Modern Drama

Receive one newly published NHB playscript each month for twelve months – the perfect way to keep you up to date with the most exciting contemporary plays by today’s top writers, from the UK’s leading theatre publisher.

Staging Coyote's Dream brings together ten major plays by First Nations playwrights living in Canada and the United States.

Six plays, six playwrights, six takes on Israel...

An overview of contemporary Canadian theatre for just about any occasion, drawn from 50 plays with an exhilarating diversity of aesthetics, styles, techniques, themes, voices and vocabularies.

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1904. Aunt Esther, the 285-year-old fiery matriarch of 1839 Wylie Avenue, sets Citizen Barlow, a young man from Alabama, on a soaring, lyrical journey of spiritual awakening.

A play about a time in American history when the sons and daughters of recently freed slaves journeyed to the industrial cities of the North in search of prosperity, a new way of life, and, essentially, their own identities.

Set in Chicago in 1927, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom is a play dealing with issues of race, art, religion and the historic exploitation of black recording artists by white producers.

A powerful exploration of the legacy of slavery in America in a play that focuses on a brother and sister in 1930s Pittsburgh as they argue over whether to sell the family piano, an instrument tainted by the wages of slavery.

A play set in 1940s Pittsburgh, about the search for self-fulfillment and acceptance in a hostile world.

A landmark play about a baseball star fighting for the right to be first black man to drive a garbage truck in 1950s Pittsburgh.

A play set in a small restaurant in the Pittsburgh Hill District in 1969. Part of August Wilson's Century Cycle, his epic dramatisation of the African American experience in the twentieth century.

The story of an ex-con in post-Reagan Pittsburgh, 1985, trying to rebuild his life. Foreword by Marion McClinton.

A real-estate developer sets about trying to redevelop the 'blighted' Hill District of Pittsburgh in the final part of August Wilson's Century Cycle, his epic dramatisation of the African American experience in the twentieth century.

Set in a run-down firm of mini-cab drivers in Pittsburgh's Hill District in 1977, Jitney is part of August Wilson's Century Cycle, his epic dramatisation of the African American experience in the twentieth century.

A collection of nine plays by the acclaimed performer and civil rights activist John O'Neal.

Four plays from leading Iranian dramatists, translated into English for the first time: Aurash, The Death of the King, Stories from the Rains of Love and Death and Interrogation.

A major anthology of contemporary Asian American drama, exploring the complexities of gender, sexuality, and family, and demonstrating the cultural and aesthetic diversity of the new generation of Asian American voices.

An important piece of contemporary queer theatre, from three of Canada's most gifted performers.