Darling Judi: A Celebration of Judi Dench
A tribute to the acclaimed British actress.
Broadway Bookshelf — Biography — Page 12
Biographies, show books, musical scores, history, and must-read theatre books.
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Biography Books
It's Good to Be the King: The Seriously Funny Life of Mel Brooks
Parish, author of many books including Katharine Hepburn: The Untold Story and Fiasco: A History of Hollywood's Iconic Flaps), here traces the life and career of mirthmaker Mel Brooks from the Borscht Belt to Broadway. Born Melvin Kaminsky, he grew up as a Brooklyn classroom clown, honing his stage skills in the Catskills before arriving in WWII France as an army combat engineer. The bombastic Brooks clawed his way into early television as a writer for Sid Caesar: "I was aggressive. I was a terr...
Julie Taymor: Playing with Fire
Since the first edition of this work appeared in 1995, Julie Taymor's fame as one of the world's most imaginative theatrical director/designers has expanded beyond avant-garde cognescenti to the general public with her mega-hit Broadway adaptation of Disney's The Lion King and, most recently, her first feature film, Titus, based on the bloodiest of Shakespeare's tragedies. Still in her forties, Taymor is the recipient of a MacArthur "genius" grant and the first woman to win a Tony Award for dire...
The Sound of Their Music: The Story of Rodgers and Hammerstein
The greatest partnership in the history of the musical, captured in print, wonderfully illustrated. For this new edition, the book has been completely rewritten and substantially expanded to include material on Rodgers' early career with Lorenz Hart as well as his later work, and also features recollections from such theatrical titans as Sheldon Harnick, Martin Charnin, Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Laurents. Also, a completely new appendix reveals the details of the continuing worldwide phenomen...
George Gershwin: An Intimate Portrait
George Gershwin lived with purpose and gusto, but with melancholy as well, for he was unable to make a place for himself--no family of his own and no real home in music. He and his siblings received little love from their mother and no direction from their father. Older brother and lyricist Ira managed to create a home when he married Leonore Strunsky, a hard-edged woman who lived for wealth and status. The closest George came to domesticity was through his longtime relationship with Kay Swi...
Love And Intrigue
PRESIDENT (furiously). Insolent villain! Your impertinence shall procure you a lodging in prison. (To his servants). Call in the officers of justice! Away! (Some of the attendants go out. The PRESIDENT paces the stage with a furious air.) The father shall to prison; the mother and her strumpet daughter to the pillory! Justice shall lend her sword to my rage! For this insult will I have ample amends. Shall such contemptible creatures thwart my plans, and set father and son against each other wit...
Leonard Bernstein at Work: His Final Years, 1984-1990
Leonard Bernstein is internationally renowned as one of the most significant composers, musical inspirations, and creative minds of the 20th century. In addition, many consider him to be the greatest American conductor of all time. He is legendary, not only for his brilliant music-making but equally for his extreme passion, raw charisma, powerful convictions, and insatiable appetite for life. This remarkable photographic essay of Leonard Bernstein during the last six years of his life gives us ...
To Broadway, To Life!: The Musical Theater of Bock and Harnick (Broadway Legacies)
In fourteen years of collaboration, composer Jerry Bock and lyricist Sheldon Harnick wrote seven of Broadway's most beloved and memorable musicals together, most famously Fiddler on the Roof (1964), but also the enduring audience favorite She Loves Me (1963), and the Pulitzer-Prize-winning Fiorello! (1959). With their charm, humor, and boundless musical invention, their musicals have won eighteen Tony Awards and continue to capture the imaginations of millions around the world. To Broadway,...
Letters from Backstage: The Adventures of a Touring Stage Actor
Ever wonder what it’s like to be a touring stage actor? Wonder no more! Michael Kostroff is here to tell you, in hilarious detail. His firsthand account of the exciting, funny, and sometimes bizarre highlights of his journey with the road companies of The Producers and Les Misérables will introduce you to beautiful old theatres, weird hotels, onstage errors, travel mishaps, colorful cast members, fascinating towns, theatre ghosts, and the art of singing on a revolving stage while lugging a d...
Working with Bernstein
As they engage with one of the 20th century's most provocative musical personalities, studies of the multifaceted Leonard Bernstein will always proffer new insights into the human condition. But this is the first book on Bernstein to be written by a composer, and the first by a colleague and friend who worked intimately with the maestro for more than three decades. Jack Gottlieb has been described as Bernstein's amanuensis and as the preeminent Bernstein scholar. This memoir presents fresh, sen...
Prometheus Bound and Other Plays: Prometheus Bound, The Suppliants, Seven Against Thebes, The Persian
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...
The Hammersteins: A Musical Theatre Family
The remarkable, unprecedented biography of the Hammersteins, Broadway's greatest and most influential family, as told by Oscar Andrew Hammerstein The Hammersteins is the story of one of Broadway's most creative and productive families. It is a story that begins in 1864 when Oscar Hammerstein I emigrates to America, establishes himself as a successful cigar merchant and turns his attention to the business of music and theaters. He builds many theaters including New York's most majestic opera...
The Actor's scenebook: Scenes and monologues from contemporary plays
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.
Character Costume Figure Drawing, Second Edition: Step-by-Step Drawing Methods for Theatre Costume Designers
Character Costume Figure Drawing will develop your drawing skills to improve your renderings. Not only is this book gorgeous and inspirational, but these comprehensive visual images carefully illustrate--step-by-step--how to successfully render dynamic characters with personality and life. This book presents drawing instruction with detailed breakdowns of various types of characters. Maternal? Elderly? Sassy? Sexy? It all startws with body proportion, bone structure, body masses, facial expressi...
The Art and Craft of Playwriting
From "story" and "tension" right down to how to get a character from one side of the stage to the other, Hatcher, an award-winning playwright, conveys his expertise and love of the theater in an intelligent, engaging style. -- fourteen essential elements found in every good play, with examples from historical and contemporary theater -- a step-by-step walk through the classic play Hedda Gabler, showing good playwriting elements in action -- interviews with playwrights Marsha Norman, Jose Rivera...
The Art of Theatre: Then and Now
THE ART OF THEATRE: THEN AND NOW, Second Edition, explores issues of diversity and creativity, presents a full day-in-the-life of theatre, and offers comprehensive coverage of theatre history. The authors make timely and relevant connections between theatre and the familiar world of television and film to help students understand how the living art of theatre relates to and influences today's screen entertainment. For flexibility in the way you teach, THE ART OF THEATRE is available in two versi...
Galileo
Considered by many to be one of Brecht's masterpieces, Galileo explores the question of a scientist's social and ethical responsibility, as the brilliant Galileo must choose between his life and his life's work when confronted with the demands of the Inquisition. Through the dramatic characterization of the famous physicist, Brecht examines the issues of scientific morality and the difficult relationship between the intellectual and authority. This version of the play is the famous one that was ...
Black Comedy - 9 Plays
This first-of-its kind collection includes a wide range of works, from an early examination and critique of American society after World War II to plays that reflect socio-political concerns that kept pace with historical events, like the sit-in demonstrations, the bus boycotts, black nationalism, and the womenÕs liberation movement. A hybrid of comedic forms including satire, farce, comedy of manners, romantic comedy, dark comedy, and tragicomedy are presented through vernacular language, stan...
My Life with Noël Coward
Payn, who performed as an actor and singer in several Coward plays, lived with the playwright as part of his extended family for 30 years and now administers his estate. Written with Barry Day, an advertising executive, this effusively affectionate memoir of Coward (1899-1973), best known for his sophisticated comedies (Blithe Spirit, Private Lives), is a giddily gossipy account of the luminary's long theatrical career and glittering social life. Renowned actors-Beatrice Lillie, Gertrude Lawrenc...
David Merrick - The Abominable Showman
The chief theater critic for the New York Daily News has written a frank portrait of Broadway's most famous producer, a man as renowned for his outrageous behavior and sharp business practices as for the string of hits that began in 1954 with Fanny , continued through the '60s and '70s with Gypsy , Hello, Dolly! and prestigious British imports like Marat/Sade and climaxed in 1980 with the lavish stage version of 42nd Street , which ran for nine years. As documented in his source notes, Kissel ha...
David Mamet: A Life in the Theatre
Author, essayist, playwright, and screenwriter, David Mamet is often referred to as the quintessential American writer. His works are known for their clever and terse dialogue and have earned him a Pulitzer Prize for Glengarry Glen Ross and Oscar nominations for House of Games as well as The Spanish Prisoner, Wag the Dog, and The Verdict. This comprehensive biography uses extensive theater and film archives to reveal in detail his ideas on writing--including the genesis for many of his plays--ac...
The Musical World of Boublil and Schonberg: The Creators of Les Miserables, Miss Saigon, Martin Guerre and The Pirate Queen
Two Frenchmen, an idea, and a blank piece of paper. That's how it started. Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schonberg are the creators of the multi-award-winning and much-loved musicals Les Miserables, Miss Saigon, Martin Guerre and now an exciting new work The Pirate Queen. Les Miserables alone has been seen by over 53 million people. The Musical World of Boublil and Schonberg is the first book to offer a comprehensive look behind the closed doors of these intensely private musical theatre giant...
Defying Gravity: The Creative Career of Stephen Schwartz, from Godspell to Wicked
Defying Gravity takes readers into the creative world of Broadway and film composer Stephen Schwartz, from writing Godspell's score at age 23 through the making of the megahit Wicked. For this first authorized biography, de Giere draws from 80 hours of interviews with Schwartz and over 100 interviews with his colleagues, friends, and family. Her sympathetic yet frank narrative reveals never-before-told stories and explores both Schwartz's phenomenal hits and expensive flops. The book also includ...
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