Set in and around a large pool of water onstage, Metamorphoses juxtaposes the ancient and the contemporary in both language and image to reflect the variety and persistence of narrative in the face of inevitable change. Nominated for three 2002 Tony Awards, including "Best Play," Metamorphoses earned Zimmerman a Tony for "Best Direction of a Play."

    Focusing primarily on six shows, Passion, Assassins, Into the Woods, Sunday in the Park with George, Sweeney Todd, and Pacific Overtures, Sondheim talks about his approaches to musicalizing characters and dramatic moments; how motifs and thematic material are created and used; how musical components like harmony, melody, and rhythm reflect character; the structuring of a score; the use of pastiche; and the practical aspects of collaboration. In addition, the book includes Sondheim's list of "Songs I wish I'd Written," his reasons behind some of those choices, and the messages he received from composers and lyricists whose songs were included on the list. An exhaustive Songlisting and a Discography follow, cataloging commercial recordings of Sondheim songs, vocal ranges, and publishing information for his songs and scores.

    Although most of the currently popular guides contain useful ideas, they all suffer from the same problems: poor organization; quirky, idiosyncratic advice; and abstract theorizing on the nature of art. As a result, they fail to offer any concrete information or useful guidelines on how to construct a well-written play. Out of frustration, Spencer wrote his own. The result, The Playwright's Guidebook, is a concise and engaging handbook full of the kind of wisdom that comes naturally with experience. Spencer presents a coherent way of thinking about playwriting that addresses the important principles of structure, includes invaluable writing exercises that build upon one another, explores the creative process, and troubleshoots recurrent problems that many playwrights face.

    The show's unconventional structure consists of Cathy, the woman, telling her story backwards while Jamie, the man, tells his story chronologically; the two characters meet only once, at their wedding in the middle of the show.Jason Robert Brown won Drama Desk Awards for the music and the lyrics after the Off-Broadway premiere in 2002 starring Norbert Leo Butz and Sherie Rene Scott. The show has since been produced at almost every major regional theater in the U.S., and has been seen in Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Germany, Italy, Canada, Spain, and the UK.

    Rodenburg calls this "a simple manual to start the journey into the heart of Shakespeare," and that is what she gives us. With the same insight she displayed in The Actor Speaks, Rodenburg tackles the playing of all Shakespeare's characters. She uses dramatic resonance, breathing, and placement to show how an actor can bring Hamlet, Rosalind, Puck and other characters to life. This is one book every working actor must have.

    Each one is placed in context with a brief introduction, is carefully punctuated in the manner that best illustrates its meaning, and is painstakingly and thoroughly annotated. Each is also accompanied by commentary that will spark the actor's imagination by exploring how the interrelationship of meter and the choice of words and sounds yields clues to character and performance. And throughout the book sidebars relate historical, topical, technical, and other useful and entertaining information relevant to the text. In addition, the authors include an overview of poetic and rhetorical elements, brief synopses of all the plays, and a comprehensive index along with other guidelines that will help readers locate the perfect monologue for their needs.More than just an actor's toolkit, Speak the Speech! is also an entertaining resource that will help demystify Shakespeare's language for the student and theater lover alike.

    This songbook contains easy piano arrangements of a dozen songs from Mel Brooks' Broadway blockbuster, the winner of a record 12 Tony Awards! Includes: Along Came Bialy * Der Guten Tag Hop-Clop * Goodbye! * Haben Sie Gehort Das Deutsche Band? * I Wanna Be a Producer * In Old Bavaria * Keep It Gay * Prisoners of Love * Springtime for Hitler * That Face * 'Til Him * When You Got It, Flaunt It.

    Among them are the anarchist Michael Bakunin, who was to challenge Marx for the soul of the masses; Ivan Turgenev, author of some of the most enduring works in Russian literature; the brilliant, erratic young critic Vissarion Belinsky; and Alexander Herzen, a nobleman's son and the first self-proclaimed socialist in Russia, who becomes the main focus of this drama of politics, love, loss, and betrayal. In The Coast of Utopia, Stoppard presents an inspired examination of the struggle between romantic anarchy, utopian idealism, and practical reformation in this chronicle of romantics and revolutionaries caught up in a struggle for political freedom in an age of emperors.

    It covers all of Kane's major plays and productions, contains hitherto unpublished material and reviews, and looks at her continuing influence after her tragic early death. Locating the main dramatic sources and features of her work as well as centralizing her place within the 'new wave' of emergent British dramatists in the 1990's, Graham Saunders provides an introduction for those familiar and unfamiliar with her work.

    Too Much Light is an on-going attempt to perform 30 plays in 60 minutes. The show is in constant flux, with at least 2 to 12 new plays written by the ensemble each week. Since the show's inception in 1988, the ensemble has generated nearly 4,500 short plays, performance pieces, and monologues, from which this collection is culled.The book contains solo performance pieces by 25 authors, covering such diverse topics as racial politics, sex between strangers, child abuse, and what it means to be a "male secretary". Rants, poems, songs, plays without words, straight-ahead monologues, jokes and audience participatory plays are just a few of the forms used by The Neo-Futurists to present their ideas and stories.

    This gorgeous book is now updated, revised and with a larger format, covering 1900 to 2001. PLAYBILL's columnist, Louis Botto, along with Robert Viagas, opens the doors and lets readers explore the 40 active Broadway theatres in New York. From the conception and design of the buildings, to their original creators, and on to the theatres' transformation, often under duress, from legitimate houses to vaudeville and Burlesque, to movie houses and then back to their original purpose, this book captures the magical world of Broadway. It is a complete and authoritative history that only Botto, the curator of PLAYBILL's incomparable 116-year-old archives, can tell. Expanded from his popular column in PLAYBILL magazine, AT THIS THEATRE is the biography of those living, breathing buildings we call theatres. In this substantially updated version, Botto includes the histories of all the theatre rescued from the wrecker in the last ten years, including the American Airlines Theatre, Disney's New Amsterdam, and the Lyric and the Apollo, now combined into the Ford Center.AT THIS THEATRE is filled with great stories featuring a cast of characters including Ethel Merman, David Merrick, Katharine Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart and Spencer Tracy. And it's also a theatrical spectacle boasting lavish illustrations of posters, programs, and photographs throughout. This is the gift book for every theatre lover on your list, including yourself!

    The father is so incapable of forgiveness he puts a gun in his son's mouth; the mother so shattered, she deserts the family and eventually takes leave of her sanity altogether; the son--only 17 years old at the time--sets out for New York City. There, he seeks an uneasy refuge in books and reinvents himself as a writer. Across the decade and a half that follows he tries to cope with the ramifications of his own anguish and estrangement while making a desperate search for redemption. A devastating, elegant, and gripping dissection of the American dream, Nocturne signals a brave new voice in American theater.

    Indeed, the phrase 'grand guignol' has entered the language to describe any display of sensational horror. Since the theatre closed its doors forty years ago, the genre has been overlooked by critics and theatre historians. This book reconsiders the importance and influence of the Grand-Guignol within its social, cultural and historical contexts, and is the first attempt at a major evaluation of the genre as performance. It gives full consideration to practical applications and to the challenges presented to the actor and director. The book also includes oustanding new translations by the authors of ten Grand-Guignol plays, none of which have been previously available in English. The presentation of these plays in English for the first time is an implicit demand for a total reappraisal of the grand-guignol genre, not least for the unexpected inclusion of two very funny comedies.

    It is for sale but there are no takers for the only eatery in the depressed town, so newcomer Percy suggests to Hannah that she raffle it off. Entry fees are one hundred dollars and the best essay on why you want the grill wins. Soon, mail is arriving by the wheelbarrow full and things are definitely cookin' at the Spitfire Grill."A soul satisfying...work of theatrical resourcefulness. A compelling story that flows with grace and carries the rush of anticipation. The story moves, the characters have many dimensions and their transformations are plausible and moving. The musical is freeing. It is penetrated by honesty and it glows." -The New York Times"Soulful...The amiable country flavored tunes and lyrics are rendered with the kind of conviction and expertise that make them transcendent. What in normal times would be a joy is, in these troubled ones, sheer nourishment." -New York Magazine"Soaring melodies!...Well before the show reaches its conclusion, many...city slickers in the audience may be ready to enter Percy's raffle." -The Wall Street Journal"An abundance of warmth, spirit and goodwill!...Some of the most engaging and instantly infectious melodies I've heard in an original musical in some time." - USA Today

    This is the fourth and final volume in the new Loeb Classical Library edition of his plays.Frogs was produced in 405 BCE, shortly after the deaths of Sophocles and Euripides. Dionysus, the patron god of theater, journeys to the underworld to retrieve Euripides. There he is recruited to judge a contest between the traditional Aeschylus and the modern Euripides, a contest that yields both sparkling comedy and insight on ancient literary taste.In Assemblywomen, Athenian women plot to save Athens from male misgovernance. They transfer power to themselves and institute a new social order in which all inequalities based on wealth, age, and beauty are eliminated--with raucously comical results.The gentle humor and straightforward morality of Wealth made it the most popular of Aristophanes's plays from classical times to the Renaissance. Here the god Wealth is cured of his blindness; his newfound ability to distinguish good people from bad brings playfully portrayed social consequences.

    Body Blows gathers six of Miller's best-known performances that chart the sexual, spiritual, and political topography of his identity as a gay man: Some Golden States, Stretch Marks, My Queer Body, Naked Breath, Fruit Cocktail, and Glory Box. In Body Blows, Tim Miller leaps from the stage to the page, as each performance script is illustrated with striking photographs and accompanied by Miller's notes and comment. This book explores the tangible body blows-taken and given-of Miller's life and times as explored in his performances: the queer-basher's blow, the sweet blowing breath of a lover, the below-the-belt blow of HIV/AIDS, the psychic blows from a society that disrespects the humanity of lesbian and gay relationships. Miller's performances are full of the put-up-your-dukes and stand-your-ground of such day-to-day blows that make up being gay in America

    The primary objective of the publication is to share creative solutions to technical problems so that fellow theatre technicians can avoid having to reinvent the wheel with each new challenge. The range of topics includes scenery, props, painting, electrics, sound and costumes. The articles each describe an approach, device, or technique that has been tested on stage or in a shop by students and professionals. Some articles included are: Building Authentic Elizabethan Ruffs; Simple and Inexpensive Stained Glass; A Quick-Load Floor Pulley Design; A Simple Approach to Stretching Drops; Flexi-Pitch Escape Stairs; Spot-Welding Scrim with Sobo; Handrail Armatures for a Grand Staircase; The Triscuit-Studwall Deck System; A Frameless Turntable; Stand on Stage: Minimum Weight, Maximum Effect; A Self-Paging Cable Tray; Roller Chain Turntable Drives; A Bench-Built XLR Cable Tester

    - Presents the most important 20th-century criticism on major works from "The Odyssey through modern literature- The critical essays reflect a variety of schools of criticism- Contains critical biographies, notes on the contributing critics, a chronology of the author's life, and an index- Introductory essay by Harold Bloom

    Cast of 3 men, 1 woman. A chorus of 4 or more who may be either male or female. Fragmentary set which may suggest house and swamp. Costumes, "simple swamp."Set deep within the mysterious Tombigee Swamp, WILEY AND THE HAIRY MAN centers around a young fatherless boy, his conjure-woman Mother, his faithful Hounddog, and the Hairy Man who haunts Wiley's days and dreams. Through rhythm and rhyme, a Chorus creates the mystery of the swamp. The magic of this play is not fairy dust -- it is soil. The magic of the earth and mud of the swamp. The magic of survival. In an exciting duel of wits, Wiley learns to rely upon his own resources and conquers two villains; the Hairy Man and his own fear.

    The music is by Marc Shaiman (who wrote the clever score to the musical film South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut ), with lyrics by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman. The story is set in Baltimore, 1962, and the songs are a snappy, affectionate homage to the rock and pop of the period. Our deluxe folio features 8 pages of wonderful color photos from the Broadway production, and piano/vocal arrangements of 12 songs: Good Morning Baltimore * The Nicest Kids in Town * Mama, I'm a Big Girl Now * I Can Hear the Bells * It Takes Two * Welcome to the '60s * Run and Tell That * Big, Blonde and Beautiful * Timeless to Me * Without Love * I Know Where I've Been * You Can't Stop the Beat.

    Karen Shimakawa argues that the forms of Asian Americanness that appear in U.S. culture are a function of national abjection—a process that demands that Americanness be defined by the exclusion of Asian Americans, who are either cast as symbolic foreigners incapable of integration or Americanization or distorted into an “honorary” whiteness. She examines how Asian Americans become culturally visible on and off stage, revealing the ways Asian American theater companies and artists respond to the cultural implications of this abjection.Shimakawa looks at the origins of Asian American theater, particularly through the memories of some of its pioneers. Her examination of the emergence of Asian American theater companies illuminates their strategies for countering the stereotypes of Asian Americans and the lack of visibility of Asian American performers within the theater world. She shows how some plays—Wakako Yamauchi’s 12-1-A, Frank Chin’s Chickencoop Chinaman, and The Year of the Dragon—have both directly and indirectly addressed the displacement of Asian Americans. She analyzes works attempting to negate the process of abjection—such as the 1988 Broadway production of M. Butterfly as well as Miss Saigon, a mainstream production that enacted the process of cultural displacement both onstage and off. Finally, Shimakawa considers Asian Americanness in the context of globalization by meditating on the work of Ping Chong, particularly his East-West Quartet.

    As Grant Wiggins counsels the young man, he learns an important lesson about heroism. A Lesson Before Dying is a wrenching portrait of a southern town crippled by racism.

    Outstanding in a career full of remarkable achievements are his productions of Titus Andronicus (1955), King Lear (1962), Marat/Sade (1964), and Midsummer Night's Dream (1970). Since moving to Paris, he has produced a series of events which push at the boundaries of theatre.

    These are the plays which got audiences out of their seats, and sometimes out into the streets. Their words and ideas rumbled ominously down the marble hallways of legislatures and challenged, even threatened, and often changed, the thinking of millions. These are the plays which either lit or reflected the fires of those political controversies which blazed across the American Twentieth Century. Individually, each is a molotov cocktail tossed onto the stage, each a political movement encapsulated in dramatic form. Combined, they constitute both a conflagration and a record of American political and theatrical ideology. Never before, however, have they been collected in one explosive volume. In Political Stages, they have at last been preserved, ever ready to serve at the barricades of subsequent eras. Includes works by Tennessee Williams, Emily Mann, Clifford Odets, Langston Hughes, and others.

    This book consists of wide-ranging conversations of people who each had a unique role in the history of the Stratford Festival.

    Alternately chilling and hilarious, UNWRAP YOUR CANDY is a delectable evening of bedtime tales for adults guaranteed to keep you awake for nights on end. Inspired in equal parts by Alfred Hitchcock, Roald Dahl and , UNWRAP YOUR CANDY boasts a versatile cast of five and minimal production requirements. Together, the plays examine the danger of being a child, the terror of being an adult and even the perils of being an unsuspecting audience member. Spine-tinglers for the twenty-first century, the collected one acts in UNWRAP YOUR CANDY are guaranteed to jolt the senses and stimulate the mind. In the title play, UNWRAP YOUR CANDY, five actors portray actual members of the theatre audience and prove far more intriguing than the play they've come to watch. (3 men, 2 women.) In LOT 13: THE BONE VIOLIN, a stunning young violin prodigy skyrockets to international prominence, only to meet a shocking and supernatural fate. (3 men, 2 women.) In WILDWOOD PARK, a neurotic real-estate agent shows a house filled with unspeakable secrets to a potential buyer who harbors an almost insatiable thirst for tabloid atrocities. (1 man, 1 woman.) And in BABY TALK, a woman is unwound when her precocious baby begins to speak early while still inside her womb. (3 men, 1 woman.)

    Several hundred pages numbered according to 28 sections, plus appendices.

    In her astonishing new book, she looks closely at the interchange between sound and rhythm in language, showing how it can change the nuance of the meaning and take the director, actor, and audience further into the world of the play.

    You Fool, How Can the Sky Fall? is an unbridled study in grotesquerie, reflecting a belief, traceable throughout Mda’s work, that government by those who inherit a revolution is almost inevitably, in the first decade or two, hijacked by the smart operators. The Bells of Amersfoort, with its graphic portrayal of the isolation imposed by exile, picks up on the themes of the other two plays but adds to them the concept of "healing," both of the soul and of the land.

    

    She squabbles with her mum and begins to spend her days in her dad's old allotment, where once she was so happy. What is Elaine searching for, in this place of memories, dreams and magic?

    Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll, and Musicals shows how American culture has changed over the twentieth century, from the Roaring Twenties (The Wild Party) to the cultural chaos of the '50s (Grease) and the sexual revolution of the '60s (Hair) and '70s (Rocky Horror), to the rebirth of the art form in the '90s (Bat Boy), and up to the present, exploring where we've been and where we might be heading. This is a celebration of the counter-culture taking center stage in the most American of performing arts, and changing it forever.

    Winner of the George Devine Award for 2002, published to tie in with the opening at the Traverse Theatre at the Edinburgh FestivalAnd that is why we can't have these/Fatally radiant creatures/Walking round the place/Reminding us how clumsy/And mean-spirited/And graceless/And cowardly/And shapeless/And flabby and foul we all are.In a drowned world - how far will you go to save your own skin? In this vicious tale of love, revolt and beauty, Gary Owen presents a vision of a world divided between citizens and non-citizens, where friends betray one another and where surfaces matter more than love or kinship.

    The poems, monologues and stories in What the Sea Means find him discussing xenophobia and millennial anxiety with Cookie Monster; penning elegies and odes to Carl Jung, Zeppo Marx, Laughing Sal and the Buddha; falling in love with a stranger's cologne on a trip to San Francisco; getting crank calls from The Sea after midnight; wandering the city streets at night, scribbling in a notebook; and explicating the animal nature of macaroons, x-rays and isosceles triangles.What the Sea Means gathers a decade and a half of Dave Awl's writing. Its contents include a chapbook of new poems; a collection of stories and monologues from The Pansy Kings' Cotillion, Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind, Talking to Myself and other shows; the 1997 online chapbook Night Diaries; and a selection of early poems going back to the late 80s.

    Also in this series are Of the Fields, Lately (1973); Salt-Water Moon (1984); and 1949 (1988), which deals with this expatriate family’s reaction to Newfoundland’s entry into confederation.With Soldier’s Heart, French looks back in time at the thoroughly alienated 16-year-old Jacob, standing on a railway platform, his suitcase and one-way ticket away from home in hand. His father Esau, a veteran of the First World War, rushes to the station in a last-ditch effort to persuade his son not to leave. Unable to speak of what had happened in the Great War since his return, Esau begins, in halting and tentative language to tell of his comrades and his brother, their training in Scotland, the agony of Gallipoli, and finally the formative events at the battle of the Somme at Beaumont Hamel. At first defensive in response to his son’s probing and impatient questioning, Esau’s answers evolve into stories of pride, foolishness, anger, desperation and finally mindless terror, leaving only the image of a man driven by the blind animal instinct to survive. It is this devastating and unsparing account of all that is in a soldier’s heart, that finally brings father and son back together.

    As before, the accents range from regional U.S. and British dialects to European accents that include, among others, the Germanic, Slavic and Romance Languages. Completing his around-the-world journey, the author then covers the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Includes two CDs.

    A world without My Funny Valentine, The Lady is a Tramp, Blue Moon, and Bewitched, to name just a few of the songs he wrote with Lorenz Hart, is scarcely imaginable, and the musicals he wrote with his secondcollaborator, Oscar Hammerstein--Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I, and The Sound of Music--continue to enchant and entertain audiences.Arranged in four sections, Rodgers and Hart (1929-1943), Rodgers and Hammerstein (1943-1960), Rodgers After Hammerstein (1960-1979), and The Composer Speaks (1939-1971), The Richard Rodgers Reader offers a cornucopia of informative, perceptive, and stylish biographical and critical overviews. Italso contains a selection of Rodgers's letters to his wife Dorothy in the 1920s, the 1938 Time magazine cover story and New Yorker profiles in 1938 and 1961, and essays and reviews by such noted critics as Brooks Atkinson, Eric Bentley, Leonard Bernstein, Lehman Engel, Walter Kerr, Ken Mandelbaum, Ethan Mordden, George Jean Nathan, and Alec Wilder. The volume features personal accounts by Richard Adler, Agnes de Mille, Joshua Logan, Mary Martin, and Diahann Carroll. The collection concludes with complete selections from more than thirty years of Rodgers's own writings on topics ranging fromthe creative process, the state of the Broadway theater, even Rodgers's bout with cancer, and a generous sample from the candid and previously unpublished Columbia University interviews.For anyone wishing to explore more fully the life and work of a composer whose songs and musicals have assumed a permanent--and prominent--place in American popular culture, The Richard Rodgers Reader will offer endless delights.

    After a young girl is lost in a cave on the edge of town, there is a Rashomon-like investigation of her disappearance and the fate of those who survive her.

    In this volume of criticism, one of Chekhov's Russian interpreters seeks to offer Western readers a clear and commanding appraisal of the master's work.

    Conried was indeed a talented and versatile actor, but his versatility often worked against him. A complex individual who yearned to perform Shakespeare on the stage, he achieved success playing low comedy in films and on television. Conried performed in nearly 10,000 radio shows and hundreds of television programs and stage plays, as well as more than 80 films. Over the years, Conried also lent his distinctive voice to numerous animated shorts, phonograph records, commercials, and other projects. Some of his most memorable roles are Dr. Terwilliker in The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T; the voice of Captain Hook from Disney's Peter Pan; eccentric Uncle Tonoose on The Danny Thomas Show; the fussy elocutionist Percy Livermore on I Love Lucy; and the voice of comical villain Snidely Whiplash from Jay Ward's Dudley Do-Right series. This book chronicles Conried's life and career from his birth in 1917 through his death in 1982. Enlivened by many photographs as well as personal reminiscences from family, friends, and colleagues, the book also contains comprehensive information on Conried's radio, television, film, stage and voice work.

    Re-imagining the life of legendary Canadian poet Gwendolyn MacEwen, from her meteoric rise to her final unravelling in the grips of alcoholism, we meet a Gwendolyn with a contagious wit, brave heart, and an endless capacity for self re-invention.

    All of them, in their various ways, fall under Oweney’s loving spell. A heartwarming new play from the author of The Wexford Trilogy and Calvacaders.

    Their respective approaches to the body, contracts, nationalism, and divorce animate their comedies and provide comic comment on the marriage plot. By attending to the dialogue between humorous comic events and the more predictable comic endings of these plays, Anderson illuminates the philosophical, political, and legal arguments about women and marriage that fascinated both female playwrights and the theatergoing public.

    The work of Herbert Blau-his directing, writing, and criticism-has been a determining force during this period as theater encounters theory.Blau’s struggle to bring a critical intelligence to the American stage goes back half a century, to the quiescent postwar years (which he has eloquently described in The Impossible Theater: A Manifesto). His innovations in performance began with early productions of now-canonical plays that were hardly known at that time (works by Brecht, Beckett, Genet, Pinter, Duerrenmatt, and others). His experience is as distinctive as his versatile habits of mind and conceptual urgency of style.If the impossible takes a little time (as the title of one essay states), Blau’s struggle now continues in a theoretical vein. Performance-and his own compelling writing- has moved across other genres and disciplines into fashion, politics, sexuality, and theory. His diversity of thought is demonstrated here in commentaries about the newer modes of performance (including conceptual and body art), various American playwrights, Renaissance drama, new music and theater, voice, the senses and the baroque, and the photographic image. As the essays reflect upon each other, a kind of cultural history, with inflections of autobiography, develops-which is what readers of Blau’s previous books have come to expect.

    This book teaches the reader how to be the best actor he can possibly be, in concert with his deepest values and highest aspirations. It is a book of instruction in the art and craft of acting; a practical, street-smart treatise on how to succeed in the business of acting, and a text that explores how the spiritual nature of acting affects both the actor and the society to which the actor contributes. The unique perspective of helping the reader to an understanding of acting as an art, a business, and a calling makes this an essential manual for anyone wishing to succeed in any creative endeavor.