"Reunion"

Tom Granby comes home after being abroad for eight years. His friends plan a college reunion hoping to meet the old Tom and enjoy a savory meal. However, the reunion will be more than just a dinner, challenging their values and impacting their lives.

"The Rise and Fall of Cyrus the Great"

An epic on the life of Cyrus the Great, the Persian king who created the Achaemenid dynasty. Based upon 'The Persian Wars' by Herodotus, this play takes us on a journey through the human psyche, passing through time, fortune, fate, values, and character.

Both plays explore the idea of man's potential, and his sense of self deriving from his connection with Nature and the universe.

This is the first time the complete plays of the Marquis de Sade have been translated into English. With introductions by the translators.

Shakespeare Classic - Spanish version

Art is, should be, “like molten lead poured into your ears” (Cannibals). If it isn’t, it has probably failed, for art—like truth—is not easy nor does it cater to the fainthearted. Yet underlining all art is the real joy of humanity, and any artist who concentrates on the facts of truth without illustrating the joy of illumination is also lacking. Ethard Van Stee is not lacking. Indeed, his strength as a writer centers firmly on his real understanding of community, of how the community can come together to celebrate the truth, or how it can often congeal in a collective and festering misunderstanding that ostracizes truth. Ultimately, though, the joy must be present if we are finally to perceive God’s will.

Sheila Tombe, Associate Professor,
University of South Carolina, Beaufort

Van Stee has written a passionate indictment of a time and place that has enthralled and infuriated many of us who have come late to a land of incredible beauty and promise and meanness and ignorance, suspicious and hostile to anything new and different, especially any Art not light and frothy family entertainment. As you read these wonderful works about ancient Greeks and 19th century Southerners, welcome to Beaufort, South Carolina in the twenty-first century.

Jon Sharp, Artistic Director
Beaufort Repertory Company

Shakuntala Recognized is a translation of the Sanskrit play, Abhijyanashakuntalam, by the great poet and playwright Kalidasa. As a poet of mellifluous charm and as a master of Simile, he indulged in Sringara Rasa (Eros)—the sensuous aspects of human condition. This play is perhaps his most powerful expression of that sensuality. Extolled by Goethe, and German Romanticists and others, the play uniquely weaves a magical fabric of life with the threads of human frailties and tragedies.

The plot for this play is based on a tale in the Indian epic Mahaabhaarata. The tale depicts how India came to be called Bharatavarsha or Bharat, a name that is still official in the Indian languages.

The Marquis de Sade's plays - available in English for the first time. From the Marquis who brought you pain, death and suffering comes..... something new.

This is the first time the complete plays of the Marquis de Sade have been translated into English. With introductions by the translators.

Gilgamesh and Enkidu. The oldest story known to man. In a teaching unit, performable play format, A Gilgamesh Play for Teen Readers tells the essence of the Gilgamesh story without the archaic (and often inappropriate) language. It is the only such format of the story, and furnishes teachers a thorough and interesting background regarding the world of young people in ancient Mesopotamia. The author is a National Board Certified Teacher, and has taught middle school for over twenty years.

Because there are so few plays on the story of Gilgamesh geared to teens, this play was created to fill the void. Although not an exact retelling of the story, the play furnishes a great deal of insight into the ancient Mesopotamian culture, as well insight into the story of Gilgamesh. The play features:

• Probing questions on various themes for teenage discussion
• Themes listed for the teacher use in a quick-reference
• A quick-reference Sumer-cabulary with keywords bolded in the play
• Pre-teaching suggestions for teachers
• A complete Sumerian ‘further reference list’ for teachers to utilize

The story is the legend of the great king Gilgamesh, and the eventual tragedy of his friendship with Enkidu—lord of the wild. It was written by a Sumerian, but was absorbed into later Babylonian culture. Because of Gilgamesh’s arrogance and pride, the gods created Enkidu—a warrior as powerful as the king—in order to teach the king humility. The warriors became friends and had many adventures together. But the evil goddess Ishtar punished Enkidu with an untimely death sentence, and Gilgamesh undertook a long journey in search of Utnoa (Utnapishtim) the Faraway—survivor of the Great Flood—who possessed the secret of immortality. At the story’s end, the fruit benefits neither the king nor his friend, but ironically, Gilgamesh—through his timeless story—has indeed become immortal.

Kao Ming's fourteenth-century play The Lute is among the greatest achievements of Chinese drama. Famed for the beautiful and imaginative poetry of its songs and the humor of its colloquial comic passages, The Lute stands among the first and finest plays in important ch'uan-ch'i genre.

Now, with Jean Mulligan's translation of this dramatic masterpiece, the English reader can appreciate the full impact of The Lute. Mulligan has not only rendered the multi-facted style of the play—whose dialogue ranges from the colloquial speech of the time to passages of poetry and ornately stylized prose—but has made the play's moral force and its importance as a literary model apparent as well.

The Lute tells the story of a humble scholar, Ts'as Po-chieh, who wins success in the civil service examinations. While he is coerced by the prime minister to remain in the capital and marry his daughter, Ts'ai's parents and original wife, Wu-niang, suffer through a famine which results in the death of both parents. Perhaps the play's most moving scenes portray Wu-niag's valiant struggles to support her dying parents-in-law, provide for their burial, and bring her husband back to their graveside. The title of the work drives from Wu-niang's playing the lute as she begs for alms along the difficult route to the capital, where she will seek her husband.

For centuries, The Lute has been esteemed for explemplifying and exploring the traditional value of filial piety. In recent times it has been a topic of debate in the People's Republic of China, where it was analyzed for its social significance as a portrayal of traditional morality. And The Lute has been important in the history of Western appreciation of Chinese literature: in 1841 a French translation made it the first ch'uan'ch'i play accessible in a Western language. One hundred years later the play became the source for the Broadway musical Lute Song.

Translations into contemporary poetry of two masterpieces of the Golden Age of Greek theatre.

An epic tale of a glory rediscovered in ancient Egypt, has been brought vividly to life by bringing it down to a raw, human scale for the stage. The struggle of the ruling class of the Eighteenth Dynasty pitted against an occupying force, is told in grand scale in The New Kingdom, a new play from Emmanuel Paul.

It is 1540 BC and Egypt is divided. In the years following the invasion of the Hyksos, a band of nomadic warriors with a base in Palestine, nothing is certain. The Pharoahs have been displaced to Thebes from their once impregnable capital in Avaris and for more than a century the Hyksos now control the north of Egypt. Decades of war are replaced by decades of peace, and the people are weary.

The Thebans have rested all hope for the restoration of their former power on the narrow shoulders of the young Ahmosis, who has seen his father and brother murdered by their enemies. The young pharaoh now shares power with his mother Aahotep, who will stop at nothing to see her surviving son grow into a great leader.

Under his rule, Egypt will finally be freed from its invaders and become united again. Ahmosis must now fight a growing religious uprising if he hopes to bring Kush the glory it once knew and bring about an era of unequaled prosperity and peace.

An epic tale of a glory rediscovered in ancient Egypt, has been brought vividly to life by bringing it down to a raw, human scale for the stage. The struggle of the ruling class of the Eighteenth Dynasty pitted against an occupying force, is told in grand scale in The New Kingdom, a new play from Emmanuel Paul.

It is 1540 BC and Egypt is divided. In the years following the invasion of the Hyksos, a band of nomadic warriors with a base in Palestine, nothing is certain. The Pharoahs have been displaced to Thebes from their once impregnable capital in Avaris and for more than a century the Hyksos now control the north of Egypt. Decades of war are replaced by decades of peace, and the people are weary.

The Thebans have rested all hope for the restoration of their former power on the narrow shoulders of the young Ahmosis, who has seen his father and brother murdered by their enemies. The young pharaoh now shares power with his mother Aahotep, who will stop at nothing to see her surviving son grow into a great leader.

Under his rule, Egypt will finally be freed from its invaders and become united again. Ahmosis must now fight a growing religious uprising if he hopes to bring Kush the glory it once knew and bring about an era of unequaled prosperity and peace.

An epic tale of a glory rediscovered in ancient Egypt, has been brought vividly to life by bringing it down to a raw, human scale for the stage. The struggle of the ruling class of the Eighteenth Dynasty pitted against an occupying force, is told in grand scale in The New Kingdom, a new play from Emmanuel Paul.

It is 1540 BC and Egypt is divided. In the years following the invasion of the Hyksos, a band of nomadic warriors with a base in Palestine, nothing is certain. The Pharoahs have been displaced to Thebes from their once impregnable capital in Avaris and for more than a century the Hyksos now control the north of Egypt. Decades of war are replaced by decades of peace, and the people are weary.

The Thebans have rested all hope for the restoration of their former power on the narrow shoulders of the young Ahmosis, who has seen his father and brother murdered by their enemies. The young pharaoh now shares power with his mother Aahotep, who will stop at nothing to see her surviving son grow into a great leader.

Under his rule, Egypt will finally be freed from its invaders and become united again. Ahmosis must now fight a growing religious uprising if he hopes to bring Kush the glory it once knew and bring about an era of unequaled prosperity and peace.

Art is, should be, “like molten lead poured into your ears” (Cannibals). If it isn’t, it has probably failed, for art—like truth—is not easy nor does it cater to the fainthearted. Yet underlining all art is the real joy of humanity, and any artist who concentrates on the facts of truth without illustrating the joy of illumination is also lacking. Ethard Van Stee is not lacking. Indeed, his strength as a writer centers firmly on his real understanding of community, of how the community can come together to celebrate the truth, or how it can often congeal in a collective and festering misunderstanding that ostracizes truth. Ultimately, though, the joy must be present if we are finally to perceive God’s will.

Sheila Tombe, Associate Professor,
University of South Carolina, Beaufort

Van Stee has written a passionate indictment of a time and place that has enthralled and infuriated many of us who have come late to a land of incredible beauty and promise and meanness and ignorance, suspicious and hostile to anything new and different, especially any Art not light and frothy family entertainment. As you read these wonderful works about ancient Greeks and 19th century Southerners, welcome to Beaufort, South Carolina in the twenty-first century.

Jon Sharp, Artistic Director
Beaufort Repertory Company

Shakespeare Classic - Spanish version