Biographies, show books, musical scores, history, and must-read theatre books.
Beneath the deadpan back-and-forth of a seemingly typical city council board meeting lies the whiff of something distinctly sinister in Tracy Letts's new play The Minutes. Known for his keen ability to illustrate the faults and cracks under humanity's surface, Letts delivers an acutely thrilling new work that pulls you in with laughter before grabbing you by the throat.
If I don't want to tell anyone, it's up to me, right? Lucy knows James has avoided the battle. Mark knows Amanda has fought for her life. But speaking the truth could bring everything crashing down. What happens if we live a life of not talking? Olivier award-winning writer Mike Bartlett's gripping and lyrical first play unlocks a culture of silence and gives voice to the human casualties when things are easier done than said. This edition was published to coincide with a new productio...
Whenever You’re Ready is an intimate account of the career of Nora Polley, who — in her 52 years at the Stratford Festival — has learned from, worked with, and cared for some of the greatest directors, actors, stage managers, and productions in Canadian theatrical history. In so doing, Nora became one of the greatest stage managers this country has ever seen. Here is an account of the Stratford Festival’s history like no other. From her childhood forays into a theater her father, V...
In Anne Washburn's disquieting new drama, a group of old friends -- most of whom have widely lost touch -- are reunited for the funeral of one their own. Washburn's expertise in blurring the lines between the real and surreal compounds the unease as the friends scour their memories of the past and cope with stark reminders of their own mortality.
In this poetic and inspiring memoir, one of America’s most revered actresses uses the imagery of flowers and the art of Ikebana to depict the unique creative bond that she has had with her mother throughout the years—and how, together, they are facing her mother’s struggle with Alzheimer’s disease. Marcia Gay Harden knew at a young age that her life would be anything but ordinary. One of five lively children born to two Texas natives—Beverly, a proper Dallas lady, and Thad, a young...
Once hailed by John Osborne as "the greatest actor since Brando", latterly known as a ruined genius whose unpredictable, hellraising behavior was legendary, Nicol Williamson always went his own way. Openly dismissive of "technical" actors, or others who played The Bard as if "their finger was up their arse", Williamson tore up the rule book to deliver a fast-talking canon of Shakespearean heroes, with portrayals marked by gut-wrenching passion. According to one co-star, Williamson was like a to...
You have to wonder why there isn't a word in the English language for the fireworks that go off in your brain when you finally kiss someone you've wanted for years. Or for the intimacy and tenderness you feel as you hold the hand of a suffering friend. A generation after the height of the AIDS crisis, what is it like to be a young gay man in New York? How many words are there now for the different kinds of pain, the different kinds of love? Matthew Lopez's The Inheritance premieres in two parts...
Is Quiz: A) The world premiere of a new play by acclaimed writer James Graham? B) A provocative re-examination of the conviction of Charles Ingram, 'the coughing Major', for cheating, following his appearance on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? C) A hilarious celebration of the great tradition of the British quiz show? D) A razor-sharp analysis of the 21st century's dangerous new attitude to truth and lies? Answer: You decide.
From West Side Story in 1957 to Road Show in 2008, the musicals of Stephen Sondheim and his collaborators have challenged the conventions of American musical theater and expanded the possibilities of what musical plays can do, how they work, and what they mean. Sondheim's brilliant array of work, including such musicals as Company, Follies, Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park with George, and Into the Woods, has established him as the preeminent composer/lyricist of his, if not all, time. Steph...
The “First Lady of Show Business” and the “Last of the Red Hot Mamas,” Sophie Tucker was a star in vaudeville, radio, film, and television. A gutsy, song-belting stage performer, she entertained audiences for sixty years and inspired a host of younger women, including Judy Garland, Carol Channing, and Bette Midler. Tucker was a woman who defied traditional expectations and achieved success on her own terms, becoming the first female president of the American Federation of Actors and win...
Like the age-old feud between the Montagues and Capulets in Romeo and Juliet, the enduring rivalry between the Boston Celtics and the LA Lakers makes for great drama. Macbeth's career began with promise but ended in ruin--not unlike Pete Rose's. Twelfth Night's Viola disguising herself as a boy to enter into a man's world is echoed in Babe Didrickson Zaharias challenge to the pro golf patriarchy when she competed in the Los Angeles Open. Exploring parallels between Shakespeare's plays and famo...
A fresh take on a classic by the Tony Award-winning playwright of The Humans “Mr. Karam’s plays aren’t tearful, but they are often about loss—of love, of health, of innocence—and the messy, haphazard, necessary ways we get on with our lives afterward… He specializes in painful comedies that really shouldn’t be as funny as they are. Karam is a mature writer, very much in command of his gifts.” —New York Times “Stephen Karam is among the very best of his generation of pl...
Following his acclaimed performance in the hit film Dunkirk, Oscar and three-time Tony winner Mark Rylance returns to the stage in Farinelli and the King. This captivating new play arrives on Broadway after sold-out runs at Shakespeare’s Globe and on London’s West End. It tells the true story of Philippe V (Rylance), a Spanish monarch on the brink of madness.
A revelatory portrait of the creative partnership that transformed musical theater and provided the soundtrack to the American Century They stand at the apex of the great age of songwriting, the creators of the classic Broadway musicals Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I, and The Sound of Music, whose songs have never lost their popularity or emotional power. Even before they joined forces, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II had written dozens of Broadway shows, but tog...
When The Sound of Music was released in 1965, it took the world by storm, capturing five Oscars (including Best Picture) and holding the number-one spot box-office record for five years. For millions of viewers, the film is a rare combination of a powerful and moving story, superb music, and breathtaking scenery. The Sound of Music: The Making of America’s Favorite Movie is not only an unequalled tribute to this beloved movie musical but also the most complete behind-the-scenes a...
A fresh insight into the mind of one of the UK’s greatest playwrights via intimate letters to and from his first wife, Pamela Lane. John Osborne was the original ‘Angry Young Man’ of British Theater. His ground-breaking play 'Look Back in Anger' (1956) was based on their turbulent marriage.
Dame Maggie Smith stands as a remarkable example of the concomitance - in a performer's career - of typecasting and characterisation, that is the ability to impersonate `against type' infinitely various screen or stage characters. This book of appreciation essentially aims at correcting the preconceived image that the general public has of Dame Maggie Smith. Focusing on the last twenty-five years, it examines, through the many parts she has played since the early 1990s, her ability to go beyond...
Leslie Odom. Jr, burst on the scene in 2015, originating the role of Aaron Burr in the Broadway musical phenomenon Hamilton. Since then, he has performed for sold-out audiences, sung for the Obamas at the White House, and won a Tony Award for Best Leading Actor in a Musical. But before he landed the role of a lifetime in one of the biggest musicals of all time, Odom put in years of hard work as a singer and an actor. With personal stories from his life, Odom asks the questions that will help...
For nearly a decade, Jackie Apodaca and Michael Kostroff shared duties as advice columnists for the actors’ trade paper, Backstage. Their highly popular weekly feature, "The Working Actor," fielded questions from actors all over the country. A cross between "Dear Abby" and the Hollywood Reporter, their column was a fact-based, humorous, compassionate take on the questions actors most wanted answered. Using some their most interesting, entertaining, and informative columns as launch points, An...
The name Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. (1867–1932) is synonymous with the decadent revues that the legendary impresario produced at the turn of the twentieth century. These extravagant performances were filled with catchy tunes, high-kicking chorus girls, striking costumes, and talented stars such as Eddie Cantor, Fanny Brice, Marilyn Miller, W. C. Fields, and Will Rogers. After the success of his Follies, Ziegfeld revolutionized theater performance with the musical Show Boat (1927) and continued maki...
"An extraordinary theatrical triumph" The Times, London A radical new version of Federico Garcia Lorca’s masterpiece, set in contemporary London. Billie Piper won the Olivier award for best actress for her portrayal of a young woman driven to the unthinkable by her desperate desire to have a child. Piper repeated the role in the New York production, which played at the Park Avenue Armory in March and April 2018. Simon Stone is an award-winning Australian film and theater director, writer and ...
Bob Fosse (1927-1987) is recognized as one of the most significant figures in post-World War II American musical theater. With his first Broadway musical, The Pajama Game in 1954, the "Fosse style" was already fully developed, with its trademark hunched shoulders, turned-in stance, and stuttering, staccato jazz movements. Fosse moved decisively into the role of director with Redhead in 1959 and was a key figure in the rise of the director-choreographer in the Broadway musical. He also became th...
All the Ways to Say I Love You by Neil LaBute, directed by Leigh Silverman, is a thoughtful, psychological solo play centered around the character Faye Johnson, performed by multiaward-winning actress Judith Light (Transparent, American Crime Story, Who's the Boss?). Reflecting on an event from her past, Johnson confronts the defining question of her life: What is the weight of a lie? All the Ways to Say I Love You received its world premiere production at the MCC Theater in September of 201...
Alan Jay Lerner wrote the lyrics for some of the most beloved musicals in Broadway and Hollywood history. Most notably, with composer Frederick Loewe he created enduring hits such as My Fair Lady, Gigi, Camelot, and Brigadoon. In The Complete Lyrics of Alan Jay Lerner, editors and annotators Dominic McHugh and Amy Asch bring all of Lerner's lyrics together for the first time, including numerous draft or alternate versions and songs cut from the shows. Compiled from dozens of archival collection...
A big-shouldered, big-trouble thriller set in mobbed-up 1920s Chicago—a city where some people knew too much, and where everyone should have known better—by the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of The Untouchables and Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright of Glengarry Glen Ross. Mike Hodge—veteran of the Great War, big shot of the Chicago Tribune, medium fry—probably shouldn’t have fallen in love with Annie Walsh. Then, again, maybe the man who killed Annie Walsh have known better than t...
The Miracle Worker. The Patty Duke Show. Valley of the Dolls. Those perennial film and television titles still reverberate with audiences entranced with Academy Award-winning film actress and Broadway and television icon Patty Duke.
All the world's a stage . . . but what happens behind the curtain is pure magic—literally! Jory and the rest of the Backstagers have one goal this semester: to put on the best show their town’s ever seen. But best laid plans aren’t easy to achieve when there’s an entire magical world that lives beyond the curtain! When one of the actors suddenly goes missing, the Backstagers must band together to save their comrade and maintain the natural balance of . . . theater. James Tynion I...
The oral history of Angels in America, as told by the artists who created it and the audiences forever changed by it--a moving account of the AIDS era, essential queer history, and an exuberant backstage tale. When Tony Kushner's Angels in America hit Broadway in 1993, it won the Pulitzer Prize, swept the Tonys, launched a score of major careers, and changed the way gay lives were represented in popular culture. Mike Nichols's 2003 HBO adaptation starring Meryl Streep, Al Pacino, and Mary-Lo...
Composer, pianist, author, television teacher, Harvard lecturer, cultural icon, humanist and conductor without peer, Leonard Bernstein's versatility was legendary. He captivated Broadway with such hits as On the Town and West Side Story and introduced middle America to classical music with his Young People's Concerts on television. He composed three symphonies and a full-length opera, and he inspired the world's leading orchestras to give some of the most memorable performances of the twentieth...
This edited volume provides new readings of the life and career of iconic actress Vivien Leigh (191367), written by experts from theatre and film studies and curators from the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. The collection uses newly accessible family archives to explore the intensely complex relationship between Vivien Leigh's approach to the craft of acting for stage and screen, and how she shaped, developed and projected her public persona as one of the most talked about and photographed a...
The complete memoirs of Neil Simon, the greatest—and most successful—American playwright of all time, the author of such iconic works as Lost in Yonkers, The Odd Couple, Biloxi Blues, and The Goodbye Girl, now with an insightful Introduction by Nathan Lane. This omnibus edition combines Neil Simon’s two memoirs, Rewrites and The Play Goes On, into one volume that spans his extraordinary five-decade career in theater, television, and film. Rewrites takes Simon through his first love, hi...
The final work from the Pulitzer Prize–winning writer, actor, and musician, drawn from his transformative last days In searing, beautiful prose, Sam Shepard’s extraordinary narrative leaps off the page with its immediacy and power. It tells in a brilliant braid of voices the story of an unnamed narrator who traces, before our rapt eyes, his memories of work, adventure, and travel as he undergoes medical tests and treatments for a condition that is rendering him more and more dependent o...
Beyond being just fuel for the body, food carries symbolic importance used to define individuals, situations, and places, making it an ideal communication tool. In musical theater, food can be used as a shortcut to tell the audience more about a setting, character, or situation. Because everyone relates to eating, food can also be used to evoke empathy, amusement, or shock from the audience. In some cases, food is central to show’s plot. This book looks at popular musical theater shows to exa...
In late 2016, Lin-Manuel Miranda released this "mixtape" album of 23 tracks from the score to the mega-hit, Tony Award-winning Broadway sensation Hamilton as performed by several recording artists. This songbook features piano, voice and guitar arrangements for 22 of these songs: Dear Theodosia (Regina Spektor feat. Ben Folds) * Helpless (Ashanti feat. Ja Rule) * History Has Its Eyes on You (John Legend) * It's Quiet Uptown (Kelly Clarkson) * My Shot (The Roots) * Satisfied (Sia feat. Miguel & ...
Nicol Williamson became famous overnight for his performance in John Osborne’s Inadmissible Evidence in 1964 at London’s Royal Court Theatre, going on to gain a reputation as perhaps the best – and most difficult – British actor of his generation and ending the ‘60s with a Hamlet which became as legendary as it was controversial. The following year he was invited to perform at the White House – the first actor ever to receive such an invitation – but Williamson’s spectacular ear...
"Do You Mind If I Smoke?" tells the story of Fenella Fielding's remarkable 65-year career in theatre, radio, TV and film. Best known for her 1960s film appearances in classic comedies such as "Carry On Screaming", "Doctor in Clover" and "Carry On Regardless", Fielding's sublime talents also brought her success in serious roles on the stage, including title roles in "Hedda Gabler" and "Colette". Spiced with star-studded anecdotes and personalized with moving stories about innocence and experienc...
In a career spanning six decades, Agnes Moorehead (1900-1974) was perhaps unique among 20th-century American actresses in making her name in four entertainment media--radio, theater, film and television--after age 40. Focusing on 25 of her most representative performances, this retrospective analyzes her work on radio serials like Mayor of the Town (1942-1949) and Suspense (1942-1962), her stage productions of Don Juan in Hell and Gigi, her television appearances on Bewitched and The Twilight Z...
Ever wondered why actors don’t wear green onstage? Or never wish each other “good luck”? Or avoid whistling in the dressing room? Or refuse to mention a certain Shakespeare play by name? “BREAK A LEG!” A TREASURY OF THEATRE TRADITIONS AND SUPERSTITIONS is a fascinating compendium of facts and fancies about theatre life, exploring the origin of the colorful traditions and superstitions that are as vital a part of theatre as the plays onstage. Includes entries on: Cats, Candles & Curtai...
The Lion King debuted July 8, 1997, at the Orpheum Theatre in Minneapolis, and was an instant success before premiering at the New Amsterdam Theatre on November 13, 1997. It is Broadway's highest grossing production of all time, having grossed more than $1 billion. The show won six 1998 Tony Awards, including Best Musical and Best Direction of a Musical, making Julie Taymor the first woman in theatrical history bestowed with the honor. The Lion King has also earned more than 70 major arts award...
Biography of lyricist, bookwriter, librettist John Treville Latouche (Cabin in the Sky, Beggar's Holiday, The Golden Apple, Candide ). The book draws widely on archival materials such as Latouche's diaries and the papers of Bernstein, Ellington, Moore, Moross, and many others, to tell for the first time, the story of this fascinating man and his work. 592 pages.
Biography of the founder of La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club and important figure in the history of American avant-garde theater and performance art, Ellen Stewart (1919–2011). Richly illustrated, including posters and photographs of early productions and other rarely-seen photos, and featuring interviews with a wide range of now-famous La MaMa alums ... a book for theater aficionados and anyone interested in the history of Off-Off-Broadway, the cultural history of New York City, or visual c...
Foreword by her sister, Idina Menzel. " the story of one younger sister growing up in the shadow of a larger-than-life older sister—looking up to her, wondering how they were alike and how they were different and, ultimately, learning how to live her own life and speak in her own voice on her own terms." Audiobook read by the author.
Biography of Al Hirschfeld, the caricaturist of Broadway. From interviews with the artist himself, his friends and wives, celebrity subjects, agent, daughter, and more; with access to personal correspondence, journals, home movies, and scrapbooks.
Spanning nine decades and showcasing the most memorable songs, dazzling dancing, and brightest stars ever to grace the silver screen, Must-See Musicals is the guide to the greatest musicals of all time from the most trusted authority on film-Turner Classic Movies. Movie musicals have been a part of pop culture since films began to talk nine decades ago with the premiere of The Jazz Singer in the fall of 1927. Since then, musicals have sung and danced over a vast amount of territory. In their ...
Al Hirschfeld knew everybody and drew everybody. Beginning in the 1920s, he caricatured Hollywood, politics, and notably the theater: Broadway belonged to Hirschfeld. His distinctive drawings appeared in The New York Times and other publications for more than seventy-five years. He lived in Paris, Moscow, and Bali, and in a pink New York townhouse on a star-studded block where his closest pals?S. J. Perelman, Brooks Atkinson, Carol Channing, Gloria Vanderbilt, Elia Kazan, William Saroyan, Marle...
By book author and Broadway dancer Tim Federle. Features 50 tips and anecdotes, with chapters such as "Let Someone Else Take a Bow," "Dance Like Everyone's Watching," and "Save the Drama for the Stage."
Rick Elice, author of Jersey Boys, Addams Family, and Peter and the Starcatcher for Broadway, has penned a heartbreaking memoir of his 34 years with the inimitable Roger Rees. Some may recognize Roger as Nicholas Nickleby and others will know him as Kirstie Alley's boyfriend on Cheers. When he died of brain cancer in 2015, Broadway dimmed all the lights in his honor -- a true stage legend. Pulled straight from Rick's enormous and broken heart, Finding Roger will touch everyone who reads it. It'...
Before Tim Federle became a bestselling author and a Broadway playwright, he worked as a back-up dancer at the Super Bowl, a polar bear at Radio City, and a card-carrying chorus boy on Broadway. Life is Life a Musical features 50 tips learned backstage, onstage, and in between gigs, with chapters such as "Dance Like Everyone's Watching" and "Save the Drama for the Stage." This charming and clever guide will appeal to all ages and inspire readers to step into the lead role of their own life, eve...
Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart are one of the defining duos of musical theater, contributing dozens of classic songs to the Great American Songbook and working together on over 40 shows before Hart's death. With hit after hit on both Broadway and the West End, they produced many of the celebrated songs of the '20s and '30s--such as "Manhattan," "The Lady is a Tramp," and "Bewitched"--that remain popular favorites with great cultural resonance today. Yet the early years of these iconic collabor...
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