Heralded as "The best new musical of the season," by the Wall Street Journal, and "Sumptuous. Gorgeous. As good as it gets," by The New York Times, this show is the breakout hit of 2019, and is positioned to be a longtime Broadway favorite with its poignant social commentary, to the tune of spellbinding music and lyrics.   In this book, Anais Mitchell takes readers inside her more than decade's-long process of building the musical from the ground up--detailing her inspiration, breaking down the lyrics, and offering thoughtful annotations of Hadestown. Fans of the musical will love this deeply thoughtful, revealing, and open look at how the songs from “the underground” evolved and became what they are today.

    It's an antebellum fever-dream, where fear and desire entwine in the looming shadow of the Master's House. Jim trembles as Kaneisha handles melons in the cottage, Alana perspires in time with the plucking of Phillip's fiddle in the boudoir, while Dustin cowers at the heel of Gary's big, black boot in the barn. Nothing is as it seems, and yet everything is as it seems.

    The 1990s was a decade of profound change on Broadway. At the dawn of the nineties, the British invasion of Broadway was in full swing, as musical spectacles like Les Miserables, Cats, and The Phantom of the Opera dominated the box office. But Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Sunset Boulevard soon spelled the end of this era and ushered in a new wave of American musicals, beginning with the ascendance of an unlikely show by a struggling writer who reimagined Puccini’s opera La Bohème as the smash Broadway show Rent. American musical comedy made its grand return, culminating in The Producers, while plays, always an endangered species on Broadway, staged a powerful comeback with Tony Kushner’s Angels in America. A different breed of producers rose up to challenge the grip theater owners had long held on Broadway, and corporations began to see how much money could be made from live theater. And just as Broadway had clawed its way back into the mainstream of American popular culture, the September 11 attacks struck fear into the heart of Americans who thought Times Square might be the next target. But Broadway was back in business just two days later, buoyed by talented theater people intent on bringing New Yorkers together and supporting the economics of an injured city. “Told with all the wit and style readers could wish for” (Booklist) Michael Riedel presents the drama behind every mega-hit or shocking flop. From the bitter feuds to the surprising collaborations, all the intrigue of a revolutionary era in the Theater District is packed into Singular Sensation. Broadway has triumphs and disasters, but the show always goes on.

    I referred them to Doctor Who's Tardis.'Frank Skinner wants you to read more poetry. Wait, wait - don't stop reading. Whether you're a frequent poetry reader or haven't read any since sixth form, Frank's infectious passion for language, rhythm and metre will win you over and provide you with the basic tools you need to tackle any poem.In this short, easy-to-digest and delightful book, Frank guides us through the twists and turns of 'Pad, pad' by Stevie Smith, a short, seemingly simple poem that contains multitudes of meaning and a deceptive depth of emotion. Revel in the mastery of Stevie Smith's choice of words, consider the eternal mystery of the speaker of the poem and be moved by rhyming couplets like you never have before.Give it a go. You never know, you might even enjoy it.

    Act I reveals the origins of one of Broadway’s legendary choreographers who appeared onstage with stars like Barbra Streisand and Mary Martin all before he was thirty. Act II includes teaching Katharine Hepburn how to sing and dance in Coco and working with Stephen Sondheim and Michael Bennett while helping to choreograph the original productions of Company and Follies. During this time, Avian won a Tony Award as the cochoreographer of A Chorus Line and produced the spectacular Tony Award–winning Dreamgirls. For a triumphant third act, Avian choreographed Julie Andrews’s return to the New York stage, devised all of the musical staging for Miss Saigon and Sunset Boulevard, and directed A Chorus Line on Broadway. He worked with the biggest names on Broadway, including Andrew Lloyd Webber, Carol Burnett, Jennifer Holliday, Patti LuPone, Elaine Stritch, and Glenn Close. Candid, witty, sometimes shocking, and always entertaining, here at last is the ultimate up-close and personal insider’s view from a front row seat at the creation of the biggest, brightest, and best Broadway musicals of the past fifty years.

    not necessarily in that order.Keith Hamilton Cobb embarks on a poetic exploration that examines the experience and perspective of black men in America through the metaphor of Shakespeare's character Othello, offering up a host of insights that are by turns introspective and indicting, difficult and deeply moving. American Moor is a play about race in America, but it is also a play about who gets to make art, who gets to play Shakespeare, about whose lives and perspectives matter, about actors and acting, and about the nature of unadulterated love.American Moor has been seen across America, including a successful run off-Broadway in 2019. This edition features an introduction by Professor Kim F. Hall, Barnard College.

    It is a story of life. The luminous life of Safdar Hashmi, extraordinary in all its ordinariness.On New Year’s Day in 1989, Jana Natya Manch – Janam – the theatre group Safdar was a part of, and which he led, was attacked while performing a street play on the outskirts of Delhi. He was only thirty-four when he died from injuries sustained during this senseless attack.Beginning with a record of the attack that killed him, this vivid memoir illuminates the life of Safdar Hashmi – artist, comrade, poet, writer, actor, activist, and a man everyone loved. But this is not a book about one man or one tragic incident. Halla Bol shows us, close up, how one man’s death and life are intertwined with the stories of many people.For a generation that grew up without knowing Safdar Hashmi, Halla Bol renders his passion, humour and humanism into an intimate portrait. It also gives an understanding of resistance, and the strength to put it into practice. It shows the profound link between ideology and real-life struggle. The ideas that Safdar and his colleagues grappled with during a period of tumult and change in India are harbingers of the society we are today.Halla Bol, the play Janam was performing in Jhandapur at the time of the attack, is included in English translation as an appendix to the book.

    His remarkable and wide-ranging career has spanned more than six decades since then, and he has accumulated accolades that include eight Tony Awards, an Academy Award, eight Grammy Awards, six Laurence Olivier Awards, a Pulitzer Prize, the Kennedy Center Honors, and a Presidential Medal of Freedom. Sondheim redefined musical theater with his groundbreaking work, combining words and music in ways that are by turns challenging, moving, witty, profound, and never less than exhilarating.This volume includes a selection of lyrics from across his career, drawn from shows including West Side Story, Gypsy, Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods, and more. The result is a delightful pocket-sized treasury of the very best of Sondheim.

    Drama. African & African American Studies. LGBTQIA Studies. Middle Eastern Studies. Performance Studies. Women's Studies. Is it possible--is it even ethical?--to make hopeful art in an unjust and chaotic world? In the tradition of artist-essayists such as James Baldwin, Anne Lamott, and Adrienne Rich, Sandberg-Zakian looks to her own socially-engaged theater-making practice alongside a diverse array of cultural influences (from slave narratives to popular musicals, Batman to "This American Life"), considering how we might reconcile our desire for hope and possibility, connection and transformation, with the necessity of navigating darkness, despair, hate and violence. The artistic coming-of-age journey of a contemporary theater artist in ten essays, THERE MUST BE HAPPY ENDINGS: ON A THEATER OF OPTIMISM & HONESTY is a smart, engaging and gently humorous contribution to the discussion of how we face art-making--and living--with hope and optimism, and an elegant, accessible, and satisfying companion to practical work in the world.

    Art. Perfomance Studies. Literary Nonficition. Can care be enacted through art? Inside a cathedral, staff members from a nursing home work with an artist to perform a poetic text about caregiving, loss, and taking the time to feel one's feelings. In the months leading up to the performance, the artist navigates her twenties--and art and life converge in unexpected ways. Weaving between oral history and poetic prose, Rachel Kauder Nalebuff has created a stirring work of hybrid nonfiction that takes us behind the scenes of artmaking and caregiving. Melding curiosity, humility, playfulness, and self-deprecation, STAGES is an inquiry into the work it takes to sustain a meaningful life."STAGES is one of a very few recent books I have read that feels truly revolutionary, in both form and in content. It consists of documentary materials assembled, in a style somewhere between Svetlana Alexievich and Andre? Breton, by a young writer, while staging a theater production in a nursing home. In a series of eye-opening interviews, she talks to housekeepers and nurses from Jamaica and Ghana about ghosts and family structure; to a clinical nutritionist, who explains how she helps people stop eating food, after a lifetime of eating food. Basically we're on a tour of a parallel institutionalized world of aging and dying which has been zealously cordoned off from the rest of American life, and which is not without its Kafkaesque elements, but our guide, Rachel Kauder Nalebuff, is so humane, curious and visionary that the overall effect is energizing and uplifting. Reading STAGES gave me the revelatory feeling of looking at something I'd been dreading, and seeing that it was actually OK, and vital, and a major part of life. STAGES brings humanity, humor, and a strong visual sensibility to a taboo subject, with exhilarating results. It expanded the way I think about family, theater, and a 'good life.'"--Elif Batuman"Caring work, emotional labor, and end-of-life care are useful abstractions; this wonderful book that weaves together interviews with nursing home workers and the author's own reflections on life, death, and making art, fills them with life. Given that we all die, and that most of us will care for others and require care ourselves in that process, everyone should read this book, sit with it, and absorb its lessons."--Kathi Weeks"STAGES is the kind of story-telling that we need more of. Care is so fundamental to who we are and the values we all share, and yet is too often hidden away rather than celebrated. Whether we are caregivers for our own family members, or whether we are professional caregivers, this role stitches together the very fabric of our society, connects generations and cultures. This story is told beautifully in STAGES."--Ai-Jen Poo, Executive Director of The National Domestic Workers Alliance and Director of Caring Across Generations

    The Girl traces her life from surviving the foster care system to her struggles with addictions. She fights, hoping to break the cycle in order to give her daughter a different life than the one she had. The Mother sits in Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, recounting memories of the daughter that was taken from her, and the struggles of living on the streets in Northern Ontario. They are both followed by Manidoons, a physical manifestation of the trauma and addictions that crawl across generations. bug reveals the hard truths that many Indigenous women face as they carve out a space to survive in contemporary Canada, while holding on to so much hope.

    Special content includes an introduction from the songwriters, lyric pages and an 8-page colour section of cast photos.This is the full eBook edition of the SIX : The Musical songbook in fixed-layout format.Contents: Ex-WivesNo WayDon’t Lose Ur HeadHeart of StoneHaus of HolbeinGet DownAll You Wanna DoI Don’t Need Your LoveSix

    She hasn't seen her in years, and her visit brings back to Lucy her desperate childhood, and her escape to New York. As she begins to find herself as a writer, she is still gripped by the urgent complexities of family life.Published as the play comes to Broadway after a highly-acclaimed UK run in 2018, this is a unique opportunity to hear Laura Linney's "simply superb" ('The Times' UK) performance of this haunting, dramatic monologue.'My Name Is Lucy Barton' was originally produced by Nicholas Hytner and Nick Starr for the London Theater Company at the Bridge Theatre in June 2018. Produced on Broadway by the Manhattan Theater Club, Lynne Meadow, Artistic Director, Barry Grove, Executive Producer, and The London Theater Company, in association with Penguin Random House Audio.RUNNING TIME ➼ 1hrs. and 30mins.©2016 Elizabeth Strout (P)2019 Random House Audio

    The moment she learns of the existence of Wish Potions – and that she can buy one from Nahlia Cress, the most beautiful and popular girl in school who runs a not-so-secret potions store – she is immediately desperate to get her hands on one, at any cost. She knows that buying a Wish Potion will change everything, but she had never expected to befriend Nahlia, or for her life to change so drastically. As she and Nahlia get closer and closer, Isamae finds herself caught up in a whole new world of romance, dreams, and hope. Questioning everything she thought she knew about life, she must now decide who she truly wants to be, and how to claim her place in the world – no matter how frightening that might be.

    He is an individualist with an eye for the unusual." - Dame Judi Dench, actor British photographer Simon Annand has been shooting candid photographs backstage at West End theaters in London for 35 years. In these meditative portraits, often shot in the intimate space of the dressing room, he captures the focus and tension of world-class actors right before they go on the stage. Actors such as Cate Blanchett, Orlando Bloom, Anthony Hopkins, Jake Gyllenhaal and Judi Dench are seen in these moments of vulnerability, which every actor experiences no matter how long they have been working. Time to Act, with an introduction by Cate Blanchett, contains a hand-picked selection of Simon Annand's remarkable and unique portraits.

    An anthology of tragic love stories written for the theatre, Chloë Whitehorn's plays rival Romeo and Juliet in heartbreak and conflict. The lovers in these plays defy society’s expectations, embracing the taboo moments in their lives, and sacrificing what matters most.This collection of plays, originally premiered on Canadian stages, includes:Divine WrecksFull length drama, 3F 3M There are many different types of love: first love, true love, obsessive love, and that other type of love. A high school god falls for the wrong girl. His teacher. A modern take on a classic story, this dark tale of heart break and revelations explores the nature of love without boundaries.Mourning After the Night Before Full length drama, 3F 2M When a family moves to a small coastal town to recover from a tragedy, they struggle to rediscover who they are and if they're worth saving. Lucy doesn't know who she is anymore. Everett is falling in love. Drew has lost so much already. Fenwick is just trying to keep her family afloat. And Pippa, well Pippa is drowning. Mourning After the Night Before explores the rippling impact of loss and the repercussions of drowning in every way a person can drown.The Deepest Trench One-act comedic drama, 2F 1M An almost love story about the ways we protect the people we love, trench warfare as a version of a fairy tale ending, and a pair of ducks.Waltzing With PuppetsOne-act drama, 1F 1MWhen searching for the man of your dreams, why would you marry someone who reminded you of the man in your nightmares?The PigeonFull length drama, 2F 1M What could Jegger, a young punk, and Malone, a past middle-aged woman, possibly have in common? Drawn together by their mutual hatred for the woman who damaged them both, they plot her destruction. Some say revenge is bittersweet, and sometimes it’s like a box of chocolates. *Listed as one of the 10 Best Toronto Productions of the year it premieredLove, Virtually Full length dramatic comedy, 3F 4M A play about our storybook romance expectations and how real life struggles to live up to the fantasy lives we've created for ourselves. It's like Shrodinger's cat. As long as you stick to online dating without really getting to know someone, you're perfect together without actually being in a relationship.*Toronto Best of Fringe How to Not Die Horribly in a FireMonologue, 1F Claire has just been proposed to. As she considers her response she reflects on advice her mother gave her in an ice cream shop, her gold star rating system for men, and how likely she is to die in a fire.trigger warnings: suicide, mental illness, rape

    Can I make it any more binary?' When friends die and pronouns change, what's left of the memories that don't fit anymore? Brought to life with storytelling, an original pop music score, and way too many America's Next Top Model references, Since U Been Gone is a moving and powerful autobiographical account about childhood co-stars, teenage rebellion, growing up queer in the mid-noughties, and finding yourself while losing a friend.

    The Oxford Book of Theatrical Anecdotes provides a comprehensive, revealing, and hugely entertaining portrait of the world of theatre across four hundred years.Many of the anecdotes are humorous: all have something pertinent and illuminating to say about an aspect of theatrical life--whether it is the art of playwriting, the craft of covering up missed cues, the drama of the First Night, the nightmare of touring, or the secret ingredients of star quality.Edmund Kean, Henry Irving, John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier, Ellen Terry, Edith Evans, Maggie Smith, Helen Mirren--the great 'names' are all here, of course, but there are tales of the unexpected, too--and the unknown. This is a book--presented in five acts, with a suitably anecdotal and personalprologue from Gyles Brandreth--where, once in a while, the understudy takes centre-stage and Gyles Brandreth treats triumph and disaster just the same, including stories from the tattiest touring companies as well as from Broadway, the West End and theatres, large and small, in Australia, India, andacross Europe.

    Combined with masterclasses and interviews withestablished, emerging, and mid-career directors, this manual is an artistic, logistic, and pedagogical exploration into the mechanics of theatre creation through the perspective of a director. With so much useful material, readers become honorary "labbies," ready to leave their own mark on the theatrical landscape.

    It trawls the archive for stories of slavery, colonialism, jazz and nationalist struggle, reaffirming the value of black culture in our shared heritage. Collaboratively created with Sharon Frese and Irfan Kasban for the M1 Fringe Festival, this work commemorates the men and women - enslaved, indentured and expatriate - who crossed the oceans into unknown territory. Desert Blooms: the Dawn if Queer Singapore Theatre traces the history of Singapore theatre from 1985 to 1995, revealing how LGBT representation first emerged and flourished on the local stage. Using excerpts of scripts, interviews and news articles, it reveals how the works of Russel Heng, Chay Yew, Eleanor Wong, Ovidia Yu, Haresh Sharma, Goh Boon Teck, Otto Fong, G Sevanathan and others were in dialogue with contemporary developments in HIV / AIDS, cub raids and early activism.

    The traitors have been punished. People feel more alive than they have in a long time. They are ready to start again.But Antigone is not. She will not move on, and she will not forget. She will drag everyone back if she has to.Lulu Raczka's searing adaptation of Sophocles' classic text hands the reins to the young women at its heart, creating something messy, irreverent and vital.

    

    Donald Trump has been re-elected US President for a second term. Brexit is in full effect and causing chaos all over Europe. In the wake of escalating wars in the Middle East, famine in West Africa, and relentless terrorist attacks by radical extremists, the UK—and many nations around the world—has enforced a ban on all immigration.With the coastline around him and life as he knows it crumbling to dust, Leslie Chen is forced to abandon his home in England and move his family back to his birthplace, Singapore. Confronting a country that is a world apart from the one he knew as a child, he is now made to question the meaning of home. As the crises and conflicts escalate, one thing is certain, come hell or high water, and possibly both, he must protect his family.Dragonflies is the story of a family fighting for survival in a hostile world, looking for somewhere to call home, and something that might look like hope.

    His poetry, plays and edited anthologies have contributed significantly to Singaporean literature over his long career, leading to his reception of the Public Service Medal in 1991 and the S.E.A. Write Award in 2011 for lifetime achievement.To celebrate his eightieth birthday, NUS professor Dr Ismail S. Talib has assembled a wealth of tributes from Yeo’s friends both local and abroad—such as, in Singapore, Catherine Lim, Ovidia Yu, Rajeev Patke and Suchen Christine Lim; and, internationally, A. Robert Lee, Paul Sharrad, Chetana Nagavajara and Alfred Yuson—that point to life-changing encounters with Yeo and his works. This encomium presents the portrait of a man who has left an indelible mark on the national literary scene, and whose writing remains vital and relevant today.