Buying from the EU? Please read about shipping from the UK. Limited edition - 100 copies Calque Ideas provides an opportunity for writers to think aloud, using their own experiences and knowledge to approach topics in an accessible and attractive way. In this intimate essay, Dan O’Brien begins with an apparently simple question: does anybody truly want to see a political play? This provocation is then developed, unpicked, reorganised: what is a political play? What does it mean to think about politics in art? Who are writers writing for? These questions lead onto larger ideas of responsibility in general, and the initial starting point takes us jaggedly into a masterful investigation of what it means to create: how else do we discover the world except through asking questions about it? author: Dan O'Brien pages: 24pp Dan O’Brien is a playwright, poet, and nonfiction writer whose recognition for playwriting includes a Guggenheim Fellowship, two PEN America Awards, and for poetry the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize. His play Newtown is the recipient of the 2024 Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation’s Theatre Visions Fund Award. O’Brien’s poetry collections are Flying on Easter and Other Poems (Poetry London Editions), Survivor’s Notebook (Acre Books), Our Cancers (Acre Books), Scarsdale (CB Editions / Measure Press), New Life (CB Editions / Hanging Loose Press), and War Reporter (CB Editions / Hanging Loose Press). In 2021 a collection of O’Brien’s essays on playwriting, A Story That Happens, was published in the UK by CB Editions, and in the US by Dalkey Archive Press. In 2023 he published his memoir From Scarsdale: A Childhood and a collection of plays, True Story: A Trilogy, both with Dalkey Archive Press. He has taught playwriting at Princeton University, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and elsewhere. Originally from New York, O’Brien lives in Los Angeles with his wife and daughter. Excerpt in American Theatre Excerpt in The Arts Fuse Podcast: Day for Night with Caridad Svich BROWSE SIMILAR TITLES IN OUR CATALOGUE: Essay - More Non-Fiction from Calque
