cover photo by Katherine Owens
this collection contains three full-length plays:
ESPERANZA RISING
ROMOLA AND NIJINSKY
THE SNOW QUEEN
and some past poetry
ESPERANZA RISING:
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
world premiere at Children's Theater Company, Minneapolis
5+M, 6+F
read the first two scenes of the play on line
ROMOLA AND NIJINSKY:
While the dance
world celebrated Vaslav Nijinsky’s meteoric rise to fame in the early 1900s, few
were privy
to the private side of this creative genius. This bold new play explores
Nijinsky’s shipboard courtship of,
and marriage to, Romola DePulsky, a relationship that would span thirty years,
weathering his exile and
frequent bouts of madness.
originally produced by Primary Stages, New York City
5 M 4 F
read the first 3 scenes of the play on line
THE SNOW QUEEN:
“…Lynne Alvarez’s
THE SNOW QUEEN—a
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
originally produced at the Undermain Theater, Dallas
4+M, 3+F
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 978-0-88145-394-2
$19.95