Biographies, show books, musical scores, history, and must-read theatre books.
Biography by Mark Harris, "an intimate and evenhanded accounting of success and failure alike; the portrait is not always flattering, but its ultimate impact is to present the full story of one of the most richly interesting, complicated, and consequential figures the worlds of theater and motion pictures have ever seen. " Audiobook narrated by George Newbern.
“Looking Back” is intended to be a visual documentary of a little-known episode in the life of Buster Keaton – his tour of British music halls in the summer of 1951. This 20th anniversary edition has been revised and updated.
Biography of legendary Broadway/film librettist/lyricst Dorothy Fields (Annie Get Your Gun, Redhead, Sweet Charity).
Shines a light on the play's continued impact in the 21st century and makes a case for the healing powers of Wilder's text to a world confronting multiple crises. Through extensive interviews with more than 100 artists about their own experience of the play and its impact on them professionally and personally—and including background on the play's early years and its pervasiveness in American culture ... shows why this particular work remains so important, essential, and beloved.
Pulling Harvey Out of Her Hat chronicles the story of how Mary Chase—a housewife with three children from a working-class Irish community in Denver, Colorado—became a Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright for Harvey, a Broadway comedy about a gentle soul and his invisible six-foot-and-one-half-inch-tall rabbit friend. This entertaining and inspiring account traces how Chase achieved her dream of becoming a famous playwright while remaining in Denver—where she worked for the Rocky Mountain N...
Chronicle of the Grammy-winning 1995 Alanis Morissette album and the new Broadway musical it inspired. Photos (Matthew Murphy) and interviews from Morissette, bookwriter Diablo Cody, creative team members, and cast members, as well as a full annotated libretto and an exploration of the album's cultural significance.
Twenty-seven interviews and profiles ranging over more than five decades tell Mike Nichols and Elaine May stories in their own words.
Looks through the apparent carnival of vaudeville performance and asks: what made the theater so popular and transformative? Monod makes the case that vaudeville became so popular because it offered audiences a guide to a modern urban lifestyle.
Biography by Earl Hess and Pratibha A. Dabholkar. Offers a full picture of Gene Kelly as the Renaissance man he actually was—dancer, choreographer, actor, clown, singer, director, teacher, and mentor. Photographs. 552 pages.
Kindle edition of 1998 book about Peggy Ramsay, the influential British play agent (Joe Orton, Eugene Ionesco, John Mortimer, Robert Bolt, Christopher Hampton, Edward Bond, Caryl Churchill, Howard Brenton, David Hare, Willy Russell and Alan Ayckbourn). The author was granted complete freedom of access to all the records and correspondence accumulated over the forty years of her agency's existence, including hundreds of impassioned letters between Peggy and her authors.
Presents Ann Miller's career in the context of her fascinating life, beginning with child acting and including three Hollywood studio contracts, two retirements for marriage, and appearances in film, stage, variety shows, sitcoms, her comeback in the stage musical Sugar Babies, and appointment as an international spokesperson for MGM in the ailing years of the studio.
At 50 years old, Wheeler is moving into an apartment of his own. Divorce and a dead-end job leave him faced with the challenge of building a brand new life as a middle-aged man. Wheeler’s hilarious, tangled journey in Linda Vista is punctuated with complications, both painful and joyful, as he forges a new path. With a deftly crafted blend of humor and humanity, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tracy Letts demonstrates the ultimate midlife crisis: the bewildering search for self-discovery on...
Chronicle of the Grammy-winning 1995 Alanis Morissette album and the new Broadway musical it inspired. Photos (Matthew Murphy) and interviews from Morissette, bookwriter Diablo Cody, creative team members, and cast members, as well as a full annotated libretto and an exploration of the album’s cultural significance
New reprint of Meredith Willson's 1959 memoir. Reflections on the ups and downs, surprises and disappointments, and finally successes of making one of America’s most popular musicals. New foreword by foreword by Michael Feinstein. 208 pages.
Illustrated book by graphic designer Paula Scher, who turned her first major project as a partner at Pentagram into a formative twenty-five-year relationship with the Public Theater in New York. Chronicles over two decades of brand and identity development and an evolving creative process in a unique "autobiography of graphic design."
Features the words and lyrics from David Byrne's recording and subsequent theatrical concert, with artwork by Maira Kalman (who designed the art for the Broadway show’s curtain). Edited and designed by Alex Kalman/What Studio?.
Ann Miller (1923-2004) was an American actress, dancer, singer and author. Best known as a tap dancer, Miller practiced other forms of dance, and some of her solo routines are considered as good as any recorded in film musical history. Despite a reputation as a kook who believed she was psychic, and the potentially flat image of a "glamour girl," Miller's wit, charm and genuine ability to act gave her and her characters depth. This biography presents Ann Miller's career in the context of her fa...
Thirteen nightmarish tales, all inspired in one way or another by the musical theatre, mashing together the history of musicals with the conventions and mad variety of the horror genre. Theatre ghosts, vampires, monsters big and small, child killers, a homicidal maniac or two, a demon-possessed keyboard, and much more
Mixes fact and fiction, memoir and novel, to imagine the provocative story of a woman we thought we knew. Darin Strauss and Tavia Gilbert narrators for the audio version.
"A rich and delightful paean to a life lived through song ... reveals the essence of Black's craft, looks at those who have inspired him and allows us to understand what made those icons tick ... with wit, warmth and great humour."
The only collection of Tynan's star-studded profiles, selected and edited by his widow and biographer, Kathleen Tynan, with a foreword by Simon Callow. Kenneth Tynan was the 20th century's most influential writer on theatre and performance. Over the course of his life he wrote a series of brilliant and incisive pen-portraits of many of the most significant performers and writers of his day. Amongst the fifty assembled here are profiles of actors such as Garbo, Bogart, Cagney, Olivier and ...
New novel by stage actress Ellen Tovatt Leary about the life of a Broadway actress in the 1970s. 255 pages.
Memoir of a dancer who got his start with Martha Graham. A rare firsthand view of the dance world in the 1940s and through the end of the twentieth century. He danced as Graham's partner in Appalachian Spring, Deaths and Entrances, Every Soul Is a Circus, and Errand into the Maze. Hodes shares his delight in dance as both hard work and a fantastic adventure.
Wesley Brown and Aimée K. Michel, editors. Includes Gun, Spell #7, The Jacksonian, The Baltimore Waltz, In the Blood, Intimate Apparel.
New biography of one of the key composers of 20th-century American popular song, Eubie Blake, who created Shuffle Along with Noble Sissle and went on to compose for films and other Broadway shows, eventually finding a second career as a ragtime raconteur in the 1960s. His skills as a pianist, gifts as a storyteller and entertainer, and appearances on major TV shows from Johnny Carson and David Frost to the Today Show led him to a new career as a concert artist. The authors also illustrate the w...
Molly Picon reminisces about her upbringing and career through the relationship with her fascinating grandmother. Originally published in 1962.
Research guide to the history of producing theatre in the United States ... explores how traditions of investment, marketing, labor union contracts, advertising, leasing arrangements, ticket scalping, zoning ordinances, royalties, and numerous other financial transactions have influenced the art of theatre for the past three centuries ... Richard Rodgers and his keen eye for investment, Jacob Shubert and his construction of the "Bridge of Thighs" for his showgirls at the Winter Garden, the sign...
The first authorized photographic tribute to the prolific and wildly inspiring ballerina,these unique and evocative artful color photographs by the celebrated photographer Gregg Delman, capture Misty's grace and strength, and are much anticipated by the worldwide audience who can't get enough of Misty.This stunning volume of photographs captures the sculpturally exquisite and iconic ballerina. Misty Copeland has single-handedly infused diversity and personality into the insular world of ballet,...
A completely new full-life portrait of Leigh, covering both her professional and personal life. Using previously unseen sources from her archive, recently acquired by the V&A, the author sheds new light on her fractious relationship with Laurence Olivier, based on their letters and diaries, as well as on the bipolar disorder which so affected her later life and work.
An exploration of Harold Pinter's work in the theatre - through interviews with the man himself and with actors and directors who worked with him. Eight actors and directors who worked with Pinter in the theatre talk candidly about what it's like to appear in a Pinter play, to direct a Pinter play, to be directed by Pinter, to work alongside Pinter as an actor. The voices belong to directors Katie Mitchell and Sam Mendes, and to actors Barry Foster, Susan Engel, Roger Lloyd Pack, Roger David...
Graphic novel adaptation of the biography of renowned musician, composer, and conductor Marvin Hamlisch. Deals with his childhood and adolescent years up to his first big successes; and includes his family's flight from Nazi-occupied Austria and their immigration to the United States. For readers ages 8 to 12 to fans of music and broadway musicals, American history, and fans of graphic novels. Features scenes with Barbra Streisand, Liza Minnelli, Christopher Walken and many other interesting ch...
This comprehensive biography, written by celebrated nonfiction author Susan Goldman Rubin, explores the tumultuous and passionate life of activist, singer, and actor Paul Robeson. When faced with the decision to remain silent or be ostracized, Paul Robeson chose to sing, shout, and speak out. Sing and Shout: The Mighty Voice of Paul Robeson explores how Robeson's love of African American spirituals and deep empathy towards the suffering of others drove his long, fervent mission as a civil ri...
Oscar Hammerstein I came to New York in the 1860s, a Prussian runaway with $1.50 his pocket, and found work at a cigar factory. A decade later he was publishing the nation's leading tobacco trade journal and eventually held dozens of patents for cigar-rolling machinery of his own design. He made a fortune and turned his efforts to theater. He built eight of them, including four around Longacre Square--later Times Square--which became a flourishing theater district. Not interested in merely owni...
At an elite East Coast university, an ambitious young black student and her esteemed white professor meet to discuss a paper the college junior is writing about the American Revolution. They’re both liberal. They’re both women. They’re both brilliant. But very quickly, discussions of grammar and Google turn to race and reputation, and before they know it, they’re in dangerous territory neither of them had foreseen – and facing stunning implications that can’t be undone.
Neil Simon (1927–2018) began as a writer for some of the leading comedians of the day—including Jackie Gleason, Red Buttons, Phil Silvers, and Jerry Lewis—and he wrote for fabled television programs alongside a group of writers that included Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, Larry Gelbart, Michael Stewart, and Sid Caesar. After television, Simon embarked on a playwriting career. In the next four decades he saw twenty-eight of his plays and five musicals produced on Broadway. Thirteen of those play...
Irving Berlin (1888–1989) has been called—by George Gershwin, among others—the greatest songwriter of the golden age of the American popular song. “Berlin has no place in American music,” legendary composer Jerome Kern wrote; “he is American music.” In a career that spanned an astonishing nine decades, Berlin wrote some fifteen hundred tunes, including “Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” “God Bless America,” and “White Christmas.” From ragtime to the rock era, Berlin’s wor...
In 1978 Chum fled Cambodia and narrowly escaped the murderous Khmer Rouge regime. Thirty years later he returns in search of his wayward daughter Neary. Jumping back and forth in time thrilling mystery meets rock concert as both father and daughter are forced to face the music of the past. From playwright Lauren Yee (King of the Yees The Great Leap) comes a story filled with horror humor pathos and songs by the best unknown rock band in Cambodia!
Still Here is the first full telling of Elaine Stritch’s life. Rollicking but intimate, it tracks one of Broadway’s great personalities from her upbringing in Detroit during the Great Depression to her fateful move to New York City, where she studied alongside Marlon Brando, Bea Arthur, and Harry Belafonte. We accompany Elaine through her jagged rise to fame, to Hollywood and London, and across her later years, when she enjoyed a stunning renaissance, punctuated by a turn on the popular tel...
Musical theatre is an international form, not just an American one. It can take root anywhere. Few people would realise that such hit standards as “The Glow Worm”, “Brazil”, “Mack the Knife”, “I Will Wait for You” and “El Condor Pasa” came from foreign language musicals.
When his friend George Gershwin persuaded Vladimir Dukelsky to change his name to Vernon Duke, what the music world already knew became apparent to the public at large—the man had two musical personas—one as a composer, the other as a tunesmith. One wrote highbrow music, the other lowbrow. Yet the two sides complemented each other. Neither could function without the other. Born and classically trained in imperial Russia, Vladimir Dukelsky (1903–1969) fled the Bolshevik Revolution with ...
Lorraine Hansberry, who died at thirty-four, was by all accounts a force of nature. Although best-known for her work A Raisin in the Sun, her short life was full of extraordinary experiences and achievements, and she had an unflinching commitment to social justice, which brought her under FBI surveillance when she was barely in her twenties. While her close friends and contemporaries, like James Baldwin and Nina Simone, have been rightly celebrated, her story has been diminished and relegated...
The life of a beloved American composer reflected through his music, writings, and letters. New York City native and gifted pianist George Gershwin blossomed as an accompanist before his talent as a songwriter opened the way to Broadway, where he fashioned his own brand of American music. He composed a long run of musical comedies, many with his brother Ira as lyricist, but his aspirations reached beyond commercial success. A lifetime learner, Gershwin was able to appeal to listeners on b...
Actor. Director. Visionary. Sam Wanamaker is best known as the man who spent the last twenty five years of his life campaigning to reconstruct Shakespeare?s Globe near its original site in London. Born in the USA, he trained as an actor in Chicago and began his career during the golden age of radio drama, before moving on to Broadway. A vocal left wing activist, Wanamaker moved to the UK during the turbulent era of the House Un-American Activities Committee and the anti-Communist witch hunts. H...
Two interrelated plays by Samuel D. Hunter.
At the age of 25 Orson Welles co-wrote, directed, and starred in Citizen Kane, widely regarded as one of the greatest films of all time. But this was not the first achievement in the young artist’s career. A few years earlier he terrorized America with his radio broadcast of War of the Worlds. And even before he conquered the airwaves, Welles had made a name for himself in New York theatre, with his dynamic stagings of Shakespeare classics and the politically charged musical The Cradle Will R...
Leonard Bernstein is one of the most significant musicians in the history of the United States. He was the first conductor born in the United States and trained exclusively in his home country to develop an international profile. Most famous as music director of the New York Philharmonic from 1958 to 1969, Bernstein spent far longer as a guest conductor who developed substantive relationships with several major ensembles. He was a composer, conductor, and has made significant contributions as a...
With a compilation of information that has never before been available in one source, this exhaustive reference work provides complete published election returns for all popular Congressional elections, including special elections, in the United States--over 36,000 since 1788. For all candidates, party affiliation, number of votes received, and percentage of popular vote are given. A brief history of congressional elections is provided, outlining the variations between states in the early years...
Dancer Robert Barnett trained under legendary choreographer Bronislava Nijinska. His professional ballet career was launched when he joined the Colonel de Basil Original Ballet Russe company. In the late 1940s, when George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein formed the New York City Ballet, Barnett was among the first generation of dancers. Under Balanchine's direction, he rose from corps de ballet to soloist.
Elaine Stritch: The End of Pretend is a book about an extraordinary life. It chronicles the twilight of actress Elaine Stritch's career, offering a rare first-person and no-holds-barred glimpse into the private persona of a Broadway legend. Told primarily in Stritch's own words, The End of Pretend provides an unvarnished portrait of this brutal and most honest truth teller. Her personality commands the page with full force. Both hysterical and mesmerizing, John Bell renders Stritch in a fashion...
More often, theatrical producers who make it big on Broadway start their climb from the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City, not the raucous frontier. Even fewer would dream of becoming a successful theatre owner in the storied West End of London. A third generation Oklahoman, Max Weitzenhoffer?s life story is as unique and colorful as you will find, a remarkable blend of risk-taking, glamour and glitz that has been enriched by saloon keepers, oil wildcatters, wealthy art patrons, art...
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