Peace Plays: v. 2 (Modern Plays) - Softcover

This, the second anthology of peace plays, is selected and introduced once again by playwright Stephen Lowe. The plays reflect the growth of glasnost and world concern over the environment. "Peace Plays: One" was an anthology contemporary British playwrighting created in response to the events of the preceding ten years; "Peace Plays: Two" emerges from a new era of glasnost between the two superpowers and includes two plays each from the USA and USSR. American Richard Stayton's "After the First Death" is a short, poetic and painful "bunker" play whilst fellow American Arthur Kopit's "End of the World with Symposium to Follow" fuses autobiography with the thriller-detective genre to depict the slow dawning of awareness. "The Burden of Decision" by Fyodor Burlatsky - speechwriter and political adviser to both Khruschev and Gorbachev - places Kennedy centre-stage during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 and "Adam and Eve" by Mikhail Bulgakov was one of the first plays to envisage the end of the world through chemical and biological armaments.