Contemporary Plays Available To Read From Home

While it is fairly simple to find classic works of theatre if they are in the public domain, it can occasionally be more of a challenge to find contemporary plays in a digital format. However, with the Library's SimplyE  app and our other e-resources partners, you can read plays in the same format that you enjoy your favorite e-books.

Here are several contemporary plays that I love available in a digital format:

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Sweat by Lynn Nottage

In one of the poorest cities in America, Reading, Pennsylvania, a group of down-and-out factory workers struggles to keep their present lives in balance, ignorant of the financial devastation looming in their near futures. Set in 2008, the powerful crux of this new play is knowing the fate of the characters long before it's even in their sights. Based on Nottage's extensive research and interviews with real residents of Reading, Sweat is a topical reflection of the present and poignant outcome of America's economic decline.

 

 

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Dry Powder by  Sarah Burgess

The same week his private equity firm forced massive layoffs at a national grocery chain, Rick Hannel threw himself an extravagant engagement party, setting off a publicity nightmare. Fortunately, Seth, one of Rick's partners, has a dream of a deal to invest in an American-made luggage company for a song that will rescue his boss from the PR disaster. But Jenny, Rick's other partner, has an entirely different plan: to maximize returns, no matter the consequences.

 

 

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Disgraced by Ayad Akhtar

Amir Kapoor is a successful Pakistani-American lawyer who is rapidly moving up the corporate ladder while distancing himself from his cultural roots. Emily, his wife, is white; she's an artist, and her work is influenced by Islamic imagery. When the couple hosts a dinner party, what starts out as a friendly conversation escalates into something far more damaging.

 

 

 

 

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Fleabag by Phoebe Waller-Bridge

An outrageously funny but poignant look at responsibility and sexuality in today's young people. The Fleabag bites back. A rip-roaring account of some sort of a female living her sort of life, this comic monologue for a female performer won a Fringe First at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2013.

 

 

 

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Three Plays: Gruesome Playground Injuries; Animals Out of Paper; Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo by Rajiv Joseph

Rajiv Joseph is one of today's most acclaimed young playwrights. This volume gathers together his three major works to date including his latest play, Gruesome Playground Injuries, which charts the intersection of two lives using scars, wounds, and calamity as the mile markers to explore why people hurt themselves to gain another's love; Animals Out of Paper, a subtle, elegant, yet bracing examination of the artistic impulse and those in its thrall, which follows a world-famous origamist as she becomes the unwitting mentor to a troubled young prodigy, even as she must deal with her own loss of inspiration; and Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, a darkly comedic drama that looks on as the lives of two American soldiers, an Iraqi translator, and a tiger intersect on the streets of Baghdad.

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Three Plays: Beauty's Daughter; Monster; The Gimmick by Dael Orlandersmith

The sheer exuberance of language that pours forth in Dael Orlandersmith's plays has dazzled critics and audiences alike. In these three pieces, the award-winning writer and performer celebrates the power of words to rescue the young black women she portrays from their constricted worlds. In the Obie Award-winning play Beauty's Daughter, Diane yearns to free herself from her soul-deadening surroundings, where people drown their unfulfilled aspirations in drugs and alcohol. In Monster, Theresa imagines a life in the rock-'n'-roll poetry bohemia of Manhattan's Lower East Side and away from her home in East Harlem, where she is scorned as a misfit. And in The Gimmick, Alexis escapes her brutal reality among the library bookshelves, where she dreams of becoming a writer in Paris. Charged with fearless wisdom, these three electrifying plays transform rage-filled ghetto experience into a triumph of rhapsodic expression.” 

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Torch Song Trilogy by Harvey Fierstein

What begins as a chance encounter in a New York nightclub leads drag performer Arnold Beckoff on a hilarious yet touching pursuit of love, happiness, and a life he can be proud of. From a failed affair with a reluctant lover to a committed relationship with the promise of a stable family, Arnold's struggle for acceptance meets its greatest resistance when he faces off against the person whose approval is most important to him: his mother. This edition contains for the first time ever both the original scripts for the three one-act plays as they were performed in the 1970s, as well as the revised script for the 2017 revival that condensed all three into Torch Song.

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The White Card by Claudia Rankine

A play about the imagined fault line between black and white lives by Claudia Rankine, the author of Citizen. The White Card stages a conversation that is both informed and derailed by the black/white American drama. The scenes in this one-act play, for all the characters' disagreements, stalemates, and seeming impasses, explore what happens if one is willing to stay in the room when it is painful to bear the pressure to listen and the obligation to respond.

 


 


Staff picks are chosen by NYPL staff members and are not intended to be comprehensive lists. We'd love to hear your ideas too, so leave a comment and tell us what you’d recommend. And check out our Staff Picks browse tool for more recommendations!

Summaries provided via NYPL’s catalog, which draws from multiple sources. Click through to each book’s title for more.