Results by title

2 books match the query 'Ives, David'

cover of The School for Lies: A Play Adapted from Molière's The Misanthrope

The School for Lies

A Play Adapted from Molière's The Misanthrope

David Ives

Northwestern University Press, 2012

Adapted from Molière’s The Misanthrope, David Ives’s The School for Lies tells the comic tale of Frank, who shares with Molière’s Alceste a venomous hatred of the hypocrisy that surrounds him. Like his predecessor, Frank gets into trouble for insulting the work of a dreadful poet and falls in love with Celimene, a witty widow. In Ives’s madcap version, however, Celimene returns Frank’s affection because she wrongly believes him to be King Louis XIV’s bastard brother. Borrowing from Shakespeare, reality TV, and everything in between, The School for Lies is an inspired entertainment as well as a pointed study in self-delusion, all rendered in sparkling couplets.
[more]
cover of Venus in Fur: A Play

Venus in Fur

A Play

David Ives

Northwestern University Press, 2012

An unsettling drama, a playful comedy, and an exploration of gender roles and sexuality, Venus in Fur is a witty, dark look at the art of acting—onstage and off.

A young playwright, Thomas, has written an adaptation of the 1870 novel Venus in Fur by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (after whom the term “masochism” was coined); the novel is the story of an obsessive adulterous relationship between a man and the mistress to whom he becomes enslaved. At the end of a long day in which the actresses Thomas auditions fail to impress him, in walks Vanda, very late and seemingly clueless, but she convinces him to give her a chance. As they perform scenes from Thomas’s play, and Vanda the actor and Vanda the character gradually take control of the audition, the lines between writer, actor, director, and character begin to blur. 

 

[more]