This one-of-a-kind anthology features thirty-six hilarious short plays by major American playwrights and emerging new voices, all guaranteed to send readers and audiences into peals of laughter.

From the surrealistic wit of Steve Martin's "The Zig-Zag Woman" to the biting political satire of Steven Dietz's "The Spot," from Christopher Durang's wonderfully loopy "Wanda's Visit" to Shel Silverstein's supremely twisted "The Best Daddy," there's something in here to make everyone laugh. There are plays for casts of all sizes, from monologues to large ensembles, with diverse and challenging roles for actors of every age and type. Even the titles are funny: Mark O'Donnell's "There Shall Be No Bottom (a bad play for worse actors)," Elaine May's "The Way of All Fish," and Alan Ball's "Your Mother's Butt." A bonanza for theatergoers, performers, and comedy fans, Laugh Lines will bring down the house.

Eric Lane and Nina Shengold are editors of twelve contemporary play collections. Their other titles for Vintage Books include Plays for Actresses, Leading Women: Plays for Actresses II, Take Ten: New Ten-Minute Plays, Take Ten II: More Ten-Minute Plays, Under Thirty: Plays for a New Generation, and Talk to Me: Monologue Plays. For Viking Penguin, they edited The Actor’s Book of Contemporary Stage Monologues, The Actor’s Book of Scenes from New Plays, Moving Parts: Monologues from Contemporary Plays, The Actor’s Book of Gay and Lesbian Plays (Lambda Literary Award nominee), and Telling Tales: New One-Act Plays.

Nina Shengold received the ABC Playwright Award and the L.A. Weekly Award for Homesteaders, published by Samuel French. Her Romeo/Juliet, a five-actor adaptation of Shakespeare’s play, is published by Broadway Play Publishing. Her ten-minute plays have been performed at the Actors Theatre of Louisville and dozens of other theaters. Ms. Shengold won the Writers Guild Award and a GLAAD Award nomination for her teleplay Labor of Love, starring Marcia Gay Harden; other screenplays include Blind Spot, with Joanne Woodward and Laura Linney, Unwed Father, Double Platinum, and a flm adaptation of Jane Smiley’s Good Will. She is artistic director of the upstate New York theater company Actor’s & Writers. Her first novel, Clearcut, was published by Anchor Books.

Eric Lane is an award-winning playwright and filmmaker. Plays include Heart of the City, Times of War, Shellac, Cater-Waiter, and Dancing on Checkers’ Grave, which starred Jennifer Aniston. Mr. Lane has written and produced two short filims: First Breath and Cater-Waiter. For his work on TV’s Ryan’s Hope, he received a Writers Guild Award. Honors include the Berrilla Kerr Playwrighting Award, La Mama Playwright Development Award, numerous Yaddo fellowships, and a St. James Cavalier Centre for Creativity fellowship in Malta. Mr. Lane is an honors graduate of Brown University, and is artistic director of Orange Thoughts Productions, a not-for-profit theater and film company in New York City.