"Seventeen-year-old Jim is having a really bad day. After getting up the nerve to tell his girlfriend, Rochelle, that he loves her, she asks him to help her poison her father. Is she joking? Just when it becomes clear that she's definitely not joking, Jim's mother wakes him up. It was all a dream! But Mom has bad news for him. Terrible news in fact. As the news becomes nightmarishly bad, Jim wakes up again. He's back with Rochelle, who tells him he fainted, and Dad comes home just in time for Rochelle to offer him a big glass of suspicious-looking milk. Now Jim isn't sure what's real and what's a dream, and every time he thinks he's got it figured out, his life takes another surprising left turn. A funny, spooky play about the nature of reality, Wake-Up Call starts as a nightmare and goes to places you'll never expect." -- Publisher website

"Renata and Maria have questions about their future. Who doesn't? But when Renata convinces Maria to hold a séance, the girls get more than they bargained for. They conjure up a mysterious figure who answers their questions but also tells them how he knows the answers: they're fictional. Renata and Maria are characters in a play called S.P.A.R., a play written by the mysterious man. He proves he's their maker by predicting the future, twisting reality and finally showing them the audience. Renata's not happy about being in S.P.A.R. The play becomes a contest of wills between author and character. But it's not a fair fight: after all, he has the script. And when Renata tries to enlist the audience's help, the author proves that the audience is fictional as well!" --

The one-act play stands apart as a distinct art form with some well known writers providing specialist material, among them Bernard Shaw, Tom Stoppard, Harold Pinter, Caryl Churchill. Alan Ayckbourn, Edward Albee and Tennesee Williams. There are also lesser-known writers with plenty of material to offer, yet sourcing one-act plays to perform is notoriously hard. This companion is the first book to survey the work of over 250 playwrights in an illuminating A-Z guide. Multiple styles, nationalities and periods are covered, offering a treasure trove of compelling moments of theatre waiting to be discovered. Guidance on performing and staging one-act plays is also covered as well as essential contact information and where to apply for performance rights. A chapter introducing the history of the one-act play rounds off the title as a definitive guide.

A cutting-edge survey of formal methods directed specifically at dealing with the deep mathematical problems engendered by the study of developing systems, in particular dealing with developing phase spaces, changing components, structures and functionalities, and the problem of emergence. Several papers deal with the modelling of particular experimental situations in population biology, economics and plant and muscle developments in addition to purely theoretical approaches. Novel approaches include differential inclusions and viability theory, growth tensors, archetypal dynamics, ensembles with variable structures, and complex system models. The papers represent the work of theoreticians and experimental biologists, psychologists and economists. The areas covered embrace complex systems, the development of artificial life, mathematics, computer science, biology and psychology.

The authors look to the laws of thermodynamics for answers to the questions of evolution, ecology, economics, and even life's origin.