Gruesome Playground Injuries

Rajiv Joseph is one of today's most acclaimed young playwrights. The recipient of numerous accolades, including an NEA award for Best Play and a Whiting Writers' Award, he is an artist to watch. This volume gathers together for the first time his three major works to date. His latest play, Gruesome Playground Injuries, charts the intersection of two lives using scars, wounds, and calamities as the mile markers to explore why people hurt themselves. Animals Out of Paper, a subtle yet bracing examination of the artistic impulse and those in its thrall, follows a world-famous origamist as she becomes the unwitting mentor to a troubled young prodigy. Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, is a darkly comedic work, a "philosophical and existential investigation into the Iraq War," (Los Angeles Times), lookin on as the lives of two American soldiers, an Iraqi translator, and a tiger intersect on the streets of Baghdad. -- from back cover.