"One of the great works of the American musical theatre. It is darling, touching, beautiful, warm, funny and inspiring. It is a work of art." -John Chapman, Daily News

    Here, arranged in chronological order, are essays from 1918 to 1956, in which Brecht explores his definition of the Epic Theatre and his theory of alienation-effects in directing, acting, and writing, and discusses, among other works, The Threepenny Opera, Mahagonny, Mother Courage, Puntila, and Galileo. Also included is "A Short Organum for the Theatre," Brecht's most complete exposition of his revolutionary philosophy of drama.Translated and edited by John Willett, Brecht on Theater is essential to an understanding of one of the twentieth century's most influential dramatists.

    With this act of violence--which is loosely based on the notorious 1955 killing of Emmett Till--James Baldwin launches an unsparing and at times agonizing probe of the wounds of race. For where once a white storekeeper could have shot a boy like Richard Henry with impunity, times have changed. And centuries of brutality and fear, patronage and contempt, are about to erupt in a moment of truth as devastating as a shotgun blast.In his award-winning play, Baldwin turns a murder and its aftermath into an inquest in which even the most well-intentioned whites are implicated--and in which even a killer receives his share of compassion.

    

    And all the hopes, dreams and lives of the people on the Avenue are forged to a fighting force to defend all that they hold dear."

    His female characters especially are engulfed by the bathos of their lives, and Inge capitalizes on this fact in order to heighten dramatically the moment of personal crisis which comes to each of them. In his four major successes--Come Back, Little Sheba; Picnic; Bus Stop; and The Dark at the Top of the Stairs--the play carries the audience through the moment of crisis; and the final curtain falls upon a note of hope and fulfillment.'--R. Baird Shuman

    

    This new collection of sixteen stories reveals John Cheever's expertness employed with greater power to even more impressive effect than heretofore.

    After eighteen months as a companion-secretary to a charming but eccentric old lady, she felt she was ready to forget the past and begin again…But a chance encounter on a London railway station brings it all back…

    This volume contains three of Strindberg's most famous plays, spanning twenty years of prodigious creativity and recurrent personal crises: The Father, which displays Strindberg's suspicion of women at its most implacable, 'powerful and profound' (Guy de Maupassant); Miss Julie (1888), which he called his masterpiece, and in which he presents with startling modernity the conflict between sexual passion and social position; and The Ghost Sonata (1907), written in physical pain and spiritual torment, which is a phantasmagoric dream play, 'a direct source for the Theatre of the Absurd' (Martin Esslin)."Michael Meyer is the translator most actors turn to when seeking a definitive text" (Sunday Times)

    Franklin J. Hildy contributes his scholarship and experience throughout the book and, in particular, to a discussion of English Theatre/Shakespeare (Ch. 5). Reorganized with more uniform chapter lengths and a clearer chronology, the ninth edition continues to provide the most thorough and accurate assessment of theatre history available. For anyone involved with, or interested in, the theatre.