This is the second volume in a series that presents plays by Sweden's greatest living playwright in English.
Lars Norén is generally considered Sweden's greatest playwright since August Strindberg. He has written about 75 plays that combine humor, a powerful emotional impact and the search for new forms of expression, which are regularly performed throughout the Nordic and European countries.
Although his work has been translated into various languages for the stage, we are exclusively publishing Norén's plays in book format in English-a project started in spring 2013 with Two Plays: And Give Us the Shadows and Autumn and Winter. This volume includes:
. Demons (1982), a very dark comedy that is an expressionist take on Albee's A Delicate Balance and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, set in a Stockholm apartment on the eve of a funeral;
. Act (2000), about a power struggle between a female terrorist on a hunger strike and the doctor who tries to make her eat again, set in a German prison; and
. Terminal 3 (2006), a beautiful, sparse play set in a hospital waiting room where a young couple is there to welcome the birth of their first baby and a middle-age couple is there to identify their dead son.
Translator Marita Lindholm Gochman was born in Sweden and came to America in 1964, where she has had a rich theatrical career. In 1985, she translated her first Norén play into English, The Last Supper, and since then has worked with him on 25 of his plays-making her Norén's foremost English language translator. Since 1987 Ms. Gochman has served as a board member of Circle in the Square, The International Theatre Institute, and The Signature Theatre.
"Lars Norén, regarded by many as the greatest Swedish playwright since Strindberg, has dealt with the love-hate relationships of modern dysfunctional families in emotionally powerful and sombre plays spiced with absurd humour." -Encyclopedia Britannica Online
"He has made the present time our home and exposed the anxiety beneath the surface of the welfare state." -Per Wastberg, former chairman of International PEN and editor-in-chief of Sweden's largest daily newspaper
