Broadway Biographies

Fear grips many American actors and directors faced with the opportunity to perform Shakespeare live. The challenges of Elizabethan British speech patterns, the thought of using verse for hours, the debate over staging a period piece versus "updating" the Bard of Avon-all can cause psychogenic trauma on this side of the Atlantic. In Shakespeare for American Actors and Directors (Limelight Editions, April 2013, $14.99), Aaron Frankel defines and asserts the acting tools by which American acto...

Inspired by Arthur Wooten's life, Dizzy is a unique read in that it marries two genres: an exciting backstage show business tale coupled with a frightening medical drama. Angie Styles, a beloved Broadway star, is struck down at the height of her career by a mysterious disease and is forced to reexamine her life and the people in it as she fights to survive. "Dizzy is a wonderfully told story with such great heart and humor." - Peter Gregus, Broadway actor, writer, director, currently starr...

Dress Circle Publishing announces the release of Showbiz, A Novel, the debut novel from award winning Broadwayproducer Ruby Preston. This Broadway beach read offers a fictionalized account of opening night intrigue, backstage romances, Broadway gossip, and colorful characters that inhabit American musical theater. Showbiz, A Novel is available on Kindle and paperback at Amazon.com, Nook, iTunes and the Drama Book Shop. Showbiz, A Novel follows Scarlett Savoy, the under-appreciated apprentic...

Thornton Wilder: A Life, the first biography of the playwright and novelist since 1983, is also the first to be based on thousands of pages of letters, journals, manuscripts, and other documentary evidence of Wilder's life, work, and times. For more than a decade, biographer Penelope Niven has worked with unprecedented access to Wilder's papers, including his family's private journals and records, searching for the secrets that illuminate Wilder's public life and work, as well as the hidden inn...

The best-selling biographer of Katharine Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor tells the electrifying story of how Barbra Streisand transformed herself into the greatest star of her era, etching �an indelible portrait of the artist as a young woman� (Publishers Weekly). In 1960, she was a seventeen-year-old Brooklyn kid with plenty of talent but no connections and certainly no money; her mother brought her soup to make sure she stayed fed as she took acting classes and scraped out a living. Just four...

Few musicals have had the impact of Lerner and Loewe's timeless classic My Fair Lady. Sitting in the middle of an era dominated by such seminal figures as Rodgers and Hammerstein, Frank Loesser, and Leonard Bernstein, My Fair Lady not only enjoyed critical success similar to that of its rivals but also had by far the longest run of a Broadway musical up to that time. From 1956 to 1962, its original production played without a break for 2,717 performances, and the show went on to be adapted into...

Over the last century the New York Times’s six leading critics—Brooks Atkinson, Howard Taubman, Clive Barnes, Walter Kerr, Frank Rich, and Ben Brantley—have offered the most authoritative and influential commentary on the Broadway musical. This definitive volume includes the original reviews of the 119 most important , selected by current chief theater critic Ben Brantley and accompanied by photographs from each show’s first production as well as celebrated revivals. From the golden age of the ...

Celebrated actress Ruthie Henshall has starred on Broadway and the West End in Chicago, Les Misérables, Cats, and Oliver! among others. She brings her extraordinary knowledge and personal experiences to this insider account of how to make it in this very tough business. An essential guide to turning dreams into reality.

“Blue Moon, ” “Where or When, ” “The Lady Is a Tramp,” “My Funny Valentine,” “Isn’t It Romantic?,” “My Romance,” “There’s a Small Hotel,” “Falling in Love with Love,” “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered”—lyricist Lorenz Hart, together with composer Richard Rodgers, wrote some of the most memorable songs ever created. More than half a century after their collaboration ended, Rodgers & Hart songs are indispensable to the repertoire of nightclub singers everywhere. A Ship Without a Sail is the stor...

Transgendered playwright, performer, columnist, and sex worker Nina Arsenault has undergone more than sixty plastic surgeries in pursuit of a feminine beauty ideal. In TRANS(per)FORMING Nina Arsenault, Judith Rudakoff brings together a diverse group of contributors, including artists, scholars, and Arsenault herself to offer an exploration of beauty, image, and the notion of queerness through the lens of Arsenault’s highly personal brand of performance art. Illustrated throughout with photograp...

Chosen by theater professionals for their compelling stories and rich characters, these 40 female monologues have been culled from the most important and entertaining plays of the last decade. Each piece, from the deeply emotional to the scathingly hilarious, is accompanied by context from the play it comes from, past production information, and helpful commentary from professionals who previously performed the piece. Professional and amateur actors, acting students, and drama teachers will find...

The theatre director is one of the most critical roles in a successful drama company, yet there are no formal qualifications required for entry into this profession. This practical guide for emerging theatre directors answers all the key questions from the very beginning of your career to key stages as you establish your credentials and get professionally recognized. It analyzes the director's role through relationships with the actors, author, designer, production manager and creative teams an...

Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1840. Excerpt: ... LECTURE XII. Comparison of the English and Spanish theatres.--Spirit of the romantic drama--Shakspeare.--His age and the circumstances of his life.--How far costume is necessary, or may be dispensed with.--Shakspeare the greatest drawer of characters.--Vindication of the genuineness of his pathos.--Play on words.-- M...

Shakespeare, Cervantes, Middleton and Fletcher. The giants of 16th-century literature are all involved in the mystery surrounding Cardenio; a play 'lost' for centuries, which many believe to be the work of England's greatest dramatist. With his incredible passion for, and understanding of, the work of William Shakespeare, director and author Gregory Doran takes the reader on a unique journey; a fascinating search through the fog of literary history for a glint of dramatic gold, and a thrilling a...

Updated it its 8th edition, Mastering Public Speaking equips readers with a firm grounding in the “hows” and “whys” of public speaking by providing an ideal balance of theory and skills while placing important emphases on critiquing, ethics, and critical thinking. Written in a casual, lively style and clearly organized, the eighth edition of Mastering Public Speaking builds on its previous success. The first public speaking book to devote an entire chapter to ethics, the eighth edition continue...

Most readers nowadays encounter the plays of Aristophanes in the classroom, not the theater. Yet the “father of comedy” wrote his plays for the stage, not as literary texts. Many English translations of the plays were written decades ago, and in their outdated language they fail to capture the dramatic liveliness of the original comedies. Here Michael Ewans offers new and lively translations of three of Aristophanes’ earliest surviving plays: Acharnians, Knights, and Peace. While remaining fa...

Scene Design: Rendering and Media is intended to help students or practitioners improve their skills at making finished renderings of scene designs for theater. The book demonstrates the process of creating the renderings through real world methods and techniques. Chapters are dedicated to a detailed discussion of various tools including drawing, light and shadow, color mixing, painting, figures, and other media, and the book is rife with colorful and inspirational examples.

The Wild West was popular with American audiences long before the appearance of the Hollywood western. From 1829 to 1881, playgoers throughout the nation applauded frontier dramas that celebrated conventional American values like rugged individualism and the ideology of Manifest Destiny. Yet, as Pioneer Performances shows, a more subversive cultural agenda often worked within the orthodox framework of this popular drama. Drawing on a range of plays and public entertainments, Matthew Rebhorn unc...

Get professional techniques usually known only by Hollywood makeup artists in this full-color, comprehensive book from accomplished makeup pros Gretchen Davis and Mindy Hall. The two come to you with impressive backgrounds in film and television industries--their projects have included Pearl Harbor, Rent, Stuart Little, and The Nanny Diaries, and Mindy Hall is fresh off her Academy Award win for her work on 2009's Star Trek. This new edition of The Makeup Artist Handbook offers even more illustr...

In Rehearsal is a clear and accessible how-to approach to the rehearsal process. Author Gary Sloan brings more than thirty years' worth of acting experience to bear on the question of how to rehearse both as an individual actor and as part of the team of professionals that underpins any successful production. Interviews with acclaimed actors, directors, playwrights, and designers share a wealth of knowledge on dynamic collaboration. The book is divided in to three main stages, helping the re...

Wonder is a highly ambivalent word and idea which can denote woe, horror, or terror on one hand and delight, jubilation, or ecstasy on the other. In the first part of this book, Adam Max Cohen embraces the many meanings of wonder in order to challenge the generic divides between comedy, tragedy, history, and romance to suggest that Shakespeare's primary goal in crafting each of his play worlds was the evocation of one or more varieties of wonder. In the second part of this book, seven esteemed ...

Exploring the relationship between dramatic language and its theatrical aspects, Reading Modern Drama provides an accessible entry point for general readers and academics into the world of contemporary theatre scholarship. This collection promotes the use of diverse perspectives and critical methods to explore the common theme of language as well as the continued relevance of modern drama in our lives. Reading Modern Drama offers provocative close readings of both canonical and lesser-known ...

Although Jane Hading (1859–1940), Lily Elsie (1886–1962), and Billie Burke (1884–1970) gained fame as stage actresses, their popular appeal also rested on their ability to cultivate a glamorous appearance. Their careers illustrate the early transformation of actresses into marketable commodities whose celebrity status depended on the consumption of their images. This celebrity, in turn, was used to market an array of beauty and fashion goods to women striving to emulate them. The three women ...

In early modern Europe medicine and theatre were often regarded as part of the same popular culture. Itinerant medical 'quacks' and troupes of actors were both integral parts of everyday life, each drawing upon theatricality to attract customers and promote their services. In this study, the writings of three renowned physicians - the Swiss Platter brothers and their Austrian colleague Guarinonius - are used to explore the often neglected interfaces between healing and performance. Their descrip...

Oedipus Rex is the greatest of the Greek tragedies. The story of the mythological king, who is doomed to kill his father and marry his mother, has resonated in world culture for almost 2,500 years. But Sophocles’ drama as originally performed was much more than a great story—it remains a superb poetic script and exciting theatrical experience, now faithfully brought to life in this English translation and audiobook. David Mulroy’s brilliant verse rendition of Oedipus Rex recaptures the aes...

Between 1930 and 1960, popular female dramatists, including Paola Riccora, Anna Bonacci, Clotilde Masci, and Gici Ganzini Granata, set the stage for a new generation of feminist theatre and the development of contemporary Italian women’s theatre as a whole. Now largely forgotten, the lives and works of these dramatists are reintroduced into the scholarly conversation in Italian Women’s Theatre, 1930–1960. Following a general introduction, the book presents a selection of dramatic works, rounded...

Now in its 67th year, Theatre World is the most comprehensive record of the theatrical season-Broadway, Off-Broadway, and Off-Off-Broadway, including listings for over 60 regional companies. Detailing more than 2,000 productions, each entry includes photos, a complete cast listing, producers, directors, authors, composers, opening and closing dates, song titles, and plot synopses. Theatre World also features the year's obituaries, a listing of all nominees and winners of the major theatrical aw...

Shakespeare scholar Nick de Somogyi draws together all the set pieces such as "All the world's a stage," Hamlet's encounters with the Players, and Bottom's amateur dramatics, along with less well-known but equally revealing passages. Interspersed throughout are insights into theater practices from Shakespeare's contemporaries.

What one of the world's greatest dramatists had to say about the theater. Collected here in Stephen Mulrine's vivid translations, these writings reveal Anton Chekhov's many and varied insights into the way theater works – and how best to realize his own intentions as a theater writer.

"The Afterlife of Ophelia presents Ophelia in a broader and more comprehensive range of contexts than previous scholarship and forges connections among fields that are typically pursued as separate lines of inquiry within Shakespeare studies, including: film and new media studies; theatre and performance studie; historicist and contextual perspectives; and studies of popular culture"--

Say Lynn Redgrave was your favorite aunt, or Dave Oyelowo was your favorite uncle, and you sat down together and asked him or her to give you their honest advice and guidance. That same advice and insider knowledge, delivered with the same sense of honesty and intimacy, is what readers will gain from Now You Tell Me! 12 Actors Give the Best Advice They Never Got. This book cuts 20 years off the learning curve of anyone who wants to go into acting and fascinates anyone interested in the entert...

"Focusing on Jews and Gentiles who defied the Nazis by resisting decrees and orders, protesting Nazi genocidal policies, or rescuing Jews, Plunka argues that drama is the ideal art form to revitalize the collective memory of Holocaust resistance. Drama of and about the Holocaust can be staged worldwide, thereby introducing the Shoah to diverse audiences. Moreover, theater affects us emotionally, subliminally, or intellectually (sometimes simultaneously) in a direct way (between actor and audienc...

Identifies, illuminates, and complicates ecocritical concerns as they relate to theatre and performance.

Even as actresses become increasingly marginalized by Hollywood, French cinema is witnessing an explosion of female talent—a Golden Age unlike anything the world has seen since the days of Stanwyck, Hepburn, Davis, and Garbo. In France, the joy of acting is alive and well. Scores of French actresses are doing the best work of their lives in movies tailored to their star images and unique personalities. Yet virtually no one this side of the Atlantic even knows about them. Viewers who feel shortc...

"Piscator is the greatest theatre man of our time." Bertolt Brecht Judith Malina and The Living Theatre have been icons of political theatre for over six decades. What few realise is that she originally studied under one of the giants of twentieth century culture, Erwin Piscator, in his Dramatic Workshop at The New School in New York. Piscator founded the Workshop after emigrating to New York, having collaborated with Brecht to create "epic theatre" in Germany. The Piscator Notebook docum...

Following the ethos and ambition of the Shakespeare NOW! series, and harnessing the energy, challenge and vigour of the 'minigraph' form, Shakespeare and I is a provocative appeal and manifesto for a more personal form of criticism. A number of the most exciting and authoritative writers on Shakespeare examine and scrutinise their deepest, most personal and intimate responses to Shakespeare's plays and poems, to ask themselves if and how Shakespeare has made them the person they are. Their resp...

For any lover of Shakespeare, the thought of time-traveling back to London to see one of his plays at the Globe represents the ultimate theatrical fantasy. The look and feel of Shakespeare's London, the streets, shops, and churches the poet would have visited; the bookstalls where he found source material; the objects that appeared on his stages or sparked his imagination--what were they like? Shakespeare: Staging the World presents an extraordinary collection of objects that evoke London in...

Applause is proud to continue the series that for over 70 years has been the standard of excellence for one-act plays in America. As previous series editor Ramon Delgado wrote in his introduction to The Best American Short Plays of 1989, the choice of entries for each edition has been based on the same goal: "to include a balance among three categories of playwrights: 1) established playwrights who continue to practice the art and craft of the short play, 2) emerging playwrights whose record of...

Argues that performance is a crucial way of understanding the affective intercultural impact of the disappearance of John Franklin’s Northwest Passage expedition in 1845.

A wide-ranging, inspiring documentary history of the American theater movement as told, at the time of its making, by the visionaries who goaded it into being. This anthology collects over forty essays, manifestos, letters, and speeches that are each introduced and placed in historical context by the noted writer and arts commentator Todd London, who spent nearly a decade assembling this collection. The founding visions of theaters from across the country are represented here, including: Arena ...

Before "Fred and Ginger," there was "Fred and Adele," a show-business partnership and cultural sensation like no other. In our celebrity-saturated era, it's hard to comprehend what a genuine phenomenon these two siblings from Omaha were. At the height of their success in the mid-1920s, the Astaires seemed to define the Jazz Age. They were Gershwin's music in motion, a fascinating pair who wove spellbinding rhythms in song and dance. In this book, the first comprehensive study of their theatr...

In Marlene, the legendary Hollywood icon is vividly brought to life, based on a series of conversations with the star herself and with others who knew her well. In the mid-1970s Charlotte Chandler spoke with Marlene Dietrich in Dietrich’s Paris apartment. The star’s career was all but over, but she agreed to meet because Chandler hadn’t known Dietrich earlier, “when I was young and very beautiful.” Dietrich may have been retired, but her appearance and her celebrity—her famous mystique—were as i...

Lionel Bart was a writer and composer of British pop music and musicals, best known for creating the book, music and lyrics for Oliver! He also wrote the famous songs Living Doll (Cliff Richard) and From Russia With Love (Matt Munroe).He was a millionaire aged thirty in the Sixties, bankrupt in the Seventies and died in 1999.In this first revealing biography, the authors gained exclusive access to Bart's personal archives - his unfinished autobiography, his letters and scrapbooks. They detail ho...

This exciting new work argues for the exploration of drama as a conduit to deep emotional learning that has the ability to change the somatic identity of performers and audiences alike. Rokotnitz suggests that the preference for reciprocity exhibited by human physiological systems also extends into psychological and cognitive processes. Modeling her epistemological inquiry upon the paradigms instantiated by our biological architecture, she argues that effective knowledge acquisition and interper...