Books by Neil LaBute
This Is How It Goes: A Play
by Neil LaBute
Belinda and Cody Phipps appear a typical Midwestern couple: teenage sweethearts, children, luxurious home. Typical except that Cody is black--"rich, black, and different," in the words of Belinda, who finds herself attracted to a former (white) classmate. As the battle for her affections is waged, Belinda and Cody frankly doubt the foundation of their initial attraction, opening the door wide to a swath of bigotry and betrayal. Staged on continually shifting moral ground that challenges our received notions about gender, ethnicity, and even love itself, This Is How It Goes unblinkingly explores the myriad ways in which the wild card of race is played by both black and white in America.
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Seconds of Pleasure: Stories
by Neil LaBute
The stories in Seconds of Pleasure are not for the faint of heart. Each potent and pithy tale finds men and women exploiting - or at the mercy of - the hidden fault lines that separate them: a woman leaves her family at their vacation home after discovering her husband in a compromising situation in "Time Share"; a dancer rescues a man stranded in the parking lot of a strip club in "Open All Night"; a middle-aged man obsesses over a scab on the calf of a pretty young girl in "Boo-Boo"; and a vain Hollywood actor gets his comeuppance in "Soft Target." Infused with LaBute's trademark wit and black humor, the stories vivisect human relations in a way that is at once intimate, brutal, and unsettlingly familiar. In Seconds of Pleasure Neil LaBute unleashes his imagination in stories that offer unflinching insight into our very human shortcomings and impure urges with shocking candor.
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Seconds of Pleasure: Stories
by Neil LaBute
In Seconds of Pleasure, acclaimed award-winning director and playwright Neil LaBute, brings to the page his cutting humor and compelling take on the shadowy terrain of the human heart. Best known for his controversial plays and films, his short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker and Playboy. Seductive and provocative, each potent and pithy tale in Seconds of Pleasure finds men and women exploiting -- or at the mercy of -- the hidden fault lines that separate them: In Time Share,” a woman leaves her family at their vacation home after discovering her husband in a compromising situation; a middle-aged man obsesses over a scab on the calf of a pretty young girl in Boo-Boo”; and a vain Hollywood actor gets his comeuppance in Soft Target.” LaBute infuses Seconds of Pleasure with his trademark wit and black humor, and unleashes his imagination in stories that offer unflinching insight into our very human shortcomings and impure urges with shocking candor.
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Reasons to Be Pretty: A Play
by Neil LaBute
In Reasons to Be Pretty, Greg's tight-knit social circle is thrown into turmoil when his offhand remarks about a female coworker's pretty face and his own girlfriend Steph's lack thereof get back to Steph. But that's just the beginning. Greg's best buddy, Kent, and Kent's wife, Carly, also enter into the picture, and the emotional equation becomes exponentially more complicated. As their relationships crumble, the four friends are forced to confront a sea of deceit, infidelity, and betrayed trust in their journey to answer that oh-so-American question: How much is pretty worth?
Neil LaBute's bristling new comic drama puts the final ferocious cap on a trilogy of plays that began with The Shape of Things and Fat Pig. America's obsession with physical beauty is confronted headlong in this brutal and exhilarating work.
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Things We Said Today: Short Plays and Monologues
by Neil LaBute
Things We Said Today features the scripts for Neil LaBute’s groundbreaking Directv project 10x10―a series of short films written and directed by LaBute based on ten compelling original monologues, five each for men and women. Also included are five short plays displaying the power and scope of Neil LaBute’s creative vision. In Pick One, three white guys come up with a way to solve America’s problems; in The Possible one young woman seduces another’s boyfriend for an unexpected reason. Call Back features an actress and actor who spar about a past encounter that she, unnervingly, remembers much better than he does. Good Luck (In Farsi), “a pleasingly astringent study in competitiveness and vanity” (The New York Times) has two actresses pulling out all the stops in a preaudition psych out; and in Squeeze Play a father and his son’s baseball coach strike a mutually beneficial deal. Rounding out the collection are two monologues commissioned as part of Centerstage’s “My America” project.
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The Money Shot: A Play
by Neil LaBute
It’s been years since either one’s had a hit, but the latest movie by a hot-shot European director could change that. The night before filming a big scene (that will undoubtedly assure them a spot back on the pop culture radar), Karen, her partner Bev, Steve, and his aspiring actress wife Missy meet in order to make an important decision: how far will they let themselves go to keep from slipping further down the Hollywood food chain? Sexy, daring, darkly hilarious―and Neil LaBute’s first officially billed comedy―The Money Shot lands as sharp and hot as a paparazzo’s camera flash in a starlet’s eye.
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Some Girl(s): A Play
by Neil LaBute
Your career as a writer is blossoming, your beautiful, young fiancee is waiting to get married and rush off to Cancun by your side―so what is your natural reaction? Well, if you're a man, it's probably to get nervous and start calling up old girlfriends. And so begins a single man's odyssey through four hotel rooms as he flies across the country in search of the perfect woman (that he's already broken up with). Some Girl(s) is the latest work from Neil Labute, American theater's great agent provocateur. In grand LaBute fashion, this by turns outrageously funny and deadly serious portrait of the artist as a young seducer casts a truthful, hilarious light on a typical young American male as he wanders through the heart of darkness that is himself. This edition includes a deleted scene.
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Fat Pig: A Play
by Neil LaBute
Cow. Slob. Pig. How many insults can you hear before you have to stand up and defend the woman you love? Tom faces just that question when he falls for Helen, a bright, funny, sexy young woman who happens to be plus sized-and then some. Forced to explain his new relationship to his shallow (although shockingly funny) friends, finally he comes to terms with his own preconceptions of the importance of conventional good looks. Neil LaBute's sharply drawn play not only critiques our slavish adherence to Hollywood ideals of beauty but boldy questions our own ability to change what we dislike about ourselves.
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Reasons to Be Pretty Happy A Play
by Neil LaBute
In this essential American play, Neil LaBute concludes his brilliant and penetrating Reasons trilogy with perfect clarity and enormous heart, capturing and refracting that moment in his characters' lives--and in our own as well--when they finally land on a "pretty good" version of happiness.
After five years in New York City, Greg and Steph return to their hometown for their 20th high school reunion and to a dramatic encounter with Kent and Carly, the friends they left behind. Old secrets and new lies become increasingly difficult to hide as the evening (and the drinking) goes on.
With Reasons To Be Pretty Happy, award-winning playwright Neil LaBute revisits the characters first introduced in the Tony Award-nominated Reasons To Be Pretty and Reasons To Be Happy as they grapple with that eternal question: Have I become the person I wanted to be?
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In a Forest, Dark and Deep: A Play
by Neil LaBute
She's a college professor with a prim demeanor, and he's a carpenter with a foul mouth and violent streak. Betty has a history of promiscuity that Bobby won't let her forget, and from their first taunting exchanges there are intimations also of the history between them. Yet on the night when Betty urgently needs help to empty her cabin in the woods--the cabin she's been renting to a male student--she calls on Bobby. In this exhilarating play of secrets and sibling rivalry, which had its premiere in London's West End in 2011, Neil LaBute unflinchingly explores the dark territory beyond, as Bobby sneeringly says, "the lies you tell yourself to get by."
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Lovely Head and Other Plays
by Neil LaBute
Lovely Head and Other Plays is a collection from award-winning playwright Neil LaBute.
The title play rivetingly explores the relationship between a nervous older man and a glib young prostitute, as their evening together drives toward a startling conclusion. Also included is the one-act play The Great War, which looks at a divorcing couple and the ground they need to cross to reach their own end of hostilities; In the Beginning, which was written as a response to the Occupy movement and produced around the world in 2012-13 as part of Theatre Uncut; The Wager, the stage version of the film Double or Nothing starring Adam Brody; the two-handers A Guy Walks Into a Bar, Over the River and Through the Woods, and Strange Fruit; and two powerful new monologues, Bad Girl and The Pony of Love.
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Reasons to be Happy: A Play
by Neil LaBute
Reasons to Be Happy features the same four characters--Greg, Steph, Carly, and Kent--picking up their lives three years later, but in different romantic pairings as they each search desperately for that elusive object of desire: happiness. New York City's MCC Theater will produce the world premiere in May 2013.
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Some Velvet Morning: A Play
by Neil LaBute
He tells her he’s finally left his wife to be with her, news to Velvet since she hasn’t seen him in years and is now friends with Fred’s recently married son. Hopes dashed, Fred engages Velvet in a mesmerizing conversation brimming with passion, remorse, humor, and anger. As power shifts and tension mounts, the young and beautiful Velvet and the older, volatile Fred revisit a shared history, and the twisted heart of their relationship is slowly revealed in a stunning climax. In this provocative two-hander, Neil LaBute continues to explore the nuances of gender relationships, creating a powerful work of sharp and subtle contrasts.
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All The Ways to Say I Love You: Two Plays and One Short Story: Off-Broadway Edition
by Neil LaBute
In All The Ways To Say I Love You, Neil LaBute’s “haunting, heartrending” (AP) new play, Mrs. Johnson is a high school English teacher in a loving marriage. As she recounts her experiences with a favored student from her past, Mrs. Johnson slowly reveals the truth that is hidden just beneath the surface details of her life, in this riveting solo play about love, hard choices, and the cost of fulfilling an all-consuming desire. Two-time Tony winner Judith Light originated the role of Mrs. Johnson in a “full-throttle performance” (Time Out NY) for the twice-extended Off Broadway premiere, at MCC in fall 2016.Also included is All My White Sins Forgiven, the evocative one-act companion play that gives depth and context to All The Ways To Say I Love You. In this engrossing two-hander, Mrs. Johnson’s husband, Eric, and his friend Todd banter, shoot hoops, and work their way around to talking some truth about their lives, their marriages, their children, and their own secrets and dreams. Rounding out the volume and an inspiration for the two plays is the short story “With Hair of Hand-Spun Gold,” a masterfully crafted piece of prose that is pure Neil LaBute―as dark and timeless as any Grimm’s fairytale yet as chillingly modern as a teenage girl chatting with an anonymous new “friend” on the Internet.
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Woyzeck: A Play
by Neil LaBute
His girlfriend, Marie, by whom he’s fathered a child; Marie’s overpowering desire for the alluring Drum- Major; and the murderous outcome of this oppressive admixture of circumstances is without a doubt one of the bleakest works of world literature. It is also considered by many to mark the beginning of modern drama. In this powerful adaption, Neil LaBute embraces the glittering darkness of Woyzeck's violent, erotic, inhumane world and uncompromisingly makes it his own. From his opening in an operating theatre and then scene by macabre scene, LaBute imbues this classic with his singular intensity and moral vision, as he takes it to its nightmarish conclusion. Included in this volume is Neil LaBute’s provocative new monologue “Kandahar,” in which a soldier back from Afghanistan calmly explains his devastating actions of the day before. A gripping stand-alone piece, this short work is also a trenchant modern-day exploration of the potent and enduring themes of Woyzeck.
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Dracula: A Thriller in Two Acts
Before acclaimed playwright and filmmaker Neil LaBute became the creator and showrunner of Syfy’s hit series Van Helsing, he had already adapted Dracula for the stage—with a fierce female Van Helsing as the vampire hunter.
In this masterful adaptation, Neil LaBute brings a rich theatricality and his provocative way with language and story to the world of Count Dracula, Van Helsing, Jonathan Harker, and his beloved Mina—this time, with very much a mind of her own—infusing the classic gothic tale of terror, obsession, and pathos with a modern edge. Chilling yet stylish in its atmosphere, dark yet deeply human in its emotional impact, Neil LaBute’s Dracula: A Thriller in 2 Acts is a tribute to both LaBute’s dramatic vision and the timelessness of Stoker’s novel.
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How to Fight Loneliness: A Play
by Neil LaBute
Brad and Jodie need Tate to do them a favor. A really big favor. Brad is married to Jodie. Jodie went to school with Tate. Tate doesn’t trust Brad. Brad and Jodie are at a life-changing crossroads and struggling to make a monumental decision about their life and love, and Tate―just maybe―has been there before. In this timely, dark, and dazzling new play, Neil LaBute takes a penetrating, point-blank look at a couple confronting the hardest decision of their lives and the aftermath of that decision. In How To Fight Loneliness, Neil LaBute has written perhaps his most shocking, and also most tender, play yet.
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The Way We Get By A Play
by Neil LaBute
Slyly profound and irresistibly passionate, The Way We Get By is award-winning playwright Neil LaBute's audacious tale of a very modern romance--a sharp, sexy, fresh look at love and lust and the whole damn thing.
Two people have a very awkward encounter after spending one hot night together following a drunken wedding reception they attend. They wake up to a blurry morning where the rules of attraction, sex, and society are waiting for them before their first cup of coffee, leading them to ponder how much they really know about each other and how much they really care about what other people think.
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