Broadway Bookshelf

Alfie: My Life, My Music, My Story

(11/1/2012)

From car mechanic to internationally loved opera, musical and recording star: the story of Alfie Boe...Alfie Boe is the first official bad boy of opera: a musical superstar celebrated not only in Britain, but worldwide. This is the story of his life - the ups and the downs, from finding fame to losing his father - and, essentially, of his love affair with music. Raised in Lancashire, the youngest of nine children and with a father who played opera at home, Alfie's story is not typical of most mu...

The Twentieth-Century Performance Reader

(10/13/2012)

The Twentieth Century Performance Reader is the key introductory text to all types of performance. Extracts from over fifty practitioners, critics and theorists from the fields of dance, drama, music, theatre and live art make up an essential sourcebook for students, researchers and practitioners. This new third edition places a renewed focus on contributions from the world of music, as well as privileging the voices of practitioners themselves ahead of more theoretical writing. A bestseller...

South Pacific

(10/9/2012)

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 book by Hammerstein and Joshua Logan, based on James A. Michener's Puli...

Annie Get Your Gun

(10/9/2012)

Broadway's biggest musical comedy hit of the 1940s, this was one for the ages and built by a "dream team" - songwriter Irving Berlin, librettists Dorothy and Herbert Fields, producers Rodgers & Hammerstein, and star Ethel Merman - telling the improbable but true story of sharpshooter Annie Oakley. A staple of the touring and summer stock circuit for years, Annie Get Your Gun kept hitting bull's-eyes, with a film version, two television productions, and thousands of stage revivals over the years...

The Rest of the Story

(9/18/2012)

Laurents passed away early in 2011 but not before writing The Rest of the Story, in which he revealed all that had happened in his life since Original Story By, filled with the wisdom he gained by growing older and a new perspective brought on by Laurents' experience of deep personal loss, including the death of his longtime companion, Tom Hatcher. Laurents' style remains engrossing and brutally honest. His voice is still highly intelligent, loving, generous, and gracious. He remained committed ...

Memoir (Title Unknown)

(9/1/2012)

Cyndi Lauper is a singer-songwriter who has released eleven albums and over forty singles. Her hit singles include 'Time After Time,' 'Girls Just Wanna Have Fun,' and 'True Colors.' She starred as Jenny in THE THREEPENNY OPERA on Broadway. Her most recent project, Kinky Boots, will have its pre-Broadway world premiere in Chicago this fall. Directed and choreographed by Tony® Award-winner Jerry Mitchell, Kinky Boots will play the Bank of America Theatre (18 West Monroe Street, Chicago, IL) ...

The Veil

(8/14/2012)

One of Ireland's leading playwrights, Conor McPherson sets his latest play around a house hemmed in by a restive, starving populace in rural Ireland. In May 1822, the defrocked Reverend Berkeley arrives at the once-glorious Mount Prospect House to accompany seventeen-year-old Hannah to England, where she is to be married off in order to absolve her mother's debts. But compelled by the peculiar voices that haunt his enchanting young charge and a fascination with the spirits that pervade the house...

Stella Adler on America's Master Playwrights

(8/14/2012)

From one of the most famous and influential acting teachers of her time, of all time--whose generations of students include Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Warren Beatty, Meryl Streep, Jerome Robbins, Annette Bening, Peter Bogdanovich, Sydney Pollack, and Mark Ruffalo--the long-awaited companion volume to her book On 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 in...

An Ideal Theatre

(8/14/2012)

A wide-ranging, inspiring documentary history of the American theater movement as told, at the time of its making, by the visionaries who goaded it into being. 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 ...

Embodied Acting

(8/13/2012)

Embodied Acting is a crucial, pragmatic intervention in the study of how neuroscience can be applied to theatre studies. Examining the nature of the acting process from the perspective of cognitive science, author Rick Kemp re-examines familiar questions of how an actor develops a character, and what is actually involved - physically, mentally - in training, rehearsing and performing. The result is an elegant blend of theory, practice and cutting-edge science, making a compelling case for disca...

Italian Women's Theatre, 1930-1960

(8/7/2012)

Between 1930 and 1960, popular female dramatists, including Paola Riccora, Anna Bonacci, Clotilde Masci, and Gici Ganzini Granata, set the stage for a new generation of feminist theatre and the development of contemporary Italian women’s theatre as a whole. Now largely forgotten, the lives and works of these dramatists are reintroduced into the scholarly conversation in Italian Women’s Theatre, 1930–1960. Following a general introduction, the book presents a selection of dramatic works, r...

Loss and Cultural Remains in Performance

(8/7/2012)

Argues that performance is a crucial way of understanding the affective intercultural impact of the disappearance of John Franklin’s Northwest Passage expedition in 1845.

Best American Short Plays

(8/1/2012)

Applause is proud to continue the series that for over 70 years has been the standard of excellence for one-act plays in America. As previous series editor Ramon Delgado wrote in his introduction to The Best American Short Plays of 1989, the choice of entries for each edition has been based on the same goal: "to include a balance among three categories of playwrights: 1) established playwrights who continue to practice the art and craft of the short play, 2) emerging playwrights whose record of...

Stagecraft Fundamentals

(7/15/2012)

Stagecraft Fundamentals Second Edition tackles every aspect of theatre production with Emmy Award-winning author Rita Kogler Carver's signature witty and engaging voice. The history of stagecraft, safety precautions, lighting, costumes, scenery, career planning tips, and more are discussed, illustrated by beautiful color examples that display step-by-step procedures and the finished product. This second edition offers even more in-demand information on stage management, drawing and drafting (bo...

Places, Please!: Becoming a Jersey Boy

(7/12/2012)

Everyone has heard of the Jersey Boys. Thirteen million people have seen the show, totaling more than $1 billion in worldwide ticket sales. Jersey Boys tells the true-life story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons and features such hits as "Sherry," "Big Girls Don't Cry," "Walk Like A Man," and "Can't Take My Eyes Off of You." The production is currently in its seventh year on Broadway, and is also playing in Las Vegas, London, Auckland, and is on two US National Tours. Since its debut in 200...

A Ship Without A Sail: The Life of Lorenz Hart

(7/3/2012)

“Blue Moon, ” “Where or When, ” “The Lady Is a Tramp,” “My Funny Valentine,” “Isn’t It Romantic?,” “My Romance,” “There’s a Small Hotel,” “Falling in Love with Love,” “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered”—lyricist Lorenz Hart, together with composer Richard Rodgers, wrote some of the most memorable songs ever created. More than half a century after their collaboration ended, Rodgers & Hart songs are indispensable to the repertoire of nightclub singers eve...

Theatre and Architecture

(7/3/2012)

Theatre and architecture are seeming opposites: one a time-based art-form experienced in space, the other a spacial art experienced over time.This book will explore and disprovethese assumptions, demonstrating ways in which theatre and architecture are co-constitutive and contextualizing their dynamic and complex inter-relationship historically and culturally

A Ship Without A Sail

(7/3/2012)

From “Blue Moon” to “Where or When,” and “My Funny Valentine,” Lorenz Hart, together with Richard Rodgers, created some of the most beautiful and witty songs ever written. Here is the story of the strikingly unromantic life of this songwriting genius.His lyrics spin with pinwheel brilliance and sophistication, yet at their core is an unmistakable wistfulness. The sweetness of lyrics such as “My Romance” and “Isn’t It Romantic?” is unsurpassed in American song. But Hart’s...

Light: A Reader in Theatre Practice

(7/3/2012)

Light contains a range of classic accounts and rare documents that offer not only different approaches to light as a creative force in performance, but also an account ofits rich history as a practice. Considered through its equipment, its dramaturgy, and as an element of design, light is shown to have aprofound effect on an audience.

Hers

(7/1/2012)

Chosen by theater professionals for their compelling stories and rich characters, these 40 female monologues have been culled from the most important and entertaining plays of the last decade. Each piece, from the deeply emotional to the scathingly hilarious, is accompanied by context from the play it comes from, past production information, and helpful commentary from professionals who previously performed the piece. Professional and amateur actors, acting students, and drama teachers will find...

His

(7/1/2012)

With 40 monologues for men chosen from plays written in the last 10 years, this collection offers a variety of compelling one-person pieces. Commentary from a theater professional who has worked on the play is included with each monologue, along with the context from the play in which the piece is taken. Offering characters that can be richly brought to life, this volume provides a useful tool for professional and amateur actors, acting students, and drama coaches.

Theatre and the Politics of Space

(6/30/2012)

This collection considers what is at stake when a theatrical space is created and when a performance takes place, asking under which circumstances the topology of theatre becomes political. The book focuses on this issue from various angles, taking theatre as a cultural paradigm for political dimensions of space in its respective historical context. From its very beginnings, theatre has been both an art and a public space shared by actors and spectators, and as a result its entity and history i...

The Second City Unscripted

(6/30/2012)

Since its modest beginning in 1959, The Second City in Chicago has become a world-renowned bastion of hilarity. A training ground for many of today’s top comedic talents—including Alan Arkin, Dan Aykroyd, Stephen Colbert, Tina Fey, Bill Murray, and Amy Sedaris— it was an early blueprint for improv-based sketch revues in North America and abroad. Its immeasurable influence also extends to television, film, and the Broadway stage. Mike Thomas interviewed scores of key figures who have contr...

The Myopia and Other Plays

(6/28/2012)

Harold Pinter

(6/28/2012)

Acting in Real Time

(6/28/2012)

Boleros for the Disenchanted and Other Plays

(6/26/2012)

Three 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 Gue...

When Pigs Could Fly and Bears Could Dance

(6/24/2012)

For more than seven decades the circuses enjoyed tremendous popularity in the Soviet Union. How did the circus—an institution that dethroned figures of authority and refused any orderly narrative structure—become such a cultural mainstay in a state known for blunt and didactic messages? Miriam Neirick argues that the variety, flexibility, and indeterminacy of the modern circus accounted for its appeal not only to diverse viewers but also to the Soviet state. In a society where government-le...

Theatre for Change

(6/19/2012)

Providing an international overview of the latest work and thinking in Drama and Education, and featuring interviews with a worldwide variety of leading practitioners and theorists, this book explores how Educational Theatre, Applied Theatre and Drama Therapy facilitate change within schools, community centres, prisons, and theatres.

Theatre and War

(6/19/2012)

Garrison Keillor and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra

(6/19/2012)

Garrison Keillor and Philip Brunelle have performed together with a long list of great orchestras: the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, Chicago, L.A. Philharmonic, Cleveland, St. Louis, Minnesota Orchestra, Seattle, and San Francisco. After years on the road, they brought the show home to St. Paul, the Fitzgerald Theater, and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. As always, Keillor served as amiable host and narrator, Brunelle as guest conductor. The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra was the f...

TRANS(per)FORMING Nina Arsenault

(6/15/2012)

Transgendered playwright, performer, columnist, and sex worker Nina Arsenault has undergone more than sixty plastic surgeries in pursuit of a feminine beauty ideal. In TRANS(per)FORMING Nina Arsenault, Judith Rudakoff brings together a diverse group of contributors, including artists, scholars, and Arsenault herself to offer an exploration of beauty, image, and the notion of queerness through the lens of Arsenault’s highly personal brand of performance art. Illustrated throughout with photogr...

Theater Careers

(6/15/2012)

Theater Careers is designed to empower aspiring theater professionals to make savvy, informed decisions through a concise overview of how to prepare for and find work in the theater business. Tim Donahue and Jim Patterson offer well-researched information on various professions, salary ranges, educational and experience requirements, and other facets certain to enlighten students contemplating a theater career, as well as inform counselors, teachers, and parents of available opportunities and t...

Adapting Chekhov

(6/15/2012)

This book considers the hundred years of re-writes of Anton Chekhov’s work, presenting a wide geographical landscape of Chekhovian influences in drama. The volume examines the elusive quality of Chekhov’s dramatic universe as an intricate mechanism, an engine in which his enigmatic characters exist as the dramatic and psychological ciphers we have been de-coding for a century, and continue to do so. Studying the practice and the theory of dramatic adaptation both as intermedial transformati...

The Memory of All That: George Gershwin, Kay Swift, and My Family's Legacy of Infidelities

(6/12/2012)

The Memory of All That is Katharine Weber’s memoir of her extraordinary family. Her maternal grandmother, Kay Swift, was known both for her own music (she was the first woman to compose the score to a hit Broadway show, Fine and Dandy) and for her ten-year romance with George Gershwin. Their love affair began during Swift’s marriage to James Paul Warburg, the multitalented banker and economist who advised (and feuded with) FDR. Weber creates an intriguing and intimate group portrait of t...

Chinglish

(6/12/2012)

Theatre Communications Group (TCG) is pleased to announce the publication of Chinglish, an uproarious new comedy by two-time Pulitzer finalist David Henry Hwang (M. Butterfly, Yellow Face). Chinglish received its world premiere at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre in 2011 before transferring to Broadway later that year. Declared the “Best American Play of 2011” by Time magazine, Chinglish will be adapted for an upcoming film by director-producer Justin Lin with a screenplay by Hwang. Springing...

Peter and the Starcatcher: The Annotated Script of the Broadway Play [

(6/5/2012)

The hilarious script for the Broadway play Peter and the Starcatcher is presented along with commentary by the playwright, the directors, the composer, the set designer, and our own Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson. 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.

David Mamet

(6/5/2012)

Priscilla, Queen of the Desert - The Musical

(6/4/2012)

Adapted from Stephan Elliott's 1994 cult-classic film The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, the Tony-winning musical is a comedy of errors involving two drag queens and a transsexual trekking through the remote Australian desert to a drag show in small resort town. Our songbook features 19 well-known pop songs from the score: Don't Leave Me This Way * Girls Just Want to Have Fun * Go West * Hot Stuff * I Love the Night Life * I Say a Little Prayer * I Will Survive * It's Raining Men ...

Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark Piano/Vocal Selections

(6/1/2012)

This matching folio features 14 songs from the much-hyped Broadway musical composed by U2's Bono and The Edge. Songs include: Bouncing off the Walls * Boy Falls from the Sky * A Freak like Me Needs Company * If the World Should End * No More * Picture This * Pull the Trigger * Sinistereo * Turn off the Dark * and more.

The Little Princess Vocal Selections

(6/1/2012)

Includes 12 songs from the Off-Broadway show: Soon, My Love * Live Out Loud (in two keys for female and male voice) * Let Your Heart Be Your Compass * Isn't That Always the Way * Lucky * If the Tables Were Turned * Soldier On * It's Like Another World * Almost Christmas * Captain Crewe * A Broken Old Doll * Soon.

Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown - Piano/Vocal Selections

(6/1/2012)

14 songs from the Broadway musical based on the film by Pedro Almodovar. Score by David Yazbek. Includes "Invisible," "Island," "Lie to Me," "Lovesick," "Madrid Is My Mama," "The Microphone," "Model Behavior," "Mother's Day," "My Crazy Heart," "On the Verge," "Shoes from Heaven."

Shakespeare

(6/1/2012)

For any lover of Shakespeare, the thought of time-traveling back to London to see one of his plays at the Globe represents the ultimate theatrical fantasy. The look and feel of Shakespeare's London, the streets, shops, and churches the poet would have visited; the bookstalls where he found source material; the objects that appeared on his stages or sparked his imagination--what were they like? Shakespeare: Staging the World presents an extraordinary collection of objects that evoke London in...

Funny

(6/1/2012)

Funny: The Book is an entertaining look at the art of comedy, from its historical roots to the latest scientific findings, with diversions into the worlds of movies (Buster Keaton and the Marx Brothers), television (The Office), prose (Woody Allen, Robert Benchley), theater (The Front Page), jokes and stand-up comedy (Richard Pryor, Steve Martin), as well as personal reminiscences from the author's experiences on such TV programs as Mork and Mindy. With allusions to the not-always-funny Carl Ju...

Archaeologies of Presence

(5/31/2012)

Middleton and Rowley

(5/30/2012)

Can the inadvertent clashes between collaborators produce more powerful effects than their concordances? For Thomas Middleton and William Rowley, the playwriting team best known for their tragedy The Changeling, disagreements and friction proved quite beneficial for their work. This first full-length study of Middleton and Rowley uses their plays to propose a new model for the study of collaborative authorship in early modern English drama. David Nicol highlights the diverse forms of collabo...

Stage Turns

(5/28/2012)

Stage Turns documents the development and innovations of disability theatre in Canada, the aesthetic choices and challenges of the movement, and the multiple spatial scales at which disability theatre operates, from the local to the increasingly global. Kirsty Johnston provides histories of Canada's leading disability theatre companies, emphasizing the early importance of local efforts in the absence of national coordination. Close readings of individual productions demonstrate how aesthetic ch...

Experimental Irish Theatre

(5/22/2012)

This book examines experimental Irish theatre that ran counter to the naturalistic 'peasant' drama that became synonymous with Irish playwriting. Focusing on four marginalised playwrights who premiered works after the death of W.B. Yeats, it charts an alternative tradition linking the experimentations of the early Irish theatre movement with the innovations of contemporary Irish and international drama. Drawing on archival material never before published this study rediscovers the vibrant and d...

Shakespeare and I

(5/17/2012)

Following the ethos and ambition of the Shakespeare NOW! series, and harnessing the energy, challenge and vigour of the 'minigraph' form, Shakespeare and I is a provocative appeal and manifesto for a more personal form of criticism. A number of the most exciting and authoritative writers on Shakespeare examine and scrutinise their deepest, most personal and intimate responses to Shakespeare's plays and poems, to ask themselves if and how Shakespeare has made them the person they are. Their resp...

The Piscator Notebook

(5/15/2012)

"Piscator is the greatest theatre man of our time." Bertolt Brecht Judith Malina and The Living Theatre have been icons of political theatre for over six decades. What few realise is that she originally studied under one of the giants of twentieth century culture, Erwin Piscator, in his Dramatic Workshop at The New School in New York. Piscator founded the Workshop after emigrating to New York, having collaborated with Brecht to create "epic theatre" in Germany. The Piscator Notebook docum...