Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:    New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars    Biographies of the authors    Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events    Footnotes and endnotes    Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work    Comments by other famous authors    Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations    Bibliographies for further reading    Indices & Glossaries, when appropriateAll editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works. Oscar Wilde’s legendary wit dazzles in The Importance of Being Earnest, one of the greatest and most popular works of drama to emerge from Victorian England. A light-hearted satire of the absurdity of all forms and conventions, this comic masterpiece features an unforgettable cast of characters who, as critic Max Beerbohm observed, “speak a kind of beautiful nonsense—the language of high comedy, twisted into fantasy.” This collection also includes Oscar Wilde’s most famous comedies, Lady Windermere’s Fan, A Woman of No Importance, and An Ideal Husband, as well as his poetic tragedy Salomé—all written between 1891 and 1895, Wilde’s most creative period. George Bernard Shaw said of Oscar Wilde that he is “our most thorough playwright. He plays with everything: with wit, with philosophy, with drama, with actors and audience, with the whole theater.”

    His tricks and turns have a purpose. They are bridges over a deep pit of sympathy and sorrow, illuminated by a tragic vision of stunted and frustrated lives.' Fintan O'Toole, Irish TimesMartin McDonagh's searingly brilliant new play premi�res at the National Theatre, London in November 2003.

    Needing college credit to graduate on time, he kept a journal of everything he saw and heard and thus was able to document in unprecedented detail how a musical is actually created. Now, more than thirty years later, he has fashioned an extraordinary chronicle. Follies was created by Stephen Sondheim, Hal Prince, Michael Bennett, and James Goldman - giants in the evolution of the Broadway musical and geniuses at the top of their game. Everything Was Possible takes the reader on a roller-coaster ride, from the uncertainties of casting to drama-filled rehearsals, from the care and feeding of one-time movie and television stars to the pressures of a Boston tryout to the exhilaration of opening night on Broadway. Foreword by long-time NY critic Frank Rich.

    Dying too young on her wedding day, Eurydice must journey to the underworld, where she reunites with her father and struggles to remember her lost love. With contemporary characters, ingenious plot twists, and breathtaking visual effects, the play is a fresh look at a timeless love story.

    They cannot act adjectives, they need verbs. This thesaurus of active verbs helps the actor to refine the action-word until they hit exactly the right one to make the action come alive.

    Theatergoers who have followed August Wilson’s career will find in Gem a touchstone for everything else he has written.”—Ben Brantley, The New York Times“Wilson’s juiciest material. The play holds the stage and its characters hammer home, strongly, the notion of newfound freedom.”—Michael Phillips, Chicago TribuneGem of the Ocean is the play that begins it all. Set in 1904 Pittsburgh, it is chronologically the first work in August Wilson’s decade-by-decade cycle dramatizing the African American experience during the 20th century—an unprecedented series that includes the Pulitzer Prize–winning plays Fences and The Piano Lesson. Aunt Esther, the drama’s 287-year-old fiery matriarch, welcomes into her Hill District home Solly Two Kings, who was born into slavery and scouted for the Union Army, and Citizen Barlow, a young man from Alabama searching for a new life. Gem of the Ocean recently played across the country and on Broadway, with Phylicia Rashad as Aunt Esther.Earlier in 2005, on the completion of the final work of his ten play cycle-surely the most ambitious American dramatic project undertaken in our history-August Wilson disclosed his bout with cancer, an illness of unusual ferocity that would eventually claim his life on October 2. Fittingly the Broadway theatre where his last play will be produced in 2006 has been renamed the August Wilson Theater in his honor. His legacy will animate the theatre and stir the human heart for decades to come.

    The notes gathered over a long career and polished to a sharp edge documented the teachings and directions that Hauser shared privately with a host of theatrical and cinematic figures, including Sir Alec Guinness, Richard Burton, Sir Ian McKellen, Dame Judi Dench, Kevin Spacey, and many others who called Hauser their director, mentor, teacher, or boss.Now, the former student has expanded and enhanced his mentor's private notes into a book-length format suitable for anyone searching for the timeless gems of the director s craft. Drawing on years of training, decades of experience, and the distilled wisdom of leading practitioners, Notes on Directing is filled with enduring good advice expressed in assertive, no-nonsense language. More than a how-to, this is a tool for directors looking to better translate the page to the stage or to the screen. With one hundred and thirty directives supported with explanatory commentary, helpful examples, and rare quotes, this deceptively slim volume has the impact of a privileged apprenticeship to a great master.Whether you are a student or a professional, a playgoer, moviegoer, or enthusiast, Notes on Directing provides a thrilling glimpse into the hidden process of creating a live, shared experience.

    In How to Stop Acting, Guskin reveals the insights and techniques that have worked wonders for beginners as well as stars. Instead of yet another "method," Guskin offers a strategy based on a radically simple and refreshing idea: that the actor's work is not to "create a character" but rather to be continually, personally responsive to the text, wherever his impulse takes him, from first read-through to final performance. From this credo derives an entirely new perspective on auditioning and the challenge of developing a role and keeping it fresh, even over hundreds of performances. Drawing on examples from his clients' work and his own, Guskin presents acting as a constantly evolving exploration rather than as a progression toward a fixed goal. He also offers sound and original advice on adapting to the particular demands of television and film, playing difficult emotional scenes, tackling the Shakespearean and other great roles, and more. His book will find an eager and appreciative audience among novices and established actors alike.

    The Last Five Years tells the story of a failed marriage of 20-somethings: he a successful novelist, she a struggling actress. Her story is told in reverse, his conventionally moving forward. They meet in the middle at the point of their wedding. Brown's strong writing has found a solid following among musical theatre fans. Our songbook features piano/vocal arrangements of 12 songs: Goodbye Until Tomorrow/I Could Never Rescue You • I Can Do Better Than That • If I Didn't Believe in You • Moving Too Fast • The Next Ten Minutes • Nobody Needs to Know • A Part of That • The Schmuel Song • Shiksa Goddess • Still Hurting • A Summer in Ohio • When You Come Home to Me. Short, bittersweet and nearly perfect, Brown has come up with a winning combination of music and book. - Variety

    From plays to official events to grassroots protests, performance, she argues, must be taken seriously as a means of storing and transmitting knowledge. Taylor reveals how the repertoire of embodied memory—conveyed in gestures, the spoken word, movement, dance, song, and other performances—offers alternative perspectives to those derived from the written archive and is particularly useful to a reconsideration of historical processes of transnational contact. The Archive and the Repertoire invites a remapping of the Americas based on traditions of embodied practice.Examining various genres of performance including demonstrations by the children of the disappeared in Argentina, the Peruvian theatre group Yuyachkani, and televised astrological readings by Univision personality Walter Mercado, Taylor explores how the archive and the repertoire work together to make political claims, transmit traumatic memory, and forge a new sense of cultural identity. Through her consideration of performances such as Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gómez-Peña’s show Two Undiscovered Amerindians Visit . . . , Taylor illuminates how scenarios of discovery and conquest haunt the Americas, trapping even those who attempt to dismantle them. Meditating on events like those of September 11, 2001 and media representations of them, she examines both the crucial role of performance in contemporary culture and her own role as witness to and participant in hemispheric dramas. The Archive and the Repertoire is a compelling demonstration of the many ways that the study of performance enables a deeper understanding of the past and present, of ourselves and others.

    Chubby Tracy Turnblad (Marissa Jaret Winokur, 2003 Tony winner for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical) is transformed into a teen celebrity on a local TV dance program. With her irresistible stage mother (Harvey Fierstein, 2003 Tony winner for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical) at her side, she attempts to win the heart of the local heartthrob and integrate "The Corny Collins Show" at the same time.

    There is Kerry Max Cook, a Texan who was convicted of murdering a young woman even though she was found with another man's hair grasped in her fist--a man whom "Texas killed a thousand times, and just keeps on doing it" in his nightmares. And there is Delbert Tibbs, a black Chicago poet who speaks of his years on death row with anger and bitterness, yet also, as he says, "still sings." All their stories have been compiled and edited by Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen into The Exonerated, a play that is both a riveting work of theater and an exploration of the dark side of the American criminal justice system.

    

    He also tells the actor when to go fast and when to go slow and when to accent a particular word.This book sets out to make going to Shakespeare performances or acting in them a richer experience, and it should have a wide appeal to both actors and audiences.It also celebrates Sir Peter Hall’s fifty years as a director of Shakespeare; from his early days at Cambridge, through founding the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford on Avon in the early ’60s, and later to his fifteen years as the director of the Royal National Theatre of Great Britain. Throughout these years, Peter Hall worked with the greatest Shakespearean actors of our generation including Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, Edith Evans, Ralph Richardson, Peggy Ashcroft, Charles Laughton and in later years Judi Dench, Anthony Hopkins, Ian Holm, David Warner, and many others. Through this great line flows a tradition of speaking and understanding Shakespeare that remains as relevant and important today. And it is Hall’s experience of working and learning with these and many other actors over the years that underpins the core of this book.Sir Peter Hall is one of the major figures in theatre today. To date he has directed over two hundred productions, including the world premiere in English of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, and the premieres of most of Harold Pinter’s plays. His diary and autobiography are published by Oberon Books.

    Baltimore's Tracy Turnblad, a big girl with big hair and an even bigger heart, has only one passion: to dance. She wins a spot on the local TV dance program, "The Corny Collins Show," and overnight is transformed from an awkward overweight outsider into an irrespressible teen celebrity. But can a trendsetter in dance and fashion vanquish the program's reigning blond princess, win the heart of heartthrob Link Larkin, and integrate a television show without denting her 'do? Only in "Hairspray!" Based on John Waters's 1988 film, the musical comedy "Hairspray" opened on Broadway in August 2002 to rave reviews. "Hairspray: The Roots "includes the libretto of the show--along with hilarious anecdotes from the authors, to say nothing of dance step diagrams and full-color bouffant wigs to copy and cut out--along with all the creative energy, brilliant color, and full-out emotion that have made the musical "a great big, gorgeous hit . . . [that] is a triumph on all levels" (Clive Barnes, "The New York Post). "

    This work is a personal journey. It explains the job of grappling with a giant three-headed monster as complex as the Royal National Theatre.

    Written in the form of a play, this volume's "characters" include a master teacher and 16 students grappling with the challenges of acting Shakespeare. Using actual speeches from 32 of Shakespeare's plays, each of the book's six "scenes" offer proven solutions to such acting problems as delivering spoken subtext, using physical actions to orchestrate a speech, creating images within a speech, dividing a speech into measures, and much more.

    Clear, everyday language explains each element of an improvised song. Simple building blocks are combined with performance tips to raise a performer's musical improvisation to its highest level. The included CD, featuring cast members from ImprovOlympic West's hilarious Opening Night, The Improvised Musical, provides * examples * exercises * practice accompaniments

    Composer John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb are the longest-running composer-lyricist team in Broadway history, having first joined forces in 1962. The creators of such groundbreaking musicals as "Chicago," "Cabaret," and "Kiss of the Spider Woman," Kander and Ebb have helped to push American musical theater in a more daring direction, both musically and dramatically. Their impact on individual performers has been great as well, starting with the handpicked star of their first musical: an untested nineteen-year-old named Liza Minnelli (who writes of this experience in her introduction). Colored Lights covers the major shows of Kander and Ebb's partnership, from "Flora, The Red Menace "(starring a then-unknown Liza) to "The Visit," due to open on Broadway in 2004. The pages and musicals in between reveal what has made theirs such a long-lived musical partnership--and one so valued by the artists they have worked with. In recounting the genesis and controversies of "Cabaret," reflecting on the superstar mentality of such artist as Frank Sinatra and Barbra Streisand, and recalling their work with Bob Fosse on "Chicago "(as well as their views on the blockbuster 2002 film), John Kander and Fred Ebb provide a history not only of their own lives but also of the American musical theater of the late twentieth century.

    Langley is a concert pianist by profession but prefers his studies of the world's minutiae, all of which he considers collectible. His older brother, Homer, a former admiralty lawyer and aspiring intrigant, maintains the household and dreams of wilder times. These seem about to begin when the beautiful socialite Milly inserts herself into the Collyer m

    Then the author continues with in-depth explanations for beginning, intermediate, and advanced programmers. Additional sections explore troubleshooting principles, working relationships, and future technologies. For the final chapter of the book, the author interviewed many respected lighting industry veterans including John Broderick, Christian Choi, Laura Frank, Jim Lenahan, and Arnold Serame.

    This handbook is part of that process.' Antony Gormley This is a handbook for working in the creative arts, with an emphasis upon imagination and receptivity: to our bodies, to our surroundings, our materials, and to what we create. It will be of value to anyone interested to explore their lives through an active engagement in the arts. It puts particular emphasis upon the sensing, feeling, moving body as a basis for any imaginative activity. The book describes sources and strategies for working within and between various forms of expression, including: moving, making things with materials and writing. It stresses the importance of intuitive, instinctive ways of knowing, perceiving, and creating. The book will be a useful resource for people studying or teaching in the arts, or for anyone whose professional life involves them in working creatively with others: therapeutically, educationally, or in a community context. The book is written to inspire rather than to instruct, to be used in small amounts to stimulate a working process, rather than to be read through from cover to cover. The authors' previous book, Body Space Image, was about improvised movement, experimental performance, and creating performance settings. This book turns to the question of imagination in our lives and how this is awakened and nourished through attention to the present, feeling world of the body and to whatever appears as we make. In this way we enter into the poetics of our experience. Miranda Tufnell is a dancer, Alexander teacher and craniosacral therapist. She has been showing her performance work in galleries and theatres since 1976, often making site-specific events and collaborating with visual artists. She has taught widely throughout the country, including periods of teaching at Dartington College of Arts and at Fellside Alexander School. Her work both as a dancer/choreographer and body therapist has been to make visible the invisible world of the sensing body. Most recently she has collaborated with Tim Rubidge and Brenda Mallon on a movement/health project, and in performance work with composer Sylvia Hallet. She has two sons. Chris Crickmay trained as an architect, but has worked mainly in visual art with a strong interest in the links between art, dance and creativity. In his teaching career, he was one of the initiators of the Open Universtiy's course, Art and Environment. Then, as head of Art and Design at Dartington College of Arts, he helped create and run a degree course entitled Art and Social Context. He now works as an independent writer and artist, continuing to participate in collaborations across the arts - in recent years with dancer, Eva Karczag. He is married and has two grown up daughters.

    Winner of the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Playwright, David Lindsay-Abaire's Kimberly-Akimbo focuses, with uncanny depth and quirky wit, on a sixteen-year-old girl suffering from a disease that causes her body to age nearly five times faster than it should.

    Readers without Broadway-size budgets and resources will learn the low-cost, low-tech approaches to painting scenery, building sets, hanging lights, setting cues, and operating sound. They’ll also find crucial guidance for generating publicity, preparing tickets, technical rehearsals, and more. • Written in a clear, direct, and jargon-free style • Features 45 lively anecdotes from the author’s own experience working in virtually every backstage capacity

    

    Although Levin is familiar within the Israeli cultural context—and despite the steadily growing stream of literary and theatrical research of his oeuvre—there are few resources on his work available outside of Israel. The present volume, containing a selection of ten of his plays, is the first comprehensive effort to present this unique playwright and director to a broad readership.Levin's artistic credo was based on a constant urge to criticize Israeli society and its mainstream ideology while simultaneously confronting the basic human and existential issues of life and death. A whole generation of Israeli theater audiences has grown up on Levin's performances with all their paradoxical complexities. At this point, just a few years after his death from cancer in 1999 at the age of 56, it may not be possible to evaluate the full impact of his work. But this volume will contribute significantly to scholarship in this direction and to the appreciation of Levin's unique style.

    Responsible for historic productions of Midsummer Night's Dream, Marat/Sade, The Mahabarata, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and The Cherry Orchard, Brooks's main concern has always been the space occupied by both the actors and the audience. In this beautifully illustrated book, Andrew Todd and Jean Guy Lecat explore the evolution of Brooks's productions and his theories of theater design. They look at his work in the early days of the Royal Shakespeare Company and his fascinating white box Dream as well as his madhouse production of Marat/Sade. They explore in detail his Theatre Bouffe du Nord in Paris where he staged The Mahabarata and the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Harvey Theater where he first staged it in the US. This is a book that every serious theatergoer will want on his shelf.

    Handke's play is a downright attack on the way language is used by a corrupt society to depersonalize the individual.My Foot My Tutor: "Handke has here written an hour-long play without words that may at first look like a piece of audience-provocation but that finishes up as sheer theatrical poetry."—GuardianIn The Ride Across Lake Constance, a group of characters (known only by the names of the actors who perform the parts) talk and play games together and skate over the thin ice that separates them from unspoken danger: "Intensely theatrical ... an author for whom playwriting seems akin to tightrope walking."—The TimesThey Are Dying Out puts the pillars of the bourgeoisie under the microscope to reveal an alien race, suffocated by rationality, unable to cope with untamed subjective impulses and shows an "uncanny knack for making the familiar seem strange" (Plays and Players).

    It strengthens our imagination, promotes self-confidence, increases spontaneity, promotes teamwork, and it's magic: it creates something out of nothing.101 IMPROV GAMES FOR CHILDREN AND ADULTS contains the basics: what improv is all about and how to do it, special instructions for how to teach improv to children, plus more advanced training on how to use your voice and body in ways you haven't thought of before. It has helpful hints for creating scenes and environments out of thin air. All this plus 101 games with simple instructions, from easy warm-up games to over-the-top crowd pleasers such as Fairy Tales, Bizarre Games, On Your Toes and Narrative Games.This is the tenth in the Hunter House SmartFun activity books series, and the first one for adults as well as children. The book is a great resource for educators as well as for the professional actor or the layperson working with improv for fun. The book contains lively illustrations and is easy to use.Improv is about creating something out of nothing, but a really good improviser can create something great out of nothing. This book shows you how.

    Prince Tartaglia's life is filled with misery until an evil witch and her equally evil henchmen curse him to search for three giant oranges. But this quest proves more fruitful than anyone could have imagined as a once-lonely prince discovers love, friendship, and laughter when he encounters wizards, monarchs, and a wild narrator who isn't sure how far removed from the story he really is.

    In the play, Martin—a hugely successful architect who has just turned fifty—leads an ostensibly ideal life with his loving wife and gay teenage son. But when he confides to his best friend that he is also in love with a goat (named Sylvia), he sets in motion events that will destroy his family and leave his life in tatters.The playwright himself describes it this way: “Every civilization sets quite arbitrary limits to its tolerances. The play is about a family that is deeply rocked by an unimaginable event and how they solve that problem. It is my hope that people will think afresh about whether or not all the values they hold are valid."

    " A highly entertaining showbiz memoir . . . The shows were fantastic." The Washington Post "We laughed and we cried at Cy Feuer's wonderfully warm, brash, and colorful memoir of his life in the New York theater and happily recommend it to anyone who has ever been to a Broadway musical. . ." Mel Brooks & Thomas Meehan. This is the rags to riches story of Cy Feuer, who, after becoming the executive officer of the Air Corps film division in World War II, teamed up with the late Ernie Martin to become a legendary Broadway musical producer. Their first hit was Where's Charley? in 1948 featuring Ray Bolger. Next up was the smash Guys and Dolls, which enabled them to hire Cole Porter for their next show, Can-Can . Feuer signed 17-year-old Julie Andrews for her Broadway debut in The Boyfriend, another hit. He hit the bulls-eye one more time with How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, his third collaboration with composer Frank Loesser. The first five musicals Feuer and Martin produced were hits, and at one point, all were running simultaneously on Broadway. He would later go to battle with Bob Fosse as producer of the acclaimed 1973 film version of Cabaret .

    FIVE KINDS OF SILENCE is a terrifying portrayal of a family for whom rules, duties and punishments are the driving force. In AN EXPERIMENT WITH AN AIR PUMP in a world of scientific chaos, cloning and genetic engineering, the cellar of a house yields up the secrets of the scientific discoveries of 1799. In ANCIENT LIGHTS, Hollywood stars come home to the hills of Northumberland.The Memory of Water: "combines a flair for witty dialogue with a relish for the dynamics of theatre?a mistress of comic anguish" GuardianFive Kinds of Silence: "this quietly eloquent play" IndependentAn Experiment With An Air Pump: "teeming with interest, humour, eloquence and, above all, ideas?it's not often we see a new play with this much energy, variety and intelligence" IndependentAncient Lights: "a cracking, grown-up play?with a light touch that cuts surprisingly deep" Daily Telegraph

    This market-leading series has been completely updated to meet the needs of today's A-level and undergraduate students. Written by established literature experts, York Notes Advanced intorduce students to more sophisticated analysis, a range of critical perspectives and wider contexts.

    A brilliant writer, critic and agent provocateur, he made friends or enemies of nearly every major actor, playwright, impresario and movie mogul of the 1950s, 60s and 70s. He wrote for the "Evening Standard", the "Observer", and the "New Yorker"; served 11 years as dramaturge for Britain's newly formed National Theatre, and spent his final years in Los Angeles. This biography, based on Tynan's own archive, offers an appraisal of Tynan's powerful contribution to post-war British theatre, set against the context of the fifties, sixties and seventies and his own turbulent life. Dominic Shellard probes beneath the celebrity myths surrounding Tynan to encounter the private man and theatre genius. He highlights Tynan's writings of 1952-1963, when the coruscating young critic came to prominence. He discusses how Tynan took his place at the vanguard of the new realist movement, helped to establish subsidised theatre, fought censorship, and assisted in the creation of such groundbreaking theatrical events as "Oh Calcutta!" in 1970. The volume seeks to reveal both the public and private Tynan, an outspoken, explicit and sometimes savage critic who became one of the most influential theatre figures of the 20th century.

    In this guide to speaking and understanding Shakespeare's verse, Peter Hall uses his extensive directorial experience to help the reader and actor discover the clues within the text.

    They provide the first step towards critical understanding and a springboard for further study for students on twentieth century, contemporary theatre and theatre history courses.Michael Chekhov's unique approach to and lasting impact on actor training is only now beginning to be fully appreciated. This volume provides, for the first time, a fully comprehensive introduction to his life and times, his most notable productions, his classic writings and his practical exercises.Franc Chamberlain unravels Chekhov's contributions to modern theatre through:an exploration of his life examination of his major work analysis of Checkhov's key productions reproduction of practical exercises.

    They are filled with summaries, commentaries, exam advice, margin and textual features to offer a wider context to the text and encourage a critical analysis.

    Maria Goos' play is a darkly funny examination of friendship and aspirations, exploring how men compromise their emotional lives in the constant quest for money, power and reputation.Cloaca premi�red at the Old Vic in September 2004.

    Information on Elizabethan history and society, literary terms, Shakespearean criticism, and Shakespeare's sources is also provided, and a comprehensive glossary includes listings of theatrical terms, actors, and theater companies from the 16th century to the present.

    Filled with one-on-one interviews and entertaining anecdotes, Off-Off-Broadway Explosion explores the backstage stories and captivating history of the unusual venues and legendary personalities of the era. Readers will discover intimate accounts of the innovative Beat Generation playwrights who transformed the New York stage, such as Edward Albee, Sam Shepard, Lanford Wilson, Amiri Baraka, Jean-Claude van Itallie, and many other artists whose legacy is still felt within theater halls today. They’ll learn about the Greenwich Village visionaries who allowed emerging playwrights to showcase experimental works not welcome on the traditional stage, such as Joseph Cino, the wildly eccentric papa who sired Caffe Cino, and Al Carmines, the radical minister of Judson Memorial Church, whose Judson Poets’ Theater was known for the avant-garde musicals conceived by the pastor himself. Finally, a special chapter, “Your Own Off-Off-Broadway,” advises today’s playwrights and theater artists how give voice to their own work and find progressive audiences to appreciate it.Playwrights Discussed:• Edward Albee• Sam Shepard• Amiri Baraka • Landford Wilson• Maria Irene Fornés• Jean-Claude van Itallie• Robert Patrick• Megan Terry• Rochelle Owens• Doric Wilson• and many others• Documents the origins of innovative off-off-broadway plays and their writers• Includes archival, rarely seen photos• Personal interviews with leading playwrights• Applicable advice for theater groups in any city

    Twelve essays analyze fourteen roles in twelve different productions between 1999 and 2002.Essays:Robert Smallwood - IntroductionPhilip Voss - Prospero in The TempestIan Hughes - Dromio of Syracuse in The Comedy of ErrorsAidan McArdle - Puck (and Philostrate) in A Midsummer Night's DreamZoë Waites and Matilda Ziegler - Viola and Olivia in Twelfth NightAlexandra Gilbreath - Hermione in The Winter's TaleAntony Sher - Leontes in The Winter's Tale, and MacbethDavid Tennant - Romeo in Romeo and JulietMichael Pennington - Timon of AthensSimon Russell Beale - HamletNigel Hawthorne - King LearRichard McCabe - Iago in OthelloFrances de la Tour - Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra

    Sheppey, his last, is the comedy of a Cockney barber who wins a sweepstake. The Sacred Flame gives an unusual note of suspense to a moving drama of maternal love. The Circle, widely regarded as Maugham's masterpiece, deals wittily with the dilemma of a woman intent on leaving her pompous husband. In The Constant Wife, a sparkling war-between-the-sexes comedy, his married heroine is an early feminist. Our Betters exposes an English aristocracy funded by American heiresses.

    An overnight sensation for her 1943 comedic role as The Girl Who Falls Down in the groundbreaking musical Oklahoma!, McCracken established the prototype dancer-comedienne, headlining in ballet, stage, film, and television productions before her life was tragically cut short by complications from diabetes. Critic-writer Lisa Jo Sagolla paints a complex portrait of the petite entertainer as a beautiful, worldly woman who retained a childlike quality onstage. McCracken's comic exuberance and athleticism also epitomized a new ballet form that melded the European ideas of aristocratic grace and movement with an American spirit. This biography chronicles her training at Balanchine's School of American Ballet, her blossoming as a ravishing talent in Bloomer Girl and Me & Juliet, along with her marriages to choreographer Bob Fosse and novelist Jack Dunphy before his involvement with Truman Capote. Touching yet inspiring, Sagolla's account describes McCracken's dramatic coaching of Shirley MacLaine, and her inspiration for the many dancer-comediennes that followed - Gwen Verdon, Carol Haney and Sandy Duncan.

    Laugh. Cry. Shout. Scream. Sing. Whether you're an actor or a singer, your voice is called upon to do many things. But how do you keep your voice healthy while satisfying these demands?Theatre voice specialist Joan Melton is uniquely qualified to show how. She maintains that the training of singers and actors should be similar. Her groundbreaking book outlines a course of study that integrates basic elements of singing technique into the whole range of theatre voice training. The physicality of Melton's approach addresses all the issues of concern for professional voice users in any field.Melton's detailed work on phrasing demonstrates the technical similarities between text that is sung and text that is spoken. She supports her suggestions for relating and integrating voice and movement, too-for those in musical theatre who must sing, speak, and dance-with exercises that fully engage the performer physically and vocally. Kenneth Tom contributes a chapter on vocal anatomy, offering clear and accessible material on how the voice works along with practical advice on its care.

    It rejected every convention of Broadway, of traditional theatre in general, and of the American musical specifically. It paved the way for the nonlinear concept musicals that dominated American musical theatre innovation thereafter. It also launched the careers of such actors as Diane Keaton, Melba Moore, Tim Curry, Peter Gallagher, and Ben Vereen.Knotted, polka-dotted, twisted, beaded, braided With more regional productions of Hair than ever before, Scott Miller gives us an incisive and fascinating analysis of the show. He looks at its place in theatre and cultural history, and its impact on recent musicals, including Rent. What's more, he delves into the mystical power Hair has over performers and viewers alike and its ability to literally change lives today--including his. Just ten days shy of the terrorist attacks in September 2001, Miller's theatre company had wrapped up their second production of Hair. The show profoundly shaped their reaction to those events, committing them to the belief in the goodness of people in general and of Americans in specific and in the connectedness we all share. And, as he reports, the same profound feelings have been true of others performing this piece.Bangled, tangled, spangled, and spaghettied! Whether you're a fan wanting to relive the time that extolled peace, love, and understanding--and sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll!or a theatre professional needing insightful analysis for a production, read Scott Miller and know the true genius of Hair.Let the sun shine, let the sun shine in, the sun shine in.

    Book by Gillespie, Bonnie

    This book celebrates the working buildings at the heart of the British theatrical industry. Focusing on the theatres in the West End, it looks at their architecture and history as well as examining what it is that constitutes a West End Theatre. The exquisite photographs in the book lead the reader on a tour - taking in the front -of -house areas, the auditoria and the backstage spaces - of some of London's most famous theatres. From the Palladium to the Lyceum, it offers glimpses of those areas not normally seen by the public, Such as rehearsal spaces, dressing rooms, backstage areas and even a Royal reception room. In doing so, it enters the private realms of the theatre technicians and actors, and brings to light the theatre's hidden world.

    Based on the celebrated two-volume Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance, this compact, affordable Companionfeatures more than 2,000 up-to-date entries, covering styles and movements, buildings, organizations, and traditions--with a particularly strong focus on biographies of actors, playwrights, directors, and designers. Editor Dennis Kennedy has significantly updated the timeline of historical andcultural events in the world of theatre and performance, and he has added an appendix of useful weblinks, which are supported and accessible through a companion website. Finally, the book includes many new entries that cover the people and companies who have come into prominence since thepublication of the Encyclopedia.

    Part I covers pedagogy, ethnography, performance, and theory as the foundation for a performative social science. Part II addresses the worlds of family, nature, praxis, and action, employing a structure that is equal parts memoir, essay, short story, and literary autoethnography. Part III examines the ethics and practical politics of performance autoethnography, anchored in the post-9/11 discourse in the United States. The amalgam serves as an invitation for social scientists and ethnographers to confront the politics of cultural studies and explore the multiple ways in which performance and ethnography can be both better understood and used as mechanisms for social change and economic justice..

    history. The Project had units in every region of the country, including groundbreaking African American troupes, and staged productions from daring dramas like The Voodoo Macbeth, Waiting for Lefty, and The Cradle Will Rock to musicals, vaudeville, and puppet shows. It was canceled in a firestorm of controversy that gave birth to the damning question: "Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist party?"    This book documents that vibrant, colorful, politically explosive time, which gave rise to bitter debates about the role of government in American art and culture. It includes interviews with such Federal Theatre actors, playwrights, directors, designers, producers, and dancers as Arthur Miller, Studs Terkel, Jules Dassin, Katherine Dunham, Rosetta Lenoire, John Houseman, and many others.    Voices from the Federal Theatre is a tie-in with the public televison special Who Killed the Federal Theatre? hosted by Judd Hirsch and coproduced by Schwartz with the Educational Film Center.

    Hope and Charles are a pair of lonely twenty-somethings about to end a supremely uninteresting first date. But just as they say good night, the myriad possibilities of their futures and a life shared together come rushing to meet them. From their first kiss to their first child, from a horrible tragedy to a second chance, each moment moves with breath-taking speed. A love story told with theatrical flair, AN INFINITE ACHE is as dazzling as it is insightful.

    Organized in thematic sections that cover topics as diverse as science and technology, sports and culture, and religion and mythology, it is a gold mine of facts, figures, and statistics. Backed by maps, diagrams, and a full index and now fully revised and updated, The Penguin Factfinder explores facts and figures on every conceivable topic of current interest, from world climates to musical notation. Whether you are seeking to establish the precise population of Guatemala, the chemical symbol for radium, or a list of Olympic Games medalists, this is the essential source of information.

    Bob is a sociopathic slob, facing jail for throwing a man out of a car; Jack seems successful and self-disciplined but nurses his own considerable demons. Together they piece together a dark shared history, which includes the disappearance of their father when they were young.John Kolvenbach's debut is a darkly humorous tale with echoes of Sam Shepard and David Mamet, about the nature of redemption, and the extraordinary things that can happen during the course of an average day.

    Thus begins a roller coaster ride of a very unusual sort, combining personal revelations with theatrical obsessions, a step-by-step disclosure of a master director's rehearsal process with a search for spiritual truth (and a decent night's sleep). Just hop aboard and get a backstage pass to the 'holding-on-by-your-fingernails' reality of the contemporary American theatre.

    This volume shows the playwright at his provocative and poetic best and includes two of his most notorious works: The Public, his only openly homosexual drama; and Play Without a Title, a Pirandellian piece in which the blurring of stage and auditorium is combined with strong political overtones. Also included is Lorca's only historical play, the hauntingly lyrical Mariana Pineda. The Public is translated by Henry Livings; the other two plays by Gwynne Edwards.

    Schanke rescues these lost theatrical writings from the dusty margins of obscurity. Often autobiographical, always rife with gender struggle, and still decidedly stageworthy, Women in Turmoil: Six Plays by Mercedes de Acosta constitutes a significant find for the canon of gay and lesbian drama. In her 1960 autobiography Here Lies the Heart, de Acosta notes that as she was contemplating marriage to a man in 1920, she was "in a strange turmoil about world affairs, my own writing, suffrage, sex, and my inner spiritual development." The voice in these plays is that of a lesbian in turmoil, marginalized and ignored. Her same-sex desires and struggles for acceptance fueled her writings, and nowhere is that more evident than in the plays contained herein. The women characters struggle with unfulfilling marriages, divorce, unrequited sexual desire, suppressed identity, and a longing for recognition. Of the six plays, only the first two were ever produced. Jehanne d’Arc (1922) premiered in Paris with de Acosta’s lover at the time, Eva Le Gallienne, starring and Norman Bel Geddes designing the set and lights. In 1934, de Acosta adapted it into a screenplay for Greta Garbo, then her lover, but it was never filmed. Portraying rampant anti-Semitism in a small New England town, Jacob Slovak (1923) was performed both on Broadway and in London, with the London production starring John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson. The Mother of Christ (1924) is a long one-act play written for the internationally known actress Eleonora Duse. After Duse’s death, several other actresses including Eva Bartok, Jeanne Eagels, and Lillian Gish explored productions of the play. Igor Stravinsky wrote a score, Norman Bel Geddes designed a set, and Gladys Calthrop designed costumes. However, the play was never produced.Her most autobiographical play, World Without End (1925), and her most sensational play, The Dark Light (1926), both unfold through plots of sibling rivalry, incest, and suicide. With overtones of Ibsen, Illusion (1928) continues the themes of de Acosta’s previous plays with her rough and seedy cast of characters, but here the playwright’s drama grows to incorporate a yearning for belonging as well as strong elements of class conflict. What notoriety remains associated with de Acosta has less to do with her writing than with her infamous romances with the likes of Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Isadora Duncan, Alla Nazimova, Eva Le Gallienne, Tamara Karsavina, Pola Negri, and Ona Munson. Through this collection of six powerfully poignant dramas, editor Robert A. Schanke strives to correct myths about Mercedes de Acosta and to restore both her name and her literary achievements to their proper place in history.Robert A. Schanke has authored the original biography, “That Furious Lesbian:” The Story of Mercedes de Acosta, also available from Southern Illinois University Press.