The key to A Theater of Envy is Rene Girard's novel reinterpretation ofmimesis. For Girard, people desire objects not for their intrinsic value, but because they are desired by someone else--we mime or imitate their desires. This envy--or mimetic desire--he sees as one of the foundations of the human condition. Bringing such provocative and iconoclastic insights to bear on Shakespeare, Girard reveals the previously overlooked coherence of problem plays like Troilus and Cressida, and makes a convincing argument for elevating A Midsummer Night's Dream from the status of a chaotic comedy to amasterpiece. The book abounds with novel and provocative interpretations: Shakespeare becomes a prophet of modern advertising, and the threat of nuclear disaster is read in the light of Hamlet. Most intriguing of all, perhaps, is a brief, but brilliant aside in which an entirely new perspectiveis brought to the chapter in Joyce's Ulysses in which Stephen Dedalus gives a lecture on Shakespeare. In Girard's view only Joyce, perhaps the greatest of twentieth-century novelists, comes close to understanding the greatest of Renaissance playwrights. Throughout this impressively sustained reading of Shakespeare Girard's prose is sophisticated, but contemporary, and accessible to the general reader. Anyone interested in literature, anthropology, or psychoanalysis will want to read this challenging book. And all those involved in theatricalproduction and performance will find A Theater of Envy full of suggestive new ideas.

    Reprint.

    The superstitious townspeople resent their happiness and their subsequent meddling ends in violence and tragedy. This play was proclaimed a Broadway hit.

    Despite these accomplishments and more—five collections of prose, songwriting with Bob Dylan, filmmaking with Robert Frank and Michelangelo Antonioni, as well as romantic relationships with rocker Patti Smith and actress Jessica Lange—Shepard seems anything but satisfied. Sam Shepard: A Life details his lifelong bouts of insecurity and anxiety, and delves deeply into his relationship with his alcoholic father and his own battle with the bottle. Also examined for the first time in-depth are Shepard’s tumultuous relationship with Lange, and his decades-long adherence to the teachings of Russian spiritualist G. I. Gurdjieff.Throughout this new biography, Winters gets to the heart of the enigma that is Sam Shepard, presenting a direct and comprehensive account of his life and work.

    It is an exploration of intimacy, identity, and the courage it takes to be who you really are.

    Both are struggling to escape from lingering parental domination and to establish their own lives and identities. In Janie's case this leads to an inconclusive involvement with a young Jewish doctor who calls her "Monkey"; while Harriet assails the world of big business and has an affair with her hard-driving (and married) boss. Told in a fast-moving series of inventive, alternately hilarious and touchingly revealing scenes, the play explores their parallel stories with uncommon wit and wisdom-resulting, ultimately, in a heightened awareness which, while not providing all the answers, goes a long way toward achieving the maturity and self-assuredness that both protagonists so desperately desire.

    Inside tips on the studio system and acting guilds make it particularly helpful for people new to the business, and numerous anecdotes from actors such as Morgan Freeman and Anthony Hopkins and examples from current movies illustrate its many lessons. It is perfect for acting classes, workshops, all actors who work in front of the camera -- and all those who want to.

    They removed military draft records, took them outside, and set them afire with napalm. The Catholic activists involved in this protest against the war included Daniel and Philip Berrigan; all were found guilty of destroying government property and sentenced to three years in jail. Dan Berrigan fled but later turned himself in.The Trial of the Catonsville Nine became a powerful expression of the conflicts between conscience and conduct, power and justice, law and morality. Drawing on court transcripts, Berrigan wrote a dramatic accountof the trial and the issues it so vividly embodied. The result is a landmark work of art that has been performed frequently over the past thirty-five years, both as a piece of theater and a motion picture.

    Of his latest play, The New York Times has written, "Uproarious ... wall-to-wall laughs ... Mr. Busch has swum straight into the mainstream and stays comfortably afloat there." Busch is the author of such plays as Vampire Lesbians of Sodom -- one of the longest-running plays in Off-Broadway history -- and Psycho Beach Party, a cross between Gidget and Spellbound. After a successful Off-Broadway run at New York City's Manhattan Theater Club, Busch moves to Broadway with The Tale of the Allergist's Wife, a hilarious comedy about a self-absorbed Upper West Side doctor's wife whose life is devoted to mornings at the Whitney, afternoons at the Museum of Modern Art, and evenings at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Her world is shaken and transformed when a childhood friend makes an unexpected visit.

    A perfect evening of comedy. Scenes Include:ACT ONEWord Dance (Part One)The Night the Bed FellFables for Our Time (Part One)The Wolf at the DoorThe Unicorn in the GardenThe Little Girl and the WolfIf Grant Had Been Drinking at AppomattoxCasuals of the KeysThe Macbeth Murder MysteryGentleman ShoppersThe Last FlowerACT TWOThe Pet DepartmentFile and ForgetMr. Preble Gets Rid of His WifeTake Her Up TenderlyThe Secret Life of Walter MiddyWord Dance (Part Two) Only material authorized for the production of this play may be used."Of belly laughs there is abundance...Small, cozy, and completely captivating revue...a sheer delight... joyous, magnificently lunatic festival" - New York Daily News

    

    An acclaimed three-person musical, tick, tick ... BOOM! is an autobiographical piece from the late Jonathan Larson, the Tony- and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer of Rent . Our songbook features 12 tunes from the production: Come to Your Senses * Green Green Dress * Johnny Can't Decide * Louder Than Words * No More * Real Life * See Her Smile * Sugar * Sunday * Therapy * 30/90 * Why.

    As a blizzard rages outside, a lonely figure, Henry Harry, lies sleeping under a heap of blankets. Suddenly, he is awakened by the insistent knocking of an unexpected visitor who turns out to be Rosannah DeLuce, a distraught young woman who has fled all the way from Arizona to escape her impending marriage, and who bursts into the cabin dressed in full bridal regalia. Exhausted, she throws herself on Henry's mercy, but after sleeping for two days straight, her vigor and combativeness return. Both characters, it develops, have been wounded and embittered by life, and both are refugees from so-called civilization. Thrown together in the confines of the snowbound cabin, they alternately repel and attract each other as, in theatrically vivid exchanges, they explore the pain of the past and, in time, consider the possibilities of the present. In the end their very isolation proves to be the catalyst that allows them to break through the web of old griefs and bitter feelings that beset them both and to reach out for the solace and sanctuary that only hard-won understanding, self-awareness and compassion for the plight of others can bestow.

    A masterful poet of the downtrodden, his plays portray life on New York's hardscrabble streets in a manner both tender and unflinching, while continually exploring the often startling gulf between who we are and how we perceive ourselves. Gathered in this volume is his current off-Broadway hit, Our Lady of 121st Street, a comic portrait of the graduates of a Harlem Catholic school reunited at the funeral of a beloved teacher, along with his two previous plays: the philosophical jailhouse drama Jesus Hopped the A Train and In Arabia, We'd All Be Kings, an Iceman Cometh for the Giuliani era that looks at the effect of Times Square's gentrification on its less desirable inhabitants.