Dan O'Brien: Plays One

Dan O'Brien: Plays One PDF Author: Dan O'Brien
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1786821753
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 548

Get Book

Book Description
The first collection from the multi-award-winning American poet and playwright Dan O’Brien, including the award-winning The Body of an American. The Body of an American (2M) Two actors embody more than thirty roles in an exhilarating new form of documentary theatre, against a backdrop of some of the world’s most iconic images of war. The House in Hydesville (5F/2M) At once an exploration of familial abuse and the need for spiritual transcendence, a compelling “true ghost story”. The Cherry Sisters Revisited (5F/1M) The five Cherry sisters’ love of the vaudeville carries them to the bright lights of Broadway. A provocative comedy with music. The Voyage of the Carcass (1F/2M) Trapped in the ice at the North Pole, only three members of the doomed Carcass crew survive. The Dear Boy (1F/3M) James Flanagan is not a kind teacher. Is he a good teacher? He likes to think so. An intimate and stirring character study of a man forced to face his past, his present, and the life he may still yet live.

Dan O'Brien: Plays One

Dan O'Brien: Plays One PDF Author: Dan O'Brien
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1786821753
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 548

Get Book

Book Description
The first collection from the multi-award-winning American poet and playwright Dan O’Brien, including the award-winning The Body of an American. The Body of an American (2M) Two actors embody more than thirty roles in an exhilarating new form of documentary theatre, against a backdrop of some of the world’s most iconic images of war. The House in Hydesville (5F/2M) At once an exploration of familial abuse and the need for spiritual transcendence, a compelling “true ghost story”. The Cherry Sisters Revisited (5F/1M) The five Cherry sisters’ love of the vaudeville carries them to the bright lights of Broadway. A provocative comedy with music. The Voyage of the Carcass (1F/2M) Trapped in the ice at the North Pole, only three members of the doomed Carcass crew survive. The Dear Boy (1F/3M) James Flanagan is not a kind teacher. Is he a good teacher? He likes to think so. An intimate and stirring character study of a man forced to face his past, his present, and the life he may still yet live.

The Body of an American

The Body of an American PDF Author: Dan O'Brien
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1783195908
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 75

Get Book

Book Description
Mogadishu, 1993. Paul is a Canadian photojournalist who is about to take a picture that will win him the Pulitzer Prize. Princeton, the present day, Dan is an American writer who is struggling to finish his play about ghosts. Both men live worlds apart but a chance encounter over the airwaves sparks an extraordinary friendship that sees them journey from some of the most dangerous places on earth to the depths of the human soul.Flying from Kabul to the Canadian High Arctic, The Body of an American sees two actors jump between more than thirty roles in an exhilarating new form of documentary drama. It urgently places these two men’s battles – both public and private –against a backdrop of some of the world’s most iconic images of war. The Body of an American is the recipient of the 2013 Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama Inspired by American History. It also received the PEN Center USA Award for Drama and the L. Arnold Weissberger Award, and premiered at Portland Center Stage in 2012, directed by Bill Rauch. The play was the recipient of the McKnight National Residency & Commission from the Playwrights’ Center, as well as a Sundance Institute Time Warner Storytelling Fellowship and a TCG Future Collaborations Grant. For further information and resources on this play, visit the Edward M Kennedy website: http://kennedyprize.columbia.edu/winners/2013/obrien/

A Story that Happens

A Story that Happens PDF Author: Dan O'Brien
Publisher: Deep Vellum Publishing
ISBN: 1628974087
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 94

Get Book

Book Description
Drawing on O’Brien’s experience of cancer and of childhood abuse, and on his ongoing collaboration with a war reporter, the four essays in A Story that Happens—first written as craft lectures for the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and the US Air Force Academy—offer hard-won insights into what stories are for and the reasons why, "afraid and hopeful," we begin to tell them.

How to Fight Presidents

How to Fight Presidents PDF Author: Daniel O'Brien
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 038534757X
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 274

Get Book

Book Description
Make no mistake: Our founding fathers were more bandanas-and-muscles than powdered-wigs-and-tea. As a prisoner of war, Andrew Jackson walked several miles barefoot across state lines while suffering from smallpox and a serious head wound received when he refused to polish the boots of the soldiers who had taken him captive. He was thirteen years old. A few decades later, he became the first popularly elected president and served the nation, pausing briefly only to beat a would-be assassin with a cane to within an inch of his life. Theodore Roosevelt had asthma, was blind in one eye, survived multiple gunshot wounds, had only one regret (that there were no wars to fight under his presidency), and was the first U.S. president to win the Medal of Honor, which he did after he died. Faced with the choice, George Washington actually preferred the sound of bullets whizzing by his head in battle over the sound of silence. And now these men—these hallowed leaders of the free world—want to kick your ass. Plenty of historians can tell you which president had the most effective economic strategies, and which president helped shape our current political parties, but can any of them tell you what to do if you encounter Chester A. Arthur in a bare-knuckled boxing fight? This book will teach you how to be better, stronger, faster, and more deadly than the most powerful (and craziest) men in history. You’re welcome.

An Irish Play

An Irish Play PDF Author: Dan O'Brien
Publisher: Dramatic Publishing
ISBN: 9781583420409
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 92

Get Book

Book Description
"Amateur actors in Cork City, Ireland, convene at their local pub-theater for the first read-through of a new "Irish play." What no one knows yet is that the play has been written by an American, and that an African-American has been cast in the lead. Over the course of the evening the newly assembled cast debates (in typically Irish fashion) the play's deficiencies and merits, who will play which part, and whether or not to do the play at all. There's Ed, a patriot and single father, whose idea it was to do the play in the first place; Martha, the stage manager; Michael, playwright and all-around lady's man; Cynthia, an aging ingenue and self-proclaimed Celtic goddess; Willie, the theater's patriarch; Joachim, an African-American just recently married into the Irish culture; and acid-tongued Declan, a young man with ambition but no direction. Irish and American cultures come into conflict, old rivalries reignite, and secrets are revealed as the group struggles toward an understanding of this enigmatic Irish play. What begins as a comedic examination of Irish theatre and identity becomes by evening's end a character drama of strong emotional force." -- Publisher website

War Reporter

War Reporter PDF Author: Dan OBrien
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780957326675
Category : War poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book

Book Description
Paul Watson won a Pulitzer Prize for his 1993 photograph of a dead American being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu; he has since reported from the Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan. Deriving from correspondence between poet and war reporter, and their eventual meeting on the shore of the Arctic Ocean, these poems bear unsparing witness to both private trauma and the incalculable danger inflicted by contemporary warfare.

The Contract Surgeon

The Contract Surgeon PDF Author: Dan O'Brien
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780618087839
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 252

Get Book

Book Description
This is the true story of the friendship between a young doctor serving in the army during the Great Sioux War, and war chief Crazy Horse. Set in the Great Plains, this tale weaves a tapestry of time and events into the account of a single day--the last day in the life of Crazy Horse--to reveal the secrets of American history.

Clearing Hurdles

Clearing Hurdles PDF Author: Dan O'Brien
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781935628088
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book

Book Description
Only one man, the Olympic Gold Medalist in the decathlon, is officially deemed the World's Greatest Athlete. As an orphan who has never met his biological parents, as a recovering alcoholic, as the subject of a timelessly infamous advertising campaign, as the athlete of maybe the most publicised and shocking failure in the history of sports, and as a man who persevered through it all to dominate his sport like few athletes ever have, it is no wonder Track & Field News calls Dan's life, the stuff movies are made of. Dan's meteoric rise to prominence saw him take the No.1 world ranking less than two years removed from his only college season, and he became an overnight celebrity when cast alongside Dave Johnson in Reebok's massive Dan & Dave ad campaign. The commercials debuted during the Super Bowl, but when O'Brien infamously failed to qualify for the Olympic team it was called the most shocking moment in U.S. Olympic history, and to this day ESPN ranks it as one of the all-time sports busts. Undeterred, O'Brien went on to capture his record-tying fifth national championship in addition to a third consecutive world championship the first decathlete in history to do so. Then at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, with what seemed like an entire country in his corner, O'Brien completed his tale of redemption by becoming the oldest decathlete to ever win an Olympic gold medal. Now, through the pages of this profoundly inspiring and fast-paced memoir, Dan will chronicle his extraordinary career. This book also offers a window into the world of the decathlon and an inside look at some of its most influential athletes. O'Brien offers an insiders view of some of the greatest Olympic decathletes -- of Bill Toomey the intellectual artist, Milt Campbell the most inspirational, and Bruce Jenner as the man most driven.

Stolen Horses

Stolen Horses PDF Author: Dan O'Brien
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 080323354X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 323

Get Book

Book Description
McDermot, Nebraska, is a pleasant, scenic western cattle town situated in the Pawnee River valley-just the place for people seeking refuge from their hectic city lives. It is also just the place for those who have made their homes on this haunting prairie since the late nineteenth century. Ideal for both, McDermot means everything to those native inhabitants and something very different to those who are looking for a new life.

The House in Scarsdale

The House in Scarsdale PDF Author: Dan O'Brien
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1786827816
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 78

Get Book

Book Description
Winner of the 2018 PEN America Award in Drama As Tolstoy said, “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” In The House in Scarsdale, playwright Dan O'Brien traces the roots of his family's particular unhappiness to learn why his parents and siblings cut him off years ago. The more Dan learns about his family, the more mysterious the circumstances surrounding their estrangement become, until his world is shaken when rumours surface that his real father might be another member of the family. Is his pathological pursuit of the truth worth the risk? Or should he follow the advice of a psychic and make his life a never-finished work of art?