Two girls quite accidentally crossed paths: one, pretty and popular; the other smart and . . . green. The story of how these two unlikely friends became Glinda the Good and the Wicked Witch of the West has made for the most spellbinding musical in years: WickedWicked: The Grimmerie is the behind-the-scenes story of the hit that has captivated Broadway—and now the world. Designed to resemble the ancient book of spells that changes Ozian history, Wicked: The Grimmerie includes profiles of the cast and creative team, the complete, illustrated lyrics to all the songs, and more than 200 full-color photographs. Packed with thrillifying details, Wicked: The Grimmerie is also full of bonus features that will delight fans of the show, from an Ozian Glossararium and an Oz travelogue to a step-by-step look at how Elphaba gets green. No need for innuendo or outuendo: This is a must-have for Wicked fans of all ages.

    There's no traffic light and no mail delivery; people can vanish without a trace and funerals are a community affair. Heather Lende posts both the obituaries and the social column for her local newspaper. If anyone knows the going-on in this close-knit town—from births to weddings to funerals—she does. Whether contemplating the mysterious death of eccentric Speedy Joe, who wore nothing but a red union suit and a hat he never took off, not even for a haircut; researching the details of a one-legged lady gold miner's adventurous life; worrying about her son's first goat-hunting expedition; observing the awe-inspiring Chilkat Bald Eagle Festival; or ice skating in the shadow of glacier-studded mountains, Lende's warmhearted style brings us inside her small-town life. We meet her husband, Chip, who owns the local lumber yard; their five children; and a colorful assortment of quirky friends and neighbors, including aging hippies, salty fishermen, native Tlingit Indians, and volunteer undertakers—as well as the moose, eagles, sea lions, and bears with whom they share this wild and perilous land. Like Bailey White's tales of Southern life or Garrison Keillor's reports from the Midwest, NPR commentator Heather Lende's take on her offbeat Alaskan hometown celebrates life in a dangerous and breathtakingly beautiful place.

    The author relates his own life experiences to offer a view of contemporary Native American life.

    Lerner, one of America’s most acclaimed and popular lyricists. Large-hearted, humorous, and often poignant in its reverence for a celebrated era in the American theater, this is the story of what Lerner calls "the sundown of wit, eccentricity, and glamour." Try as he might to keep himself out of these pages, Lerner reveals himself to be a man of great talent, laughter, and love. Along the way, we meet a sensational supporting cast: Moss Hart, Fritz Loewe, Julie Andrews, Richard Burton, Rex Harrison, Cecil Beaton, Louis Jourdan, and Maurice Chevalier, to name a few. They are seen in moments of triumph and disaster, but all are professionals at the creation of theater. And the creation of theater is the matrix of this wonderful book. Included are the complete lyrics to My Fair Lady, Gigi, and Camelot.

    Drawing on her hugely popular lecture courses at Yale and Harvard over the past thirty years, Marjorie Garber offers passionate and revealing readings of the plays in chronological sequence, from The Two Gentlemen of Verona to The Two Noble Kinsmen. Supremely readable and engaging, and complete with a comprehensive introduction to Shakespeare's life and times and an extensive bibliography, this magisterial work is an ever-replenishing fount of insight on the most celebrated writer of all time.

    Practiced by such actors of stature as Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro, Julie Harris, Dustin Hoffman, and Ellen Burstyn (not to mention the late James Dean) the Method offers a practical application of the renowned Stanislavsky technique.On Method Acting demystifies the "mysteries" of Method acting -- breaking down the various steps into clear and simple terms, including chapters on:Sense Memory -- the most vital component of Method actingImprovisation -- without it, the most integral part of the Method is lostAnimal Exercises -- just one way to combat the mental blocks that prevent actors from grasping a characterCreating The Outer Character -- so actors can give the freshness of originality to a role while at the same time living the life of the characterOn Method Acting is also an indispensable volume for directors, designers, lighting technicians, and anyone in the dramatic arts interested in creating a believable and realistic effect in their productions.

    His story begins here—before the homemade goat milk soaps and hand-gathered honeys, before his memoir of the city mouse’s move to the country, The Bucolic Plague—in I Am Not Myself These Days,  with “plenty of dishy anecdotes and moments of tragi-camp delight” (WashingtonPost).

    A moving account of Dillard’s own experiences while writing her works, The Writing Life offers deep insight into one of the most mysterious professions.

    And what a life! By one of today’s greatest living actors.He was born a Canadian on a Friday the thirteenth in 1929—the year of the Crash. His boyhood was one of privilege: an ancestor was a Governor General; his great-grandfather Sir John Abbott was Canada’s third prime minister and owned railroads. There were steam yachts, mansions, and a life of Victorian gentility and somewhat cluttered splendor.Plummer tells how “this young bilingual wastrel, incurably romantic, spoiled rotten, tore himself away from the ski slopes to break into the big bad world of theatre, not from the streets up but from an Edwardian living room down,” and writes of his early acting days as an eighteen-year-old playing the lead in Shakespeare’s Cymbeline, directed by the legendary Komisarjevsky of Moscow’s Imperial Theatre.We see his glorious New York of the fifties, where life began at midnight, with the likes of Arthur Miller, Carson McCullers, Tennessee Williams, and Paddy Chayefsky, and how Plummer’s own Broadway world developed and swept him along through the last Golden Age the American Theatre would ever remember . . . how the sublime Ruth Chatterton (“she might have been created by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Sinclair Lewis”) introduced him to the right people in New York . . . how Miss Eva Le Gallienne gave Plummer his Broadway debut at twenty-five in The Starcross Story (“It opened and closed in one night! One solitary night! But what a night!”). He writes about Miss Katherine Cornell (the last stage star to travel by private train), who, with her husband, Guthrie McClintic, added to what experience Plummer had the necessary gloss, spit, and polish to take him to the next level. Guthrie bundled Plummer off to Paris for a production of Medea, opposite Dame Judith Anderson (“a little Tasmanian devil . . . who with one look could turn an audience to stone”).Plummer writes about the great producers with whom he worked—Kermit Bloomgarden, Robert Whitehead, and Roger Stevens—about Lillian Hellman, Leonard Bernstein, Elia Kazan (“If you weren’t careful, this chameleon of chameleons might change into you, wear your skin, steal your soul”), and the miracle that was the new Stratford Festival in Canada, where Plummer blossomed in the classics under the extraordinary Tyrone Guthrie. He writes about his (too brief) encounters with his favorite geniuses, Orson Welles and Jonathan Miller. He writes about his lifelong friendships with Raymond Massey and the wild Kate Reid, and with that fugitive from the Navy, “that reprobate and staunch drinking buddy, the true reincarnation of Eugene O’Neill, whose blood was mixed with firewater,” Jason Robards, Jr.Plummer writes about his affairs and his marriages, and about his daughter, Amanda, who “despite her slim looks and tiny bones could raise tempests, guaranteed to loosen the foundation of any theatre in which she chose to rage.”We see him becoming a leading actor for Peter Hall’s Royal Shakespeare Theatre, with a company of young talented players, each destined for stardom—Judi Dench, Vanessa Redgrave, Peter O’Toole, et al., collectively the future of the English stage. The old guard was brilliantly represented by Dames Edith Evans and Peggy Ashcroft and Sir John Gielgud. Plummer, the only fugitive from the New World, played Richard III, Benedick, and Henry II in Becket.He writes about his film career: The Sound of Music (affectionately dubbed “S&M”) . . . Inside Daisy Clover, which brought him together with the beautiful Natalie Wood . . . John Huston’s The Man Who Would Be King (Plummer was Rudyard Kipling). He tells the story of accepting Sir Laurence Olivier’s invitation to join the National Theatre Company, playing in Amphytron directed by Olivier himself (“a great actor but lousy director”), and writes about falling deeply in love with and eventually marrying a young actress and dancer, Elaine Taylor—to this day, his “one true strength.”Seamlessly written, with stories that make us laugh out loud and that make real the fascinating, complex, exuberant adventure that is the actor’s (at least this actor’s) life.

    We are a bombarded generation: Facebook, billboards, Twitter, Instagram, taxes, newspapers, watches monitoring our sleep, apps that read our pulse, terrorism. There's such an onslaught to the senses these days it's a marvel any of us manage to get out of bed. I love bed. While we are overwhelmed and confused by the miasmic cloud of information, there are those that seek to take advantage: there are parking fines, hate Tweets, Nigerian email scams and Christmas newsletters from old school friends about their ugly kids. And just as we're getting round to doing something about it, we're distracted again. I, Joe Lycett, comedian, wordsmith, and professional complainer, am here to help. During my short life of doing largely nothing I've discovered solutions to many of life's problems, which I impart to you, dear Reader. Containing a centurion of complaint letters to unsuspecting celebrities, companies and anyone brave enough to clog up my phone, as well as illustrations, one-liners , jokes and life hacks, this little gem offers you a collection of tips and advice* for all manner of modern woe. By the time you have finished reading this book you will have learnt how to: - Reverse a parking fine - Manipulate the tabloid press - Navigate social media - Respond to hate mail - Out-weird internet trolls - Contest a so-called ripe avocado - Send the perfect Christmas newsletter - Defeat ISIS - Take down multi-national companiesAND MUCH, MUCH MORE! Joe Lycett x * If you are looking for guidance with taxes, quitting smoking, moving house, love, divorce, education, healthcare or anything actually important may I recommend speaking to friends or family members and not consulting a book by a comedian who eats halloumi at least twice a day.

    (To date, it has won no fewer than 31 Emmys.) Seriously... I'm Kidding, Degeneres' first book in eight years, brings us up to date about the life of a kindhearted woman who bowed out of American Idol because she didn't want to be mean. Lively; hilarious; often sweetly poignant.

    . . a sort of David Sedaris-like take on knitting-laugh-out-loud funny most of the time and poignantly reflective when it's not cracking you up." --Library Journal on Yarn HarlotStephanie Pearl-McPhee returns to pen another hilarious and poignant collection of essays surrounding her favorite topics: knitting, knitters, and what happens when you get those two things anywhere near ordinary people.For the 60 million knitters in America, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee (a.k.a. the Yarn Harlot) shares stories of knitting horrors and triumphs, knitting successes and defeats, but, mostly, stories about the human condition that ring true for everyone-especially if you happen to have a rather large amount of yarn in your house.Pearl-McPhee maintains a popular blog at www.yarnharlot.ca. Divided into sections relating to each essay's content, such as women, politics, family, and overcoming boredom, Free-Range Knitter will entertain yarnsmiths who enjoy sharing in the collective experiences of the woolen and silky skein.

    Denis, Agnes de Mille, and Martha Graham.Documenting Duncan's own life as a dancer and as a woman—from her enchantment with classical music and poetry as a child in San Francisco and her intense study of classical Greek art in Athens, through the great strides she made in teaching, founding schools, performing, and collaborating with international artists, to her notorious love affairs and the tragic deaths of her own children—My Life reissued here is still as extraordinary as the woman who wrote it more than sixty years ago.

    

    Opening with his childhood in working-class Belfast, in a neighborhood of drinkers and dreamers, Branagh describes the fires of early ambition that drew him to the stage and to the plays of Shakespeare. At age twenty-four he founded his own actor's troupe with the goal of performing those plays; at twenty-eight, he directed and starred in the movie of "Henry V," the role that won him international fame. "Beginning" is crammed with colorful anecdotes and insights into the actor's and director's craft, including: Stories about Olivier, Gielgud, Finney, Jacobi, and a private audience with Prince Charles to research the role of Henry VAd-libbing Shakespeare when props are missingThe differences in performing on stage, television, and large-screen filmsA near-miss in landing the role of Mozart in the film "Amadeus": an actor's dream turned nightmareRaising millions from scratch and filming "Henry V" in seven weeksWritten with great humor and a natural storyteller's gift, "Beginning" is an intriguing book for anyone interested in theater and film.