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Bus Stop: A Three-Act Romance
(1995) Upon hitting Broadway in 1955 Bus Stop was an immediate commercial & critical success. During a winter storm a busload of weary travelers are forced to shack up at a roadside diner until morning. Inge was renowned for his in-depth character studies, Bus Stop is no exception and offers a warm play about the intersecting lives of eight ordinary people. A L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring: Megan Anderson, Terrence Currier, Rachel Miner, Anson Mount, Kyle Prue, Lynnie Raybuck, Jef... |
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A Short History of Opera
(1965) When first published in 1947, A Short History of Opera immediately achieved international status as a classic in the field. Now, more than five decades later, this thoroughly revised and expanded fourth edition informs and entertains opera lovers just as its predecessors have. The fourth edition incorporates new scholarship that traces the most important developments in the evolution of musical drama. After surveying anticipations of the operatic form in the lyric theater of the Greeks, medi... |
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Master Teachers of Theatre: Observations on Teaching Theatre by Nine American Masters
(1988) Claribel Baird reviews the interpretation of classical texts for theatrical performance. Howard Bay interrupted his stage design career of more than 150 Broadway productions to help students. Bernard Beckerman asks if there are approaches to the teaching of dramatic literature that particularly suit drama-as-theatre. Robert Benedetti offers suggestions on the teaching of acting. Oscar Brockett treats the problems of the theatre teacher and the processes of learning. Agnes Haaga shows that the ... |
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Commedia Dell'Arte: An Actor's Handbook
(1994) An entertaining and highly illuminating account of Commedia's origins as a popular theatrical form, plus a practical and timely step-by-step guide to using commedia techniques in performance. |
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The Fervent Years: The Group Theatre And The Thirties
(1983) The Group Theatre was perhaps the most significant experiment in the history of American theater. Producing plays that reflected topical issues of the decade and giving a creative chance to actors, directors, and playwrights who were either fed up with or shut out of commercial theater, the ”Group” remains a permanent influence on American drama despite its brief ten-year life. It was here that method acting, native realism, and political language had their tryouts in front of audiences who... |
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It Would Be So Nice If You Weren't Here: My Journey Through Show Business [
(1990) "In this ebullient, often rancorous autobiography, the stage, film and TV actor describes vividly the hassles that cost him the plum role in The Graduate and numerous other setbacks before he starred in The Heartbreak Kid . Instructive and entertaining, his story includes tidbits on Mike Nichols, Elaine May, Roman Po lanski, Ellen Burstyn, Simon & Garfunkel, and many other luminaries, none more intriguing than the un sinkable Grodin," said PW. Photos. |
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The Studio
(1985) In 1967, John Gregory Dunne asked for unlimited access to the inner workings of Twentieth Century Fox. Miraculously, he got it. For one year Dunne went everywhere there was to go and talked to everyone worth talking to within the studio. He tracked every step of the creation of pictures like "Dr. Dolittle," "Planet of the Apes," and "The Boston Strangler." The result is a work of reportage that, thirty years later, may still be our most minutely observed and therefore most uproariously funny po... |
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Luis Valdez Early Works: Actos, Bernabe and Pensamiento Serpentino
(1990) This collection is actually three books in one: 1) a collection of one-act plays by the famous farmwork theatre, El Teatro Campesino and its director, Luis Valdez, 2) one of the first fully realized, full-length plays by Valdez alone, and 3) an original narrative poem by Luis Valdez. |
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Unmarked: The Politics of Performance
(1993) InUnmarked, Peggy Phelan examines the relationship between political and representational visibility and invisibility within both mainstream culture and the avant-garde. Her controversial study of the politics of performance uses theories of psychoanalysis, feminism and cultural studies to examine issues in photography, film, theatre, anti-abortion demonstrations and performance art. Unmarked is a boldly speculative analysis of contemporary culture and will be of interest to performance theorist... |
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The Way of Acting: The Theatre Writings of Tadashi Suzuki
(1993) Widely considered the most influential contemporary theatre director in Japan, Tadashi Suzuki provides a thorough and accessible formulation of his ideas and beliefs, and insights into his training methods — the Suzuki Method of Actor Training (not to be confused with the violin training technique). His method of training actors has been taught in the United States since the early eighties. Some programs which employ this method in their training of actors include the Juilliard School, Col... |
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AS I AM
(1988) By age 21 the self-confident, determined, Southern-bred actress had starred in a Broadway hit, won a Tony, was "the toast of New York" and was featured on a Life coveronly the first of many triumphs in a celebrity life. In this account written "to reclaim the past that was stolen," Neal writes candidly about her numerous love affairs, both transient and profound, such as a liaison with Gary Cooper and her 25-year marriage to writer Roald Dahl. More arresting are the tragedies that beset her, in... |
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Don Giovanni
(1985) Standard Italian libretto, with complete English translation. Convenient and thoroughly portable—an ideal companion for reading along with a recording or the performance itself. Introduction. List of Characters. Plot Summary. |
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The Technique of Acting
(1990) Adler, among the most acclaimed actresses and teachers of acting, has written a dynamic book that is sure to become a classic. After the forward by former pupil Marlon Brando, Adler explains her technique, which is based on the methods of Stanislavskishe was a student of the famous Russian. The 12 chapters cover goals, body and speech control, imagination, action, and character; the book also includes a very useful listing of scenes from well-known plays. Adler made her stage debut in 1906 at th... |
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A Source Book in Theatrical History: Twenty-five centuries of stage history in more than 300 basic documents and other primary material
(1959) A rich resource for students of theater and theater historians, this volume features an annotated collection of more than 300 unusually interesting and detailed articles. Passages by contemporary observers from ancient Greece to modern times include notes on acting, directing, make-up, costuming, stage props, machinery, scene design, and much more. |
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Scenes for Young Actors
(1990) A One-Of-A-Kind Acting Aid With Young Talent In Mind In drama classes and at auditions, young actors have continually had to resort to performing roles written for much older men and women -- roles that are often difficult for them to identify with or to fully understand. But this innovative scenebook gives younger performers the opportunity to portray characters their own age. From the classics to the finest in contemporary drama -- from Shakespeare, Shaw, and Chekov to Miller, Will... |
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Later Plays Of Eugene O'Neill
(1967) Eugene Gladstone O'Neill (16 October 1888 – 27 November 1953) was an American playwright, and Nobel laureate in Literature. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into American drama techniques of realism earlier associated with Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish playwright August Strindberg. His plays were among the first to include speeches in American vernacular and involve characters on the fringes of society, where they... |
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The Way of the World
(1994) One of the greatest of all Restoration comedies, this knowing comedy of manners depicts the scheming of a nest of shallow, deceitful aristocrats to prevent two lovers from marrying. The play abounds with felicitous phrasing, delicious verbal battles of the sexes and a depth of feeling and sensitivity that elevate it far above other plays in the genre. This inexpensive edition, complete and unabridged, makes it widely available to today’s readers. Note. New footnotes. "Commendatory Verses" by ... |
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Godspell: Vocal Selections
(1983) 13 vocal selections from the perennial favorite, including the songs: All Good Gifts * By My Side * Day by Day * Learn Your Lessons Well * O Bless the Lord, My Soul * Prepare Ye (The Way of the Lord) * and more. |
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Becket
(1995) Portrays the conflict of loyalties between church and state as they influenced the lives of two powerful men in English history. |
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The Modern Monologue: Women
(1993) The Modern Monologue in two volumes, one for men and one for women, is an exciting selection of speeches drawn from the landmark plays of the 20th century. The great playwrights of the British, American and European theatre-- and the plays most constantly performed on stage throughout the world--are represented in this unique collection. Monologues of all types--both serious and comic, realistic and absurdist--provide a dynamic challenge for all actors: the student, the amateur and the profess... |
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The Harold Arlen Songbook (P/V/G Composer Collection)
(1985) A "must-own" collection of 76 songs of Harold Arlen. Includes his major works and some previously unpublished titles. Highlights include: Come Rain or Come Shine * Get Happy * Let's Fall in Love * The Man That Got Away * Over the Rainbow * Stormy Weather * and more! |
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1776: A Musical Play
(1976) 1776 The musical was produced on Broadway in 1969, running for 1,217 performances, and was made into a film of the same name in 1972. The show was nominated for five Tony Awards and won three, including Best Musical. |
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24 Favorite One Act Plays
(1963) Two dozen classic dramas by some of the finest and most famous playwrights of the last hundred years--Anton Chekhov, Noel Coward, Oscar Wilde, Arthur Miller, and A.A. Milne. |
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Structuring Drama Work: A Handbook of Available Forms in Theatre and Drama
(1990) A practical handbook for drama teachers and youth theatre workers. It offers a whole range of theatrical "conventions" to help initiate, focus and develop dramatic activity - whether in a workshop situation, or as part of an active exploration of texts, or within a full-scale performance. |
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Guys and Dolls: Vocal Selections
(1982) 12 vocal selections from the Broadway staple, including: Adelaide's Lament * A Bushel and a Peck * Fugue for Tinhorns * Guys and Dolls * I've Never Been in Love Before * If I Were a Bell * Luck Be a Lady * Sit down You're Rockin' the Boat * and more. |
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The Physicists
(1994) The world’s greatest physicist, Johann Wilhelm Möbius, is in a madhouse, haunted by recurring visions of King Solomon. He is kept company by two other equally deluded scientists: one who thinks he is Einstein, another who believes he is Newton. It soon becomes evident, however, that these three are not as harmlessly lunatic as they appear. Are they, in fact, really mad? Or are they playing some murderous game, with the world as the stake? For Möbius has uncovered the mystery of the universe... |
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Not Since Carrie: Forty Years of Broadway Musical Flops
(1992) While ample material on hit Broadway musicals is readily available, detailed critical information on musical flops has been difficult to come by. Mandelbaum's ( "A Chorus Line" and the Musicals of Michael Bennett , LJ 6/15/89) informative and entertaining survey of almost 200 musical flops from 1950 to 1990 fills the void admirably. Framed by the 1988 megaflop Carrie , which theater buffs still speak of in hushed tones, the shows are presented thematically rather than chronologically, thus bett... |
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Jesus Christ Superstar: A Rock Opera (Vocal Selections)
(1985) Highly acclaimed show by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice. Songs include: HEAVEN ON THEIR MINDS . EVERYTHING'S ALRIGHT . HOSANNA . PILATE'S DREAM . I DON'T KNOW HOW TO LOVE HIM . THE LAST SUPPER ;. I ONLY WANT TO SAY (GETHSEMANE) . KING HEROD'S SONG . SUPERSTAR |
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Improvisation Starters
(1992) Includes 900 situations for improvisation which use character conflict, contrasts, obstacles in solo improvisation, physical positions for one or two actors, props, the environment, and lines of dialogue. |
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The Ultimate Broadway Fake Book
(1993) Over 720 songs from over 240 Broadway shows! Recently revised to include hits from Martin Guerre, Rent, Smokey Joe's Cafe, Sunset Boulevard, Victor/Victoria, and more! This is the definitive collection of Broadway music, featuring: * Song title index * Show title index * Composer and lyricist index * Synopses of each show. Song highlights include: Ain't Misbehavin' * All I Ask of You * Another Op'nin' Another Show * As Long As He Needs Me * At The Ballet * Bali Ha'i * Beauty and the Beast * Bew... |
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Irreverent Acting
(1992) IRREVERENT ACTING is a CRAFT HANDBOOK offering a practical, applicable approach to acting, with very specific techniques used to create the emotional life of the character. The craftual process of "Obligation/Choice/Choice approach" is fully explained in terms of the actor's responsibilities to a piece of material whether it be a monologue, scene, play or film. This book contains 22 of Eric's 27 "choice approaches" and score of other techniques which make it possible for the actor to fulfill al... |
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Freeing Shakespeare's Voice: The Actor's Guide to Talking the Text
(1993) A practical approach to breaking through the barriers of restraint and incomprehension when faced with Shakespeare. Pre-eminent voice teacher, actor and director Kristin Linklater goes beyond the techniques in her classic text, Freeing the Natural Voice, to a passionate exploration of the words of Shakespeare. Beginning with exercises designed to break long-held habits and allow the development of a visceral, Elizabethan relationship to language, she analyses Shakespeare's strategies for ... |
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Prometheus Bound and Other Plays: Prometheus Bound, The Suppliants, Seven Against Thebes, The Persian
(1961) Aeschylus (525-456 BC) brought a new grandeur and epic sweep to the drama of classical Athens, raising it to the status of high art. In "Prometheus Bound", the defiant Titan Prometheus is brutally punished by Zeus for daring to improve the state of wretchedness and servitude in which mankind is kept. "The Suppliants" tells the story of the fifty daughters of Danaus who must flee to escape enforced marriages, while "Seven Against Thebes" shows the inexorable downfall of the last members of the c... |
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The Definitive Broadway Collection
(1988) This is simply the best and most comprehensive collection of Broadway music ever collected! 142 of the greatest show tunes compiled into one volume - this is one book that every Broadway lover must have! Songs include: Don't Cry for Me Argentina * Edelweiss * Hello, Dolly! * I Could Have Danced All Night * I Dreamed a Dream * I Know Him So Well * Lullabye of Broadway * Mack the Knife * People * Send in the Clowns * Somewhere * Summertime * Sunrise, Sunset * Tomorrow * What Kind of Fool Am I? * ... |
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Assasins
(1993) Assassins is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by John Weidman, based on an idea by Charles Gilbert, Jr. It uses the premise of a murderous carnival game to produce a revue-style portrayal of men and women who attempted (successfully or otherwise) to assassinate Presidents of the United States. The music varies to reflect the popular music of the eras depicted. The musical first opened Off-Broadway in 1990, and the 2004 Broadway production won five Tony Awards. |
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What's It All About
(1993) He was born Maurice Joseph Micklewehite in London's impoverished East End. And yet Michael Caine emerged as one of the world's most versatile, enduring, and beloved actors of our time. With the easy charm of a natural raconteur, Caine takes us onto the sets and into the homes of Hollywood's most talented celebrities. Candid, vibrant, and warm, here is a captivating self-portrait of a man who is at once sublimely ordinary and freshingly unique, one of the greatest actors in film today. |
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The Big Book of Broadway
(1994) This 2003 revised edition includes 70 songs from classic musicals to recent blockbusters like The Producers, Aida and Hairspray. Includes: All I Ask of You * Bring Him Home * Camelot * Elaborate Lives * Everything's Coming up Roses * If I Loved You * The Impossible Dream (The Quest) * A Lot of Livin' to Do * One * Some Enchanted Evening * Tell Me on a Sunday * Thoroughly Modern Millie * Till There Was You * What I Did for Love * and more. |
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The Actor's scenebook: Scenes and monologues from contemporary plays
(1984) Schulman and Mekler provide 78 new, fully playable scenes with story notes, including more monologues for men and women from today's best new plays. A diverse selection of scenes and characters to challenge the full range of readers' talents as actors. |
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The Sanford Meisner Approach: An Actors Workbook
(1994) Founding member of the famed Group Theater and friend, colleague, and later rival to Lee Strasberg, Sanford Meisner spent his life teaching a variation of the Stanislavsky-based Method acting that brought Strasberg so much fame. In this clearly written introduction to Meisner's techniques, Silverberg, himself a graduate of Meisner's Neighborhood Playhouse School of Theater, outlines a 15-week program of exercises designed by Meisner to help actors approach each performance with the playful spon... |
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On Method Acting
(1989) 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 acting Improvisation -- without it, the most integral p... |
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Drafting for the Theatre
(1992) This process-oriented text—supplemented by 280 illustrations—is structured to provide students with a proper and practical approach to the development of drafting and related skills for the theatre. Dennis Dorn and Mark Shanda emphasize the standard drafting and designing practices of the theatre industry through a series of projects and exercises that help the student in the development of research skills. The early sessions focus on the basics of lettering, tool introduction, geometric... |
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The Playboy of the Western World and Riders to the Sea
(1993) Two beautifully crafted dramas set among the folk of the Aran Islands and western Irish coastlands. The Playboy of the Western World deals with its young hero’s progress, in the eyes of others, from timid weakling to paragon of bravery. Riders to the Sea is a dark elegy to the fragile existence of those who live at the mercy of the sea. Reprinted from authoritative editions, complete with Synge’s preface to The Playboy of the Western World. New introductory Note. |
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Travesties
(1994) Travesties was born out of Stoppard's noting that in 1917 three of the twentieth century's most crucial revolutionaries -- James Joyce, the Dadaist founder Tristan Tzara, and Lenin -- were all living in Zurich. Also living in Zurich at this time was a British consula official called Henry Carr, a man acquainted with Joyce through the theater and later through a lawsuit concerning a pair of trousers. Taking Carr as his core, Stoppard spins this historical coincidence into a masterful and riotous... |
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The Right to Speak: Working with the Voice
(1993) In The Right to Speak, renowned voice teacher Patsy Rodenburg teaches you how to meet any speaking challenge with total self-assurance. Rodenburg has trained thousands of actors, singers, media personalities, lawyers, politicians, business people, teachers and students in the art of using their voice fully and expressively without fear. She has taught them how to breathe, how to support their breath, how to stretch their voice to meet any vocal effort and how to have total confidence in whatever... |
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The Heidi Chronicles
(1991) The graduating seniors of a Seven Sisters college, trying to decide whether to pattern themselves after Katharine Hepburn or Emily Dickinson. Two young women besieged by the demands of mothers, lovers, and careers--not to mention a highly persistent telephone answering machine--as they struggle to have it all. A brilliant feminist art historian trying to keep her bearings and her sense of humor on the elevator ride from the radical sixties to the heartless eighties. |
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Voice and the Actor
(1991) "Speaking is part of a whole: an expression of inner life." Cicely Berry has based her work on the conviction that while all is present in nature our natural instincts have been crippled from birth by many processes—by the conditioning, in fact, of a warped society. So an actor needs precise exercise and clear understanding to liberate his hidden possibilities and to learn the hard task of being true to the ‘instinct of the moment’. As her book points out with remarkable persuasiveness ‘... |
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Costume Designer's Handbook: A Complete Guide for Amateur and Professional Costume Designers
(1992) Newly revised and updated, The Costume Designer's Handbook is now more comprehensive than ever and is the backbone of any costume designer's library since its original publication in 1983. |
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Towards a Poor Theatre
(1991) "One of the century's most impressive theatrical manifestos" - Irving Wardle Jerzy Grotowski created the Theatre Laboratory in Opole, South-West Poland, in 1959. His work since then, with a small permanent company, became one of the most potent sources of information for modern actors and directors. This is a record of the ideas that motivated the work of the Theatre Laboratory, and of the company's methods and discoveries.In his Preface Peter Brook writes: "Grotowski is unique. Why? Because no ... |
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Ginger: My Story
(1992) Winning a dance contest in Texas launched the 14-year-old Virginia Katherine McMath on her acting career and eventful personal life, episodes, emotions and dialogue from which she recreates here in exhaustive detail. Now 79, this devout Christian Scientist recalls her early vaudeville days in a determinedly upbeat tone, as well as her stage and film hits, including the 10 musicals-- Top Hat , Swing Time , etc.--in which she and Fred Astaire co-starred. Also discussed is Rogers's Oscar-winning Ki... |
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Creating Unforgettable Characters
(1990) In this book, Linda Seger shows how to create strong, multidimensional characters in fiction, covering everything from research to character block. Interviews with today's top writers complete this essential volume. |
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