Coffee table book by Eila Mell and The American Theatre Wing. Foreword by Audra McDonald. Commemorating over 75 years of Broadway greatness with never-before told stories, rare photos from the American Theatre Wing's archives, and more than 100 interviews with past and present Tony winners, including actors, producers, writers, and costume designers. 400+ color and black-and-white photographs. 320 pages.
By David Mamet, with illustrations by David Mamet. The author " shares scandalous and laugh-out-loud tales from his four decades in Hollywood where he worked with some of the biggest names in movies." Audiobook narrated by Jim Frangione. 256 pages.
By Arnold Aronson. Looks at the history of theatrical scenography by examining the work and contributions of fifty set, costume, lighting, and projection designers since the Renaissance ... including opera, dance, Broadway and West End commercial theatre, avant-garde performance, and even Olympic spectacles. Each chapter features one designer, with basic biographical information and a discussion of that artist's style, aesthetics, and contributions. 330 pages.
By Sean Mayes. Unveils the untold stories and perspectives of artists of color shaping the stage today, through interviews drawn from Broadway and regional productions, including André De Shields, Alex Lacamoire, Baayork Lee, and many more. 168 pages.
Becky Nurse is an outspoken, sharp-witted tour guide at the Salem Museum of Witchcraft who’s just trying to get by in post-Obama America. She’s also the descendant of Rebecca Nurse, who was infamously executed for witchcraft in 1692—but things have changed for women since then…haven’t they? After losing her job for calling out The Crucible in front of schoolkids, Becky visits a local witch for help. One spell leads to another, and then everything really goes off the rails. A darkly comic play a...
Memoir blending a behind-the-scenes history about New York City's Public Theater with an engrossing account of her life working alongside her husband, the Public's founder Joe Papp. 392 pages.
A comprehensive study of this 1950 motion picture, from start to finish and after its release. The authors discuss in detail the contributions of the cast (which included Gloria DeHaven, Eddie Bracken, Phil Silvers, and Marjorie Main), the director (Charles Walters), the producer (Joe Pasternak), the script writers (George Wells and Sy Gomberg), the songwriters (which included Harry Warren and Mack Gordon), and top MGM executives (Louis B. Mayer and Dore Schary). Features extensive interviews, ...
An account of stage musicals' engagement with historically significant theories about mental distress, illness, disability, and human variance in the United States. Shows how theater dramatized serious medical conditions and social problems. Among the many Broadway productions discussed are Next to Normal, A Strange Loop, Sweeney Todd, Man of La Mancha, Dear World, Anyone Can Whistle, Gypsy, Oklahoma!, and Lady in the Dark.
Sir Patrick Stewart memoir. From his humble beginnings in Yorkshire, England, to the heights of Hollywood and worldwide acclaim. Audio version read by the author. 480 pages.
From Audrey Hepburn to Zsa Zsa Gabor, a star-studded alphabet book featuring the greatest ladies of the classic era of American movies (from the creators of "A Is for Audra and B Is for Broadway"). Hollywood history, spellbinding scenes, captivating costumes, and sparkling sets. Reading age 3 - 7 years. 48 pages.
Series of photographs by Simon Annand behind the scenes in London theaters, capturing actors before they go on stage. Foreword by Cate Blanchett. 256 pages.
Series of photographs by Simon Annand that go behind the scenes in London theaters, capturing actors before they go on stage. Foreword by Cate Blanchett. 256 pages.
On March 13, 2020, as theaters shut their doors and so many of us went into lockdown, Suzan-Lori Parks picked up her pen and set out to write a play every day. What emerged is a breathtaking chronicle of our collective experience throughout the troubling days and nights that followed.
Plays for the Plague Year is at once a personal story of one family's daily lives, as well as a sweeping account of all we faced as a city, a nation, and a global community. Parks' groundbreaking new work is br...
"Offers a witty multidimensional look at the musical genius ..." Explores the bond between Sondheim and his audiences ... examines the challenging Sondheim works that continue to develop devoted new followings. "... a lavish, highly engrossing documentation of the dynamic force who reshaped twentieth-century American musical history."
Guide to fifty popular musicals from the comedy classics of the 1930s and 1940s to the frequently-produced darlings of modern theater. Kindle version to be released 9/15/23. 314 pages.
Pop history of audiences through the ages. Walks us through the different types of audiences and the history of their changing behaviors, what science has to say about how our brains respond to what we experience, how technology will continue to shape audiences, and why, during COVID-19, people risked a deadly virus to be part of a crowd. Drawing on perspectives from critics, performers, scholars, and many others. 256 pages.
By Charles Busch. Anecdotal account of the artist's journey in the worlds of Off-Broadway, Broadway, and Hollywood as a playwright, LGBT icon, drag actor, director, and cabaret performer. Features rare photos. 288 pages.
Marc Robinson, editor. Collected edition of Adrienne Kennedy's wide-ranging writings, spanning six decades and including ten unpublished works: the early surrealistic one-acts A Lesson in Dead Language and A Rat's Mass; works like A Movie Star Has to Star in Black and White and Film Festival: The Day Jean Seberg Died that reveal Kennedy's longstanding fascination with Hollywood and film culture; Ohio State Murders, one of several plays featuring her protagonist Suzanne Alexander and the first o...
Interlocking story of the lives and careers American songbook interpreters Bing Crosby, Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Judy Garland, and Barbra Streisand. 384 pages.
Chronicles Cohen's decade-long quest to bring No Way to Treat a Lady to the stage–writing, re-writing, and shepherding it across the US and Europe amidst all manner of adversity and plain rotten luck. A portrait of passion, persistence, and resilience. Cast of characters includes an Oscar-winning screenwriter who invites Cohen to his personal screening room for a marathon midnight writing session; a Tony Award-winning director making his comeback after a horrific accident renders him a quadripl...
Brainteasers that require more than an ordinary knowledge of Broadway facts that will send even the most seasoned theater lovers looking for answers. Kindle version to be released 9/15/23. 232 pages.
Paperback version of 2021 book, with some revisions. Detailed and comprehensive reference devoted to musical theater's most prolific and admired composer and lyricist. Entries cover Sondheim's numerous collaborators; key songs; and major works. Also profiles the actors who originated roles and sang Sondheim's songs for the first time, including Ethel Merman, Angela Lansbury, Mandy Patinkin, and Bernadette Peters. Features a detailed biographical entry for Sondheim, a chronology of his career, a...
Biography of August Wilson by Patti Hartigan, who interviewed Wilson many times before his death and traces his life from his childhood in Pittsburgh to Broadway. She also interviewed scores of friends, theater colleagues and family members, and conducted extensive research to tell the story of a writer who left an indelible imprint on American theater and opened the door for future playwrights of color. 592 pages.
Play by Ben Weatherill. Published to coincide with the world premiere at Theatre Royal Windsor, in June 2023, starring Roger Allam and Ian McKellen. 80 pages.
Follows the American dance legend from her premature birth into a single-parent home in Springfield, Massachusetts, to her first Broadway performance at age fifteen, through her days as a blazing icon in the world of Hollywood, and finally, to her inspiring comeback. From rare documents, letters, and production files; and drawing on the authors' intimate personal relationships with Powell.
In Locksburg, Pennsylvania, a former coal and steel town whose best days seem long past, five thousand residents have toughed it out, and have reasons for both worry and hope as this neglected place teeters between decay and renewal. For some of them, their biggest troubles have just arrived.
After years of just scraping by, three restless souls have their lives upended: Nathan, a volunteer fireman who uncovers a secret stash of money in a burning building and takes it; Callie, a nurse whose...
Juicy—a young, queer, Southern man, who is grappling with questions of identity—is visited by the ghost of his father (Pap) at his mother’s wedding/family barbecue. Pap demands that Juicy avenge his recent murder. How will Juicy, a sensitive and self-aware young Black man, trying to break a cycle of trauma and toxic masculinity, avenge his father’s premature death? Fat Ham reinvents Shakespeare’s masterpiece in startling and hilarious ways amidst the backdrop of a family barbeque in the America...
No matter how you approach it, Cats is so much more than a silly dance revue based on some silly poems, so much more than a punchline. Why has Cats been such a huge, longstanding commercial success around the world? Why do people see it over and over?
Cats is literally about life and death.
Cats is about us.
The early drama of Eugene O’Neill, with its emphasis on racial themes and conflicts, opened up extraordinary opportunities for Black performers to challenge racist structures in modern theater and cinema. By adapting O’Neill’s dramatic writing—changing scripts to omit offensive epithets, inserting African American music and dance, or including citations of Black internationalism--theater artists of color have used O’Neill’s texts to raze barriers in American and transatlantic theater.
Featuring contributions from over eighty original cast members, creatives, crew and audience members, Out For Blood pieces together the surprising, hilarious and often-moving inside story of Carrie The Musical to discover how this 'horror of a Broadway musical' lived, died and was subsequently resurrected as a mainstream success story.
In 1988, following the success of its production of Les Misérables and in the wake of the commercial success of mega-musicals such as Cats, Phantom of the Opera...
Biography of playwright and musical bookwriter Terrence McNally. Looks at his life and work against the backdrop of a dynamic theatrical culture, tracing the ways in which an artist grows and responds to reality. Based on interviews with McNally and with many of the artists with which he worked. 408 pages.
Part of two-volume set. Detailed, illustrated study that covers Schulman's writings on Garland between 1993 and 2023 that concentrate on her recordings. Utilizes published articles, reviews, liner notes, interviews, program notes, talks, and prefaces. Includes all the facts but does not exclude amusing anecdotes and unsettling stories that shed light on this complicated artist. 294 pages. Released 7/10/23.
art of two-volume set. Detailed, illustrated study that covers Schulman's writings on Garland between 1993 and 2023 that concentrate on her recordings. Utilizes published articles, reviews, liner notes, interviews, program notes, talks, and prefaces. Includes all the facts but does not exclude amusing anecdotes and unsettling stories that shed light on this complicated artist. 294 pages.
About the creation of the musical that opened at the Manchester Opera House in February 2020, music and lyrics by Alan Silvestri and Glen Ballard and a book by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale (adapted from their original screenplay). Pairs exclusive, in-depth interviews with previously unpublished photography; excerpts from Bob Gale's personal journal; and a foreword by Gale to reveal and detail the years long process, and the creative ingenuity and technical innovation. 224 pages.
Bebe, a bookworm with an outlandish imagination, lives a peculiarly privileged life for a Black girl during the Great Depression. Her fearless father owns a hospital and an array of businesses, making him a keen target of the KKK. Her home life is filled with a panoply of distinctive family members, including a psychic mother, a terrifying "spinster" aunt who's having a secret affair with the local white sheriff, a renegade librarian aunt, a grandmother who might be the great-great-granddaughte...
Play by Suzie Miller. Special edition features the definitive version of the award-winning script, together with colour photos and exclusive additional content. 144 pages.
Songs from the film plus 14 more from the cast recording arranged in standard piano/vocal format with the melody in the piano part. Alan Silvestri and Glen Ballard. 144 pages. Released 6/1/23.
Gives his account of how Evita, Cats, Starlight Express, Les Misérables, The Phantom of the Opera, Chess, and Miss Saigon changed the business of musical theater in the 1980s. With insightful, personal stories from cast members, set designers, musical supervisors, dancers, lighting designers, production managers, singers, and choreographers ... and the backstage drama, production nightmares, and financial woes that threatened to derail the shows at multiple points. 268 pages.
Chronological review of the long journey to bring the culture of gay men and women onto the American stage. From the genteel female impersonators of the 1910s to the raucous drag queens of La Cage aux Folles, from the men of The Normal Heart to the women of Fun Home, and from Eva Le Gallienne and Tallulah Bankhead to Tennessee Williams and Nathan Lane .. chronicles the plays and people that brought gay culture to Broadway. 240 pages.
Photographs by Joan Marcus. Mixes clever cocktails that pay homage to unforgettable Broadway shows–such as the Rainbow High from Evita and the Sidecar Named Desire–with authentic recipes for drinks that played supporting roles in beloved shows–like the legendary Vodka Stinger from Company–and shakes it up with a history of the cocktail on Broadway. 30 drink recipes. Featured throughout are images from intoxicating images of classic shows to portraits of effervescent stage celebrities to vintage...
By George J. Ferencz. Explores the creation of NBC-TV's landmark 1952-53 WWII documentary series, with particular attention to its evocative Rodgers-Bennett score. Chronicles "Victory"'s gestation and production at NBC, its reception, the series' afterlife in syndication and home video, and the score's "Gold Record" sales success on RCA records; plus examining each episode in turn, focusing on how the Bennett-scored music pairs with screen action. Every transformation of the much-used Rodgers t...
Chronicles the development of dance, with an emphasis on musicals and the Broadway stage, in the United States from its colonial beginnings to performances of the present day. 304 pages.
2012 Broadway musical with a score by Tom Kitt (music), Amanda Green (lyrics), Lin-Manuel Miranda (music and lyrics). A dozen songs from the musical in vocal line with piano accompaniment arrangements: "Cross the Line," "Enjoy the Trip," "I Got You," "It Ain't No Thing," "It's All Happening," "Killer Instinct," "Legendary," "One Perfect Moment," "Something Isn't Right Here," "Tryouts," "We Ain't No Cheerleaders," "We're Not Done."
Insight into the role of the casting director. Explains the jobs of all the other people involved in the casting process and how they influence casting decisions. 176 pages. Kindle Edition released earlier.
Memoir by Chita Rivera, with Patrick Pacheco. "Chita invites us into workrooms and rehearsal studies, on stage and on set as she works with some of the greatest talents of the age, including Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Laurents, Stephen Sondheim, Bob Fosse, Jerome Robbins, Hal Prince, Liza Minnelli, Sammy Davis Jr, Gwen Verdon, Shirley MacLaine, and many others. We also learn deeply moving, revelatory details about her upbringing and her heritage, and how they indelibly shaped her work and career...
