Drama Book Shop and JMGC Reveal August and September Events

The Drama Book Shop will present, in association with Jay Michaels Global Communications, an ongoing series of author spotlight events. DBS welcomes a diverse range of guests from the stages of Broadway to the intimate settings of Off-Broadway, Off Off Broadway, and beyond. These discussions include Q&As, readings, and special guests. The events are also part of The Drama Book Show!, DBS's official podcast. With events scheduled through 2025 and a successful podcast showing, the Drama Book Shop is becoming the go-to spot for the arts community.

The events of August and September include

Sex, Drugs, and Pilot Season: Confessions of a Casting Director

Tuesday, August 20 · 7:30 - 8:30pm

From his humble beginnings growing up on his grandfather's dairy farm in New York, Joel Thurm became one of the most admired, powerful, and accomplished casting directors in Hollywood, Early on, Thurm's instincts proved beyond reproach when he recognized John Travolta as much more than a teen idol, casting him in the TV movie THE BOY IN THE PLASTIC BUBBLE. It was during his years as Vice President of Talent and Casting for both Paramount Television and NBC that he discovered the remarkable Phoenix family, from which River and Joaquin became A-list movie stars. With his insider's knowledge, irreverent style, and biting wit, Thurm tells the stories of his key involvement in such iconic movies and shows as GREASE, AIRPLANE!, THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW, CHEERS, TAXI, THE LOVE BOAT, FANTASY ISLAND, STARSKY & HUTCH, CHARLIE'S ANGELS, THE GOLDEN GIRLS, KNIGHT RIDER, THE COSBY SHOW, HILL STREET BLUES and many, many more. SEX, DRUGS, AND PILOT SEASON is the ultimate backstage pass to the boardrooms of Manhattan and the executive suites of Hollywood, where show-business history was made.

The Queens' English with Chloe O. Davis

Monday, August 26 · 7:30 - 8:30pm

This young reader's adaptation of The Queens' English is a nonfiction illustrated reference guide to the LGBTQIA+ community's contributions to the English language. This playful, richly illustrated visual dictionary is the perfect book for anyone who has ever wondered about the origin of phrases like "boi," "drag," or "demisexual," the history of the word "queer," and the wonderfully diverse, wide-ranging histories that have contributed to LGBTQIA+ culture and vocabulary.

Drawing from traditions as divergent as the ancient poet Sappho to the underground ball scene of the 1980s, from the Stonewall Riots to RuPaul's Drag Race, this glossary is a colorful compendium-and a celebration of every king, queen, butch, femme, trans, folx, and enby who has shaped the history, identity, and limitless imagination of queerness.

The Making of a Musical: The 12 Year Journey of Love Quirks

Tuesday, September 3 · 7:30 - 8:30pm

In Seth Bisen-Hersh's fourth book, "The Making of a Musical: the 12 year journey of Love Quirks", he comprehensively reveals the twelve-year journey of his award-winning off-Broadway musical Love Quirks. The book includes chapter analyses on the writing process of every song that was ever in the project, as well as an insider's look at producing a musical off-Broadway. Bisen-Hersh's witty, comedic style permeates the book, which also features one last cat-pter by his late cat, Smee. This is a must have for all Quirkies, Broadway hopefuls and fans of underdog perseverance.

First Gen with Alejandra Campoverdi and Paola Ramos

Tuesday, September 10 · 7:30 - 8:30pm

Alejandra Campoverdi has been a child on welfare, a White House aide to President Obama, a Harvard graduate, a gang member's girlfriend, and a candidate for U.S. Congress. Living a life of contradictory extremes often comes with the territory when you're a "First and Only." It also comes at a price. In her award-winning memoir First Gen, Alejandra retraces her trajectory as a Mexican American woman raised by an immigrant single mother in Los Angeles. Forgoing the tidy bullet points of her résumé and shining a light on the spaces between them instead, what emerges is a powerful testimony that shatters the one-dimensional glossy narrative we are often sold of what it takes to achieve the American Dream. Part memoir, part manifesto, First Gen is a gripping journey to "reclaim the parts of ourselves we sacrificed in order to survive."

Broadway Melody- A Conversation with Jack Viertel and Ted Chapin

Tuesday, September 17 · 7:30 - 8:30pm

A show business romance crossing 7000 miles and 70 years, Broadway Melody lands securely in the confines of Times Square and the Theater District, as a crackerjack trumpet player and a blue-collar spotlight operator vie for the love of an aspiring ingenue who holds them both in thrall for their entire lifetimes. Filled with theater lore and history, vivid characters both real and imagined, and a great number of songs in its heart, this novel delivers the ultimate valentine to Broadway then and now. For more than a century the Broadway theater has been a landing strip for characters on the run - from their upbringing, from the unwelcoming communities they grew up in, even from their parents. So it seems for the obsessively gifted trumpet player Ike Harris, who leaves behind a most peculiar childhood and a chaotic life on the road for the orchestra pit of the Winter Garden Theater. There, in the dark confines beneath the stage he falls hopelessly in love with a young ingenue in a catastrophic flop that leaves all concerned searching for happier outcomes. All, that is, except for Vincent Donnelly, who has been training his number two follow spot on the very same young performer - Aurora Shelton - and wishing he could fall through its lighted beam and land securely against her heart. Vincent, it first appears, gets what he wants. Or perhaps not. Broadway Melody traces three lives through the early ambitions and unlikely pathways that landed all of them in the same place at the same time - 1960s Broadway. Woven through its pages are the hits and flops, the making and breaking of careers, the destruction of three historic theater buildings, the plague of AIDS, the machinations of union bosses and producers, and, of course, the world outside this insular community - the audience that looks to Broadway for emotional thrills, for enlightenment, and for pure entertainment. Laced with humor and sadness, portraits of historical characters from The Street and a long view of the rise, fall and revival of Times Square itself, Broadway Melody stitches three lives - and three hearts - into the fabric of an endlessly compelling tale of the American theater.

A Conversation with Duncan Pflaster

Thursday, September 26 · 7:30 - 8:30pm

About the plays:

Fourteen Hundred And Sixty Sketches Of Your Left Hand- When Paul gets invited to New Mexico for the summer for an artist's retreat with his gay bromantic college buddy Alonso, he discovers that Alonso's sister Blanca is tasking Paul with keeping Alonso on his medication for temporal lobe epilepsy, which he doesn't want to take since he identifies with Van Gogh, who had the same condition. Paul and Blanca begin a clandestine affair as he increasingly offers teases of his body to Alonso as incentive to take his meds. All comes to a head when Blanca's boyfriend Gabriel returns unexpectedly from the army. Tormented painters, sexual obsession, and crossed boundaries combine for a scorching new play.

Harmony Hall- Set in 1968, the play is a poetic homage to the style of Tennessee Williams. Brother Linus is a monk who has been exiled to a remote monastery on an island, where he has lived alone in quiet contemplation for the past 20 years. Then, during a huge thunderstorm, a young man named Christian washes up on the beach with memory loss, and in giving succor to him, Linus begins to question to what exactly he is truly devoted, and if he has allowed his life to be wasted.

A Touch of Cinema- Dina Kummerspeck, a filmmaker in a small country that isn't America, has been taken by the newly-fascist government and tortured for making supposedly seditious films. Now returned home under house arrest with an electric shackle on her ankle, she and her husband Tomas invite over their actor friends for a party, but unbeknownst to them, it's going to be a secret reading of Dina's new screenplay loosely based on her torture.