What do you think?
Rate this book
The Civilians: An Anthology of Six Plays
Collected for the first time in one volume are six inventive theater pieces created by Obie Award-winning theater company The Civilians. Based on the creative investigation of actual experience, and often intertwined with experimental cabaret, their pieces are boldly theatrical and always unique -- from a story about a Hollywood movie and a lost flock of geese ( Canard, Canard, Goose? ); to a tale about things lost and found, charting a musical landscape of loss ( Gone Missing ); to a dark ride through the landscape of American public culture, asking a thorny question: how do we know what we know when everyone in power seems to be lying? ( (I Am) Nobody's Lunch ).
Includes the plays Canard, Canard, Goose? by The Civilians, Gone Missing by The Civilians, (I Am) Nobody's Lunch by The Civilians, The Ladies by Anne Washburn, Paris Commune by Steven Cosson and Michael Friedman, Shadow of Himself by Neal Bell. With a foreword by Oskar Eustis, Artistic Director of the Public Theater.
Includes the plays Canard, Canard, Goose? by The Civilians, Gone Missing by The Civilians, (I Am) Nobody's Lunch by The Civilians, The Ladies by Anne Washburn, Paris Commune by Steven Cosson and Michael Friedman, Shadow of Himself by Neal Bell. With a foreword by Oskar Eustis, Artistic Director of the Public Theater.
- GenresTheatre
300 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2009
4 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 25, 2013
"Canard, Canard, Goose?" by the Civilians
"Gone Missing" by Steve Cosson
"(I Am) Nobody's Lunch" by Steve Cosson
"The Ladies" by Anne Washburn
"Paris Commune" by Steve Cosson and Michael Friedman
"Shadow of Himself" by Neal Bell
I purchased this to read "The Ladies" which was probably my favorite play of 2004. (I had also seen "Gone Missing" which I remember enjoying.) I like what the Civilians do, what I would call documentary theater. Plays developed through interviews and research on a particular topic. The people being interviewed are part of the show, the interviewers, and the actors developing the material. Very layered and interesting. There's a nice mix of seriousness and lightness to all of the pieces that make them fun and engaging.
That said, I do think that plays are probably best appreciated as a performance, an experience. Not that they can't be a good literature or an interesting read, but I feel like that's secondary.
I feel like the first three pieces in the collection are best experienced as performance. Actors are playing multiple roles, becoming the interview subjects. The text was interesting, based on broad, open-ended questions, but I feel like it would really come to life with good actors. (The first piece is the company trying to discover what happened to the geese in the movie "Fly Away Home". The second about loss - missing things. And the third was about people's reactions to the polarization in the country at the beginning of the Iraq war.)
The last three of the collection are different. Still "documentary" but more focused and more theatrical in their way. And each, for me, stands on its own as interesting text and a compelling read. "Paris Commune" tells the story of a people's uprising in 1870's, when the French government was expelled from the city for a week. The people, the circumstances leading up to the revolution and the effects are explored. "Shadow of Himself" is an exploration of masculinity through the Gilgamesh story.
My favorite though is "The Ladies", about four dictators' wives - Eva Peron, Imelda Marcos, Elena Ceausescu and Jiang Qing (Madame Mao). The writer, Anne Washburn and the director, Anne Kauffman are also characters in the play. The Ladies play the supporting characters to each other's lives and act out important (and pedestrian) scenes while the writer and director discuss their own relation to the ladies and their struggle to find the best way to present them. The scenes are alternated with recorded interviews, songs and quick (humorously too-quick) retellings of the actresses' research. It's ultimately about women and power, how much they have and what they do with it, as well as the inherent theatricality of the four central ladies. This piece alone would get more than five stars from me.
"Gone Missing" by Steve Cosson
"(I Am) Nobody's Lunch" by Steve Cosson
"The Ladies" by Anne Washburn
"Paris Commune" by Steve Cosson and Michael Friedman
"Shadow of Himself" by Neal Bell
I purchased this to read "The Ladies" which was probably my favorite play of 2004. (I had also seen "Gone Missing" which I remember enjoying.) I like what the Civilians do, what I would call documentary theater. Plays developed through interviews and research on a particular topic. The people being interviewed are part of the show, the interviewers, and the actors developing the material. Very layered and interesting. There's a nice mix of seriousness and lightness to all of the pieces that make them fun and engaging.
That said, I do think that plays are probably best appreciated as a performance, an experience. Not that they can't be a good literature or an interesting read, but I feel like that's secondary.
I feel like the first three pieces in the collection are best experienced as performance. Actors are playing multiple roles, becoming the interview subjects. The text was interesting, based on broad, open-ended questions, but I feel like it would really come to life with good actors. (The first piece is the company trying to discover what happened to the geese in the movie "Fly Away Home". The second about loss - missing things. And the third was about people's reactions to the polarization in the country at the beginning of the Iraq war.)
The last three of the collection are different. Still "documentary" but more focused and more theatrical in their way. And each, for me, stands on its own as interesting text and a compelling read. "Paris Commune" tells the story of a people's uprising in 1870's, when the French government was expelled from the city for a week. The people, the circumstances leading up to the revolution and the effects are explored. "Shadow of Himself" is an exploration of masculinity through the Gilgamesh story.
My favorite though is "The Ladies", about four dictators' wives - Eva Peron, Imelda Marcos, Elena Ceausescu and Jiang Qing (Madame Mao). The writer, Anne Washburn and the director, Anne Kauffman are also characters in the play. The Ladies play the supporting characters to each other's lives and act out important (and pedestrian) scenes while the writer and director discuss their own relation to the ladies and their struggle to find the best way to present them. The scenes are alternated with recorded interviews, songs and quick (humorously too-quick) retellings of the actresses' research. It's ultimately about women and power, how much they have and what they do with it, as well as the inherent theatricality of the four central ladies. This piece alone would get more than five stars from me.
April 13, 2009
Anne Washburn's "Ladies" and Neal Bell's "Shadow of Himself" are both brilliant. The other four plays, documentary theater works by The Civilians theater collective, didn't do as much for me. So, I'm giving the book as a whole a four-star rating though those two plays really belong in the five-star range.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews