Best American Short Plays: 2012-2013

2014 | Essays

For over 70 years, The Best American Short Plays has been the standard of excellence for one-act plays in America. From its inception, it has identified cutting-edge playwrights who have gone on to establish award-winning careers, including Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, and more. In this volume, the plays capture the struggle between "hot tempers and cold decrees." Humans love to think of themselves as rational beings well in control of their lives and surroundings from sunup to sundown, sundown to sunrise. The problem is that human nature bucks and bridles at every attempt to socialise and civilise. Shakespeare got it right when he penned the observation: The brain may devise laws for the blood, but a hot temper leaps o'er a cold decree. But cold decrees are what prevent is from self-destruction, and so we endure the struggle.

William W. Demastes (Author)