Broadway Books Database

Unsinkable is the definitive memoir by film legend and Hollywood icon Debbie Reynolds. Actress, comedienne, singer, and dancer Debbie Reynolds shares the highs and lows of her life as an actress during Hollywood’s Golden Age, anecdotes about her lifelong friendship with Elizabeth Taylor and her experiences as the foremost collector of Hollywood memorabilia, and intimate details of her marriages and family life with her children, Carrie and Todd Fisher. A story of heartbreak, hope, and sur...

Fear grips many American actors and directors faced with the opportunity to perform Shakespeare live. Their tongues twist at the first trauma: To Brit or not to Brit, that is the question. Whether tis nobler to stick to the kings English, or opt out and go all US. The thought of using verse for hours makes them dizzy. Iambic pentameter: Its not to fight, but to welcome. Its the God-given inherent beat of spoken Englishoops, American. And they go into a psychogenic trauma just considering the is...

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...

A decade-long collaboration between three-time Academy Award® winner Steven Spielberg and Pulitzer Prize winner Tony Kushner, Lincoln is a revealing drama that focuses on the 16th President’s tumultuous final months in office. Having just won re-election in a country divided, Lincoln pursues a course of action designed to end the war, unite the country and abolish slavery. With the moral courage and fierce determination to succeed, his choices during this critical moment will change the fate of...

Theatre Communications Group (TCG) is pleased to announce the publication of the newest play by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Mamet: The Anarchist. Just having completed its world premiere on Broadway under the direction of the playwright and starring Patti LuPone and Debra Winger, Mr. Mamet’s work is also currently represented on Broadway with the revival of his award-winning Glengarry Glen Ross starring Al Pacino and Bobby Cannavale. “Mamet remains the American theatre’s most ur...

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...

Hard Times tells the story of the adult musical in 1970s New York City. Featuring strong sexual content, frequent nudity, and simulated sexual activity, adult musicals were cheap to produce, and even the ones that got the most scathing reviews usually made money. Author Elizabeth Wollman illustrates how they both drew from and reflected aspects of American culture at a particularly tumultuous time.

Show Boat draws on exhaustive archival research to tell the story of how Jerome Kern, Oscar Hammerstein II, and a host of directors, choreographers, producers, and performers--among them Paul Robeson--made and remade the most important musical in Broadway history.

Melding a poetic dreamscape with a stream-of-consciousness narrative, Elliot, A Soldier's Fugue takes us on an unforgettable journey across time and generations. Lyrically tracing the legacy of war on a single Puerto Rican family, this Pulitzer Prize finalist is the first installment in Quiara Alegria Hudes' The Elliot Trilogy. Quiara Alegría Hudes wrote the book for the Broadway musical In the Heights, which received the 2008 Tony Award for Best Musical, a Tony nomination for Best Book of a...

Quiara Alegría Hudes is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Water by the Spoonful, the Tony Award-winning musical In the Heights and the Pulitzer Prize finalist Elliot, A Soldier’s Fugue. Her other works include Barrio Grrrl!, a children’s musical; 26 Miles; Yemaya’s Belly and The Happiest Song Plays Last, the third piece in her acclaimed trilogy.

The five Chamber Plays of August Strindberg, written in 1907 and newly translated by Paul Walsh, including "Storm," "Burned House," "The Ghost Sonata,: "The Pelican," and "Black Glove." Strindberg began writing his chamber plays early in 1907 for a group of young actors embarking on a new endeavor: to open a small theater in the center of Stockholm dedicated to the Strindberg plays. The theater would be called Intima Teatern (The Intimate Theater), and it would explore the possibilities of a new...

Music and Lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Book by Quiara Alegria Hudes, Conceived by Lin-Manuel Miranda In the Heights is an exciting musical about life in Washington Heights, a tight-knit community where the coffee from the corner bodega is light and sweet, the windows are always open, and the breeze carries the rhythm of three generations of music. During its acclaimed Off-Broadway and Broadway runs, In the Heights became an audience phenomenon and a critical success. It's easy to see why: with...

John Pizzarelli, the son of jazz guitar legend Bucky Pizzarelli, is a connoisseur of American song who grew up among the legends of jazz. From teenage explorations of rock music to life on the road with his father, he worked his way from gigs in tiny clubs to opening for Frank Sinatra during his final international tour. Now Pizzarelli performs in festivals and top venues across the United States and the world, and he shares his unique journey in this revealing, charming, and heartwarming memoir...

Theatre Communications Group (TCG) is pleased to announce the U.S. release of The Oberon Anthology of Contemporary American Plays: Volume One edited by Mark Subias, published by Oberon Books (London). This new volume brings together plays from four of the best young artists on the contemporary American playwriting scene. Volume One is introduced by Andr� Bishop, Artistic Director of the Lincoln Center Theater, and each play is introduced by well-known and critically acclaimed writers. �The f...

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...

West End and Broadway theatre legend Ruthie Henshall has given a 25th anniversary present to fans and future musical theatre stars with the release of her new book 'So You Want To Be In Musicals?' The book, co-written with music director Daniel Bowling contains personal anecdotes and professional advice about the world of musical theatre with Henshall revealing what it really takes to build a long and successful career on the stage. Henshall, the triple threat star of hit musicals includ...

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...

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.

Everyone has heard of the Jersey Boys. Thirteen million people have seen the show, totaling more than $1 billion in worldwide ticket sales. Jersey Boys tells the true-life story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons and features such hits as "Sherry," "Big Girls Don't Cry," "Walk Like A Man," and "Can't Take My Eyes Off of You." The production is currently in its seventh year on Broadway, and is also playing in Las Vegas, London, Auckland, and is on two US National Tours. Since its debut in 200...

From car mechanic to internationally loved opera, musical and recording star: the story of Alfie Boe...Alfie Boe is the first official bad boy of opera: a musical superstar celebrated not only in Britain, but worldwide. This is the story of his life - the ups and the downs, from finding fame to losing his father - and, essentially, of his love affair with music. Raised in Lancashire, the youngest of nine children and with a father who played opera at home, Alfie's story is not typical of most mu...

One of Ireland's leading playwrights, Conor McPherson sets his latest play around a house hemmed in by a restive, starving populace in rural Ireland. In May 1822, the defrocked Reverend Berkeley arrives at the once-glorious Mount Prospect House to accompany seventeen-year-old Hannah to England, where she is to be married off in order to absolve her mother's debts. But compelled by the peculiar voices that haunt his enchanting young charge and a fascination with the spirits that pervade the house...

The Memory of All That is Katharine Weber’s memoir of her extraordinary family. Her maternal grandmother, Kay Swift, was known both for her own music (she was the first woman to compose the score to a hit Broadway show, Fine and Dandy) and for her ten-year romance with George Gershwin. Their love affair began during Swift’s marriage to James Paul Warburg, the multitalented banker and economist who advised (and feuded with) FDR. Weber creates an intriguing and intimate group portrait of the r...

The hilarious script for the Broadway play Peter and the Starcatcher is presented along with commentary by the playwright, the directors, the composer, the set designer, and our own Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson. Filled with behind-the-scenes information and photos of the cast and crew, this annotated script will enchant and entertain fans of the book and the play alike.

Adapted from Stephan Elliott's 1994 cult-classic film The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, the Tony-winning musical is a comedy of errors involving two drag queens and a transsexual trekking through the remote Australian desert to a drag show in small resort town. Our songbook features 19 well-known pop songs from the score: Don't Leave Me This Way * Girls Just Want to Have Fun * Go West * Hot Stuff * I Love the Night Life * I Say a Little Prayer * I Will Survive * It's Raining Men ...

This matching folio features 14 songs from the much-hyped Broadway musical composed by U2's Bono and The Edge. Songs include: Bouncing off the Walls * Boy Falls from the Sky * A Freak like Me Needs Company * If the World Should End * No More * Picture This * Pull the Trigger * Sinistereo * Turn off the Dark * and more.

14 songs from the Broadway musical based on the film by Pedro Almodovar. Score by David Yazbek. Includes "Invisible," "Island," "Lie to Me," "Lovesick," "Madrid Is My Mama," "The Microphone," "Model Behavior," "Mother's Day," "My Crazy Heart," "On the Verge," "Shoes from Heaven."

Theatre Communications Group (TCG) is pleased to announce the publication of Chinglish, an uproarious new comedy by two-time Pulitzer finalist David Henry Hwang (M. Butterfly, Yellow Face). Chinglish received its world premiere at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre in 2011 before transferring to Broadway later that year. Declared the “Best American Play of 2011” by Time magazine, Chinglish will be adapted for an upcoming film by director-producer Justin Lin with a screenplay by Hwang. Springing from ...

Cyndi Lauper is a singer-songwriter who has released eleven albums and over forty singles. Her hit singles include 'Time After Time,' 'Girls Just Wanna Have Fun,' and 'True Colors.' She starred as Jenny in THE THREEPENNY OPERA on Broadway. Her most recent project, Kinky Boots, will have its pre-Broadway world premiere in Chicago this fall. Directed and choreographed by Tony® Award-winner Jerry Mitchell, Kinky Boots will play the Bank of America Theatre (18 West Monroe Street, Chicago, IL) i...

Rita Hayworth dancing by candlelight in a small Mexican village; Elizabeth Taylor devouring homemade pasta and tenderly wrapping him in her pashmina scarf; streaking for Sir Laurence Olivier in a drafty English castle; terrifying a dozing Jackie Onassis; carrying an unconscious Montgomery Clift to safety on a dark New York City street. Captured forever in a unique memoir, Frank Langella's myriad encounters with some of the past century's most famous human beings are profoundly affecting, funn...

TCG is proud to present Mojo and Other Plays, a new collection of plays by the author of the Tony Award-nominated Jerusalem. One of Britain’s most compelling and original playwrights, Butterworth follows up the publication of that critically acclaimed play with this collection of six early works. The volume includes the Olivier Award-winning Mojo, as well as an interview between the playwright and Nick Hern, founder of Nick Hern Books.

A vibrant, exuberant self-portrait of one of today’s greatest living actors. Christopher Plummer’s magnificent book recounts the wild adventure that is his life, stretching from a privileged childhood in Canada to the glorious, star-studded New York of the fifties to a sensational career in film appearing in some of our most beloved classics. Here are his late nights out with Carson McCullers, Tennessee Williams, Paddy Chayefsky, and Arthur Miller; his affairs and marriages; his collaboratio...

Vocal selection are now available for Frank Wildhorn's WONDERLAND, which opened on Broadway last Spring. The book features 19 piano/vocal selections from the score including: 'Advice from a Caterpillar,' 'Down the Rabbit Hole,' 'Finding Wonderland,' 'Go with the Flow,' 'Home,' 'I Am My Own Invention,' 'The Mad Hatter,' 'Off with Their Heads,' 'Through the Looking Glass,' and 'Welcome to Wonderland,' along with a special section of full-color production photos.

Spring Awakening, a groundbreaking and multi-award winning show, is being produced all over the United States as well as in 28 countries around the world. Now, 13 years after Steven Sater first conceived the radical notion of creating a rock musical from Frank Wedekind’s notorious symbolist drama Frühlings Erwachen, Applause Theatre & Cinema Books publishes Sater’s notes on his famously evocative, poetic lyrics. A Purple Summer: Notes on the Lyrics of Spring Awakening (March 13, $9.99) is an ...

Updated in its 6th edition, Working in Groups provides readers with practical strategies, built on theory and research, for communicating and working successfully in groups. The authors use the guiding principle of balance while looking at both how groups work and how to work in groups. This accessible and user-friendly text gives readers the tools to apply group communication theories, methods, and skills—helping them become more effective and ethical group members.

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...

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. 1885. Excerpt: ... CLOSING SCENES. DECEMBER 7th.--Mr. Irving's engagement, which began on November ioth, was ended last night. It has filled a period of four weeks and it has been prosperous to the actor and advantageous to the public. The pieces presented were, with two exceptions, those in which Mr. Irving and Miss Terry had been see...

THE ART OF THEATRE: A CONCISE INTRODUCTION, Third Edition, explores issues of cultural diversity and creativity, presents a full day-in-the-life of theatre, and offers briefer coverage of theatre history. The authors make timely and relevant connections between theatre and the familiar world of television and film to help students understand how the living art of theatre relates to and influences today's screen entertainment.

Theatregoers are increasingly aware of the growing use of object and figure animation throughout the performing arts. Puppetry offers engaging contemporary perspectives on this universal art-form. It provides an account of puppetry's different facets, from its demands and techniques through its uses and abuses to its history and philosophy.

In 'Moving to Los Angeles: The ABC's of Getting an Agent,' top Hollywood executive Alec Shankman writes an informational guide for talent that breaks down the process of securing an agent into a series of simple steps. Alec was an agent & department head at a Top 10 talent agency in Los Angeles by the age of 23 and subsequently the CEO of the industry's largest online talent resource, GotCast.com, by the age of 30. He references his own personal journey from Ohio to success in the entertainment ...

A feel-good play that tackles some serious issues. A perfect play choice for amateur or semi-professional drama societies. The stage is set for a happy weekend as Chris Hedges takes his girlfriend, Tanya, home to meet his mother and announce their engagement. Things start to go wrong when the identity of Tanya's father is revealed. It seems that he and Chris's mother knew each other many years before. As the weekend unravels Tanya's father is drawn in to enlist his support. It looks as if every...

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...

This historic 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. 1915. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... PROPERTIES AND HOW TO MAKE THEM Use care in the selection of your properties. Study your text. Avoid anachronisms. Do not use muskets and pipes in a scene that is laid before muskets were invented and tobacco discovered. Do not use modern lamps to light a mediaeval scene. Do not use mod...