In the award-winning Clean House—a play of uncommon romance and uncommon comedy—a maid who hates cleaning dreams about creating the perfect joke, while a doctor who treats cancer leaves his heart inside one of his patients. This volume also includes Eurydice, Ruhl’s reinvention of the tragic Greek tale of love and loss, together with a third play still to be named.Sarah Ruhl received the prestigious Susan Smith Blackburn Prize in 2004 for her play The Clean House, which has been produced at Yale Repertory Theatre in New Haven, Wilma Theatre in Philadelphia, South Coast Repertory Theatre in Costa Mesa, and Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in Washington, DC. Her play Eurydice has been produced at Madison Repertory Theatre and Berkeley Repertory Theatre.

    After a critically acclaimed Broadway premier and successful film adaptation (starring Nicole Kidman, Aaron Eckhart, and Diane West), Rabbit Hole has been hailed as an artistic breakthrough for the highly regarded Lindsay-Abaire. A drama of what comes after tragedy, it captures “the awkwardness and pain of thinking people faced with an unthinkable situation—and eventually, their capacity for survival.” -USA TodayDavid Lindsay-Abaire is the Pulitzer-winning author of Rabbit Hole, which was made into a feature film. He is the author of Good People, Fuddy Meers, Wonder of the World, A Devil Inside and Kimberly Akimbo, as well as the book and lyrics to Shrek the Musical. He has written the screenplays for Rabbit Hole, Rise of the Guardians and Oz: The Great and Powerful. Born in South Boston, he now lives in Brooklyn.

    The New York Times declared it "a breakthrough musical," and after a two-year run, the Golden Theater is still selling out eight shows a week. Its success is not limited to the Great White Way, however: This summer, the cast will be swearing, drinking, and ennui-ing their way across the country.As smart, risqu, and downright entertaining as the show itself, Avenue Q is a must-have companion book. In addition to the complete Tony Award-winning book and songs (perfect for those who can't get enough of the lyrics to "It Sucks to Be Me"), Avenue Q is packed with exclusive interviews with the cast and creatures, and features puzzles, connect-the-dots, and other "educational" activities to prepare readers for life after college. With a distinctive cover and chock-full of gorgeous photography and original illustrations, Avenue Q is a jam-packed thrill ride of a book.

    Available individually, as well as in a boxed set, the four hardcover volumes have been specially bound with covers featuring images central to Beckett's works. Typographical errors that remained uncorrected in the various prior editions have now been corrected in consultation with Beckett scholars C. J. Ackerley and S. E. Gontarski."Poet, novelist, short–story writer, playwright, translator, and critic, Samuel Beckett created one of the most brilliant and enduring bodies of work in twentieth–century literature. In celebration of the one hundredth anniversary of his birth, the four volumes of this new edition bring together nearly every word Beckett published during his lifetime. Open anywhere and begin reading. It is an experience unequaled anywhere in the universe of words." — Paul Auster, from his Series Notes

    It is absolutely intoxicating to ponder what he will give us in the future.”—Irish Echo“The unique and extraordinary aspect of McPherson’s writing is the way in which his characters reveal themselves in tiny details which almost imperceptibly build up an extensive picture of the past, present and future, not just of themselves but of Ireland.”—The Sunday Mail (London)Conor McPherson returns to his native Dublin for the setting of his new play, which he will direct in a much-anticipated production at London’s National Theatre in fall 2006. It is Christmas Eve, and James “Sharky” Harkin, erstwhile fisherman/van driver/chauffeur, gathers with friends at the dingy flat he shares with his blind brother to drink booze and play cards. As Christmas Eve becomes Christmas Day, the familiar-looking stranger Mr. Lockhart reminds Sharky of the bargain he made when they last met in prison—and Sharky suddenly finds himself playing a game with the stakes set at his soul. With this magnificently atmospheric new play, McPherson is once again set to entrance his audience, this time with a new take on the Faustian theme.Conor McPherson was born in Dublin, where he still lives. His plays include This Lime Tree Bower, St. Nicholas, The Weir, Port Authority, Dublin Carol, and Shining City, which premiered on Broadway in spring 2006. One of Ireland’s leading playwrights, his work has been produced throughout the United Kingdom and the United States.

    But what it can do, when it’s as good as this, is to send us out enriched by other people’s passionate concern.” –Guardian (London)“An impassioned eulogy… It’s hard not to be impressed – and also somewhat frightened – by the description of her as a two-year-old looking across Capital Lake in Washington State and announcing, ‘This is the wide world, and I’m coming to it.’” –New York TimesOn March 16, 2003, Rachel Corrie, a twenty-three-year-old American, was crushed to death by an Israeli Army bulldozer in Gaza as she was trying to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian home. My Name is Rachel Corrie is a one-woman play composed from Rachel’s own journals, letters and emails – creating a portrait of a messy, articulate, Salvador Dali-loving chain-smoker (with a passion for the music of Pat Benatar), who left her home and school in Olympia, Washington, to work as an activist in the heart of Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Since its Royal Court premiere (London), the piece has been surrounded by both controversy and impassioned proponents, and has raised an unprecedented call to support political work and the difficult discourse it creates.ALAN RICKMAN is a British actor and director, who directed the London and New York productions of the play. KATHERINE VINER is an award-winning journalist and editor of the Guardian’s Weekend Magazine.

    Vocal selections from the popular Broadway musical, including: 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee * My Friend, the Dictionary * Pandemonium * I'm Not That Smart * Magic Foot * Prayer of the Comfort Counselor * My Unfortunate Erection * Woe Is Me * I Speak Six Languages * The I Love You Song.

    What was life? What was love? What else could have been? Full of mordant, bitter humour, this is a passionate threnody from one of Ireland's leading playwrights.Woman and Scarecrow premieres at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in June 2006.

    Book annotation not available for this title.

    Based on the award-winning memoir by Timothy Conigrave, and adapted for the stage by acclaimed playwright Tommy Murphy, Holding the Man tells a remarkable true-life love story that speaks across generations, sexualities and cultures.The course of teenage love rarely runs smooth, but it is a white-water adventure if you are secretly gay in an all-male school in 1970s Melbourne with a crush on the captain of the football team.Against the odds, Tim and John develop a relationship that, for fifteen years, survives everything life throws at it – the separations, the discriminations, the temptations, the jealousies and the losses – until the only problem that love can’t solve turns up to part them.

    They produced hit after catchy hit, each one instantly recognizable, infectious, and irresistible. Nearly a quarter of a century later, these beloved songs gave birth to the blockbuster musical MAMMA MIA , which became a legend in its own right. It opened in 85 cities and has since been seen by more than 20 million people throughout the world. This officially sanctioned book tells the double story of the band and the play--and it's told by those know it best: two of the group's singer/songwriters and MAMMA MIA producer Judy Craymer. It's colorful literally and figuratively, and jam-packed with illustrations from the group's own archives. Through first-person recollections from ABBA members, intertwined with commentary from the MAMMA MIA team, "Thank You for the Music" cuts through the thicket of myths and misconceptions that have grown up around ABBA to reveal what actually happened.

    At last this major director, practitioner, and author of many books on community theatre speaks out about the subjects most important to him - the practical work he does with diverse communities, the effects of globalization, and the creative possibilities for all of us.

    For maximum poetic oomph, let's say 1001 beds. . . . They symbolize a life and art dedicated to reaching out toward folks from Bozeman to Tampa. A life and art that has traveled widely and, I believe, reached a couple hundred thousand people with my stories of queer life and love."—Tim MillerFor a quarter century, Tim Miller has worked at the intersection of performance, politics, and identity, using his personal experiences to create entertaining but pointed explorations of life as a gay American man–from the perils and joys of sex and relationships to the struggles of political disenfranchisement and artistic censorship. This intimate autobiographical collage of Miller's professional and personal life reveals one of the celebrated creators of a crucial contemporary art form and a tireless advocate for the American dream of political equality for all citizens.Here we have the most complete Miller yet–a raucous collection of his performance scripts, essays, interviews, journal entries, and photographs, as well as his most recent stage piece Us. This volume brings together the personal, communal, and national political strands that interweave through his work from its beginnings and ultimately define Miller's place as a contemporary artist, activist, and gay man.

    New Downtown Now brings together ten new works that exemplify the playfulness, excitement, and possibilities of the theater. Characterized by fragmenting structure, hypnotic rhythms, kaleido-scopic imagery, unpredictable characters, and lyrical language, these plays resemble puzzles from which the writers are teasing revelations. Though disparate in subject matter and style, with characters ranging from a sushi chef to a soldier and settings from a taxicab to a live television broadcast, these highly original plays share a commitment to formal experimentation that places them beyond the psychological clichés of the majority and the cold condescension of postmodernism. The anthology includes Interim by Barbara Cassidy; Tragedy: a tragedy by Will Eno; Nine Come by Elana Greenfield; Shufu-Sachiko and Enoshima Island by Madelyn Kent; The Appeal by Young Jean Lee; The Vomit Talk of Ghosts by Kevin Oakes; Ajax (por nobody) by Alice Tuan; Apparition, an uneasy play of the underknown by Anne Washburn; Demon Baby by Erin Courtney.Mac Wellman is the author of numerous plays and the recipient of three Obie awards, most recently in 2003 for lifetime achievement. He is professor of playwriting at Brooklyn College. Young Jean Lee is a playwright and director, and member of the Obie award-winning company 13P. Jeffrey M. Jones is a playwright and curator of the Obie award-winning Little Theater at Tonic in New York.

    Musicals are especially good at this because they provide not only an opportunity for us to enact dramatic versions of alternative identities, but also the material for performing such alternatives in the real world, through songs and the characters and attitudes those songs project.This book addresses a variety of specific themes in musicals that serve this general function: fairy tale and fantasy, idealism and inspiration, gender and sexuality, and relationships, among others. It also considers three overlapping genres that are central, in quite different ways, to the projection of personal identity: operetta, movie musicals, and operatic musicals.Among the musicals discussed are Camelot, Candide; Chicago; Company; Evita; Gypsy; Into the Woods; Kiss Me, Kate; A Little Night Music; Man of La Mancha; Meet Me in St. Louis; The Merry Widow; Moulin Rouge; My Fair Lady; Passion; The Rocky Horror Picture Show; Singin' in the Rain; Stormy Weather; Sweeney Todd; and The Wizard of Oz.Complementing the author's earlier work, The American Musical and the Formation of National Identity, this book completes a two-volume thematic history of the genre, designed for general audiences and specialists alike.

    Here for the first time is a survey of her life and career which takes place in the world of New York writers and artists beginning in the early 1950s; a world that revolved around serious intellectual discourse, cocktails, cigarettes and theatre! Grayson's own story is that of a hugely talented woman, admired by writers, producers, fellow actors, but who did not get the one role that would propel her into the stratosphere. Nevertheless, with the roles she did inhabit, she became an iconic figure.This book reaches back to Grayson's earliest stage appearances in 1942 as a teenager on Long Island; her extensive stage work in regional theatre and in New York City; her television and film appearances including three early New York art house films, the avant-garde French film Qui �tes-vous, You Polly Maggoo? and her Oscar nominated turn in The Night of the Iguana. And for Dark Shadows followers, this book answers some lingering questions: who got hired on Shadows first, Grayson or her husband Sam? Was it always happiness and light on the Dark Shadows set? And did she really do much aside from Shadows or Iguana?

    Rich theatricality and broad humor which characterizes Crouch's work

    -Mary Shen Barnidge, Chicago Reader

    At first, the new doctor cures anything

    Published by MTI Music Library in New York, NY and New Hartford, CT.

    Unfortunately, her imaginary friend Mr. Marmalade doesn't have much time for her. Not to mention he beats up his personal assistant, has a cocaine addic-tion, and a penchant for pornography and very long dildos. Larry, her only real friend, is the youngest suicide attempt in the history of New Jersey. MR. MARMALADE is a savage black comedy about what it takes to grow up in these difficult times.

    Second Act Trouble puts you with the creators in the rehearsal halls, at out-of-town tryouts, in late-night, hotel-room production meetings, and at after-the-fact recriminatory gripe fests. Suskin has compiled and annotated long-forgotten, first-person accounts of 25 Broadway musicals that stubbornly went awry. Contributions come from such respected writers as Patricia Bosworth, Mel Gussow, Lehman Engel, William Gibson, Lewis H. Lapham, and John Gruen. No mere vanity productions, these; you can't have a big blockbuster of failure, it seems, without the participation of Broadway's biggest talents. Caught in the stranglehold of tryout turmoil are Richard Rodgers, Jule Styne, Jerry Herman, Cy Coleman, Charles Strouse, John Kander, Mel Brooks, and even Edward Albee., The infamous shows featured include Mack & Mabel; Breakfast at Tiffany's; The Act; Dude; Golden Boy; Hellzapoppin'; Nick and Nora; Seesaw; Kelly; and How Now, Dow Jones.

    British-born Lean asserted himself in Hollywood as a major filmmaker with his epic storytelling and panoramic visions of history, but he started out as a talented film editor and director in Great Britain. As a result, he brought an art-house mentality to b

    A celebrity artist shining bright at the crest of the Restoration Ned, or Mr. K as he's called, is applauded onstage and off for his interpretations of Shakespeare's tragic ladies: Ophelia, Cleopatra, especially his Desdemona and his famous "death scene". He s the toast of the town and the very secret "mistress" of the powerful Duke of Buckingham. But when an unknown named Margaret Hughes plays Desdemona one night at an illegal theater, instead of stopping the show, the ever-game King Charles II changes the law to allow women to act. By the stroke of a pen, Kynaston's world is turned upside-down. He loses his cachet, his livelihood, his lover and his sense of self. And as such women as the king's own courtesan Nell Gwynn, and Kynaston s former dresser Maria, become stars, his own light disappears until fate and his desire for revenge give him a chance to take the stage again.

    16 vocal selections from the wickedly funny Broadway musical with music by David Yazbek. Songs include: Give Them What They Want * Great Big Stuff * Love Is My Legs * Love Sneaks In * Nothing Is Too Wonderful to Be True * What Was a Woman to Do * and more. Includes bio and four pages of photos!

    The book offers a backstage pass to the personal and creative lives of some of the most important and influential theater artists of the past fifty years.

    Buffini is deliciously skilled at crafting lines.' Financial TimesLoveplay:'Delightfully quirky, funny and touching. A hit if ever I saw one. Buffini has an appetite for history, and the most beguiling of dramatic voices.' Daily TelegraphDinner:'A cracking black comedy that has you laughing uproariously one moment and jumping with shock the next . . . Dinner offers a delicious feast of comedy at its most heartless and macabre.' Daily TelegraphBlavatsky's Tower:'A refreshingly dizzying perspective on that cornerstone of dysfunction - the family.' Time Out 'A truly remarkable play. Buffini is a startingly original voice and an outstanding talent.' What's On

    This collection contains the performance texts of four of their most recent and highly acclaimed shows. Contains various forewords which offer unique insight into Kneehigh’s approach to making theatre, revealing how a script can emerge from a collaborative devising process.

    Masons unique methods will help all theatre artists find the only thing that matters: creative truth. When I was a young actor, he taught me everything I needed to know and continue to use today. In fact, I dont set foot inside any character I play unless Marshalls with me. Jeff Daniels Marshall is the director who has brought almost all my plays to life on stage. No one gets better performances from actors than he does, so he knows what hes talking about. His approach should prove useful to actors who want to inhabit a playwrights creation without appearing to act. Lanford Wilson The theatrical magic that theatergoers experience isnt magic at allits hard work. Before the curtain goes up, an intense collaborative process transforms the words of a writers script into a production that involves thousands of details, hundreds of decisions, and dozens of dedicated people. Making that collaboration a successful journey is a directors job, and in Creating Life on Stage, youll find out how a major American director does it.Award-winning director Marshall Mason guides you through the entire adventure: from choosing a script to pre-production preparations, through rehearsals to opening night. He shows you how sound fundamental choices and a dynamic vision can make productions at any level successful: large or small; national, regional, or local. Mason takes you inside a directors mind to see how imaginative ideas can lend thematic structure and coherence to costuming, design, music, and lighting. Then he shows how a director can take a vision and bring it to life through the actors. With hard-won wisdom, Mason describes a collaborative process that helps actors locate the impulses to action that lead to strong, truthful choices inside the world of the play.See how a director becomes what Marshall Mason calls a sculptor of movement. Read Creating Life on Stage and understand how an artistic vision and creative collaboration can help audience members live the play from their seats and relive it again and again in their memories.

    Alphabetically ordered and cross-referenced, it provides a wealth of information for all serious readers of Beckett.'Ackerley and Gontarski have amassed an amazing amount of information about Samuel Beckett and his works. The Faber Companion will prove useful to everyone - from the neophyte who seeks other work by Beckett to the seasoned Beckett scholar who is not necessarily an expert on the writer's use of astrology or zoology. In short, from A to Z, all readers of Beckett will be enriched.' - Ruby Cohn

    Written by two theatre professionals who worked intimately with Grotowski over the last twenty-five years of his life, this book fills a gap in the published writings about this master director and teacher.In this book, the writers demonstrate Grotowski's significance and how his frank rhetoric, his revolutionary theories, his landmark productions, and pioneering cultural projects continue to cause controversy and provide fertile topics for discussion and further experimentation in theatre studios, classrooms, and on stages around the world.The book introduces Grotowski to a new generation of theatre students, outlining his contributions to twentieth century performance and placing them in context and in perspective.

    An excellent resource book for the brand new or veteran Theatre Arts instructor, covering a range of essential basic topics in activities that are engaging, thoughtful and active, without being asinine.

    From her childhood in bohemian New York of the 1920s and 30s to her career as a painter, dancer and chorus performer on Broadway and television, it tells the story of the many ups and downs she faced.

    This comprehensive book, for the interested theatergoer and writers, new or experienced, is written in a lively and user-friendly style and illustrated with numerous examples, containing a how-to tutorial approach to its subject matter that has never appeared in print. With years of theatrical experience between them, Steven L. Rosenhaus and Allen Cohen have written the best and most comprehensive guide to the Broadway musical.

    Silent Leila is an introverted girl who has a passion for celebrity magazines. Stag Lee Macalinden is the deadest of dead-end kids in a dead-end town. They never meant to get mixed up in a murder... but now they need a place to hide.Yellow Moon explores what it means to live in a celebrity-obsessed world and what it is that defines who you are when you're 17 years old. The play premiered at the Circle Studio of Citizens' Theatre, Glasgow, in September 2006, and won the 2008 Brain Way Award for Best Play for Young People.

    He taught directing at the State Institute for Theatre Training and wrote several influential books. His productions received numerous awards for creative excellence. In The Joy of Rehearsal, his best-known work, Efros illuminates the dynamics of the director's creative work. He discusses the process of considering future plays, rehearsing them, and evaluating the results. Devoted to the principles of Konstantin Stanislavsky and Michael Chekhov, and inspired by the ideas of Bertolt Brecht, Efros also considers the practice of rehearsals and other features central to professional creative work. His productions of Shakespeare, Moliere, Chekhov and other classics were major events for those who looked to the theatre for social significance as well as aesthetic experience. Theatre students and professionals will benefit from the insights gained as Efros writes about his unique vision for the modern theatre.

    These eleven essays by well-known playwrights explore the pedagogy of playwriting, offering fascinating and valuable insights into the way established playwrights communicate their own creative methods to young writers. Each of the playwrights has extensive experience as a teacher in a variety of venues. Their chapters offer insight into the unique vision of each playwright and provide practical and tested advice, exercise, and course structures for both students and teachers of playwriting. A concluding essay by dramaturg and literary manager, Mead Hunter, offers career advice for beginning as well as emerging playwrights.

    Shane is unsure of his sexuality, more unsure of how to find intimacy and completely thrown by having to choose between laundry liquid and powder. He meets 2 strangers, Sydney Will and the beguiling Peter, a 50-year-old gay man.

    But Broadway is more than a street, it’s a community. In this Q Guide, a true Broadway expert takes theater fans on the ultimate insider’s tour.

    A scenic artist is responsible for translating the vision of the scenic designer to the realized scenery.Unlike all other scene painting books, this text will take you step-by-step through actual individual scene painting projects. Each project is commonly used in theatrical productions and each project builds upon the skills learned in the previous lesson. From wood and marble, to foliage and drapery, this book will teach the you how to become a skilled scenic painter.

    Examines art and censorship in the current political climate.

    THRILL ME: THE LEOPOLD & LOEB STORY is a two-character musical drama that recounts the chilling true story of the legendary duo who committed one of the most infamous and heinous crimes of the twentieth century. Focusing on their obsessive relationship and utilizing Leopold's 1958 parole hearing as a framework, THRILL ME reveals the series of events in 1924 Chicago that led about-to-be law students Leopold and Loeb to be forever remembered as "the thrill killers." Nathan Leopold was passionate about Richard Loeb, who was passionate about crime and excitement. They created a secret agreement to satisfy each other's needs. Soon Richard convinced Nathan that they embodied Nietzsche's idea of the "Superman" and were above society. Then he drew him into his plan to lure a young boy to his death just to prove they could get away with it. But soon their perfect crime unraveled due to a careless mistake. Or was it so careless?

    Weingust argues that their experimental performances at the Globe on Bankside have revealed enhanced possibilities not only for performing Shakespeare, but for theatrical practice in general.

    Daniel Woodley Prowse (1834-1914), police magistrate, journalist, sportsman, historian and champion of the common man, was a "cross between Dr Samuel Johnson and Falstaff." As he rails at both plaintiffs and felons in his jokes and yarns he revives the excitement and the agonies of his time. “It's title may be dry, but Frank Holden's one-man play is as colorful as can be, an absolute delight with no small measure of wit and a tour-de-force performance.” Times Colonist, Victorica, B.C. “A transfixing performance – simply enthralling.” Edmonton Journal Born in Port de Grave, Newfoundland in 1834 Judge D.W. Prowse is best known as the author of A History of Newfoundland, first published in 1895. A History of Newfoundland is widely hailed as one of the finest histories written about Newfoundland and Labrador. The song and melody "Greedy Harbour, " performed by Frank Holden, words and air composed by Jack Maher and Stephen Mullins, 1929, (Greenleaf's " Ballads and Sea Songs of Newfoundland," Harvard University Press, 1933, page 256, Lib of Congress card catalogue # 68:20767).

    This book takes a behind-the-scenes look as Tolkien's literary masterpiece makes its debut on the boards.

    Anyone interested in Broadway will learn a great deal from this book."---William Everett, author of The Musical: A Research Guide to Musical Theatre"As Wollman weaves her historical narrative, she compellingly returns to . . . the conflict between the aesthetics and ideologies of rock music and the disciplined and commercial practices of the musical stage."---Theatre Research International"This well-written account puts the highs and lows of producing staged rock musicals in New York City into perspective and is well worth reading for the depth of insight it provides."---Studies in Musical TheatreThe tumultuous decade of the 1960s in America gave birth to many new ideas and forms of expression, among them the rock musical. An unlikely offspring of the performing arts, the rock musical appeared when two highly distinctive and American art forms joined onstage in New York City. The Theater Will Rock explores the history of the rock musical, which has since evolved to become one of the most important cultural influences on American musical theater, and a major cultural export. Despite the genre’s influence and fame, there are still some critics who claim that the term “rock musical” is an oxymoron. The relationship between rock and the musical theater has been stormy from the start, and even the comparatively recent success of Rent has done little to convince theater producers that rock musicals are anything but highly risky ventures. Elizabeth L. Wollman explores the reasons behind these problematic connections and looks at the socioeconomic forces that underlie aesthetic decisions. She weighs the influence on the rock musical by mass media, sound, and recording technology, and the economic pressures that have affected New York theater in general over the past three decades. Finally, Wollman offers a meditation on the state of the musical, its relation to rock, and, ultimately, its future. Packed with candid commentary by members of New York's vibrant theater community, The Theater Will Rock traces the rock musical’s evolution over nearly fifty years, in popular productions such as Hair, The Who's Tommy, Jesus Christ Superstar, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Little Shop of Horrors, Rent, and Mamma Mia!—and in notable flops such as The Capeman. Elizabeth L. Wollman is Assistant Professor of Music at Baruch College of the City University of New York.

    Grassroot ensemble theater is discovered to be neither alternative nor marginalized, but vanguard, a natural evolution of the movement that propelled regional theater "away from the commercial restraints of New York and toward a theater expressive of the rich diversity of American culture.”Robert H. Leonard is Professor of Theatre Arts at Virginia Tech and former artistic director of the Road Company, an acclaimed ensemble theater that produced two dozen original plays reflecting the issues of Central Appalachia.Ann Kilkelly is Professor of Theater Arts and Women's Studies at Virginia Tech and a nationally recognized scholar and performer who created the Diversity Training Laboratory that uses performance techniques to examine diversity issues.Linda Frye Burnham is co-director of Art in the Public Interest and the Community Arts Network. She founded High Performance magazine and is editor, with Steven Durland, of The Citizen Artist: 20 Years of Art in the Public Arena.Jan Cohen-Cruz is Director of Theatre Studies in the NYU Tisch School of the Arts. She is author of Local Acts: Community-based Performance In The United States (Rutgers University Press 2005).

    Among the singers, conductors, promoters, actors, and others are Plácido Domingo, Luciano Pavarotti, Milton Berle, Jimmy Durante, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, Sally Rand, Sam Wanamaker, Dina Halpern (to whom he was married), George Balanchine, Samuel Goldwyn, Carol Channing, Yul Brynner, Richard Tucker, Leontyne Price, Jussi Bjöerling, Tito Gobbi, and Maria Callas.Ranging from hilarious to somber, these fascinating vignettes and anecdotes provide a complete picture of a world that few have ever seen so intimately. Newman himself is necessarily very much a part of these stories, and his irrepressible nature and love for the arts shine through on every page.

    Yet in spite of his unquestioned status as a classic of the stage, Ibsen is often dismissed as a boring old realist, whose plays are of interest only because they remain the gateway to modern theater. In Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism, Toril Moi makes a powerful case not just for Ibsen's modernity, but also for his modernism.Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism situates Ibsen in his cultural context, emphasizes his position as a Norwegian in European culture, and shows how important painting and other visual arts were for his aesthetic education. The book rewrites literary history, reminding modern readers that idealism was the dominant aesthetic paradigm of the nineteenth century. Modernism was born in the ruins of idealism, Moi argues, thus challenging traditional theories of the opposition between realism and modernism.By reading Ibsen's modernist plays as investigations of the fate of love in an age of skepticism, Moi shows why Ibsen still matters to us. In this book, Ibsen's plays are showed to be profoundly concerned by theater and theatricality, both on stage and in everyday life. Ibsen's unsettling explorations of women, men and marriage here emerge as chronicles of the tension between skepticism and the everyday, and between critique and utopia in modernity.This radical new account places Ibsen in his rightful place alongside Baudelaire, Flaubert and Manet as a founder of European modernism.