Favorite playwright: Tom Stoppard
Why? I love when author's revel in language, and Stoppard is one of the best. And many of his works are as much about the process as they are the product.
Example: "Words don't deserve that kind of malarkey. They're innocent, neutral, precise, standing for this, describing that, meaning the other, so if you look after them you can build bridges across incomprehension and chaos. But when they get their corners knocked off, they're no good any more... I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little or make a poem which children will speak for you when you're dead."
- Henry, The Real Thing
Favorite works: The Real Thing, Arcadia, Jumpers, The Real Inspector Hound, Hapgood

The Lord of the Rings

 Watching the films and discussing the books recently has gotten me thinking about the variety of themes they address. Here's an initial list:
 ö the nature of good and evil
 ø choice and free will
 ö grief
 ø men and women
 ö children and parents
 ø possession by evil spirits
 ö temptation, dual natures of humans
 ø treatment of nature
 ö saving or helping others
 ø courage and strength
 ö loyalty and trust
 ø faith in the unseen
 ö individuals as instruments of a larger will
 ø journeys
 ö storytelling
 ø comfort and home
 ö the use and abuse of power
 ø industry and agriculture

Favorite playwright: William Shakespeare  
Why? Most people won't need an explanation for liking Bill. Whether he wrote them or not, we've still got a set of works attributed to this man that are beautiful, penetrating, highly flexible, and a joy to speak and read.
Example: asdfasdf (Hamlet project) 

Favorite works: Hamlet, King Lear, Twelfth Night, Henry VI, Richard II, Comedy of Errors

O t h e r f a v o r i t e p l a y s :

Edward Albee: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? David Auburn: Proof
Bertolt Brecht: Galileo, Mother Courage and Her Children, The Good Person of Sezchuan,  
The Threepenny Opera
Michael Frayn: Noises Off, Democracy
Brian Friel: Translations
Anton Chekhov: The Cherry Orchard, Three Sisters
Caryl Churchill: A Number, Top Girls
Complicite: Mneumonic, The Elephant Vanishes
Arlene Hutton: As It Is In Heaven 
Marie Jones: Stones in His Pockets
Kenneth Lonergan: Lobby Hero
David Mamet: Edmund
Martin McDonagh: The Beauty Queen of Leenane, Lonesome West
Frank McGuiness: Someone Who'll Watch Over Me
Edna St. Vincent Millay: Conversation at Midnight
Arthur Miller: Death of a Salesman
Eugene O'Neill: Mourning Becomes Electra, A Long Day's Journey Into Night, The Iceman Cometh
Harold Pinter: The Dumb Waiter, The Caretaker, Betrayal
The Presnyakov Brothers: Playing the Victim
Yazmina Reza: Life X3, Art
Johannes von Saaz: Death and the Ploughman
Peter Shaffer: Equus
Simon Stephens: On the Shore of the Wide World, Country Music
Shelagh Stephenson: An Experiment with an Air Pump
Polly Teale: After Mrs. Rochester
August Wilson: The Piano Lesson

F a v o r i t e P l a y

Copenhagen

by Michael Frayn

Why? On the surface, a very talky play, but one that contains very strong action within the dialogue. The characters (based on real life) are incredibly detailed, and the dialogue is so compelling that anyone, even someone not interested in the theatre, quantum physics, or World War II history will be drawn in.

Example: 

One favorite playwright: Samuel Beckett
Why? He's a perpetually mysterious and intriguing playwright, the subject of much debate about the role of the playwright
Example: “Perhaps my best years are gone. When there was a chance of happiness. But I wouldn’t want them back. Not with the fire in me now. No. I wouldn’t want them back.”
 - Krapp,  Krapp’s Last Tape
Favorite works: Waiting for Godot, Krapp's Last Tape, Ohio Impromptu, Catastrophe