Boris Vian was a French polymath: writer, poet, musician, singer, translator, critic, actor, inventor and engineer. He is best remembered today for his novels. Those published under the pseudonym Vernon Sullivan were bizarre parodies of criminal fiction, highly controversial at the time of their rele

Atmospheric, Bubblicious, Distorted, Ecstatic, Experimental, Funny, Hypnotic, Layered, Loose, Perceptual, Playful, Psychological, Sophisticated, Surreal, Wise assy, Witty

Anne Carson is a Canadian poet, essayist, translator, and a professor of Classics and comparative literature at the University of Michigan. Carson lived in Montreal for several years and taught at McGill University. She is reticent about her private life; the biography published in current editions

Baroque, Erotic, Feminist, Intimate, Open-ended, Playful, Polychromatic, Sophisticated, Spiritual, Sublime, Witty

When he joined the Stephen Joseph Theatre in the Round in 1957, Alan Ayckbourn was set on being an actor. Little did he know he would become one of England's most successful and well-respected playwrights; in fact, he would go on to become the first living playwright to be knighted since Noel Coward.

Clean, Contemporary plays, Domestic, Playful, Quirky, Witty

With names like "Run for Your Wife" and "Wife Begins at Forty," Cooney's plays are ready to pratfall easily into the puddle of "take my wife, please..." humor or to lollygag about the "garters-'n-boxers" school of comedy à la Benny Hill (where nothing is funnier than a dropped pair of drawers). Ho

Clown, Commedia dell'arte, Funny, Physical force, Physical theater, Playful, Profane