Most Popular Books by Neil Labute

Lonely Planet: The world''s leading travel guide publisher* Since the ancient Greeks, actor''s have been society''s storytellers. And ever since Hollywood first left the backlot, these storytellers have been traveling to far-flung corners of the world to tell those tales. We decided to ask some of the most widely traveled people in the film industry to sit down and tell us their own stories - personal, inspiring, funny, embarrassing and human experiences from their time on the road. Lights, Camera ... Travel! includes 33 stories from screen stars including Alec Baldwin, Brooke Shields, Rolf de Heer, Paul Cox, Neil LaBute, Richard E Grant, Sandra Bernhard and Bruce Beresford. Edited by Andrew McCarthy and Don George About Lonely Planet: Started in 1973, Lonely Planet has become the world''s leading travel guide publisher with guidebooks to every destination on the planet, as well as an award-winning website, a suite of mobile and digital travel products, and a dedicated traveller community. Lonely Planet''s mission is to enable curious travellers to experience the world and to truly get to the heart of the places where they travel. TripAdvisor Travellers'' Choice Awards 2012 and 2013 winner in Favorite Travel Guide category ''Lonely Planet guides are, quite simply, like no other.'' - New York Times ''Lonely Planet. It''s on everyone''s bookshelves; it''s in every traveller''s hands. It''s on mobile phones. It''s on the Internet. It''s everywhere, and it''s telling entire generations of people how to travel the world.'' - Fairfax Media (Australia) *#1 in the world market share - source: Nielsen Bookscan. Australia, UK and USA. March 2012-January 2013 Important Notice: The digital edition of this book may not contain all of the images found in the physical edition.

Belinda and Cody Phipps appear to be a typical Midwestern couple: teenage sweethearts, children, luxurious home. Typical except that Cody is black -- "rich, black, and different," in the words of Belinda, who finds herself attracted to a former (white) classmate. As the battle for her affections is waged, Belinda and Cody frankly doubt the foundation of their initial attraction, opening the door wide to a swath of bigotry and betrayal. Staged on continually shifting moral ground that challenges our received notions about gender, ethnicity, and even love itself, THIS IS HOW IT GOES unblinkingly explores the myriad ways in which the wild card of race is played by both black and white in America. "Neil LaBute is the first dramatist since David Mamet and Sam Shepard -- since Edward Albee, actually -- to mix sympathy and savagery, pathos and power." --Donald Lyons, New York Post "LaBute [is] our American Aesop, a mad moral fabulist serving stiff tonic for our country''s sin-sick souls." --John Istel, American Theatre

Filthy Talk for Troubled Time is one of his earliest plays. A downbeat night at a topless bar exposes the gulf between the twitchy clientele and the waitresses who serve but despise them. The Mercy Seat examines a couple who, on the day after a world-changing atrocity, toy with exploiting it to start a new life. Some Girl(s) follows a young writer''s panicked retreat from his imminent wedding as he seeks out old girlfriends and opens new wounds, while in This Is How It Goes the breakdown of a seemingly successful marriage is complicated by submerged bigotry and hatred. The collection also includes two short plays about relationships in crisis - A Second of Pleasure and Helter Skelter - which are in equal part tender and chilling. Together these plays form a complex and compelling portrait of the sexes - sometimes warring, sometimes loving, but never fully at peace.

The title play, which had its American premiere at La MaMa in 2012, rivetingly explores the relationship between a nervous older man and a glib young prostitute, as their evening together drives toward a startling conclusion. Also included is the one-act play The Great War, which looks at a divorcing couple and the ground they need to cross to reach their own end of hostilities; In the Beginning, which was written as a response to the Occupy movement and produced around the world in 2012-13 as part of Theatre Uncut; The Wager, the stage version of the film Double or Nothing starring Adam Brody; the two-handers A Guy Walks Into a Bar, Over the River and Through the Woods, and Strange Fruit; and two powerful new monologues, Bad Girl and The Pony of Love.

Your Friends & Neighbors is a searing display of the war between the sexes, delivered with the kind of wit used by the great Restoration playwrights to expose the hypocrisies in male/female relationships. Neil Labute''s debut feature, in the company of men, was described by Variety as "a dark, probing, truly disturbing exploration of yuppie angst and male anxieties". In Your Friends & Neighbors, male anxiety is again on show, but in a much wider context, revealing the rabid desire of people-regardless of sex- to serve their own interests at any cost.

''LaBute takes us to shadowy places we don''t like to talk about, sometimes even to think about.'' Newsday Obsession with surface and secrets runs through this second collection of Neil LaBute''s work. The Shape of Things peels back the skin of modern-day relationships to ask how far someone might change themselves for love, or for art. In Fat Pig, a man confronts his friends'' - and his own - fixation with Hollywood ideals of beauty when he falls for a ''plus size'' young woman. In a Dark Dark House and In a Forest, Dark and Deep are twin tales of sibling conflict. In the first, estranged brothers must reconcile conflicting memories, after one asks for corroboration of childhood abuse. In the second, a man''s offer to help his sister clear out her cottage brings a terrible confession into the light. The Shape of Things ''What initially seems a touching study of student romance develops instead into a passionate discussion about the way art feeds on life.'' Daily Telegraph Fat Pig ''As large as Helen is, the tender heart of the play is easily twice as big.'' Variety In a Dark Dark House ''LaBute toys with expectations and takes pleasure in our discomfort... The play does lead to a pretty dark place - but the ending is not without hope.'' Daily Mail In a Forest, Dark and Deep ''It is billed as being about sibling rivalry, but in fact majors on far deeper, dangerous things: the yearning to be understood, female manipulation, and fascinated male disgust at a sister''s lurid sexuality.'' The Times

Neil LaBute''s Bash is a collection of three darkly brilliant one-act plays. In ''Medea Redux'', a woman tells of her complex and ultimately tragic relationship with her junior high-school English teacher. In ''Iphigenia in Orem'', a Utah businessman confides in a stranger in a Las Vegas hotel room, confessing to an especially chilling crime. In ''A Gaggle of Saints'', a young Mormon couple separately recount the violent events of an anniversary weekend in New York City. All three are unblinking portraits of the evils that are abroad in everyday life; each is distinguished by the raw and yet lyrical intensity that has become Neil Labute''s signature.

''LaBute takes us to shadowy places we don''t like to talk about, sometimes even to think about.'' Newsday Obsession with surface and secrets runs through this second collection of Neil LaBute''s work. The Shape of Things peels back the skin of modern-day relationships to ask how far someone might change themselves for love, or for art. In Fat Pig, a man confronts his friends'' - and his own - fixation with Hollywood ideals of beauty when he falls for a ''plus size'' young woman. In a Dark Dark House and In a Forest, Dark and Deep are twin tales of sibling conflict. In the first, estranged brothers must reconcile conflicting memories, after one asks for corroboration of childhood abuse. In the second, a man''s offer to help his sister clear out her cottage brings a terrible confession into the light. The Shape of Things ''What initially seems a touching study of student romance develops instead into a passionate discussion about the way art feeds on life.'' Daily Telegraph Fat Pig ''As large as Helen is, the tender heart of the play is easily twice as big.'' Variety In a Dark Dark House ''LaBute toys with expectations and takes pleasure in our discomfort... The play does lead to a pretty dark place - but the ending is not without hope.'' Daily Mail In a Forest, Dark and Deep ''It is billed as being about sibling rivalry, but in fact majors on far deeper, dangerous things: the yearning to be understood, female manipulation, and fascinated male disgust at a sister''s lurid sexuality.'' The Times

Against a glittering jazz-age backdrop, mistress of the house Julie and ambitious servant John face off in a gripping, night-long encounter. As the balance of power shifts often and dangerously---sometimes with exquisite subtlety, sometimes stark brutality---LaBute masterfully reinterprets Strindberg''s timeless erotic struggle between a man and a woman. This thrilling, essential Miss Julie, which had its world premiere at the Geffen Playhouse in 2013 with Lily Rabe as Julie, Logan Marshall-Green as John, and Laura Heisler as Kristine, superbly embodies both the passionate spirit of the original and the unflinching style of Neil LaBute.

The winner of the Film-makers'' Trophy for Best Dramatic Feature at the 1997 Sundance Film Festival, In the Company of Men is a black comedy about a psychological love triangle set within 1990s corporate culture.

Bash Three darkly brilliant one-act plays, unblinking portraits of the evils abroad in everyday life, first performed in 1999. Reasons to be Pretty Nominated for the Tony Award for Best Play. ''Neil LaBute at his best. It says things about love and betrayal that are rarely put on stage . . . The play has the transfixing nastiness that has made LaBute one of the most disturbing theatrical presences of the last decade. Yet it also has an unexpected ingredient: a beating heart.'' Observer Now collected with its sequel - Reasons to be Happy ''A richly entertaining shard of tragicomedy.'' Daily Telegraph

Filthy Talk for Troubled Time is one of his earliest plays. A downbeat night at a topless bar exposes the gulf between the twitchy clientele and the waitresses who serve but despise them. The Mercy Seat examines a couple who, on the day after a world-changing atrocity, toy with exploiting it to start a new life. Some Girl(s) follows a young writer''s panicked retreat from his imminent wedding as he seeks out old girlfriends and opens new wounds, while in This Is How It Goes the breakdown of a seemingly successful marriage is complicated by submerged bigotry and hatred. The collection also includes two short plays about relationships in crisis - A Second of Pleasure and Helter Skelter - which are in equal part tender and chilling. Together these plays form a complex and compelling portrait of the sexes - sometimes warring, sometimes loving, but never fully at peace.

"Obsession with surface and secrets runs through this second collection of Neil LaBute''s work. The Shape of Things peels back the skin of modern-day relationships to ask how far someone might change themselves for love, or for art"--About the play