While it has been written that Tennessee Williams had a dislike of St. Louis, the city where he lived the longest, Schvey reveals how the city was indispensable to Williams' formation and development both as a person and artist, and that he remained emotionally tethered to St. Louis for a host of reasons for the rest of his life.
Memoir that shares the highs and lows of a remarkable career that has spanned five decades, and shares the lessons that she has learned, often the hard way, about how to live a life in the spotlight, strive for excellence, and still get along with your mother.
Putting It Together chronicles the two-year odyssey of creating the iconic Broadway musical Sunday in the Park with George. In 1984, James Lapine, then a fledgling playwright and director, met Stephen Sondheim, already a legendary Broadway composer, and the two decided to turn Georges Seurat’s masterwork Sunday on the Island of La Grand Jatte into a musical.
Fully authorized graphic novel adaptation by Cavan Scott, illustrated by José María Beroy, of the Andrew Lloyd Webber, Charles Hart, Richard Stilgoe original libretto.
This book situates the production of The Boy Friend and the Players' Theatre in the context of a post-war London and reads The Boy Friend, and Wilson's later work, as exercises in contemporary camp. It argues for Wilson as a significant and transitional figure both for musical theatre and for modes of homosexuality in the context of the pre-Wolfenden 1950s.
Songbook features 24 selections from Bridges of Madison County, 13: The Musical, Honeymoon in Vegas, and The Last Five Years and the album How We React and How We Recover. Arranged for voice with piano accompaniment. "All Things in Time," "Almost Real," "Always Better," "Another Life," "Anywhere but Here," "Before and After You/One Second and a Million Miles," "Being a Geek," "Brand New You," "Fifty Years Long," "Hope," "I Love Betsy," "Invisible," "It All Fades Away," "Jason's Song (Gave It Aw...
This book chronicles one hundred years of dramatic developments in ballet, modern, and experimental dance for stage and screen in Europe and North America. The volume is magisterial in scope, encompassing the history of theatrical dance from 1900 through 2000. Beginning with turn-of-the-century dancer-choreographers like Loie Fuller, Isadora Duncan, Michel Fokine, and a bit later Vaslav Nijinsky, and proceeding through the profusion of dance styles performed today, the book provides an unparall...
Biography by Mark Harris, "an intimate and evenhanded accounting of success and failure alike; the portrait is not always flattering, but its ultimate impact is to present the full story of one of the most richly interesting, complicated, and consequential figures the worlds of theater and motion pictures have ever seen. " Audiobook narrated by George Newbern.
“Looking Back” is intended to be a visual documentary of a little-known episode in the life of Buster Keaton – his tour of British music halls in the summer of 1951. This 20th anniversary edition has been revised and updated.
Many of the American playwrights who dominated the 20th century are no longer with us: Edward Albee, Arthur Miller, Sam Shepard, Neil Simon, August Wilson and Wendy Wasserstein. A new generation, whose careers began in this century, has emerged, and done so when the theatre itself, along with the society with which it engages, was changing. Capturing the cultural shifts of 21st-century America, Staging America explores the lives and works of 8 award-winning playwrights – including Ayad Akhtar, ...
Shines a light on the play's continued impact in the 21st century and makes a case for the healing powers of Wilder's text to a world confronting multiple crises. Through extensive interviews with more than 100 artists about their own experience of the play and its impact on them professionally and personally—and including background on the play's early years and its pervasiveness in American culture ... shows why this particular work remains so important, essential, and beloved.
In 1928, Hilton Edwards and Micheál mac Liammóir founded the Dublin Gate Theatre, which quickly became renowned for producing stylistically and dramaturgically innovative plays in a uniquely avant-garde setting. While the Gate’s lasting importance to the history of Irish theater is generally attributed to its introduction of experimental foreign drama to Ireland, Van den Beuken shines a light on the Gate’s productions of several new Irish playwrights, such as Denis Johnston, Mary Manning, David...
The original one-act edition of the play by Henry Shields, Jonathan Sayer, Henry Lewis which premiered at the Old Red Lion Theatre in London in 2012. (The expanded two-act version Won WhatsOnStage, Olivier, Tony, and Drama Desk Awards.)
The time is 1927. The place is a run-down recording studio in Chicago. Ma Rainey, the legendary blues singer, is due to arrive with her entourage to cut new sides of old favorites. Waiting for her are her black musician sidemen, the white owner of the record company, and her white manager. What goes down in the session to come is more than music. It is a riveting portrayal of black rage, of racism, of the self-hate that racism breeds, and of racial exploitation.
Songbook of songs from the album Disney Goes Classical. Classical versions of iconic Disney themes, arranged for solo piano, and piano/vocal/guitar where appropriate. "Almost There," "The Bare Necessities," "Beauty and the Beast," "Can You Feel the Love Tonight?," "Colors of the Wind," "Go the Distance," "How Far I'll Go," "I See the Light," "Let It Go," "Overture from Mary Poppins," "Part of Your World," "Reflection," "When She Loved Me," "When You Wish Upon a Star," "A Whole New World." 72 pa...
Stories from renowned performers, dance educators, and other avid dance adventurers ... about epic dance adventures across North America, Europe, South America, Asia, and Africa highlight various dance traditions, as well as unique aspects of each country's geography, history, demographics and educational systems.
Collection of personal essays, poems and even amusement park maps on the subjects of insecurity, fame, anxiety, and much more. Told in her unique voice (sometimes singing voice).
Autobiography (with photos) by stage and film actor David Suchet. Discusses his London upbringing and love of the city, his Jewish roots and how they have influenced his career, the importance of his faith, how he really feels about fame, his love of photography and music, and his processes as an actor. He looks back on his fifty-year career, including reflections on how the industry has changed, his personal highs and lows, and how he wants to be remembered.
Vocal selections from Moulin Rouge! the musical. Includes "Backstage Romance," "Chandelier," "Come What May," "Crazy Rolling," "Elephant Love Medley," "Firework," "Nature Boy," "Only Girl in a Material World," "Shut Up and Raise Your Glass," "The Sparkling Diamond," "Sympathy for the Duke," "El Tango de Roxanne," "Your Song." 120 pages.
Pulling Harvey Out of Her Hat chronicles the story of how Mary Chase—a housewife with three children from a working-class Irish community in Denver, Colorado—became a Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright for Harvey, a Broadway comedy about a gentle soul and his invisible six-foot-and-one-half-inch-tall rabbit friend. This entertaining and inspiring account traces how Chase achieved her dream of becoming a famous playwright while remaining in Denver—where she worked for the Rocky Mountain News, mar...
Since the late 1990s, Rupert Goold has garnered a reputation as one of the UK's most exciting and provocative theatre directors. His exhilarating, risk-taking productions of both classic texts and new plays have travelled from regional stages to the National Theatre, the West End, Broadway and beyond. Through his artistic directorship of Northampton's Royal & Derngate, the touring theatre company Headlong and London's Almeida Theatre, he has radically transformed, not only the companies themsel...
First volume in series, covering the years 1970-1995. Overview of ensemble-based creation within the general historical and cultural contexts of the period, followed by a detailed study of the evolution of ensemble-based work. Contributors examine matters such as influence, funding, production and legacies, as well as the forms of collective devising and creation, while presenting close readings of the companies' most prominent works.
Chronicle of the Grammy-winning 1995 Alanis Morissette album and the new Broadway musical it inspired. Photos (Matthew Murphy) and interviews from Morissette, bookwriter Diablo Cody, creative team members, and cast members, as well as a full annotated libretto and an exploration of the album's cultural significance.
Account of recent Broadway history—spanning from the debut of Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Sunset Boulevard to Disney’s The Lion King. Drawing upon more than 150 insider interviews, Riedel walks us through the Broadway we know and love today: an industry awash in big hits and bigger money, while also being an industry split between its adherence to old art forms and the allure of popular culture.
Part of Broadway Legacies series. Study of the musical theater works of Rida Johnson Young (ca. 1869-1926), one of the most prolific female playwrights of her time, as well as a lyricist and librettist in the musical theater. She wrote more than thirty full-length plays, operettas, and musical comedies, 500 songs, and four novels, including Naughty Marietta, Lady Luxury, The Red Petticoat, and When Love is Young. 192 pages. Using archival materials such as original typescripts, correspondence, ...
Cordelia Lynn's version, from a literal translation by Helen Rappaport, first performed at the Almeida Theatre, London, in April 2019, in a production directed by Rebecca Frecknall.
Records the seven-decade history of this distinguished theatre from its nightclub origins to its current status as a Tony Award-winning Broadway institution. Based on years of research as well as interviews conducted with Circle in the Square's major contributing artists.
In meditative portraits, often shot in the intimate space of the dressing room, Annand captures the focus and tension of world-class actors right before they go on the stage. Including Cate Blanchett, Orlando Bloom, Anthony Hopkins, Jake Gyllenhaal and Judi Dench.
Lucy Prebble is one of Britain's foremost writers for the stage and screen. This eagerly anticipated play collection brings together her landmark plays for the first time, showcasing her work from 2003 to 2019. Beginning with her George Devine Award-winning play The Sugar Syndrome it continues through her explosive look at the biggest financial scandal in history, concluding with her pointed dramatization of the one of the most shocking news stories of the 2010s.
Features the words and lyrics from David Byrne's recording and subsequent theatrical concert, with artwork by Maira Kalman (who designed the art for the Broadway show's curtain). Edited and designed by Alex Kalman/What Studio?.
The classic novelization of one of Broadway’s most enduring and beloved musicals (based on a conception by Jerome Robbins, book by Arthur Laurents, music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, directed and choreographed by Jerome Robbins), updated with a new cover.
Presents a basic understanding of this most American of art forms, the musical theatre, including a very brief history of musicals, a survey of important and well-known shows, examples of the wide and wild variety of musicals, a look at the amazing people who create musicals, and a sense of how Broadway musicals reflect and comment on our culture.
Are the musical's progressive politics rooted in its embrace of regressive entertainments like burlesque and minstrelsy? Shows how musicals return again and again to this question, and grapple with a guilt that its joyous pleasures are based on exploiting the laboring bodies of its performers. Rogers argues that the discourse of "integration"—which claims that songs should advance the plot—has functioned to deny the radical work that the musical undertakes every time it transitions into song an...
Documents how black women theater artists and activists—many of whom worked behind the scenes as directors, designers, producers, stage managers, and artistic directors—disseminated the black aesthetic and emboldened their communities. Draws on nearly thirty original interviews with well-known artists such as Ntozake Shange and Sonia Sanchez, as well as less-studied figures including distinguished lighting designer Shirley Prendergast, dancer and choreographer Halifu Osumare, and three-time To...
Alexandra Kitty curates Sherlock Holmes' theatrical world throughout the decades: from unlikely Off-Broadway musicals to lauded slapstick comedies, to more traditional and gripping portrayals of his iconic stories and new incarnations. 172 pages.
Looks through the apparent carnival of vaudeville performance and asks: what made the theater so popular and transformative? Monod makes the case that vaudeville became so popular because it offered audiences a guide to a modern urban lifestyle.
Biography by Earl Hess and Pratibha A. Dabholkar. Offers a full picture of Gene Kelly as the Renaissance man he actually was—dancer, choreographer, actor, clown, singer, director, teacher, and mentor. Photographs. 552 pages.
Fully revised and updated version of 2017 book by drama critic Michael Coveney, with photographs by Peter Dazeley. Stories of the architecture, the people, and the productions which have defined each theatre, with photographs of the public areas, auditorium and backstage, Updated to include ten additional theatres, including the Victoria Palace Theatre, the Sondheim Theatre, the Bridge Theatre and the Noël Coward Theatre. Foreword by Mark Rylance. 288
Approaches the avant-garde Japanese performance art form of butoh from a cross-cultural, gender studies, and scientific perspective. From twenty years of research, interviews with some of the world’s top practitioners, historical documents, and rare photographs.
Kindle edition of 1998 book about Peggy Ramsay, the influential British play agent (Joe Orton, Eugene Ionesco, John Mortimer, Robert Bolt, Christopher Hampton, Edward Bond, Caryl Churchill, Howard Brenton, David Hare, Willy Russell and Alan Ayckbourn). The author was granted complete freedom of access to all the records and correspondence accumulated over the forty years of her agency's existence, including hundreds of impassioned letters between Peggy and her authors.
Presents Ann Miller's career in the context of her fascinating life, beginning with child acting and including three Hollywood studio contracts, two retirements for marriage, and appearances in film, stage, variety shows, sitcoms, her comeback in the stage musical Sugar Babies, and appointment as an international spokesperson for MGM in the ailing years of the studio.
Paul Edmondson and Stanley Wells, editors. Assembles all of Shakespeare's sonnets in their probable order of composition. The introduction debunks long-established biographical myths about Shakespeare's sonnets and proposes new insights about how and why he wrote them. Explanatory notes and modern English paraphrases of every poem and dramatic extract illuminate the meaning of these witnesses to Shakespeare's inner life and professional expertise. 208 pages.
At 50 years old, Wheeler is moving into an apartment of his own. Divorce and a dead-end job leave him faced with the challenge of building a brand new life as a middle-aged man. Wheeler’s hilarious, tangled journey in Linda Vista is punctuated with complications, both painful and joyful, as he forges a new path. With a deftly crafted blend of humor and humanity, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tracy Letts demonstrates the ultimate midlife crisis: the bewildering search for self-discovery once...
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