It tells the story of very private lives caught up in the heartrendering ordeal of suffering and doom - an ordeal that was largely ignored for reasons of politics and majority morality.Filled with power, anger, and intelligence, Larry Kramer's riveting play dramatizes what actualy happened from the time of the disease's discovery to the present, and points a moral j'accuse in many directions. His passionate indictment of government, the media, and the public for refusing to deal with a national plague is electrifying theater - a play that finally breaks through the conspiracy of silence with a shout of stunning impact. As Douglas Watt summed it up in his review for the New York Daily News,THE NORMAL HEART is "an angry, unremitting and gripping piece of political theater. You are bound to come away moved."

    Made into a movie starring Patrick Swayze, this is the inspiring story of an American doctor who experienced a spiritual rebirth in an impoverished section of Calcutta.

    Bertie White, quiet and conservative, dreams of getting married and having children. In 1951, their childhood worlds collide in Atlantic City. Keeping in touch as pen pals, they reunite over the years ... always near the ocean.Powerful and moving, this novel follows Cee Cee and Bertie's extraordinary friendship over the course of thirty years as they transform from adolescents into adults. A bestselling novel that became a hugely successful film, Beaches is funny, heartbreaking, and a tale that should be a part of every woman's library.

    "This is the most wonderfully authentic account of the experience of creating a performance. It's full of delicate and sometimes moving observation; full of striking information...; full of the frustration and tedium and occasional tears of the unequal struggle of any of us flawed thespians with ourselves and a great role; and full of his own astonishing and unforgettable drawings. Images, images. What images!" Simon Callow, The Sunday Times (London)

    With a delicate wife and their unborn child, he has no choice but to leave Ireland and set out for England in search of work. But from the moment Patrick and Mary set foot in Liverpool, they are beset by new trials.After moving to York, they are forced to settle in the nightmarish slums of Walmgate. Yet the very poverty and hopelessness of their surroundings binds the small community together. Only stubborn determination survive tragedy can win them hopes of a better life….

    Tracy Whitney is young, beautiful and intelligent - and about to marry into wealth and glamour. Until, suddenly, she is betrayed, framed by a ruthless Mafia gang, abandoned by the man she loves. Only her ingenuity saves her and helps her fight back.

    Catherine Cookson explores this theme in a major novel that will absorb and enthral her readers as irresistibly as any she has written.Roddy Greenbank was brought by his father to the remote Northumberland community of Langley in the autumn of 1807. Within hours of their arrival, however, the father meets a violent death and the boy is left with all memory gone of his past life.Adopted and raised by old Kate Makepeace, Roddy found his closest companions in Hal Roystan and Mary Ellen Lee. These three stand at the heart of a richly eventful narrative that spans the first half of the nineteenth century, their lives lastingly intertwined by the inexorable demands of a strange and somewhat cruel destiny.

    In doing so, he entered our hearts—my heart—because he made his struggle my struggle. His life became my life.”—Eric Bogosian“Virtuosic. A master writer, reporter, comic and playwright. Spalding Gray is a sit-down monologist with the soul of a stand-up comedian. A contemporary Gulliver, he travels the globe in search of experience and finds the ridiculous.”—The New York TimesIn 2004, we mourned the loss of one of America’s true theatrical innovators. Spalding Gray took his own life by jumping from the Staten Island ferry into the waters of New York Harbor, finally succumbing to the impossible notion that he could in fact swim to Cambodia. At a memorial gathering for family, friends and fans at Lincoln Center in New York, his widow expressed the need to honor Gray’s legacy as an artist and writer for his children, as well as for future generations of fans and readers. Originally published in 1985, Swimming to Cambodia is reissued here 20 years later in a new edition as a tribute to Gray’s singular artistry.Writer, actor and performer, Spalding Gray is the author of Sex and Death to the Age 14; Monster in a Box; It’s a Slippery Slope; Gray’s Anatomy and Morning, Noon and Night, among other works. His appearance in The Killing Fields was the inspiration for his Swimming to Cambodia, which was also filmed by Jonathan Demme.

     Heaven Leigh Casteel was the prettiest, smartest girl in the backwoods, despite her ragged clothes and dirty face...despite a father meaner than ten vipers...despite her weary stepmother, who worked her like a mule. For her brother Tom and the little ones, Heaven clung to her pride and her hopes. Someday they'd get away and show the world that they were decent, fine and talented -- worthy of love and respect. Then Heaven's stepmother ran off, and her wicked, greedy father had a scheme -- a vicious scheme that threatened to destroy the precious dream of Heaven and the children forever!

    Christopher Hampton has made a masterful adaptation for the stage of the conspiracy to corrupt a young girl barely out of her convent.

    A mixture of poetry, metaphysics, and common sense, they are ideal for the imaginative director and are easily adapted for radio or small acting areas.

     When her mother is shot at the close of World War II, Marika Magos is orphaned into a new life in the diamond canyons of South Africa. As a worn-torn Europe is on the mend, Marika climbs to the glittering heights of the London fashion industry. From Paris to New York, her name is known and her admirers many. Not even Tony Palma, the international tycoon who thought he possessed her entirely knows of the secret passion she harbours for Swiss immigrant Gunter Grieff. Yet the sweet promise of their affair turns to ashes when Marika learns that his name and papers are false, changed in the final days of the war to protect his German identity. Song of the Wind tells a powerful tale of romance, adventure and intrigue. Praise for Song of the Wind ‘Irresistible . . . keeps your emotions trembling over hundreds of pages’ - MAIL ON SUNDAY Praise for Madge Swindells Praise for Madge Swindells 'Superlative' - Publishers Weekly 'I was gripped from start to finish’ - Kate Alexander, author ‘Terrific. A book that’s big in every sense. . . rich in detail and written with passion it lives on in the memory. I loved it’ - Sarah Harrison, author Madge Swindells was born and educated in England. As a teenager, she emigrated to South Africa where she studied archaeology at Cape Town University. Later, in England, she was a Fleet Street journalist and the manager of her own publishing company. Her earlier novels, Summer Harvest, Shadows on the Snow, The Corsican Woman, Edelweiss, The Sentinel and Harvesting the Past were international bestsellers and have been translated into eight languages. She lives in South Africa.

    When others begin to speak freely around him, he not only becomes privy to secrets both dangerous and frivolous, he also discovers an adventurous extrovert within himself.

    This format will delight both those who know the great dramatist's works and those who are new to them. Michael Foreman's dramatic color illustrations and varied black-and-white line drawings are the perfect complement to this celebration of Shakespeare's genius.

    A unicorn who has no horn sets out to find one.

    Prolific bestselling author Danielle Steel revisits this familiar theme in No Greater Love. Twenty-year-old Edwina Winfield is forced to assume the role of head of the household, becoming both mother and father to her five younger siblings after her parents and beloved fiancé drown during the disastrous sinking of the Titanic. Determined never to marry, Edwina must also run the family newspaper until her younger brothers are old enough to step in. But next-in-line Phillip heads first to Harvard and then is tragically killed during World War I. Fun-loving George is wooed by the lights of Hollywood and exquisite sister Alexis follows in his footsteps. While tending to the youngest children, Fannie and Teddy, Edwina must assist the rest of her siblings out of their many scrapes and escapades. Along the way, she comes to terms with her loss and is finally able to put the events of the fateful night of April 15, 1912, the night the Titanic made its final voyage to the bottom of the sea, behind her and let love into her heart once more. --Alison Trinkle

    It's hard starting over — new family, new school, new friends.Then Jenny meets Pete McCaffrey, the mysterious boy next door. Stay away from him, everyone warns her, he's trouble. He's already got a girlfriend. And he deals drugs.But Jenny needs someone to lean on, so she ignores their advice. Pretty soon, Pete's hooked on Jenny. And Jenny is hooked on drugs.She knows she's in over her head. The question is, can she get out?

    It is an extension of notes on the theater and theatergoing that have been accumulating for some time. It does not have an argument, or set out to prove a thesis, and it will not be one of those useful books one reads for the fruits of its research. Rather, it is a form of critical description that is phenomenological in the sense that it focuses on the activity of theater making itself out of its essential materials: speech, sound, movement, scenery, text, etc. Like most phenomenological description, it will succeed to the extent that it awakens the reader's memory of his own perceptual encounters with theater. If the book fails in this it will be about as interesting to read as an anthology of someone else's dreams. In any case, this book is less concerned with the scientific purity of my perspective and method than with retrieving something from the theater experience that seems to me worthy of our critical admiration.

    The play is set in a beach bungalow. The young man who lives there has pulled a lost young woman from the ocean. Soon, she finds herself trapped in his life and torn between her need to come to rest somewhere and her certainty that all human relationships turn eventually into nightmares. The struggle between his tolerant and gently ironic approach to life and her strategy of suspicion and attack becomes a kind of war about love and creation which neither can afford to lose. This is an offbeat, wonderful love story. Note: The play contains a wealth of excellent monologue and scene material.

    Twelve distinguished actors were asked to write about the preparation and performance of a Shakespeare role they had played in a production with the Royal Shakespeare Company.

    The intention is to create a painting or drawing that is a harmonious unit, with each individual element subordinated to the impact of the whole. The author uses pen and ink, watercolour and oil to introduce methods for artists to develop personal patterns of thinking and perceiving and to integrate a drawing or a painting. This book is designed to be of interest to artists of all levels and abilities, particularly for intermediate and advanced students who already know how to paint but who want to make more expressive paintings. Charles Reid is the author of "Figure Painting in Watercolor" and "Painting by Design".

    It covers a period starting after 1940-42 and goes on to the ushering in of Janata Party's rule after the emergency and then Indira Gandhi's return to power. Such a long narration, having so many characters, with their different natures, and temperaments and different relationships with their peculiar problems, in the background of distinctive culture prevailing in the villages, the erosion of human values, the deep impact of politics on the changing village culture after 1947, intrusion of politics into religion and interference of religion in politics. The writer has accommodated all that in this great creation.The novel first published in 1985. For this novel Ram Sarup Ankhi received Sahitya Akademi award in 1987. The novel has been translated into 10 languages.

    

    This guide gives advice on selecting a play, auditioning a cast, and creating a stage space, shows how to conduct acting workshops, and demonstrates rehearsal techniques.

    

    He graduated from Oxford University in 1878 with a reputation as a brilliant scholar and quickly dazzled London society with his wit and his flamboyant dress. His first literary successes came in the 1880s with his lecture tour of America and the publication of his fairy tales. These were followed by five highly polished plays and The Picture of Dorian Gray, all completed during the first half of the 1890s. After losing a slander suit over accusations of his homosexual behavior, Wilde was prosecuted and spent two years in prison. Following his release in 1897, estranged from his wife and children, Wilde moved to Paris, where he died in 1900.

    

    Displaying all the variety and richness that characterize verse drama at its best, the plays appear here in the order in which they were first performed.

    

    

    But Rocky can cope with that. After all, he's lived with his severe disfigurement for sixteen years.Underneath, Rocky is sharp-witted, big-hearted and tough. He needs to be. People may care - but often they just don't think.For his mother - always unconventional, always living close to the edge - the one important thing in the world is to see her son happy.This is their story - a story of courage, hope, determination - and a love that would never die.

    This book contains the complete librettos of 11 operettas by Gilbert and Sullivan:Trial by JuryThe SorcererH.M.S PinaforeThe Pirates of PenzancePatienceIolanthePrincess IdaThe MikadoRuddigoreThe Yeomen of the GuardThe GondoliersMartyn Green, who acted in the majority of these shows, includes extensive annotations about the staging and his personal experiences.

    The way performances are created--in training, workshops, and rehearsals--is the key paradigm for social process.

    

    Each chapter consists of a complete activity project which gives students practical experiences in drama.

    It is Thanksgiving Day, 1973, and they are furiously preparing for the imminent arrival of relatives for a family dinner. At first the action of the play is refreshingly offhand and filled with warmhearted humor, with Maurine fluttering about chattering nonstop and Bob trying to disguise the fact that he has been smoking a forbidden cigarette. But then, as Jeremy's cutting ripostes become more sarcastic and venomous, the mood changes-impelling a series of explosive confrontations as the others struggle to understand and accept Jeremy's alarming bitterness and to convey the love and deep concern which they feel for him. But, in the end, the gulf between them is too great, the harsh words too hurtful, for harmony to be restored. Instead there is violence and rage, and the shattering realization that what once was can be no more, and they can only pick u the pieces and go on as best they can.