Broadway Bookshelf

Bash--acting edition

(12/15/2015)

BASH, a collection of three darkly brilliant one-act plays, forms a trio of unforgettable personal accounts. In MEDEA REDUX, a woman tells of her complex and ultimately tragic relationship with her junior high school English teacher; in IPHIGENIA IN OREM, a Utah businessman confides in a stranger in a Las Vegas hotel room, confessing a most chilling crime; and in A GAGGLE OF SAINTS, a young Mormon couple separately recounts the violent events of an anniversary weekend in New York City. All thre...

Adventures in Blackface: and other shorts

(12/31/2014)

Adventures in Blackface is a short story and one of a selection of “shorts” retrieved from the cutting room floor. The short story centers on a black college freshman, Ruth, one of six black students in an otherwise white university in the 1960’s. Ruth faces the challenge of the romantic advances of a white male student, and the racism of white faculty.

Tevye's Daughters: No Laughing Matter

(12/31/2014)

The Crawley sisters of Downton Abbey? The Bennet sisters of Pride & Prejudice? The daughters born to Zelophehad? Why mention any of these women in the same breath as the beloved characters in the Broadway musical Fiddler on the Roof? Conventional wisdom has it that Fiddler on the Roof is about Tevye, a beleaguered patriarch persecuted by his neighbors and “desperately clinging to Tradition.” But in this surprising eBook, Jan Lisa Huttner turns the reader’s focus away from Tevye and onto h...

Falling off Broadway

(12/29/2014)

Falling off Broadway is a witty, entertaining memoir by Tony Award-winning producer David Black of his adventures on Broadway. The book is filled with revealing personal accounts of theatrical luminaries and well-known figures such as Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, Julie Harris, Gene Hackman, Joel Grey, Bernadette Peters, Burt Reynolds, Julie Andrews, Groucho Marx, Joshua Logan, Alan King, David Merrick, Donald Trump, and Richard Nixon. This memoir is based on David Black's one-man play, which...

The Godspell Experience: Inside a Transformative Musical

(12/22/2014)

This book covers all things "Godspell." It includes a colorful behind-the-scenes account of the musical’s creative history, notes about each song, never-before-published photographs, "Godspell" movie development details, complete lyrics, and much more. In his Foreword for "The Godspell Experience," composer Stephen Schwartz shares some of his favorite personal memories from the earliest days of "Godspell." Author Carol de Giere has gathered fresh comments from original cast members, Stephen S...

Hopelessly Hollywood: My Dreamland Diary, from Small Town Extra to Musical Theatre King for a Day

(12/21/2014)

Curtain up on musical theatre, LA! Journey into the shadows of Tinseltown, where on dozens of small stages eager young actors fresh off the bus share the spotlights with forgotten idols and new stars rising. Follow collaborators Mike and David into this dream-drenched world, the two believing they are the next Rodgers and Hammerstein waiting to be discovered. But the City of Angels soon cures them of their heady illusions, sending each down a separate road, one ultimately tragic. Here is another...

Out of the Woods: A True Story

(12/21/2014)

Father takes six-year-old daughter to see summer production of Into the Woods thinking in his ignorance it would be appropriate for children because it’s about fairy tales. Problem is that her mother died when daughter was three weeks old, and seeing the show opens the floodgates to almost seven years of unresolved grief for father and daughter both. Next morning, daughter wakes father and begs him to take her to see it again. And the same the next morning, and the next after that. And so beg...

ZOMBIE BROADWAY, Issue 1

(12/19/2014)

They say that New Yorkers have seen everything. But that was before New York City was hit by a zombie infestation, destroying the city, and killing most of its inhabitants. Now the President and all his men have to solve this zombie problem before it hits the rest of the country. Dropping a bomb on the city seems like the only solution, until the mayor of New York comes up with a last ditch effort: put on a Zombie Broadway! Crazy? Well, not completely. Seems like zombies aren't so different fro...

STAGE MANAGEMENT from Rural America to Broadway: An Interview with Bryce McDonald

(12/19/2014)

What do Mary-Louise Parker, Kathleen Turner, Frank Langella, Blythe Danner, Judith Ivy, Victoria Clark, Sherie Rene Scott, Danny Burstein, and Doug Hughes have in common? Each of them has worked with Bryce McDonald during his career as a New York Stage Manager. While serving as Production Stage Manager for the 2014 off-Broadway run of "Tales from Red Vienna," Bryce McDonald took some time to answer questions about his career as a professional stage manager: how he got started and what he lo...

W. C. Fields from Burlesque and Vaudeville to Broadway: Becoming a Comedian

(12/17/2014)

A virtuoso comedian, W. C. Fields is often called a comic genius and legendary iconoclast who gave the gift of laughter to multitudes during his epoch and left a legacy of humor for future generations. Using the newly opened W. C. Fields Papers at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Library, this groundbreaking book explores how he became a comedian during his lesser known stage career from 1898 to 1930 - years of hardship and exaltation that had a major influence on his comedy...

Mickey & Sage

(12/15/2014)

This four-scene, 60-minute piece lays bare the way that the minor differences that kids note about their playmates' home lives take on greater weight and power as childhood ends. --Alan Scherstuhl, Village Voice Listening to two kids talking smack during forced backyard playdates can be pretty funny. They mangle adult language they're trying to ape, and what it all means. But there's a disturbing undercurrent to MICKEY & SAGE. Comedy leavens the underlying painful circumstances, as filtered ...

Strays, the Musical: Piano-Vocal Score (Volume 2)

(12/12/2014)

STRAYS, THE MUSICAL! explores furry foibles from the PETS’ point of view. The actors give voice to a variety of cat and dog characters in this hilarious–and often moving–musical review “drama-dy” that seeks to edu-tain audiences about normal pet behavior while honoring the bond we share with them. The two-hour review-format offers a mix of funny to poignant monologues and scenes with and without music, perfect for middle school to high school contest/performance as well as adult comm...

Three Songs by George M. Cohan: for Voice and Piano

(12/11/2014)

Give my Regards to Broadway, Over There and Mary's a Grand Old Name. Classic sheets from the early 20th century. Carry this on your Kindle, and you'll always be prepared to kick a party into overdrive.

The Broadway Anthology: And Tender Buttons

(12/11/2014)

The Broadway Anthology: And Tender Buttons (Bonus Book) By Edward L. Bernays, Samuel Hoffenstein (Authored by), Walter J. Kingsley (Authored by), Murdock Pemberton (Authored by), Gertrude Stein (Authored by)

Charles Walters: The Director Who Made Hollywood Dance

(12/5/2014)

From the trolley scene in Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) to Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers's last dance on the silver screen ( The Barkleys of Broadway, 1949) to Judy Garland's timeless, tuxedo-clad performance of "Get Happy" ( Summer Stock, 1950), Charles Walters staged the iconic musical sequences of Hollywood's golden age. During his career, this Academy Award--nominated director and choreographer showcased the talents of stars such as Gene Kelly, Doris Day, Debbie Reynolds, and Frank Sinatra. ...

It Happened on Broadway: An Oral History of the Great White Way

(12/2/2014)

In this deliciously revealing oral history of Broadway from World War II through the early 1980s, more than one hundred theater veterans—including Carol Channing, Hal Prince, Donna McKechnie, Hal Holbrook, Andrea McArdle, and Al Hirschfeld—deliver the behind-the-scenes story of the hits, the stars, the feuds, and the fiascoes. Along the way there are evocations of the great comedians and dramatic actors who had that indefinable magic that made them stand out above the rest. With verve, love...

The Broadway Comedy Murders

(12/1/2014)

Hollywood comedy writer Springer McKay’s latest adventure finds him on Broadway, where his satirical play, Boob Tube, is in rehearsal with a bunch of wildly eccentric actors—British stage legend Lady Kate Ashley, egotistical sitcom star Wally Wheeler, highly neurotic Tony Award–winner Nedda Norman, and action film star Kirby Gates, who has saved the world a million times. Retired junk dealer Sid Rosko is the producer. Five quirky young performers round out the cast. When two surprisin...

Current Hits on Broadway

(12/1/2014)

(Piano/Vocal/Guitar Songbook). 29 favorites from contemporary Broadway blockbusters like Wicked, Mamma Mia, Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, Matilda , and more! Includes: Ain't No Mountain High Enough * Dancing Queen * Defying Gravity * I've Decided to Marry You * (You Make Me Feel Like) a Natural Woman * Not My Father's Son * On My Own * The Origin of Love * Raise You up / Just Be * Seize the Day * When I Grow Up * A Whole New World * Wig in a Box * You and Me (But Mostly Me) * and more.

The Song of Spider Man: The Inside Story of the Most Controversial Musical in Broadway History

(11/5/2013)

Shakespeare for American Actors and Directors

(4/23/2013)

Fear grips many American actors and directors faced with the opportunity to perform Shakespeare live. Their tongues twist at the first trauma: To Brit or not to Brit, that is the question. Whether tis nobler to stick to the kings English, or opt out and go all US. The thought of using verse for hours makes them dizzy. Iambic pentameter: Its not to fight, but to welcome. Its the God-given inherent beat of spoken Englishoops, American. And they go into a psychogenic trauma just considering the is...

Les Miserables: From Stage to Screen

(4/16/2013)

It has been 150 years since Victor Hugos novel Les Misérables was first published. However, for the last 25 or so, the poignant saga of Jean Valjean, a villain to some, but a savior to others, set in France during the early years of the 19th century, has become one of the worlds most popular musicals, and is about to become one of the must-see movies of 2013. In Les Misérables: The Official Archives, the reader can find out how the musical came to lifethe trials and tribulations of turning it...

Unsinkable: A Memoir

(4/2/2013)

Unsinkable is the definitive memoir by film legend and Hollywood icon Debbie Reynolds. Actress, comedienne, singer, and dancer Debbie Reynolds shares the highs and lows of her life as an actress during Hollywood’s Golden Age, anecdotes about her lifelong friendship with Elizabeth Taylor and her experiences as the foremost collector of Hollywood memorabilia, and intimate details of her marriages and family life with her children, Carrie and Todd Fisher. A story of heartbreak, hope, and s...

In the Heights: Complete Book and Lyrics

(4/2/2013)

Music and Lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Book by Quiara Alegria Hudes, Conceived by Lin-Manuel Miranda In the Heights is an exciting musical about life in Washington Heights, a tight-knit community where the coffee from the corner bodega is light and sweet, the windows are always open, and the breeze carries the rhythm of three generations of music. During its acclaimed Off-Broadway and Broadway runs, In the Heights became an audience phenomenon and a critical success. It's easy to see why: with...

Rita Moreno: A Memoir

(3/5/2013)

In this luminous memoir, Rita Moreno shares her remarkable journey from a young girl with simple beginnings in Puerto Rico to Hollywood legend—and one of the few performers, and the only Hispanic, to win an Oscar, Grammy, Tony and two Emmys. Born Rosita Dolores Alverio in the idyll of Puerto Rico, Moreno, at age five, embarked on a harrowing sea voyage with her mother and wound up in the harsh barrios of the Bronx, where she discovered dancing, singing, and acting as ways to escape a tumu...

Shakespeare for American Actors and Directors

(2/25/2013)

Fear grips many American actors and directors faced with the opportunity to perform Shakespeare live. The challenges of Elizabethan British speech patterns, the thought of using verse for hours, the debate over staging a period piece versus "updating" the Bard of Avon-all can cause psychogenic trauma on this side of the Atlantic. In Shakespeare for American Actors and Directors (Limelight Editions, April 2013, $14.99), Aaron Frankel defines and asserts the acting tools by which American acto...

Lincoln: The Screenplay

(2/13/2013)

A decade-long collaboration between three-time Academy Award® winner Steven Spielberg and Pulitzer Prize winner Tony Kushner, Lincoln is a revealing drama that focuses on the 16th President’s tumultuous final months in office. Having just won re-election in a country divided, Lincoln pursues a course of action designed to end the war, unite the country and abolish slavery. With the moral courage and fierce determination to succeed, his choices during this critical moment will change the fate...

Cool Side of the Pillow

(2/13/2013)

Zachery Kleinmann lives in the elite world of New Canaan, Connecticut and has left his accounting job four years earlier to be a modern stay-at-home father. But as his son is starting pre-school, his wife is passionately involved in her own career, and Zach is knocking on forty years old, he begins to wonder how he will find his own serenity and define himself moving forward. Enter Ginger Charman, an older, eccentric, free living actress who has dedicated her life to bringing joy to childre...

The Anarchist

(2/5/2013)

Theatre Communications Group (TCG) is pleased to announce the publication of the newest play by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Mamet: The Anarchist. Just having completed its world premiere on Broadway under the direction of the playwright and starring Patti LuPone and Debra Winger, Mr. Mamet’s work is also currently represented on Broadway with the revival of his award-winning Glengarry Glen Ross starring Al Pacino and Bobby Cannavale. “Mamet remains the American theatre’s m...

Collaborators

(1/15/2013)

Taking its inspiration from historical fact, Collaborators explores the intense, paradoxical, and ultimately deadly friendship between the dissident writer Mikhail Bulgakov and Josef Stalin, centering around a play which Bulgakov was forced to write to commemorate Stalin's sixtieth birthday. Stalin has been in power for 16 years and his purges are at their zenith. Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita is lying unpublished in a desk drawer, and his latest play Molière has been banned followi...

Dizzy: A Fictional Memoir

(12/5/2012)

Inspired by Arthur Wooten's life, Dizzy is a unique read in that it marries two genres: an exciting backstage show business tale coupled with a frightening medical drama. Angie Styles, a beloved Broadway star, is struck down at the height of her career by a mysterious disease and is forced to reexamine her life and the people in it as she fights to survive. "Dizzy is a wonderfully told story with such great heart and humor." - Peter Gregus, Broadway actor, writer, director, currently starr...

The Book of Mormon: The Testament of a Broadway Musical

(12/4/2012)

In celebration of the making of The Book of Mormon, the authors, production team, and entire original cast recount their experiences as they grew their show from the initial idea to opening night on Broadway. With the complete book and lyrics annotated by the full creative team and cast, along with more than 700 photographs and illustrations, they share the journey that began one night in a Manhattan bar and culminated seven years later in the achievement that is The Book of Mormon.

Elliot, A Soldier’s Fugue

(11/20/2012)

Melding a poetic dreamscape with a stream-of-consciousness narrative, Elliot, A Soldier's Fugue takes us on an unforgettable journey across time and generations. Lyrically tracing the legacy of war on a single Puerto Rican family, this Pulitzer Prize finalist is the first installment in Quiara Alegria Hudes' The Elliot Trilogy. Quiara Alegría Hudes wrote the book for the Broadway musical In the Heights, which received the 2008 Tony Award for Best Musical, a Tony nomination for Best Book of ...

The Director’s Voice, Volume 2

(11/20/2012)

This second volume presents a cross-section of the most diverse and dynamic stage directors defining today’s American theater, in conversation with director/producer Jason Loewith. A follow-up to the immensely popular first volume, which has sold over eighteen thousand copies, much has changed in the twenty years since The Director’s Voice debuted. “The nonprofit model has been turned on its head,” Loewith notes. “Institution-building is out for these directors; creating a distinctive...

Show Boat: Performing Race in an American Musical

(11/2/2012)

Show Boat draws on exhaustive archival research to tell the story of how Jerome Kern, Oscar Hammerstein II, and a host of directors, choreographers, producers, and performers--among them Paul Robeson--made and remade the most important musical in Broadway history.

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 Chamber Plays of August Strindberg

(10/30/2012)

The five Chamber Plays of August Strindberg, written in 1907 and newly translated by Paul Walsh, including "Storm," "Burned House," "The Ghost Sonata,: "The Pelican," and "Black Glove." Strindberg began writing his chamber plays early in 1907 for a group of young actors embarking on a new endeavor: to open a small theater in the center of Stockholm dedicated to the Strindberg plays. The theater would be called Intima Teatern (The Intimate Theater), and it would explore the possibilities of a new...

Thornton Wilder: A Life

(10/30/2012)

Thornton Wilder: A Life, the first biography of the playwright and novelist since 1983, is also the first to be based on thousands of pages of letters, journals, manuscripts, and other documentary evidence of Wilder's life, work, and times. For more than a decade, biographer Penelope Niven has worked with unprecedented access to Wilder's papers, including his family's private journals and records, searching for the secrets that illuminate Wilder's public life and work, as well as the hidden inn...

World on a String: A Musical Memoir

(10/30/2012)

John Pizzarelli, the son of jazz guitar legend Bucky Pizzarelli, is a connoisseur of American song who grew up among the legends of jazz. From teenage explorations of rock music to life on the road with his father, he worked his way from gigs in tiny clubs to opening for Frank Sinatra during his final international tour. Now Pizzarelli performs in festivals and top venues across the United States and the world, and he shares his unique journey in this revealing, charming, and heartwarming memoir...

Hard Times: The Adult Musical in 1970s New York City

(10/29/2012)

Hard Times tells the story of the adult musical in 1970s New York City. Featuring strong sexual content, frequent nudity, and simulated sexual activity, adult musicals were cheap to produce, and even the ones that got the most scathing reviews usually made money. Author Elizabeth Wollman illustrates how they both drew from and reflected aspects of American culture at a particularly tumultuous time.

The Oberon Anthology of Contemporary American Plays: Volume One

(10/23/2012)

Theatre Communications Group (TCG) is pleased to announce the U.S. release of The Oberon Anthology of Contemporary American Plays: Volume One edited by Mark Subias, published by Oberon Books (London). This new volume brings together plays from four of the best young artists on the contemporary American playwriting scene. Volume One is introduced by Andr Bishop, Artistic Director of the Lincoln Center Theater, and each play is introduced by well-known and critically acclaimed writers. The...

Water by the Spoonful

(10/16/2012)

Quiara Alegría Hudes is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Water by the Spoonful, the Tony Award-winning musical In the Heights and the Pulitzer Prize finalist Elliot, A Soldier’s Fugue. Her other works include Barrio Grrrl!, a children’s musical; 26 Miles; Yemaya’s Belly and The Happiest Song Plays Last, the third piece in her acclaimed trilogy.

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...

Hello, Gorgeous: Becoming Barbra Streisand

(10/9/2012)

The best-selling biographer of Katharine Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor tells the electrifying story of how Barbra Streisand transformed herself into the greatest star of her era, etching an indelible portrait of the artist as a young woman (Publishers Weekly). In 1960, she was a seventeen-year-old Brooklyn kid with plenty of talent but no connections and certainly no money; her mother brought her soup to make sure she stayed fed as she took acting classes and scraped out a living. Just fo...

Broadway Musicals: From the Pages of The New York Times

(10/9/2012)

Over the last century the New York Times’s six leading critics—Brooks Atkinson, Howard Taubman, Clive Barnes, Walter Kerr, Frank Rich, and Ben Brantley—have offered the most authoritative and influential commentary on the Broadway musical. This definitive volume includes the original reviews of the 119 most important , selected by current chief theater critic Ben Brantley and accompanied by photographs from each show’s first production as well as celebrated revivals. From the golden age...

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...

So You Wanna Be a Superstar?: The Ultimate Audition Guide

(10/2/2012)

Geared toward hopeful musical theater, show choir, a cappella, and glee club singers, as well as all shower singers that want to improve their skills, this enthusiastic and practical guide can help anyone’s inner superstardom make a public appearance. Full of straightforward, well-organized advice for every step of the process, this book will help you train your vocal cords, pick the right audition material, and become comfortable with the spotlight. Interactive quizzes, helpful sidebars, and ...

READY?...SET?...ACT!

(9/27/2012)

“Ready? Set? Act!” is for the working actor who desires to move to the next level in film, TV and theater and who wants to set reachable goals that will sustain his or her career for many years to come. It is for the actor who has been discouraged by his progress so far and wants to know what to do to get ahead! It is for every actor who needs to combine the business aspects of having a career with the creative drive that made him choose to be an actor, in the first place. Joan Sittenfie...

So You Want To Be In Musicals?

(9/27/2012)

West End and Broadway theatre legend Ruthie Henshall has given a 25th anniversary present to fans and future musical theatre stars with the release of her new book 'So You Want To Be In Musicals?' The book, co-written with music director Daniel Bowling contains personal anecdotes and professional advice about the world of musical theatre with Henshall revealing what it really takes to build a long and successful career on the stage. Henshall, the triple threat star of hit musicals includ...

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 ...