(Theater Communications Group)"Baker may just have the subtlest way with exposition of anyone writing for the theater today ... There is something distinctly Chekhovian in the way her writing accrues weight and meaning simply through compassionate, truthful observation."            --Charles Isherwood, New York Times"Baker has a soft spot for the abandoned, the discarded, the hard-luck case ... her heartbreaking works of staggering focus have actually rescued realism from the aesthetic scrap heap."            --Helen Shaw, Timeout New York"Baker is a writer whose plays have a quiet, hypnotic charm a grace and humor. She's able to take ordinary, low-key situations--a small-town acting class, guys wasting time in an alley behind a café--and fill them with gentle comedy, generosity of spirit and an eye (and ear) for the foibles that make us all so hopelessly human."            --Village Voice

    I know all the countries of the world and the capital cities. And every prime number up to 7507. Christopher, fifteen years old, stands beside Mrs Shears's dead dog. It has been speared with a garden fork, it is seven minutes after midnight, and Christopher is under suspicion. He records each fact in the book he is writing to solve the mystery of who murdered Wellington. He has an extraordinary brain and is exceptional at maths, but he is ill-equipped to interpret everyday life. He has never ventured alone beyond the end of his road, he detests being touched and he distrusts strangers. But Christopher's detective work, forbidden by his father, takes him on a frightening journey that turns his world upside-down.Simon Stephens's adaptation of Mark Haddon's bestselling, award-winning novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time offers a richly theatrical exploration of this touching and bleakly humorous tale.

    Filled with behind-the-scenes information and photos of the cast and crew, this annotated script will enchant and entertain fans of the book and the play alike.

    Infinite possibilities. 'Let's go for a drink. I don't know what I'm doing here anyway. One drink. And if you never want to see me again you never have to see me again'. Nick Payne's "Constellations" is a play about free will and friendship; it's about quantum multiverse theory, love and honey. "Constellations" premiered at the Theatre Upstairs at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in January 2012.

    She has written a stunningly original book of essays whose concerns range from the most minimal and personal subjects to the most encompassing matters of art and culture. The titles themselves speak to the volume's uniqueness: "On lice," "On sleeping in the theater," "On motherhood and stools (the furniture kind)," "Greek masks and Bell's palsy."100 Essays I Don't Have Time to Write is a book in which chimpanzees, Chekhov, and child care are equally at home. A vibrant, provocative examination of the possibilities of the theater, it is also a map to a very particular artistic sensibility, and an unexpected guide for anyone who has chosen an artist's life.

    Not on this earth but elsewhere . . .Determined to make his mark like those before him, Pharus is hell-bent on being the best choir leader in the school's fifty-year history. First he must gain the respect of his peers, but he's an outsider in a world steeped in rites and rituals, a community that demands he conform.Tarell Alvin McCraney's piercing new play set in an all boys, all black American prep school scores a gospel refrain of the politics of minority and masculinity.Choir Boy premiered at the Theatre Upstairs at the Royal Court, London, in September 2012. It was commissioned by, and is a co-production with Manhattan Theatre Club and was supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

    Use your creative imagination to create a past that belongs to your character. I don’t want you to be stuck with your own life. It’s too little.” “You must get beneath the words before you can say them. The text must be in you. It is your job to fill, not to empty the words. They can only be used if they come out of what you need to say.”    —Stella Adler   From one the most celebrated and influential acting teachers of her time, of all time, whose generations of students include Marlon Brando, Anthony Quinn, Eva Marie Saint, Diana Ross, Robert De Niro, Warren Beatty, Annette Benning, Peter Bogdanovich, Mark Ruffalo—the long-awaited companion volume to her book on the master European playwrights Ibsen, Strindberg, and Chekhov (“Evidence,” wrote John Guare, “that Stella Adler is hands down the greatest acting teacher America has produced . . . Nobody with a serious interest in the theater can afford to be without this book”). She was a force of nature, an unforgettable personality. Once, when she walked into a crowded room and her presence caused a hush to fall over it, a little girl asked, “Mommy, is that God?” Adler saw script interpretation as the actor’s profession (“The most important thing you can teach actors is to understand plays”). Her classes of script analysis became legendary; brilliant revelations of the playwrights, the characters, the social class and the time of the play as opposed to one’s own. Adler explored how to find the ideas and experience them; how to search for the soul, for what is unsaid; all of this as a way of building craft as distinct from talent. Her new book, brilliantly edited by Barry Paris, brings together her most important lectures on America’s plays and playwrights, the giants of the twentieth century, men she knew, loved, and worked with. Adler considers, among them, Eugene O’Neill, Mourning Becomes Electra; his first play, Beyond the Horizon; and his last, Long Day’s Journey into Night (“O’Neill is a mystical playwright . . . his speech is vernacular, down-to-earth . . . it conveys the idea that there is nothing real outside, but that’s where I want to be—somewhere out in the fog. The answers are hard to get in a fog”) . . . She writes about Tennessee Williams and The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, Summer and Smoke, and The Lady of Larkspur Lotion (“Williams captivates us because of the romantic way in which he escapes the filth and frustration . . . The greatness in Williams is that [the characters] have a right to run away. What do they run away from? From the monster of commercialism and competition, from things that kill the melody and beauty of life”) . . . about Clifford Odets (“Clifford, if you don’t become a genius,” Adler once said to him, “I’ll never forgive you”); and about his plays Waiting for Lefty and Golden Boy (on Lorna Moon and Joe Bonaparte: “You can’t put a whore together with a Napoleonic man and think they’re going to make it. They might make it under certain conditions—but not from the point of view of love. This is not a love story. It’s a hate story”) . . . about William Inge and The Dark at the Top of the Stairs and Come Back, Little Sheba; about Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman (“[The salesman’s sons] are Biff and Happy . . . They’re not George and Jacob. Their names are shortcuts. It’s the American Way—a way of saying, ‘We’ll leave out tradition’ . . . That tells you something you’ll see throughout the entire play: they are cut off from custom”) about Miller’s After the Fall; and Edward Albee’s The Zoo Story and The Death of Bessie Smith. Illuminating, revelatory, inspiring: Stella Adler at her electrifying best.

    The fourth play written by playwright Rajiv Joseph follows the lives of two best friends tumultuous relationship and lives as they come together over a 30 year period.

    This official songbook presents all the songs from the show arranged for voice and piano with chord symbols, as well as an eight-page colour photo section and an exclusive foreword written by Tim Minchin.The book has been carefully designed to minimise awkward page turns and to make playing from it a real pleasure.Song list:MiracleNaughtySchool SongPatheticThe HammerLoudThis Little GirlBruceTellyWhen I Grow UpI’m HereThe Smell Of RebellionQuietMy HouseRevolting ChildrenWhen I Grow Up/NaughtySkill Level Intermediate/Advanced

    Ten songs from the Broadway musical based on the hit film about sorority girl turned Harvard law student Elle Woods. Features easy arrangements of: Bend and Snap * Ireland * Legally Blonde * Legally Blonde Remix * Omigod You Guys * Positive * Serious * So Much Better * What You Want * Whipped into Shape.

    It's the ultimate guide to what to do and not do when you're putting your show together.

    Rajiv Joseph's groundbreaking new American play explores both the power and the perils of human nature.

    Their past and present selves collide in this haunting and beautiful tale of togetherness. All relationships have their ups and downs; the optimism of youth becomes the wisdom of experience. Love is a leap of faith.

    That night, Sater came home and began writing the first lyric of Spring Awakening: "Mama Who Bore Me" - a lyric which still stands, verbatim, just as he first wrote it. Ten years later, in the wake of the enormous international success of this groundbreaking, multiaward-winning show, its original director, Michael Mayer, urged Sater to write notes explicating its famously evocative, poetic lyrics. In rich detail, Sater's notes address the literary sources and allusions of each lyric. He also writes feelingly of what prompted the songs over the course of the show's eight years of development. In so doing, Sater expands on his partnership with Sheik and his experiences with original cast members, Lea Michele and Jonathan Groff, now also known from Glee. These notes will prove invaluable for fans of the show, for all those interested in theater, and most especially for all the young performers who will play the roles and sing these songs.

    Based on the classic novel Le Fantome de L'Opéra by Gaston Leroux, it is widely considered to be one of Andrew Lloyd Webber's most accomplished scores. This beautifully illustrated anniversary celebration will delight true fans, with its history of how Gaston Leroux came to write the tale originally, and look at the early incarnations of the Phantom. It then describes how Lloyd Webber was inspired to take up the material, and every step of the phenomenon that ensued. The book also includes the full text of the play, a world map pointing out Phantom facts, and a Phantom timeline.

    This essential handbook guides the reader through the various stages of auditioning, advises actors on how to approach a part once they've landed it, and steers them toward making strong, imaginative choices.

    Here are explanations of all the famous key terms, such as Alienation Effect, Epic Theatre and Gestus, as well as many others which go to make up what we think of as 'Brechtian theatre'. The book also explores the practical application of these theories in Acting, Language, Music, Design and Direction. Also included are fifty exercises contributed by Julian Jones, to help student actors investigate Brecht's ideas for themselves, becoming thoroughly familiar with the tools in the Brecht toolkit."A thorough yet crystal clear explanation of Brecht's more complicated techniques and ideas." - Teaching Drama Magazine"One of the best introductory books on Brecht currently in circulation... Unwin [presents] the theoretical and practical ideas of Bertolt Brecht in a clear, concise and connected way so that students and practitioners may consider the importance of his work in the twenty-first century." - A Younger Theatre"A useful, refreshing, no-nonsense introduction to a practitioner who can be contradictory and is often misunderstood." - The StageStephen Unwin is one of Britain’s leading theatre and opera directors. He worked at the Traverse Theatre in the 1980s, founded English Touring Theatre in 1993, and in 2008 was appointed Artistic Director of the Rose Theatre, Kingston. He has written guides to Shakespeare’s plays; Ibsen, Chekhov and Strindberg; twentieth-century Drama; the plays of Bertolt Brecht; and So You Want To Be A Theatre Director?Julian Jones, who contributed the exercises included in The Complete Brecht Toolkit, is Senior Lecturer in Acting at Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance.

    This accessible introduction offers a springboard into the play, taking a hands-on, performance-based approach, exploring the challenges and the rewards it presents to actors, audiences and students. Springboard Shakespeare: Macbeth has a three-part structure: whether you're watching or reading, Ben Crystal takes you through exactly what you need to know Before, During and After the play. He combines a genuine passion and understanding of Shakespeare with his experience as an actor, giving the reader a clear route to thinking about, understanding and enjoying Macbeth.

    This accessible introduction offers a springboard into the play, taking a hands-on, performance-based approach, exploring the challenges and the rewards it presents to actors, audiences and students.Springboard Shakespeare: Hamlet has a three-part structure: whether you're watching or reading, Ben Crystal takes you through exactly what you need to know Before, During and After the play. He combines a genuine passion and understanding of Shakespeare with his experience as an actor, giving the reader a clear route to thinking about, understanding and enjoying Hamlet.

    Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston played the lead role in the play’s celebrated Broadway performance at the Neil Simon Theatre, for which he was awarded the Tony Award for Best Actor. In this volume, Cranston provides a never-before-published illuminating and personal introduction to the play.All The Way tells the story of the tumultuous first year of the presidency of Lyndon Baines Johnson, thrust into power following Kennedy’s assassination and struggling to hold onto the White House in an election that forces him to make concessions. In 1964, this pivotal year in American history, he passes a landmark civil rights bill, but begins his fateful descent into Vietnam. LBJ is fiercely determined to lift the country out of the ashes and rebuild it into The Great Society—by any means necessary.

    A sweet little old lady, alone in her house, is pitted against a a gang of criminal misfits who will stop at nothing…Posing as amateur musicians, Professor Marcus and his gang rent rooms in the lopsided house of sweet but strict Mrs Wilberforce. The villains plot to involve her, unwittingly, in Marcus' brilliantly conceived heist. The police are stumped, but Mrs Wilberforce becomes wise to their ruse and Marcus concludes that there is only one way to keep the old lady quiet. With only her parrot, General Gordon, to help her, Mrs Wilberforce is alone with five desperate men.

    When Agnes finds Tilly's Dungeons & Dragons notebook, however, she stumbles into a journey of discovery and action-packed adventure in the imaginary world that was Tilly's refuge. In this high-octane dramatic comedy laden with homicidal fairies, nasty ogres, and 90s pop culture, acclaimed young playwright Qui Nguyen offers a heart-pounding homage to the geek and warrior within us all.

    Free Your Voice offers readers the liberating insights and personal instruction of sound healing legend Silvia Nakkach, whose four-decade immersion in the use of the voice as a creative force makes her a uniquely qualified teacher and guide. With coauthor Valerie Carpenter, Silvia shows how to reclaim the healing potential of your voice (regardless of training or experience) through more than 100 enjoyable exercises that are steeped in spiritual tradition and classical vocal technique and backed by the latest science. Free Your Voice invites us to savor a banquet of our own divine sounds as we explore breathwork, chant, and other yogic practices for emotional release, opening to insight, and much more. Required reading for the thousands of people in Silvia s training programs, here is a definitive resource for using the voice as an instrument of healing and fulfillment. Instruction includes guided practices available as downloadable audio.

    Honest, witty and direct, The Golden Rules of Acting is every actor’s best friend – in handy paperback form.‘When auditioning, rehearsing or in a performance, take a risk – the worst that can happen is that you get embarrassed. You won’t die.’Easy to dip into, fully illustrated throughout, and designed to be both instructive and empowering, The Golden Rules of Acting won’t tell you how to act – but it will tell you how to be an actor.‘Always remember, the people auditioning you want you to be brilliant. They want you to solve their casting problem.'If you’re a working actor, drama-school student, someone who wants to become an actor, or simply someone who has a dream and wants to make it a reality, this book is for you.‘NEVER harmonise when singing ‘Happy Birthday’ – this has nothing to do with work, it’s just all actors do it & it’s bloody annoying.’Andy Nyman learnt the golden rules of acting the hard way, through twenty-five years of working in theatre, film and television. On stage, he co-wrote, co-directed and starred in the West End hit Ghost Stories, and won an Olivier Award for Best Entertainment for co-writing and directing Something Wicked This Way Comes with his regular collaborator Derren Brown. His many film appearances include Severance and Frank Oz’s Death at a Funeral.

    Wade is one of theatre's most vibrant young playwrights and a leading female voice on the British theatre scene.

    Full of straightforward, well-organized advice for every step of the process, this book will help you train your vocal cords, pick the right audition material, and become comfortable with the spotlight. Interactive quizzes, helpful sidebars, and words of advice from industry professionals add a personalized and real-world touch.Author Ted Michael, a veteran of music and theater, along with the help of popular actors, actresses, and singers, provides all the tools young singers need in order to nail their auditions and nurture their natural show-stopping abilities.

    Many of the people who work on Broadway keep scrapbooks of their experiences: photos, signed posters, ticket stubs, and, of course the Playbills. These are treasured keepsakes, something to be savored over a lifetime, and then passed on to friends and descendants. Playbill Books, a division of the iconic 128-year-old company that designs the programs for every show on Broadway, has expanded this idea into an annual project that has become a Broadway institution: The Playbill Broadway Yearbook . Taking the form of a high school or college yearbook, the eighth edition is packed with photos (more than 4,000 of them, many in color) and memorabilia from the entire 2011-2012 Broadway season. The new edition includes chapters on 70 Broadway shows, which is every show that ran during the season not just such new shows as Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, Once, Newsies, Nice Work If You Can Get It, and One Man, Two Guvnors, but the long-running ones from seasons past, such as Phantom of the Opera, The Book of Mormon, and Wicked . In addition to headshots of all the actors who appeared in Playbill, the book has photos of producers, writers, designers, stage managers, stagehands, musicians, ushers even Leonardo, the "SM" fish who is the backstage mascot at Jersey Boys . This year's roster is expected to top 10,000 names.

    "In Joshua Young's WHEN THE WOLVES QUIT, the palpable influences of cinema and surrealism are woven together in this luminous play-in-verse. The firing of a gun triggers this emotional investigation of faith, memory, and the afterlife. With the same ferocity of a fired bullet Young's work accelerates the reader through his poetic obsession where the woods are ghostly and the path through the thicket is somewhere off the stage. With ingenuity and his strong gifts as a storyteller, Joshua Young's tale invites readers to become major characters and to explore a place that is the "middle ground between closure and myth." Oliver de la Paz"Long after reading it, Joshua Young's WHEN THE WOLVES QUIT still sits on my chest heavy as stone, lapping at my throat with a sometimes tongue and the always threat of teeth. When I scream blood-lust for new words, this book is what I greedily nightmare about." J. A. Tyler"A remarkable and delightful full-length debut, Joshua Young's WHEN THE WOLVES QUIT is a poetic Lynchian noir unlike any poetry before. Interrogating a familiar, provincial American space where 'secrets are damp, / caught in the space between the throat and the front teeth, ' Young entices us to step onto the stage itself. ENTER STAGE LEFT someone disappears. ENTER STAGE RIGHT see the missing through a keyhole or worse, through the slats of your neighbor's nearly closed blinds. Brilliantly suppressing distinctions between poetry, drama, and fiction, here is a frightening polyphony of voices, where all become victims of their own crimes where 'suffering moves and breathes.' The smallest details are even more disturbing, such as an out of tune piano plinking over the debris of other people's lives in half-abandoned rooms. When told in the book this is dream, we think nightmare. Most worryingly, Young manages to implicate an audience who is much too titillated by the oblique violence happening offstage. Just try to remove yourself from that association, reader." Richard Greenfield"

    Our production will capitalize on the presence of the actor, sophisticated costumes, and precise lighting design to create razor sharp imaginary worlds. Only the minimal necessary elements of set and props will be constructed in order to bring the audience into our collectively imagined worlds. The onus of discovering, sharing and ultimately inhabiting these worlds lays with the ensemble of twelve actors. Though the reader of the script may glimpse the interconnectedness of the “menu,” each audience, seeing only one combination of the nine possibilities, has but one experience of the journey, or meal. By rehearsing and presenting all nine versions of the play, the ensemble will bring the consciousness of all to the performance of each.

    This accessible introduction offers a springboard into the play, taking a hands-on, performance-based approach, exploring the challenges and the rewards it presents to actors, audiences and students. Springboard Shakespeare: A Midsummer Night's Dream has a three-part structure: whether you're watching or reading, Ben Crystal takes you through exactly what you need to know Before, During and After the play. He combines a genuine passion and understanding of Shakespeare with his experience as an actor, giving the reader a clear route to thinking about, understanding and enjoying A Midsummer Night's Dream.

    This definitive volume includes the original reviews of the 119 most important , selected by current chief theater critic Ben Brantley and accompanied by photographs from each show’s first production as well as celebrated revivals. From the golden age of the musical, with its divas, legendary directors, lyricists, and choreographers, right up to The Book of Mormon, Brantley gives context to this treasure trove of reviews with a thoughtful introduction and essays that guide the reader through each decade.

    The Singer's Edition series is specially designed for singers who'd like to perform songs from a particular show. Each book contains the show's top eight songs, in their original keys. The sheet music includes the vocal line and lyrics, along with a piano accompaniment that is a reduction of the original orchestral score. Singers can have a live pianist accompany them, playing the music as written in the book, or they can use the CD, which includes a full performance of each piano accompaniment. Songs include: Astonishing * Days of Plenty * Five Forever * Here Alone * Our Finest Dreams * Small Umbrella in the Rain * Some Things Are Meant to Be * Take a Chance on Me.

    It makes the blood rush."Olivier-award winning actor Adrian Lester plays Ira Alridge in the world premiere of Lolita Chakrabarti's new play, Red Velvet, which launches Indhu Rubasingham's reign as the Tricycle Theatre's new Artistic Director. The play is set in the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, in 1833. Edmund Kean, the greatest actor of his generation, has collapsed on stage whilst playing Othello. A young black American actor, Ira Aldridge, has been asked to take over the role. But, as the public riot in the streets, how will the cast, critics and audience react to the revolution taking place in the theatre?Written by the 2012 Most Promising Playwright (Evening Standard Awards) Lolita Chakrabarti, Red Velvet uses imagined experiences based on the often-forgotten, but true, story of Ira Aldridge, an African-American actor who, in the nineteenth century, built an incredible reputation on the stages of London and Europe.

    Write to Dream offers 30 of the best plays written by YPT students from 1995-2012, along with standards-based workshops from YPT's curriculum to inspire creativity and enhance literacy skills in the classroom. Lesson plans are organized so teachers can easily integrate them into their classroom curricula. The plays feature stories and characters for all ages, from a science experiment gone hilariously awry to a Chinese immigrant struggling to learn English and graduate high school to an elderly woman facing the gentrification of her neighborhood.This book is for everyone. Read these plays aloud in classrooms across the country, discuss them as a family around the dinner table and read them on your own in quiet moments of inspiration and reflection.Your purchase of this book includes a donation to support YPT. We are incredibly grateful for your contribution. As a nonprofit organization, we depend on community members like you to continue our work. Your support will help us realize the visions of even more young playwrights and reach even more students in the classroom. (Young Playwrights' Theater)

    Wollman takes readers on a fascinating tour of the adult musical scene of New York City's rampant 1970s.After the success of Hair in 1968, the low-budget adult musical proliferated. The most famous was the long-running "Oh! Calcutta!," but countless more made it to stage: "Stag Movie," "Let My People Come," "The Faggot," and others. Structured like old-fashioned revues, with thematically interconnected songs and skits, they received little respect from critics, who either condemned them for going too far in the direction of hard-core pornography, or for not being erotic enough. The public thought otherwise, flooding the theaters and pouring cash into box-office tills. Wollman shows that adult musicals represented far more than a silly fad from a silly decade: they reflected experimentation with newfound sexual freedom, not to mention the rise of the women's and gay liberation movements. She examines the impact of the Stonewall riots on gay musicals; how feminism was reflected on stage; and how "porno chic" and hard-core porn influenced performances. Even the most middlebrow efforts brought into focus the debate between art and obscenity, and angst over New York City's socioeconomic status. By the early 1980s, as the city's economy recovered and society grew conservative, these musicals disappeared-an indicator of a larger transformation.Wollman reasserts the significance of this humble (if hardly modest) art form. Adult musicals, she shows, represented aspects of American culture at their messiest and most confused-and thus at their most honest.

    A tale of two cultures, Oil and Water is a hopeful and haunting legend that resonates deeply.

    William Bloor, a Foxfinder, arrives at Sam and Judith Covey’s farm to investigate a suspected contamination. What follows will change the course of all their lives, forever.

    When Olivia loses control at her birthday party, her friends decide to intervene once and for all, but perhaps each of these five women is battling an addiction of some sort.

    Culled from years of experience, the information offered in these enlightening conversations will strengthen readers’ understanding of how designing in the commercial theatre is different from designing in an academic setting or not-for-profit theatres. The conversations are accompanied by designer sketches, finished drawings, technical plates of drafting, photos of scale models, storyboards illustrating multi-scene productions and unique lighting looks, and photos from Broadway and regional theatre productions. If you’ve ever wondered what it really takes to make it in the world of theatre design, let these Broadway stars be your guide!

    He was worked with everyone from Busby Berkeley to Ruby Keeler to Leonard Bernstein, to Ann-Margret to Kevin Spacey to Tony Danza to Kathie Lee Gifford to Stephen Sondheim and everyone in between. At the halfway mark of his very long stage career Mr. Dixon suffered a devastating drug addiction which nearly killed him and left him homeless. He then went on to rebuild his life and career and have even greater successes in his life and profession. A truly remarkable saga of success, devastation and redemption covering more than four decades. If you have any interest in what goes on behind the scenes in the theater, you must read this book. ED DIXON has been featured in Broadway's Anything Goes, Mary Poppins, Sunday in the Park with George, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Gore Vidal's The Best Man, The Iceman Cometh, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Cyrano, the Musical, Les Miserables, The Three Musketeers, King of Schnorrers, Leonard Bernstein's Mass, and No, No, Nanette. He has toured America with Ann-Margret in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, with Ben Vereen in Pippin, and as Maxin Sunset Boulevard for which he was nominated for a Joseph Jefferson Award and won a Helen Hayes Award. Ed is the author/composer of Shylock, Richard Cory, Fanny Hill, Whodunit... the Musical, and Cloak and Dagger. His writing has garnered a Drama Desk Nomination, a Dramalogue Award, two Dean's List Awards, a Leon Rabin Award, the NYMF Festival Prize and Audience Award as well as a Steinberg Grant.

    Say Lynn Redgrave was your favorite aunt, or David Oyelowo was your favorite uncle, and you sat down together and asked him or her to give you their honest advice and guidance.  That same advice and insider knowledge, delivered with the same sense of honesty and intimacy, is what readers will gain from Now You Tell Me! 12 Actors Give the Best Advice They Never Got.  This book cuts 20 years off the learning curve of anyone who wants to go into acting and fascinates anyone interested in the entertainment industry.  What is the most important quality to bring to an audition?  How do you chose an acting or vocal coach?  If you decide to 'go pro', where do you start?  These questions and many others are addressed by Pauley Perrette, Sam Waterston, and others who have spent decades in the profession.Most importantly, the subtitle of each book in the Now You Tell Me! series is "Making a Living; Making a Life."  The editors of this book have carefully selected professional actors who have not only been successful in their chosen professions, but have also made purposeful decisions when it comes to building a good life.  The young actors who will read Now You Tell Me! 12 Actors Give the Best Advice They Never Got will benefit from reading about the unique experiences of these actors who have been successful in all aspects of their lives.Includes interviews with: Pauley Perrette (NCIS); David Oyelowo (Red Tails, The Help); Charles Busch (Vampire Lesbians of Sodom); Joseph Kolinski (Les Miserables, One Life to Live); Michael McKean (This is Spinal Tap, Laverne & Shirley); Brian Stokes-Mitchell (Ragtime, Man of La Mancha); Julia Motyka (The Kindergarten Shuffle, In the Family); Alexandra Neil (As the World Turns, Rock 'n' Roll); Michael O'Neill (The West Wing, Grey's Anatomy); Eden Sher (The Middle, Weeds); Sam Waterston (Law & Order, King Lear); the last major interview with Lynn Redgrave and a bonus interview with director Kent Paul.

    This anthology collects over forty essays, manifestos, letters, and speeches that are each introduced and placed in historical context by the noted writer and arts commentator Todd London, who spent nearly a decade assembling this collection. The founding visions of theaters from across the country are represented here, including: Arena Stage (Washington, DC), El Teatro Campesino (California), Barter Theatre (Virginia), Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Roadside Theater (Kentucky), Second City (Illinois), Theatre 47 (Dallas), Bread and Puppet (Vermont), The Actor's Workshop (California), Public Theater (New York), Minnesota Theatre Company, The Group Theatre (New York), and dozens more. This celebration of the artists who came before is an exhilarating look backward, as well as toward the future.Todd London is in his fifteenth season as artistic director of the Tony Award–winning New Dramatists, where he has worked closely with more than a hundred of America's leading playwrights and advocated nationally and internationally for hundreds more. The author of The Artistic Home and Outrageous Fortune: The Life and Times of the New American Play, he has written, edited, and/or contributed to eleven books.

    Closer to home, though, language is failing him. He doesn't know what to say to his wife, Mary, to keep her from leaving him, and he doesn't recognize the deep feelings that his lab assistant, Emma, has for him.

    What goes on there is mysterious, alchemical and closely guarded. So how are aspiring theatre directors supposed to learn their craft?In Getting Directions, Russ Hope gives us the benefit of unprecedented, fly-on-the-wall access to eight rehearsal rooms. He has shadowed some of the UK's most exciting young directors at each step of the way, on productions as diverse as Shakespeare at the Globe, Greek tragedy at the Gate, Tennessee Williams at the Young Vic, panto at the Lyric Hammersmith, and a touring Dickens dramatisation.Describing each of these rehearsal periods from first concept to first night in revealing and often remarkable detail, Hope gets under the skin of the professional director, and reveals the decisions they must make on a daily basis: How best to arrive at a concept and communicate this to a design team? Which games and exercises really help to unlock the text for actors? And what should you do if everything is falling apart during the tech?Getting Directions will equip emerging directors with a practical handbook, not bogged down with theories or precepts, that lifts the lid on what it means to be a director. The result is both a portrait and a masterclass from a generation of theatre practitioners, essential reading for anyone who wants to follow in their footsteps, or to understand what directing really entails.

    With fellow RSC actors for company,Nick travels the country visiting thebuildings, landscapes and former sitesof war and intrigue that feature in the plays, and asks the question: what is it about the England of Shakespeare's Histories that continues to fascinate? From Alnwick to Eastcheap, Windsor Castle to a Leicester car park, this is his snapshot of England and its people, then and now.

    He has received many OBIE awards, an NEA Lifetime Achievement Award, and a MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship.

    Drawing together carefully commissioned contributions by leading international scholars and artists, this radical new work poses a number of essential questions:What are the principle signifiers of theatrical presence?How is presence achieved through theatrical performance?What makes a memory come alive and live again?How is presence connected with identity?Is presence synonymous with 'being in the moment'?What is the nature of the 'co-presence' of audience and performer?Where does performance practice end and its documentation begin?Co-edited by performance specialists Gabriella Giannachi and Nick Kaye, and archaeologist Michael Shanks, Archaeologies of Presence represents an innovative and rewarding feat of interdisciplinary scholarship.

    Originally scripted for open-air performance in the promenade style, the action kicks off with an amusing, rustic, Victorian melodrama; but thereafter it is the brooding presence of Dartmoor which lies at its dark centre. Over the purple heather, the granite tors and the sucking bog of Grimpen Mire, comes a parade of colourful characters to confuse and disturb the courageous soul of Doctor Watson, sent by Holmes to scout for some solid facts behind the highly mysterious death of Sir Charles Baskerville. Fresh-faced from Canada, the new baronet, Sir Henry Baskerville, - You can cut the Sir ! - is having none of the old world superstition surrounding the ancient curse on his family; yet it slowly becomes apparent, even to his no-nonsense mind, that a very real threat is lurking on Baskerville Moor. And, what is more, it leaves footprints... Playwright Simon Corble gives Conan Doyle's original tale some highly inventive twists in order to create an engaging drama that has delighted audiences and received glowing reviews wherever it has been staged since 1995. In print for the first time, the action leaps off the page at even the most casual reader and, if you think you know exactly how it is going to end...the female of the species has a surprise in store. Hell hath no fury, Watson. Quite, Holmes.

    The book explores antics such as camp, kitsch, drag, guerrilla theater, zap actions, rallies, manifestos, pageants, and parades alongside more familiar forms of "legitimate theater." Against queer theory's long-suffering romance with mourning and melancholia and a national agenda that urges homosexuals to renounce pleasure if they want to be taken seriously by mainstream society, Acts of Gaiety seeks to reanimate notions of "gaiety" as a political value for LGBT activism.The book mines the archives of lesbian-feminist activism of the 1960s-70s, highlighting the outrageous gaiety that lay at the center of the social and theatrical performances of the era and uncovering original documents long thought to be lost. Juxtaposing historical figures such as Valerie Solanas and Jill Johnston with more recent performers and activists (including Hothead Paisan, Bitch & Animal, and the Five Lesbian Brothers), Warner shows how reclaiming this largely discarded and disavowed past elucidates possibilities for being and belonging. Acts of Gaiety explores the mutually informing histories of gayness as politics and as joie de vivre, along with the centrality of liveliness to queer performance and protest.

    This collection features works by five founding members, each currently active with the company: Ugly’s First World by Jeff Dorchen, in which a singing zombie, seeking revenge against T. S. Eliot, becomes a pawn in a battle to overthrow God; Innocence and Other Vices by Dave Buchen, a half-true, half-blasphemous screwball comedy about the mildly unhealthy relationship between charity and capitalism; Letter Purloined by David Isaacson, a whodunit comedy about war atrocities and a handkerchief; There Is a Happiness That Morning Is by Mickle Maher, a play in rhymed verse, about the poetry of William Blake and having sex in public; and Necessity by Danny Thompson, a bloody and historically inaccurate bio-drama of Thomas Alva Edison. See what audiences around the world have come to know as uniquely Oobleckian: irreverent, vexed, impossibly funny, and unexpectedly transcendent.

    Neil Rutherford's book provides a unique perspective on the musical theatre audition process from the viewpiont of one of the most influential and commercial casting directors in the West End, who has also had extensive experience as a professional actor.

    . . . Vividly written. . . . An intriguing and evocative drama."—The San Francisco Chronicle, on Brainpeople"Mr. Rivera's intimate play . . . uses historical fact as a frame to pose intriguing questions about what might have happened."—The New York Times, on School of the AmericasThree new works from José Rivera, a writer known for his lush language, open heart, and stylistic flirting with the surreal. Boleros for the Disenchanted is the moving story of the playwrights own parents: their sweet courtship in 1950s Puerto Rico, and then forty years later in more difficult times in America. With Brainpeople, Rivera explores the troubled minds of three women in a post-apocalyptic setting who feast on a freshly slaughtered tiger. In School of the Americas, he imagines Che Guevara's encounter—more passionate than political—with a young schoolteacher in Bolivia. Also included is his one-act penned in protest of California's Proposition 8, Pablo and Andrew at the Altar of Words.José Rivera's works include the plays References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot, Marisol, Cloud Tectonics, and Sueno (an adaptation of Life Is a Dream), as well as the Oscar-nominated screenplay to The Motorcycle Diaries.

    A prominentleftist and social maverick, Blitzstein constantly pushed the boundaries of convention in mid-century America in both his work and his life.Award-winning music historian Howard Pollack's new biography covers Blitzstein's life in full, from his childhood in Philadelphia to his violent death in Martinique at age 58. The author describes how this student of contemporary luminaries Nadia Boulanger and Arnold Schoenberg became swept up inthe stormy political atmosphere of the 1920s and 1930s and throughout his career walked the fine line between his formal training and his populist principles. Indeed, Blitzstein developed a unique sound that drew on everything contemporary, from the high modernism of Stravinsky and Hindemith to jazzand Broadway show tunes. Pollack captures the astonishing breadth of Blitzstein's work--from provocative operas like The Cradle Will Rock, No for an Answer, and Regina, to the wartime Airborne Symphony composed during his years in service, to lesser known ballets, film scores, and stage works. Acourageous artist, Blitzstein translated Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's The Threepenny Opera during the heyday of McCarthyism and the red scare, and turned it into an off-Broadway sensation, its Mack the Knife becoming one of the era's biggest hits.Beautifully written, drawing on new interviews with friends and family of the composer, and making extensive use of new archival and secondary sources, Marc Blitzstein presents the most complete biography of this important American artist.

    Campbell and Shaw on Broadway. The play toured this hemisphere and Europe for two years before its return to Off-Broadway. It is a masterful compendium of badinage with Shaw and Mrs. Campbell in scenes of both confrontation and distancing. Here is Shaw in all his contradictions; he adores the actress, Mrs. Campbell, most ascetically, and persuades her to play in Pygmalion. He frets with her when she leaves for America, and yet he refuses permission to publish the letters that would save her from bankruptcy. Mrs. Campbell is his match; she published them anyway. Here is a strange and intriguing romance fought around the world.

    

    He's almost Christ-like, from a distance, in terms of height and weight. Listen closely or drift off uncontrollably as he speaks to you directly about the notion of home, about the notion of the world. A provocative new work by Pulitzer Prize finalist Will Eno.

    A housing project in North Memphis, originally developed in the 1950s to attract white residents, the area had, by the nineties, become a byword for poverty and drug-related crime. In 2000, the Memphis City government received a $35 million federal grant in order to redevelop the area, and in 2003, the neighbourhood was demolished, following the relocation of hundreds of black residents.Hurt Village is not just a housing project, it’s a way of life for thirteen-year-old Cookie. Desperate to move her family out of the project, Cookie’s great-grandmother, Big Mama, is waiting on the local government to find them a new homr in suburban Raleigh. When she’s denied aid due to earning slightly over the public assistance maximum, her grandson, Buggy, recently returned from war and suffering from PTSD, renews old acquaintances and plunges the family back into a life of drug-dealing, addiction and gang violence, in order to forge a better life for them somewhere new.Hurt Village premiered at the Signature Theatre Company, New York City, in 2012. It is the fourth of Katori Hall’s ‘Memphis’ plays.

    This explosive, multimedia story of a young woman trapped in a living nightmare combines direct, chilling performances with video and animation to create a site-specific experience that is both intimate and immersive.

    This must-have resource for actors consists of a practical masterclass on movement from the Head of Movement at The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (one of the few worldwide brands in drama) complete with video examples on a DVD.The book provides a complete curriculum on movement training: from 'pure movement', to games, Grotowski, Alexander, ballet, yoga and Feldenkreis. Jackie takes the reader through the practical steps, enabling the actor to master each technique and apply it to performance and character. The DVD contains video examples performed by acting students and a series of three mini masterclasses. A book to use as an aide memoir for technique, or as a textbook to base a movement course around.

    Michener Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony for Best Musical, South Pacific flourished as the golden musical of Broadway's post-WWII golden era. Nearly 60 years after its 1949 premiere, South Pacific returned to Broadway in Lincoln Center Theater's glorious Tony-winning production, setting box-office records and bringing this timely and timeless musical to new generations. With a score by Rodgers & Hammerstein and a libretto by Hammerstein and Joshua Logan, based on James A. Michener's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Tales of the South Pacific, this landmark musical combines compassionate love stories with the saga of a world at war. Richly developed characters are faced with life-changing moments in a complex world, their thoughts and yearnings powerfully expressed in the lyrics to such songs as "This Nearly Was Mine " "Younger Than Springtime " and "Some Enchanted Evening."

    Ten years later, he cofounded the Manitoba Theatre Centre, establishing a model for regional theatres across North America. This comprehensive biography traces Hirsch's life, from his difficult childhood to his eventual professional success, as he went on to direct award-winning productions in Los Angeles, New York City, and Toronto—from Guys and Dolls to The Tempest—and work with actors such as Anthony Hopkins and Maggie Smith. Revealing why Hirsch was notorious for his fiery temper and budget-blowing sets, the book details his stormy four years as CBC’s head of TV drama in the 1970s and his even more volatile tenure as artistic director at the Stratford Festival from 1981 to 1985.

    The story had better be good. With 85% of the talent pool out of work at any given time, the one-person show has become a hedge against unemployment, a do-it-yourself pension plan and a ladder out of the rut. But is it an actor’s nightmare, or a dream come true? How did Spalding Gray (“Swimming to Cambodia”) and Anna Deavere Smith (“Fires in the Mirror”) revolutionize the art form and make it their own? How do you go public with your private life, as Julia Sweeney (“God Said Ha!”) does, and live with yourself? What happens when you blur the line between theatre and journalism, like Mike Daisey (“The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs”)? What does it take to succeed on the level of Hal Holbrook (“Mark Twain Tonight!”) or Julie Harris (“The Belle of Amherst”)? ACTING SOLO: THE ART AND CRAFT OF SOLO PERFORMANCE is the ultimate guide to the popular theatrical genre of one-person shows. The revised and expanded edition of this comprehensive study covers every aspect of the field, including biographical and autobiographical monologues, literary adaptations and anthologies, documentaries, storytelling, character sketches, and more.“Simply put, I was blown away by it,” says Obie Award-winning solo artist Charlayne Woodard, in her foreword to the book. “ACTING SOLO has certainly jiggled my mind: feeding me with new insights and answers to fresh questions. This book is a must-read for everyone interested in the solo acting genre, be it to perform, teach, or simply enjoy. Jordan Young tells our story in a way that has already inspired me to get to work on my next play.”Lily Tomlin, Ian McKellen, Ed Asner, Tovah Feldshuh (“Golda’s Balcony”), Frank Ferrante (“An Evening With Groucho”), Eve Ensler (“The Vagina Monologues”), Sarah Jones (“Bridge & Tunnel”), Hershey Felder (“George Gershwin Alone”), Heather Woodbury, Fred Curchack, Ruth Draper, John Gielgud, James Whitmore, playwright William Luce and directors Mark W. Travis and Joel Zwick are among the many solo artists whose work is discussed.Three additional bonus chapters are available as separate ebooks: IRISH THEATRE AND SOLO PERFORMANCE, BECKETT AND SOLO PERFORMANCE and STAND-UP COMEDY AND SOLO PERFORMANCE.

    Born in 1892 in the frontier society of Idaho, she became a suffragette in New York City, was the first to put Jimmy Cagney on stage, and along with her husband, Burton, founded the Negro Repertory Theater and the nationally recognized Seattle Repertory Playhouse. With star appearances by Woody Guthrie and Helen Hayes, the memoir beautifully illustrates the evolution in her personal life and the development of professional theater during the Great Depression, World War II, and the McCarthy period.James believed that theatre could offer both an uplifting artistic experience and the tools to advance community development. Her views on art and politics and her choice to stage what some saw as controversial plays led to a clash with the Un-American Activities Committee. After two Kafkaesque trials, a conviction for refusing to follow Committee rules, and being manhandled by police, she fled to Canada.Written thirty-five years ago with celebrated actress Jean Freeman, James's memoir sheds light on a fully realized creative life, her love for Burton, and a fascistic strain of American politics that continues to exist today.

    Thirty-one men were arrested, and the ensuing scandal led to an ordinance against "oral sodomy" in California. "Tom Jacobson's exceptional THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY WAY ... is meta-theatre - dense and accurate and mysterious. While obviously influenced by Genet and Stoppard - the costuming metaphor will remind you of Genet's THE MAIDS and aspects of Stoppard's JUMPERS - Jacobson is working a distinctly American vernacular, and his voice is ultimately his own. There's a lot of erotic tension in the piece, which tells a wordless story that not only informs the talk but turns us on, too. Jacobson's real strength as an artist is his willingness to let mystery be just that." -Hilton Als, The New Yorker "Playwright Tom Jacobson is known for tackling challenging themes, and his latest effort - recounting a scandalous little-known chapter in Southern California history - is among his boldest. Not content to merely relate a fascinating milestone in gay-rights travails, Jacobson sets the stage for two versatile actors to explore multilayered ruminations on sexual identity, institutional corruption, the conscience of civil servants carrying out questionable duties, the mysteries of the acting craft, and more ... Jacobson's intriguing script shrewdly mixes historical fact and fictionalization. The inventive play-within-a-play structure ... The play takes a startling turn at the end, bringing Jacobson's central themes of role-playing, self-deception, and moral responsibility to a shattering conclusion." -Les Spindle, Backstage West ..". playwright Tom Jacobson, who loves to tinker with history in surprising and ticklish ways, doesn't seem interested in doing a docu-drama. By untethering from reality a la WAITING FOR GODOT and placing the action in the actors' minds, he comes up with something bigger, bolder and better as the two actors onstage bend identity, twist law and criminalize sex. It is also hysterically funny and simultaneously deadly serious." -Rod Stafford Hagwood, Sun Sentinel ..". playwright Tom Jacobson's trademark cerebral acrobatics in his new play, THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY WAY." -Philip Brandes, The Los Angeles Times "Tom Jacobson's scintillating new play." -Steven Leigh Morris, L A Weekly "Few joys are more long-lasting than seeing a theatrical work that contains enough complexity to make one ponder. An intricate piece written and produced well will leave one peeling layers away for days. One gradually comes to full understanding of something which was, on first encounter, like an unopened bud: full of depth and richness hidden behind a structured exterior. Take, as case in point, Tom Jacobson's intricate, fascinating, and very adult play, THE TWENTIETH CENTURY WAY. Indeed, it is disturbing. It is historic. It is deeply moving. It needs to be seen." -Frances Baum Nicholson, Pasadena Star News

    Toying with post 9/11 phobias, this dark comedy plays upon our fears, both real and imagined.

    Includes Lace Curtain Irish, The Greatest Actress Who Ever Lived, Planchette, Little Sister, Souvenirs from Eden, The Countess and the Lesbians, Deep Haven, Since I Died, and 'Til the Fat Lady Sings.

    Places, Please! documents Daniel Robert Sullivan's transformation from a "small-time" professional actor to a musical superstar: his two years of auditions, weeks of rehearsals, and hundreds of performances in the Toronto Company of Jersey Boys, where he appeared as bad-boy Tommy DeVito.

    To familiarize the reader with the world of each playwright, Tichler and Kaplan introduce us to the environments in which the work happens, conducting their interviews in the playwright’s home, a dark theater, or a coffee shop. Topics of conversation range from the playwrights’ earliest memories of the theater to finding their unique voices, and from their working relationships with directors, actors, and designers to their involvement in the purely commercial aspects of their profession. Taken together, these conversations constitute a collectively taught master class in the art and craft of writing for the stage.

    Here, the enterprise of playwriting itself is being re-imagined. Here, above all else, is a commitment to becoming in the theatre.For all that, each play is concerned with what is unfinished business in Ireland. How astonishing, then, that these plays should revolve for the most part around identity and, in particular, sexual identity. How identity comes into play, how we open up the field of play, how we raise into collective experience the exercise of that play – the urgency in the playwriting would appear to lie precisely here.We can read from the historical moment – from a narrative emphasizing an economic bubble and its hangover – into these plays. Or we can take these playwrights at their word and observe lives lived at the contour of identities in the making. It is for us as readers, just as we have as theatre-goers – frequently scandalized, enthralled, shamed, appalled, unburdened, tickled pink – to decide.

    In this cahier he opens that experience, describing the challenges as well as the rewards, which can go from the difficulty of deciphering Beckett’s notoriously difficult handwriting to finding an English equivalent for one of Beckett’s numerous verbal jokes. This cahier offers an insight into the ‘task of the translator’ – when the writer being translated was himself a master translator.

    Shaped by the inequities visited on performers in the 19th century, the union has shaped the landscape of the professional American theater. Founded in 1913, it became a force to be reckoned with in an historic 1919 strike - the most entertaining and dramatic one (naturally) the nation had ever seen. Since then, Equity has gone beyond securing the safety, health, and rights of stage actors, to become arguably the most progressive force in theater. It stared down not only obdurate producers, but segregation - on and off the stage, the political hysteria of the blacklist years, and the challenge of the AIDS epidemic, its members forming what would become Equity Fights AIDS. It entertained the troops of several successive American wars and fostered the spread of stage culture across the land, from the government-fostered productions of the Depression-era Federal Theatre Project to the Equity Library Theatre, which offered the classics to the public at bargain prices. It oversaw the little theater movement's growth into the regional theater movement, and was there when Broadway begat Off-Broadway, and then Off-Off-Broadway. To read this resplendent new book, lavishly illustrated with historical images and stunning photographs, is to learn not only the union's glorious past, but that of American theater itself.

    Through close analysis of stage practice and stage picture, the book builds a profile of the kinds of writing and staging that characterise a Shakespearean history play and that differentiate one history play from another.The first part of the book concentrates primarily on the stage, looking at the 'single' picture or tableau; the use of presenters or choric figures; and the creation of horizontally and vertically divided stage pictures. Later chapters focus more on the body: on how bodies move, gesture, occupy space, and handle objects in particular kinds of scenes. The book concludes by analysing the highly developed use of one crucial stage property, the chair of state, in Shakespeare's last history play, Henry VIII.Students of Shakespeare often express anxiety about how to read a play as a performance text rather than a non-dramatic literary text. This book aims to dispel that anxiety. It offers readers a way of making sense of plays by looking closely at what happens on stage and breaks down scenes into shorter units so that the building blocks of Shakespeare's historical dramaturgy become visible. By studying the unit of action, how it looks and how that look resembles or differs from the look of other units of action, readers will become familiar with a way of reading that may be applied to other plays, both Shakespearean and non-Shakespearean.

    

    It stresses the Filipino performing body's location as it conjoins colonial histories of the Philippines with U.S. race relations and discourses of globalization. Puro arte, translated from Spanish into English, simply means "pure art." In Filipino, puro arte however performs a much more ironic function, gesturing rather to the labor of over-acting, histrionics, playfulness, and purely over-the-top dramatics. In this book, puro arte functions as an episteme, a way of approaching the Filipino/a performing body at key moments in U.S.-Philippine imperial relations, from the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, early American plays about the Philippines, Filipino patrons in U.S. taxi dance halls to the phenomenon of Filipino/a actors in Miss Saigon. Using this varied archive, Puro Arte turns to performance as an object of study and as a way of understanding complex historical processes of racialization in relation to empire and colonialism.

    He was also the most brilliant, witty and insightful satirist and lyric poet of his time, limited only by his early death caused by venereal disease and alcoholism. Passion for Living provides a full discussion of his life and writings, set in the context of his Times - the licentious court of Charles II and his mistresses, the Dutch warsand the so-called Popish Plot - together with close readings and analyses of his love lyrics, bawdy songs and shrewd satires, related to the life of his contemporaries, such as Thomas Hobbes, Samuel Butler and John Dryden. This informative and readable study will be of interest to both the general reader and the student.

    Every page reveals the joys and difficulties of his short life, his comic sensibility, deep compassion, and often puzzling use of dramatic style and genre. Carnicke demystifies Chekhov's plays-forged from his literary innovations, avid theatergoing, love of vaudeville, and loathing of melodrama. She interweaves biographical and cultural information with insightful case studies and close analysis to leave her reader with a full and fresh perspective on an artist, who is as foundational to theatrical traditions as are Shakespeare and Stanislavsky.

    Theatrical legends Buffalo Bill and Oscar Wilde graced the Tabor Opera House, while revolutionary Susan B. Anthony reached a rough mining audience from a stage atop a bar. Thomas Kemp spared no expense on the risque Black Crook at the Grand Central Theater, complete with a grand waterfall, a trapdoor and dragons. Follow Leadville historian Gretchen Scanlon through these theatrical glory days, from the glamorous productions and stump speeches to the offstage theft and debauchery that kept the drama going even when the curtain fell.

    Set in Berlin, 1945, three young boys huddle for days in the sewers as Russian tanks rumble through the streets above. Through membership of the Hitler Youth, the boys are conditioned to fight to the last bullet but, almost paralysed by fear and indecision, they bicker among themselves as they determine how to survive. A play about history and our children, warfare and freewill, Capture the Flag is engaging and thought provoking.

    See official URL for free, full download.Commercial theater is thriving across Europe and the UK, while public theater has suffered under changing patterns of cultural consumption—as well as sharp reductions in government subsidies for the arts. At a time when the rationale behind these subsidies is being widely reexamined, it has never been more important for public theater to demonstrate its continued merit. In Resetting the Stage, Dragan Klaic argues convincingly that, in an increasingly crowded market of cultural goods, public theater is best served not by imitating its much larger commercial counterpart, but by asserting its artistic distinctiveness and the considerable benefit this confers on the public.