As we’ve often noted, it’s helpful to read collections around a central theme or style, or a group of plays by the same author. For one thing, you may find that what attracted you to one play is even more evident in another script. And even if you don’t choose a different script, reading through collections can give you a better feel for recurrent themes, character types, symbols and language.

A good example is a new collection by Richard Foreman, an award-winning playwright-director hailed by Ben Brantley of The New York Times as “the top shaman in America’s experimental theater.” Indeed, Paradise Hotel And Other Plays reaffirms Foreman’s status as the reigning philosopher/vaudevillian of the New York avant-garde. In addition to six new plays—Paradise Hotel, The Universe, Permanent Brain Damage, Risk It! Risk It!, Pearls For Pigs and Benita Canova (the last two have been Obie recipients for Best Play), this collection also boasts two short, but powerful essays on Foreman’s unique approach to the art of playwriting. [ISBN 1-58567-015-4, $19.95, Overlook Press]

If Foreman is the king of Off Broadway, then Charles Busch is the queen. Renowned for weaving popular culture, wicked camp humor and biting social satire into uproarious (and bizarre) theatrical pieces, Busch’s work can be savored in The Tale Of The Allergist’s Wife And Other Plays. The collection includes Vampire Lesbians Of Sodom, Psycho Beach Party, The Lady In Question and Red Scare On Sunset, all of which Busch has written and performed in (often in drag). The Tale Of The Allergist’s Wife is his most recent—a hilarious comedy about a self-absorbed Upper West Side doctor’s wife whose world is shaken when a childhood friend makes an unexpected visit and changes her life—for better or worse. [ISBN 0-8021-3785-7, $14.50, Grove Press]

When German writer Heinrich von Kleist died a suicide in 1811 at the age of 34, he left behind a body of work. While small in quantity, it is as fascinating and controversial as anything ever written. You can judge for yourself in Heinrich Von Kleist: Three Major Plays, edited and translated by Carl R. Mueller. Kleist’s favorite themes are justice and revenge, revolution and social change, and these are very much on display in The Prince Of Homburg, The Broken Jug, and Amphitryon. Mueller does an outstanding job of conveying the beauty of Kleist’s literary style, while creating performable texts. [ISBN 1-57525-230-9, $19.95, Smith and Kraus]

Three Dublin Plays, by Sean O’Casey, which includes three of the Irish playwright’s greatest works, mirror the lives of the Dublin poor of the early twentieth century—from the tenement dwellers in The Shadow Of A Gunman and Juno And The Paycock to the bricklayer, street vendor and charwoman in The Plough And The Stars. In all three, he conveys eloquently the details of his characters’ thoughts and actions, as well as the terrors—large and small—posed by the constant threat of political violence. [ISBN 0-57119-552-0, $14, Faber and Faber]

Born in 1956, Martin Crimp is among the most successful British playwrights and translators of his generation, whose work demonstrates a style that is harsh, elegant and sardonic. These qualities are apparent in Martin Crimp: Plays One, which includes Dealing with Clair (in which a routine real estate deal results in a mysterious assault on the agent), and The Treatment, about the fantasies, sexual and otherwise, of the young and not so young in New York’s Tribeca, as well as Getting Attention and Play With Repeats. Crimp’s work is often disturbing, but worth paying a visit. [ISBN 0-57120-345-0, $17, Faber and Faber]

Unknown to many, Marina Carr writes plays that are darkly comic, often surreal examinations of family and relationships. Praised in Ireland for the beauty and uniqueness of her language, Carr is now making a name for herself in this country. A good introduction to her work is Marina Carr Plays 1, a collection that includes Low In The Dark, The Mai, Portia Coughlan, and By The Bog of Cats. As The Observer noted, Carr “is at once gentle and raucous…capable of articulating deep-seated woes and resentments in a manner you rarely find outside O’Neill.” [ISBN 0-57120-011-7, $17, Faber and Faber]

Definitely not unknown is Tom Stoppard, but two new collections of his work are especially welcome, since they provide an overview of the playwright’s considerable talent. Tom Stoppard Plays 4 includes Dalliance, Undiscovered Country, Rough Crossing, On The Razzle, and The Seagull. [ISBN 0-57119-750-7, $16, Faber and Faber]. Tom Stoppard Plays 5 includes Arcadia, The Real Thing, Night And Day, Indian Ink, and Hapgood. [ISBN 0-57119-751-5, $17, Faber and Faber]

For a quarter of a century, the Humana Festival Of New American Plays, presented by the Actors Theatre of Louisville, has been the place to experience the very best in new plays and performances. Thirty-one playwrights are represented in Humana Festival 2000: The Complete Plays, including Stephen Belber, whose play Tape takes a hard look at the issue of taking responsibility for past actions. More intriguing, perhaps, is Back Story. Based on a story by Joan Ackermann, this is a collaborative project by 17 dramatists who wrote three scenes and 16 monologues for the play’s two characters, a brother and sister whose relationship evolves over the years. [ISBN 1-57525-226-0, $19.95, Smith & Kraus]