Mark W. Lee's award-winning plays premiered in New York, London and Los Angeles. Four of these plays can be found in this collection along with essays that describe how - and why - each play was written.CALIFORNIA DOG FIGHTFour men and two women meet at an illegal dog fight on the Sacramento delta. Written in the 1980's, the play presaged the growing rage, resentment and violence that dominate American politics and culture in the twenty-first century.REBEL ARMIES DEEP INTO CHADTwo white journalists and two African prostitutes meet in a house outside Nairobi. Inspired by Lee's work as a foreign correspondent, the play shows how war challenges and compromises the easy moral conclusions of the Western world.PIRATESA lively comedy that reflects the clash between legend and academic history.

AN AMERICAN ROMANCEA comedy set at Brook Farm, the 1840 utopian experiment established by Transcendentalists in Western Massachusetts. Nathaniel Hawthorne and the writer Margaret Fuller deal with love, idealism, desire and the most crucial issue of all - who has to shovel manure.