Best of
Drama

1979

A Woman of Substance


Barbara Taylor Bradford - 1979
    In the brooding moors above a humble Yorkshire village stood Fairley Hall. There, Emma Harte, its oppressed but resourceful servant girl, acquired a shrewd determination. There, she honed her skills, discovered the meaning of treachery, learned to survive, to become a woman, and vowed to make her mark on the world.In the wake of tragedy she rose from poverty to magnificent wealth as the iron-willed force behind a thriving international enterprise. As one of the richest women in the world Emma Harte has almost everything she fought so hard to achieve--save for the dream of love, and for the passion of the one man she could never have. Through two marriages, two devastating wars, and generations of secrets, Emma's unparalleled success has come with a price. As greed, envy, and revenge consume those closest to her, the brilliant matriarch now finds herself poised to outwit her enemies, and to face the betrayals of the past with the same ingenious resolve that forged her empire.

Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre


Keith Johnstone - 1979
    Admired for its clarity and zest, Impro lays bare the techniques and exercises used to foster spontaneity and narrative skill for actors. These techniques and exercises were evolved in the actors' studio, when he was Associate Director of the Royal Court and then in demonstrations to schools and colleges and ultimately in the founding of a company of performers called The Theatre Machine.Divided into four sections, 'Status', 'Spontaneity', 'Narrative Skills' and 'Masks and Trance', arranged more or less in the order a group might approach them, the book sets out the specific approaches which Johnstone has himself found most useful and most stimulating. The result is a fascinating exploration of the nature of spontaneous creativity.

Bent


Martin Sherman - 1979
    Martin Sherman's worldwide hit play Bent took London by storm in 1979 when it was first performed by the Royal Court Theatre, with Ian McKellen as Max (a character written with the actor in mind). The play itself caused an uproar. "It educated the world," Sherman explains. "People knew about how the Third Reich treated Jews and, to some extent, gypsies and political prisoners. But very little had come out about their treatment of homosexuals." Gays were arrested and interned at work camps prior to the genocide of Jews, gypsies, and handicapped, and continued to be imprisoned even after the fall of the Third Reich and liberation of the camps. The play Bent highlights the reason why - a largely ignored German law, Paragraph 175, making homosexuality a criminal offense, which Hitler reactivated and strengthened during his rise to power.

Dollanganger Boxed Set: Flowers in the Attic / If There Be Thorns / Petals on the Wind / Seeds of Yesterday / Garden of Shadows(Dollanganger, prequel-4


V.C. Andrews - 1979
    Including a free poster of the family tree for the Dollanger Saga, this set features Flowers in the Attic, If There Be Thorns, Petals on the Wind and Seeds of Yesterday.

Amadeus


Peter Shaffer - 1979
    Devout court composer Antonio Salieri plots against his rival, the dissolute but supremely talented Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. How far will Salieri go to achieve the fame that Mozart disregards? The 1981 Tony Award winner for Best Play. An L.A. Theatre Works full cast performance featuring: Steven Brand as Baron van Swieten James Callis as Mozart Michael Emerson as Salieri Darren Richardson as Venticello 2 Alan Shearman as Count Orsini-Rosenberg Mark Jude Sullivan as Venticello 1 Simon Templeman as Joseph II Brian Tichnell as Count Johann Kilian Von Strack Jocelyn Towne as Constanze Directed by Rosalind Ayres. Recorded in Los Angeles before a live audience at The James Bridges Theater, UCLA in September of 2016.

The Elephant Man


Bernard Pomerance - 1979
    A horribly deformed young man, who has been a freak attraction in traveling side shows, is found abandoned and helpless and is admitted for observation to Whitechapel, a prestigious London hospital. Under the care of a famous young doctor, who educates him and introduces him to London society, Merrick changes from a sensational object of pity to the urbane and witty favorite of the aristocracy and literati. But his belief that he can become a man like any other is a dream never to be realized.

Flowers in the Attic/Petals on the Wind


V.C. Andrews - 1979
    C. Andrews, Flowers in the Attic and Petals on the Wind.

Cages of Glass, Flowers of Time


Charlotte Culin - 1979
    Fourteen-year-old Claire, a victim of child abuse, gradually finds love in the world with the help of two unlikely friends.

The Trial of God: (as it was held on February 25, 1649, in Shamgorod)


Elie Wiesel - 1979
    Only two Jews, Berish the innkeeper and his daughter Hannah, have survived the brutal Cossack raids. When three itinerant actors arrive in town to perform a Purim play, Berish demands that they stage a mock trial of God instead, indicting Him for His silence in the face of evil. Berish, a latter-day Job, is ready to take on the role of prosecutor. But who will defend God? A mysterious stranger named Sam, who seems oddly familiar to everyone present, shows up just in time to volunteer. The idea for this play came from an event that Elie Wiesel witnessed as a boy in Auschwitz: "Three rabbis--all erudite and pious men--decided one evening to indict God for allowing His children to be massacred. I remember: I was there, and I felt like crying. But there nobody cried."Inspired and challenged by this play, Christian theologians Robert McAfee Brown and Matthew Fox, in a new Introduction and Afterword, join Elie Wiesel in the search for faith in a world where God is silent.

The Collected Plays, Vol. 1


Neil Simon - 1979
    His mixture of verbal wit and beautifully crafted farce, ethnic humor and insight into universal foible, and above all compassion and understanding, make even his sharpest barbs touch the heart as well as the funny bone. These seven plays, beginning with his unforgettable debut, Come Blow Your Horn, make us laugh uproariously even as we indelibly identify with the objects of our laughter.

The Life of Brian: Screenplay


Graham Chapman - 1979
    But, with its unforgettable songs and its infinitely quotable script it has gone on to become an enduring cult classic.

On Golden Pond


Ernest Thompson - 1979
    He is a retired professor, nearing eighty, with heart palpitations and a failing memory but still as tart-tongued, observant and eager for life as ever. Ethel, ten years younger, and the perfect foil for Norman, delights in all the small things that have enriched and continue to enrich their long life together. They are visited by their divorced, middle-aged daughter and her dentist fiancé.

The Norton Anthology of American Literature: American Literature since 1945 (Volume E)


Nina Baym - 1979
    Last volume (E) of the anthology of the American literature from its sixteenth-century origins to the present.

The Devil and Billy Markham


Shel Silverstein - 1979
    The Devil and Billy Markham, published in Playboy in 1979, was later adapted into a solo one-act play.

Three: An Unfinished Woman, Pentimento, Scoundrel Time


Lillian Hellman - 1979
    

No Acting Please: A Revolutionary Approach to Acting and Living


Eric Morris - 1979
    Morris' classes. Foreword by Jack Nicholson.

Tennessee Williams: Eight Plays (Book Club Edition)


Tennessee Williams - 1979
    The Glass MenagerieA Streetcar Named DesireSummer and SmokeThe Rose TattooCat on a Hot Tin RoofOrpheus DescendingSweet Bird of YouthNight of the Iguana

The Globe Illustrated Shakespeare: The Complete Works Annotated


William Shakespeare - 1979
    English literature.

Electra, Antigone & Philoctetes (Translations from Greek and Roman Authors)


Sophocles - 1979
    Three tragedies by Sophocles, newly translated to make them accessible to the widest possible audience.

The Insanity of Mary Girard


Lanie Robertson - 1979
    

Coward Plays 1: Hay Fever, The Vortex, Fallen Angels, Easy Virtue


Noël Coward - 1979
    The volume is introduced by Sheridan Morley, Coward's first biographer."Hay Fever," a comedy of bad manners, concerns a weekend with friends of the Bliss family, who have all been invited independently for a weekend at their country house near Maidenhead. "The Vortex "was a controversial drama in its time, introducing drug-addiction onto the stage at a time when alcoholism was barely mentioned. "Fallen Angels," which is written for two star actresses was described as 'degenerate', 'vile', 'obscene', 'shocking' - the second half of the play is entirely taken up with an alcoholic duologue between the two women. "Easy Virtue" is an elegant, laconic tribute to a lost world of drawing-room dramas, no other writer went more directly to the jugular of that moralistic, tight-lipped but fundamentally hypocritical 20s society.