My favorite plays

By Valerie Rae Smith, department of theatre

Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
Subtitled “a tragicomedy in two acts,” Beckett’s modernist, absurdist play uses a small cast, sparse props, and disjointed dialogue in a production some critics have called “the most significant English language play of the 20th century.”

Cloud 9 by Carol Churchill
Cloud 9 is a two-act play, set first in British colonial Africa of the Victorian era and next in a 1979 London park. The actors interchange characters between acts in a parody of conventional comedy and a satirical look at Victorian society and colonialism.

Our Town by Thornton Wilder
Arguably the most frequently produced play by any American playwright, Our Town is a three-act play set in a fictional town modeled after various rural New Hampshire communities. Its astute character development in a setting of ordinary everyday life has vaulted it to popularity.

For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf by Ntozake Shange
This 1975 stage play is structured into a series of twenty poems and performed by a cast of nameless women, each only identified by a color (Lady in Yellow, etc). The poems explore issues of love, abortion, abandonment, and rape.

Life is a Dream by Pedro Calderón de la Barca
The Spanish play Life is a Dream, possibly the playwright’s most well-known piece, uses comedy to tease out nuances in the conflict between human free will and determinism (or fate).

Letters to a Student Revolutionary by Elizabeth Wong
A multicultural cast usually fills out this powerful and surprisingly witty play about friendship, political awakening, and all the complications involved. The play explores ideas of capitalism and communism, and ultimately gives a sharp reminder of the price of democracy.

As You Like It by William Shakespeare
One of Shakespeare’s pastoral comedies, As You Like It has been adapted for radio, musical theatre, and film. It incorporates political tensions, confusing love triangles, and characters in disguise.

Arcadia by Tom Stoppard
Stoppard, playwright of the famous Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, released Arcadia in 1993. Its themes include the relationship between past and present, order and disorder, and the certainty of knowledge. Set in an English country house, the play’s action cuts between a 19th century family and the 1989 residents.

Mnemonic by Théâtre du Complicité
Mnemonic interlaces two narratives in a comedic and profound play examining the nature of memory and its quirks. The story follows a girl searching for her father, and the group of forensic scientists trying to piece together clues surrounding the 1991 find of four-thousand-year-old remains of a man in the Alps.

The Illusion by Pierre Corneille
Originally labeling his 17th century play “a strange monster,” Cornielle’s masterpiece has undergone numerous translations and re-staging. Tony Kushner’s modern adaptation of the comedy takes as its primary images a cave, a magician, a father’s search, three visions of love, and a reunion.