Letter from Anthology Editor

Chicago, IL — November 27, 2020 — This December marks a celebration for our company, for we’re releasing the first of a series of curated literary collections. American Theatre in the Twenty-First Century: Absurd, Symbolic & Poetic Short Plays is much more than a collection of scripts, for the playwrights broke the mold of what is expected in short stage plays, and an editor compiled a pleasing format that’s quickly adaptable for the stage beyond the page.

In order to get a closer look at this new series, let’s meet the team behind this collection. Shaun Vain compiled the anthology, wrote the introduction, and worked with each of the nine playwrights to find a fair way of equally representing each contributors’ work(s). However, Vain was in great company in selecting which plays would go into Volume 1 of Future Publishing House Anthology.

The review process was three-fold:

• A review committee read each play submitted for this first volume,
• they selected their favorite plays from the submissions,
• and each reviewer weighed in on which play was their personal favorite.

A review committee member (D.S.) writes:

This has been really fun, and I’m so glad you invited me to participate. … The top four were in a close struggle for first place, but Chalked is just so eloquent in expressing hard important truths. There’s a nice variety and timeliness among the submissions. A few could even be described as classic or timeless. There are tough issues and creepy mind-bending sci-fi. Anyway, I look forward to knowing what pieces ultimately make it into the anthology.

“These plays have been reviewed by dramaturgies, art critics, and theatre professionals in academia and in professional performance,” writes Shaun Vain, editor of American Theatre in the Twenty-First Century. “This is a truly remarkable collaborative theatre and literary experience, pinning to the page the absurd humor, symbolic metaphors, and poetic wit from a sample of the finest living playwrights.”

Several of the contributors to FPH’s first anthology are playwrights whose works appear around the world, in New York, London, Ukraine, and smaller cities too.

This is a truly remarkable collaborative theatre and literary experience, pinning to the page the absurd humor, symbolic metaphors, and poetic wit from a sample of the finest living playwrights.

— editor, S. Vain

“These plays are written by people who live for the expression of art and theatre in performance, especially fringe performance and festivals,” writes Vain. After pouring over the anthology, Vain created an index in order to help theatre companies, actors, and readers locate the perfect materials to suit their needs. Topics include a few of the following examples: Absurdism, Aliens, see Extraterrestrial life, Cannabis, Ethics, a list of Genres, Holy Bible, Hypertext, LBGTQ+, Monologues, Pietà (Michelangelo), Peptide nucleic acid, Pro-choice vs. pro-life, Workplace satire… and the list goes on for five pages.

Get Free Shipping on Your Order: Leading up to the December 2020 release of the premiere volume of A Future Publishing House Anthology Series, Future Publishing House offers free shipping for readers who order from this page of their website.

There’s a nice variety and timeliness among the submissions. A few could even be described as classic or timeless. There are tough issues and creepy mind-bending sci-fi.

— Review committee member, D.S.