Neil LaBute is arguably the most challenging, provocative, and acclaimed playwright of his generation. In works like bash, The Shape of Things, Fat Pig, and reasons to be pretty, he superbly engages with such themes as men and women, sex and power, deception and manipulation, with the humane sensibility of an artist who, as John Lahr wrote in The New Yorker, "does not trivialize darkness but treats it with proper awe."