About the Book:

Spotlighting the best of Broadway, Off-Broadway, regional, and experimental writings since 2000, Duo! offers strong dramatic pieces for performance, acting class, and study.

Culled from the work of more than 100 playwrights — veterans as well as up-and-coming talents — this follow-up compendium to the popular edition of the 1990s is by turns comic, serious, or both, but always intensely human.

Pieces include scenes from: Tracy Letts confronts the aftermath of betrayal on a night too hot for sleep in August: Osage County; Karen Finley exposes sexual politics outside the Oval Office in George & Martha; Lynn Nottage delineates gentility, the fear of being alone, and the passage of time in Intimate Apparel; Richard Greenberg weighs the costs of being godly or becoming merely human in the baseball-themed Take Me Out; and Tina Howe bends time, showing the universal power of dramatic recognition across the ages, in Water Music.

Filled with rich characters and universal storylines, Duo! speaks to people of all ages and backgrounds and tackles all the paramount issues of our time — from race and gender to class and politics to love and sex.

About the Author:

Joyce E. Henry, Ph. D., is professor emerita of Theatre and Communication Studies at Ursinus College. She is the editor of The Wisdom of Shakespeare and author of Beat the Bard. She lives in Collegeville, Pennsylvania.

Rebecca Dunn Jaroff, Ph. D., is assistant professor of English at Ursinus College, where she teaches American literature, drama, and journalism. She lives in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania.

Bob Shuman, M.F.A., is an editor, playwright, college professor, and co-author of Simply Elegant Flowers with Michael George. A Fellow of the Lark Theatre Company, he received Hunter College's Irv Zarkower Award for excellence in playwriting. He lives in New York City.