cover photo by Katherine Owens
This collection contains three full-length play, ESPERANZA RISING, ROMOLA AND NIJINSKY, and THE SNOW QUEEN, and some past poetry:
The Star Tribune (Minneapolis) named ESPERANZA RISING the Outstanding New Show of 2006.
“ESPERANZA is a story about the past
that pushes into the present. In the 1930s, a well-to-do Mexican adolescent is
cluelessly callous toward the hardships of the family’s household help. When her
landowner father dies, her life is upended. Esperanza travels several rungs down
in class, winding up in a U S migrant workers’ camp…
What makes ESPERANZA most winning is that a story so susceptible to bathos is
told without guile or artifice. What this little girl loses in privilege, she
gains in empathy and experience.”
Rohan Preston, Star Tribune
“…Lynne Alvarez’s THE SNOW QUEENa
delicate, perfumed script produced with exquisite artistry. The New York
playwright, who has been living in Dallas the last two years, has created a song
of innocence and experience. Youthful innocence suffers, no doubt, when it comes
up against the world’s cruelties. But it learns wisdom that way, if it chooses
to….
Perhaps some folks might find THE SNOW QUEEN just too rarified and artful to
constitute a good time. Magic theater isn’t for some. I pity them.”
Lawson Taitte, The Dallas Morning News
and about her poetry…
[This] is a book that is utterly
without precedent in the poetry of this country. It has its roots in the poetry
of Latin America, yet is violently and vividly the work of a poet in the United
States. The language makes it so, the language not exactly as spoken, yet with
the stabbing rhythms of passionate discourse among us. The book must be read as
the measure of a new and daring sensibility arisen in the midst of our culture,
already multifaceted and immense, yet this voice can be heard strong and true.
David Ignatow, Poet
“[These poems]…capture the
beauty and violence of passion… At her best in these poems, Lynne Alvarez is a
storyteller of remarkable skill….”
The Village Voice
PLAYS BY LYNNE ALVAREZ: LATER PLAYS & SELECTED POEMS
I S B N 0-88145-294-3, $16.95