare Company and inspired by the 'little changeling boy' - the source of Oberon and Titania's quarrel in "A Midsummer Night's Dream".

Listen

A Midsummer Night's Dream (Audiobook)
An L.A. Theatre Works full cast performance. Directed by Martin Jarvis.

For the Young'uns

A Midsummer Night's Dream
This Oberon version preserves the core of Shakespeare's plot, retains the original language, and is adapted for the Primary & Early Years.

Scholarship

Ours As We Play It: Australia plays Shakespeare
A close look at several contemporary Australian productions of three of Shakespeare's best-loved plays, including Australian understandings of power in "A Midsummer Night's Dream".
A Midsummer Night's Dream: Critical Essays
Traces the modern critical and performance history, focusing on feminism, deconstruction, textual theory, and queer theory.
A Midsummer Night's Dream: A Critical Guide
Introduction to its critical and performance history, including stage productions, TV, film versions, opera and ballet.

Romeo and Juliet

A new version for younger audiences, by Bijan Sheibani and Ben Power.

Originally staged as part of the National Theatre's Shakespeare for Younger Audiences programme. This archival recording was captured in 2017

Adaptations

Romeo and Juliet in Baghdad
The play uses Shakespeare to comment on contemporary political and social concerns. The feuding families are Shiite and Sunni and the play is full of contemporary references. Paris becomes a clownish Al-Qaeda member wearing an explosive vest, an American general makes a brief apperance and the rattle of machine guns is frequently heard offstage

Translations & Adaptations

Hedda Gabler by Patrick Marber
Just married. Bored already. Hedda longs to be free. A new version by Patrick Marber, at The National Theatre, London. 2016.
Hedda Gabler: A Play in Four acts
Translated by Edmund Gosse, revised by William Archer - c1906-1927
Hedda Gabler, adapted by Mark O'Rowe
Mark O'Rowe's adaptation of Hedda Gabler, premiered at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin. 2015.
Hedda by Lucy Kirkwood
Lucy Kirkwood's version of Hedda Gabler, relocated to London in 2008. First performed at the Gate Theatre, London.
Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler in a new version by Brian Friel
Brian Friel's version premiered at the Gate Theatre, Dublin. 2008.
Hedda Gabler: A screenplay adaptation by Matthew John
Matthew John's adaptation is presented as a screenplay, with production photographs.

On level 4 of the KG Library, Call Number 791.4372 HED 1

Performances

Set in an anonymous corner of suburbia, this contemporary adaptation of Ibsen's play is a shattering exploration of ambition, domestic power and gender roles.

Fiona Shaw in the title role. Hedda Gabler. Directed by Deborah Warner. 1993.

Scholarship

Replay: Classic Modern Drama Reimagined by Toby Zinman
Spans a century of theatre to explore how iconic plays have been adapted and versioned by later writers.
A Sourcebook on Naturalist Theatre by Christopher Innes
Essential primary sources which document one of the key movements in modern theatre - Three writers and six plays: Ibsen, Chekhov & Bernard Shaw.
Stella Adler on Ibsen, Strindberg and Chekhov
Legendary acting teacher Stella Adler gives us her extraordinary insights into the work of Henrik Ibsen, August Strindberg and Anton Chekhov.

On level 3 of the KG Library, Call Number 809.2034 1
Ibsen's Kingdom: The Nan and his Works. by Evert Sprinchorn
A biographical reading of Ibsen's plays with analyses of his works, placing them and their author within the social, political, and intellectual foment of nineteenth-century Europe.

Translations & Adaptations

The Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht
Translated by John Willett and Ralph Manheim.

More plays by Bertolt Brecht

Fulltext of 57 plays.

Scholarship

A Guide to the Plays of Bertolt Brecht by Stephen Unwin
A clear and readable guide to Brecht''s plays.
The Complete Brecht Toolkit by Stephen Unwin
A practical, hands-on guide - for actors, directors, teachers and students - to Brecht's theory and practice of theatre.
Brecht in Practice: Theatre, Theory and Performance by David Barnett & Enoch Brater
Analyses how Brecht’s ideas come alive in rehearsal and performance, and his vision of a politicized, interventionist theatre.

Playscripts & Adaptations

Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
A landmark play of desperation and humor in which two tramps wait for someone who never comes.

Performances

Theatreland

This eight-part documentary series covers six exciting months in the life of London's Theatre Royal Haymarket from all angles, in particular the arrival of a new artistic director - Sean Mathias, and the lead-up to his production of Waiting for Godot, starring Ian McKellen - which recently toured Australia to rave reviews.

Beckett's best known play is a finely wrought tragicomedy exploring the battle between the futility of life and the fundamental human desire to survive. Directed by Michael Lindsay Hogg

Scholarship

Beckett: Waiting for Godot by Lawrence Graver
A comprehensive critical study of Samuel Beckett's first and most renowned dramatic work, Waiting for Godot.
The Plays of Samuel Beckett by Katherine Weiss
This Critical Companion covers Beckett's entire dramatic oeuvre.
Reassessing the Theatre of the Absurd: Camus, Beckett, Ionesco, Genet, and Pinter. by Michael Bennett
This book uses the works of five major playwrights of the 1950s to provide a timely reassessment of one of the most important theatre 'movements' of the 20th century.
The Theatre of the Absurd by Martin Esslin
Martin Esslin coined the phrase ''Theatre of the Absurd'' in this ground-breaking book.

In the library - call number 809.2 9 /3B

Playscript

Removalists by David Williamson
A blend of boisterous humour and horrifying violence, a classic statement on Australian authoritarianism.

Australian Biography: David Williamson (2015)

Scholarship

Playscript

Cloud Nine by Caryl Churchill
Set in both colonial Africa and modern-day Britain, Cloud Nine is about relationships - between women and men, men and men, women and women. Caryl Churchill's play Cloud Nine was first staged by Joint Stock and premiered in London at the Royal Court Theatre in 1979.

Prefer print? Go the the library - call number 822.914 CHU 7 /A

More by Caryl Churchill

Churchill: Plays 1 by Caryl Churchill
Traps; Vinegar Tom; Light Shining in Buckinghamshire; Cloud Nine; Owners.
Churchill: Plays 2 by Caryl Churchill
Softcops; Top Girls; Fen; Serious Money.

In print only - in the library at call number 822.914 CHU 8 (However all the individual plays are available online.)
Churchill: Plays 4 by Caryl Churchill
Hotel; This is a Chair; Blue Heart; Far Away; A Number; Drunk Enough to Say I Love You?; A Dream Play.
Shorts by Caryl Churchill
Abortive; The After-Dinner Joke; The Hospital at the Time of the Revolution; Hot Fudge; The Judge's Wife; Lovesick; Not Not Not Not Not Enough Oxygen; Schreber's Nervous Illness; Seagulls; Three More Sleepless Nights.

Scholarship

Caryl Churchill in Digital Theatre+
Find Caryl Churchill in Drama Online
Everything by and about Caryl in Drama Online

The Theatre of Caryl Churchill by R. Darren Gobert; Kevin Wetmore & Patrick Lonergan
Churchill's work and its place in contemporary drama.
Modern British Playwriting: The 1970's by Chris Megson
Caryl Churchill, David Hare, Howard Brenton and David Edgar.
Caryl Churchill by Elaine Aston
Scope and development of Caryl Churchill's theatre.
Caryl Churchill by Mary Luckhurst
Churchill's political agendas, collaborations with other practitioners, and specific production histories of her plays.

The Complete Libretto

Hamilton : the revolution : being the complete libretto of the Broadway musical, with a true account of its creation, and concise remarks on hip-hop, the power of stories, and the new America
A backstage pass to the groundbreaking, hit musical Hamilton, winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and Eleven Tony Awards, including Best Musical, including the award-winning libretto, behind-the-scenes photos and interviews, and exclusive footnotes from composer-lyricist-star Lin-Manuel Miranda, now streaming on Disney+ with the original cast.
Summary: Hamilton : the revolution

Scholarship

Historians on Hamilton: How a Blockbuster Musical Is Restaging America's Past
Hamilton: An American Musical
Call Number: Music Scores (KG) MScores 782.14 44
17 selections in piano/vocal format.
Story Grid Analysis: Hamilton by Lin-Manuel Miranda
The Routledge Companion to the Contemporary American Stage Musical
The Megamusical
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical
The Australian Musical: From the beginning
Disney Theatrical Productions: Producing Broadway Musicals The Disney Way
Staging Musicals: An Essential Guide
Rhetoric, Politics, and Hamilton: an American Musical

Watch

Documentary: Hamilton: One Shot to Broadway.

Playscript

Sweat
A group of down-and-out factory workers struggle to keep their lives in balance, ignorant of the financial devastation looming.

Hear More

Playscript

Once: The musical
An Irish busker and a young Czech mother meet through a shared love of music.

The movie is on DVD in the Kelvin Grove library, level 4 at 791.43 ONC 6

Plays that Changed the World

Read, Watch, Listen, Research

Preferred Version

Translations & Adaptations

Performances

Scholarship

Playscripts

Watch

Adaptations and Retellings

Listen

For the Young'uns

Scholarship

Adaptations

Translations & Adaptations

Performances

Scholarship

Translations & Adaptations

More plays by Bertolt Brecht

Scholarship

Playscripts & Adaptations

Performances

Theatreland

Scholarship

Playscript

Scholarship

Playscript

More by Caryl Churchill

Scholarship

The Complete Libretto

Scholarship

Watch

Documentary: Hamilton: One Shot to Broadway.

Playscript

Read more by Lynn Nottage

Hear More

Playscript

Read more by Enda Walsh

Even more by Enda

Scholarship

Hunger

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