J.M. Synge, one of the greatest English language playwrites of the 20th century, immortalized the Aran Islands and its people with vivid written portraits that are among the greatest in modern literature. Synge’s vibrant language and earthy themes breathtakingly capture the folklore and way of life that has since perished on these remote northern islands.

There is now no doubt that not only is Waiting for Godot the outstanding play of the 20th century, but it is also Samuel Beckett's masterpiece. Yet it is both a popular text to be studied at school and an enigma. The scene is a country road. There is a solitary tree. It is evening. Two tramp-like figures, Vladimir and Estragon, exchange words. Pull off boots. Munch a root vegetable. Two other curious characters enter. And a boy. Time passes. It is all strange yet familiar.

Starring Mark Ruffalo, Josh Hamilton and Missy Yager, the original cast was reunited for this exclusive L.A. Theatre Works performance of This is Our Youth. In 1982, on Manhattan's Upper West Side, three pot-smoking teenagers are resoundingly rejecting the 1960s ideals of their affluent parents. In hilarious and bittersweet detail, This is Our Youth follows 48 turbulent hours in the lives of three very lost souls at the dawn of the Reagan Era.

During a winter storm a busload of weary travelers are forced to shack up at a roadside diner until morning. Inge was renowned for his in-depth character studies, Bus Stop is no exception and offers a warm play about the intersecting lives of eight ordinary people.

This timeless comedy of manners is considered one of Molière's most probing and mature works. While it's still an exemplar of 17th century farce, Molière went beyond his usual comic inventiveness to create a world of rich, complex characters, especially in the cynical title character Alceste, played here by the Tony Award-winning actor Brian Bedford.

They may go to the same school, but misfits Solomon, Diwata and Howie have never met and their teachers and peers just don't take them seriously - until a sex scandal involving one of their teachers brings them together. Soon they realize that three voices are stronger than one. And since their school has no speech and debate squad, maybe this is their chance to be heard at last - by the school and even the world.

A Scottish meteorologist locks horns with his American counterpart as both men try to convince General Dwight D. Eisenhower that they can accurately predict the atmospheric conditions needed to launch the greatest amphibious assault in the history of mankind - the D-Day invasion.

One of the best-known collections of W. B. Yeats' prose, The Celtic Twilight explores the old connection between the Irish people and the magical world of fairies. Yeats, by traveling the land in the early 20th century and talking to the common people about their experiences with the creatures, yielded a colorful overview of Celtic fairy folklore.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, and for aging Hollywood stars Karen and Steve that means agreeing to a shocking contractual clause. On the eve of a "climactic" day of shooting, they finally tell their significant others what's to come.

It's the middle of the high-flying, go-getting 80s in Maggie Thatcher's England, and Marlene has something to celebrate: she has just been made managing director of the Top Girls Employment Agency. But with no friends to speak of, and a past she'd just as soon forget, the guests at Marlene's party are a collection of famous women from history. Soon Marlene discovers that life above the glass ceiling is not all it's cracked up to be. This is a bold, searing comedy from an Olivier Award-winning playwright.

In his brilliantly imagined, Obie Award-winning show, Roger Guenveur Smith explores the life of the controversial Black Panther leader through a series of improvisations based on Newton's own words and writings.

Clifford Odets’ masterpiece, starring Mark Ruffalo, Jane Kaczmarek, Richard Kind, and Ben Gazzara, brings to life the struggles of a working-class family aspiring to the promise of the American Dream. Even as they endure the country’s worst economic nightmare, three generations of an immigrant family are crowded into a Bronx tenement, fiercely determined to stay afloat, no matter what the cost.

Pulitzer Prize-winner Sam Shepard's classic comedy is a story of estranged brothers Austin and Lee. Shepard compares and contrasts the reality of the two brothers by forcing them to come to terms with each other, with themselves, and with family.

What does it mean to be pretty? Do you really need someone to validate your appearance? Neil LaBute tackles our obsession with physical beauty head-on in a work nominated for multiple Tony and Drama Desk Awards. Our production, directed by the playwright, includes original Broadway cast member Thomas Sadoski, whose acclaimed performance also earned aTony nomination. Includes a backstage conversation with Neil LaBute and the cast. An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast production.

Playwright Kenneth Lonergan has made a career of creating characters whose considerable flaws often get in the way of their good intentions. In Lobby Hero, two menial security guards are embroiled in an unexpected family fiasco… and the local beat police are divided by their own romantic and political allegiances. An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring: Tate Donovan as Bill; Cedric Sanders as William; Emily Swallow as Dawn; Michael Weston as Jeff. Directed by Bart DeLorenzo. Recorded before a live audience at the Skirball Cultural Center, June 2011.

The most acclaimed Scottish novel of all time, Sunset Song is a powerful portrait of a land and people in turmoil, seen through the life and struggles of its heroine, Chris Guthrie. In the years up to and beyond the First World War, Chris' resilience, like the land itself, endures despite everything and is portrayed with a lyrical intensity that echoes through the years and still resonates today.

If the name seems familiar, these tales about Darby O'Gill and his encounter with the fairies were adapted for a Disney movie, Darby O'Gill and the Little People. They tell the story of an Irishman whose cow is captured by the fairies - or "good people". In his determination to recover his property, Darby finds himself in the center of their home, the mountain Sleive-na-mon.

Finnegans Wake is the greatest challenge in 20th-century literature. Who is Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker? And what did he get up to in Phoenix Park? And what did Anna Livia Plurabelle have to say about it? In the rich nighttime and the language of dreams, here are history, anecdote, myth, folk tale and, above all, a wondrous sense of humor, colored by a clear sense of humanity. In this exceptional reading by the Irish actor Barry McGovern, with Marcella Riordan, the world of the Wake is more accessible than ever before.

When a carousing Englishman disgraces the consecrated effigy of Hanuman, a leprous "Silver Man" marks him with a hideous curse. The ensuing night brings new terrors to the house of the doomed man.

Adopting the structure and themes of the Arthurian legend, Steinbeck created a Camelot on a shabby hillside above the town of Monterey, California, and peopled it with a colorful band of knights. At the center of the tale is Danny, whose house, like Arthur’s castle, becomes a gathering place for men looking for adventure, camaraderie, and a sense of belonging—men who fiercely resist the corrupting tide of honest toil and civil rectitude.

In the story, a land owner named Vasili Andreevich Brekhunov takes along one of his peasants, Nikita, for a short journey to the house of the owner of a forest. He is impatient and wishes to get to the town more quickly to purchase the forest before other contenders can get there. They find themselves in the middle of a blizzard, but the master in his avarice wishes to press on. They eventually get lost off the road and they try to camp. The master's peasant soon finds himself suffering from hypothermia.

"It was in the first week of October in the year 1391 that I first came face to face with the man who owned me… the man whose lightest word was to us, his villeins, weightier than the King’s law or the edicts of our Holy Father…” So began the story of Martin Reed - a serf whose resentment of the automatic rule of his feudal lord finally flared into open defiance.

How Green Was My Valley is Richard Llewellyn’s best-selling - and timeless - classic, as well as the basis of a beloved film. As Huw Morgan is about to leave home forever, he reminisces about the golden days of his youth when South Wales still prospered, when coal dust had not yet blackened the valley. Drawn simply and lovingly, with a crisp Welsh humor, Llewellyn’s characters fight, love, laugh, and cry, creating an indelible portrait of a people. Richard Llewellyn (1906–1983), a Welsh novelist, was born in Hendon, England, in the county of Middlesex.

From the mid-1650s through the 1660s, Henry Morgan, a pirate and outlaw of legendary viciousness, ruled the Spanish Main. He ravaged the coasts of Cuba and America, striking terror wherever he went. Morgan was obsessive. He had two driving ambitions: to possess the beautiful woman called La Santa Roja and to conquer Panama, the "cup of gold".

This magnificent novel - which secured for its author the 1955 Nobel Prize in Literature - is now available to contemporary American audiences. Although it is set in the early 20th century, it recalls both Iceland's medieval epics and such classics as Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter. And if Bjartur of Summerhouses, the book's protagonist, is an ordinary sheep farmer, his flinty determination to achieve independence is genuinely heroic and, at the same time, terrifying and bleakly comic.

In 1913, before there is a rumor of war in Europe, Matthias Wrenn and Con Hatchel, lifelong friends from Ballyrannel in the Irish midlands, decide to see the world at the expense of the king of England and join the British army. A year later, while en route to India, their troop ship is recalled and they soon find themselves in the European slaughterhouse that was World War I.

Set during the tumultuous years of the Napoleonic Wars, The Passion intertwines the destinies of two remarkable people: Henri, a simple French soldier, who follows Napoleon from glory to Russian ruin; and Villanelle, the red-haired, web-footed daughter of a Venetian boatman, whose husband has gambled away her heart. In Venice’s compound of carnival, chance, and darkness, the pair meets their singular destiny.

The works of Thomas Wolfe cemented his legacy as one of the very best of the American Southern writers. Wolfe's largely autobiographical novel features Eugene Gant, who pines for a more expansive life after being born to a father whose bouts of maniacal raving are fueled by a prodigious appetite for drink.

Fifteen-year-old Adam Cooper is anxcious to join the excitement and action of the Revolutionary War. On the morning of April 19, 1775, he stands beside his Massachusetts farmer father to face the redcoats marching out of Boston. But suddenly, his father falls on the village green, and Adam’s hands are shaking as he shoots at columns of marching men. With realistic drama and riveting suspense, Howard Fast brings the glory and the agony of the colonial battlefield vividly to life.

To the Chinese the dragon is not an evil creature, but is a god and the friend of men who worship him. He "holds in his power prosperity and peace." Ruling the waters and the winds, he sends the good rain, is hence the symbol of fecundity. In the Hsia dynasty two dragons fought a great duel until both disappeared, leaving only a fertile foam from which were born the descendants of the Hsia. Thus, the dragons came to be looked upon as the ancestors of a race of heroes. This is the story of China at War.