Rajiv Joseph is one of today’s most acclaimed young playwrights. The winner of numerous awards, 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.
Included herein are his latest play, Gruesome Playground Injuries, which charts the intersection of two lives using scars, wounds, and calamity as the mile markers to explore why
people hurt themselves to gain another’s love and the cumulative effect of such damage; Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, a philosophical and existential investigation into the Iraq
War” (Los Angeles Times), a darkly comedic drama that looks on as the lives of two American soldiers, an Iraqi translator, and a tiger intersect on the streets of Baghdad; and
Animals Out of Paper, a subtle, elegant, yet bracing examination of the artistic impulse and those in its thrall. The play follows a world-famous origamist as she becomes the unwitting
mentor to a troubled young prodigy, even as she must deal with her own loss of inspiration.
