Broadway Bookshelf — Biography — Page 8

The Untold Stories of Broadway, Volume 2 PART 1

(11/15/2014)

Have you ever wanted to sneak behind the curtain of some of Broadway's greatest hits including Wicked, Rent, and A Chorus Line? Do you wonder what Patti LuPone revealed to Raul Esparza about Broadway dressing rooms or wish you were a fly on the wall during Audra McDonald's big break auditions? Are you dying to know why Laura Linney would watch Stockard Channing from the rafters each night? From opening nights to closing nights. From secret passageways to ghostly encounters. From Bro...

The Barbra Streisand Record & CD Collector's Guide 1962-2014 A Six-Decade Celebration

(11/10/2014)

A musical tribute celebrating six decades of Streisand’s amazing recording career, this second edition to the popular five-star rated book, has 26 pages more and features over 90 new items. It covers all of Streisand’s single and album releases worldwide on vinyl and compact disc, and includes several rare and unpublished photographs. And pictured is the thank you note Ms. Streisand sent to the author. Available exclusively on Amazon.

Fosse

(11/4/2014)

The only person ever to win Oscar, Emmy, and Tony awards in the same year, Bob Fosse revolutionized nearly every facet of American entertainment. His signature style would influence generations of performing artists. Yet in spite of Fosse’s innumerable—including Cabaret, Pippin, All That Jazz, and Chicago, one of the longest-running Broadway musicals ever—his offstage life was shadowed by deep wounds and insatiable appetites. To craft this richly detailed account, best-selling author S...

Experiencing Leonard Bernstein: A Listener's Companion

(10/30/2014)

Leonard Bernstein is a household name. Most know him for his classic musical reworking of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet as Broadway’s West Side Story. But Bernstein accomplished so much more as a composer, and his body of work is both broad and varied. He composed ballets (Fancy Free, Facsimile, Dybbuk), operas (Trouble in Tahiti, Candide, A Quiet Place), musicals (On the Town, Wonderful Town), film scores (On the Waterfront), symphonies, choral works, chamber music pieces, art songs, and ...

The Director Within: Storytellers of Stage and Screen

(10/28/2014)

In Rose Eichenbaum’s latest book on the confluence of art making and human expression, she sits down with thirty-five modern day storytellers—the directors of theater, film, and television. Eichenbaum’s subjects speak with revealing clarity about the entertainment industry, the role and life of the director, and how theatrical and cinematic storytelling impacts our culture and our lives. The Director Within includes interviews with Peter Bogdanovich (The Last Picture Show), Julie Taymor (...

Streisand: In the Camera Eye

(10/14/2014)

Streisand: In the Camera Eye is a collection of 170 of the most compelling photographs of Barbra Streisand, chosen for their rarity, beauty, and insight into Streisand’s multifaceted life and career. The pictures, most of which have never been published before, document her many phases, from her early days on Broadway, including Funny Girl, to her hugely popular TV specials, to her work as an actress in films such as Hello, Dolly!, The Way We Were, and A Star Is Born. Taken by some of the gre...

South Pacific: The Complete Book and Lyrics of the Broadway Musical

(10/8/2014)

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony for Best Musical, South Pacific flourished as the golden musical of Broadways post-WWII golden era. Nearly 60 years after its 1949 premiere, South Pacific returned to Broadway in Lincoln Center Theaters 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 libretto by Hammerstein and Joshua Logan, based on James A. Micheners Pul...

Laurence Olivier: A Biography

(9/23/2014)

Widely regarded as the greatest actor of the twentieth century, Laurence Olivier (1907-1989) was as troubled as he was talented. A man desperate for affection and approval, plagued with self-doubt and self-loathing, Olivier escaped his personal conflicts on the stage, where he perfected his skills to a remarkable degree. His interpretations of Shakespeare, Chekhov, Coward and countless other playwrights on stage made theater history, and his performances in the films Wuthering Heights, Henry V,...

Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh

(9/22/2014)

Fiddler on the Roof: Based on Sholem Aleichem's Stories

(9/16/2014)

Released to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the Broadway premiere, the full text and lyrics from the original production of one of the most beloved musicals of the 20th century Fiddler on the Roof is well established as one of the great works of American musical theater. Adapted from the tales of Yiddish writer Sholom Alecheim and set in Tsarist Russia in 1905, it has proven an indelible tale of family, tradition, wit, and sorrow—all filtered through the ordeals of Tevye, a Jewis...

You'll Be Swell!: What To Expect When You Expect Your Child Will Be A Star

(9/4/2014)

Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Show Business For Your Child But Had No One To Ask (because all the other stage moms are too competitive.) What your best, most brutally honest friend would tell you about the world of childhood acting today.

Sondheim and Lloyd-Webber: The New Musical

(9/1/2014)

In this third volume of the distinguished The Great Songwriters series, musicologist Stephen Citron takes on two leading contributors to the lyric stage, Stephen Sondheim and Andrew Lloyd-Webber. By exploring the works of these two giants of musical theater and those of their contemporaries, Citron also simultaneously guides readers along the winding path of musical theater. Beginning with Sondheims lyrics-only works West Side Story, Gypsy, and Do I Hear A Waltz? through his scores for A Little...

The Wordsmiths: Oscar Hammerstein 2nd and Alan Jay Lerner

(9/1/2014)

Incomparable and unique in their ability to write both libretti and lyrics, Oscar Hammerstein and Alan Jay Lerner brought the musical theater to an artistic peak that remains unsurpassed. From Show Boat, Oklahoma!, and The Sound of Music to Brigadoon, My Fair Lady, and Camelot, they wrote the book and lyrics for one glittering gem after another. Drawing on a wealth of previously unpublished manuscripts, lyrics, letters, and interviews, Stephen Citrons dual biography brings to life the strikingl...

Best Monologues from The Best American Short Plays, Volume Two

(9/1/2014)

(Best American Short Plays). This second volume of the best monologues from the Best American Short Plays series features a diverse selection drawn from the outstanding works from many of today's best American playwrights. In these monologues, the playwrights capture much of the flavors, feelings, and thoughts of American culture over the past several decades. The result is a collection of taught, engaging monologues offering fascinating perspectives. They are written with an eye toward the sta...

Alan Jay Lerner: A Lyricist's Letters

(9/1/2014)

The man behind "I Could Have Danced all Night" and "Almost Like Being in Love", lyricist Alan Jay Lerner (1918-1986) is widely regarded as one of the most important figures of the American musical stage. In penning the lyrics to some of the most well-known and beloved Broadway shows, including Brigadoon, Paint Your Wagon, My Fair Lady, and Camelot, Lerner worked and corresponded with some of the greatest luminaries of popular entertainment over a career which spanned four decades, from performe...

Class Divisions on the Broadway Stage: The Staging and Taming of the I.W.W.

(7/10/2014)

Examining twenty-five years of theatre history, this book covers the major plays that feature representations of the Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.), or "Wobblies." American class movement and class divisions have long been reflected on the Broadway stage and, through the lens of the I.W.W., Michael Schwartz presents a fresh look at the conflict between labor and capital. From O'Neill's The Hairy Ape; Sidney Howard's They Knew What They Wanted; John Howard Lawson's Processional; Harold...

American Legends: The Life of Barbra Streisand

(7/7/2014)

A lot of ink has been spilled covering the lives of history’s most influential figures, but how much of the forest is lost for the trees? In Charles River Editors’ American Legends series, readers can get caught up to speed on the lives of America’s most important men and women in the time it takes to finish a commute, while learning interesting facts long forgotten or never known. It should come as no surprise that Barbra Streisand allegedly once declared that she never had any idols...

The Assistant Lighting Designer's Toolkit

(6/2/2014)

What are the do’s and don’ts of being a good assistant lighting designer? What are focus tapes, and how do I use them? What is the best method for creating a magic sheet? What should be found in every assistant’s kit? How do I make that first important leap into this professional career? Answer these questions and many more with The Assistant Lighting Designer’s Toolkit. This definitive guide unlocks the insider-secrets used to succeed as a professional assistant lighting...

The Astaires: Fred & Adele

(6/1/2014)

Before "Fred and Ginger," there was "Fred and Adele," a show-business partnership and cultural sensation like no other. In our celebrity-saturated era, it's hard to comprehend what a genuine phenomenon these two siblings from Omaha were. At the height of their success in the mid-1920s, the Astaires seemed to define the Jazz Age. They were Gershwin's music in motion, a fascinating pair who wove spellbinding rhythms in song and dance. In this book, the first comprehensive study of their theat...

The Complete Book of 1960s Broadway Musicals

(4/10/2014)

While the 1960s may have been a decade of significant upheaval in America, it was also one of the richest periods in musical theatre history. Shows produced on Broadway during this time include such classics as Bye, Bye Birdie; Cabaret; Camelot; Hello Dolly!; Fiddler on the Roof; How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying; Oliver!; and Man of La Mancha. Performers such as Dick Van Dyke, Anthony Newley, Jerry Orbach, and Barbara Streisand made their marks, and other talents—such as Bob F...

William B.. Gill: From the Goldfields to Broadway: From the Goldfields to Broadway (Forgotten Stars of the Musical Theatre)

(3/18/2014)

Pink Triangle: The Feuds and Private Lives of Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, Truman Capote, and Famous Members of Their Entourages

(2/7/2014)

One hot summer night in 1945, three young American writers, each an enfant terrible, came together in a stuffy Manhattan apartment for the first time. Each member of this pink triangle was on the dawn of world fame—Tennessee Williams for A Streetcar Named Desire; Gore Vidal for his notorious homosexual novel, The City and the Pillar; and Truman Capote for Other Voices, Other Rooms, a book that had been marketed with a photograph depicting Capote as a underaged sex object that caused as much c...

American Legends: The Life of Ed Sullivan

(2/5/2014)

*Includes pictures. *Includes in depth accounts of Elvis Presley and The Beatles' historic performances on The Ed Sullivan Show. *Includes Sullivan's quotes about his life and his famous show. *Includes a bibliography for further reading. "Open big, have a good comedy act, put in something for children and keep the show clean. I believe in getting the best acts I can, introducing them quickly, and getting off." – Ed Sullivan’s explanation for the success of The Ed Sullivan Show "E...

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...

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...

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...

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...

So You Want to Be in Musicals

(9/11/2012)

Celebrated actress Ruthie Henshall has starred on Broadway and the West End in Chicago, Les Misérables, Cats, and Oliver! among others. She brings her extraordinary knowledge and personal experiences to this insider account of how to make it in this very tough business. An essential guide to turning dreams into reality.

An Ideal Theatre

(8/14/2012)

A wide-ranging, inspiring documentary history of the American theater movement as told, at the time of its making, by the visionaries who goaded it into being. This anthology collects over forty essays, manifestos, letters, and speeches that are each introduced and placed in historical context by the noted writer and arts commentator Todd London, who spent nearly a decade assembling this collection. The founding visions of theaters from across the country are represented here, including: Arena ...

Italian Women's Theatre, 1930-1960

(8/7/2012)

Between 1930 and 1960, popular female dramatists, including Paola Riccora, Anna Bonacci, Clotilde Masci, and Gici Ganzini Granata, set the stage for a new generation of feminist theatre and the development of contemporary Italian women’s theatre as a whole. Now largely forgotten, the lives and works of these dramatists are reintroduced into the scholarly conversation in Italian Women’s Theatre, 1930–1960. Following a general introduction, the book presents a selection of dramatic works, r...

Loss and Cultural Remains in Performance

(8/7/2012)

Argues that performance is a crucial way of understanding the affective intercultural impact of the disappearance of John Franklin’s Northwest Passage expedition in 1845.

Best American Short Plays

(8/1/2012)

Applause is proud to continue the series that for over 70 years has been the standard of excellence for one-act plays in America. As previous series editor Ramon Delgado wrote in his introduction to The Best American Short Plays of 1989, the choice of entries for each edition has been based on the same goal: "to include a balance among three categories of playwrights: 1) established playwrights who continue to practice the art and craft of the short play, 2) emerging playwrights whose record of...

The Life and Times of My Fair Lady

(7/9/2012)

Few musicals have had the impact of Lerner and Loewe's timeless classic My Fair Lady. Sitting in the middle of an era dominated by such seminal figures as Rodgers and Hammerstein, Frank Loesser, and Leonard Bernstein, My Fair Lady not only enjoyed critical success similar to that of its rivals but also had by far the longest run of a Broadway musical up to that time. From 1956 to 1962, its original production played without a break for 2,717 performances, and the show went on to be adapted into...

A Ship Without A Sail: The Life of Lorenz Hart

(7/3/2012)

“Blue Moon, ” “Where or When, ” “The Lady Is a Tramp,” “My Funny Valentine,” “Isn’t It Romantic?,” “My Romance,” “There’s a Small Hotel,” “Falling in Love with Love,” “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered”—lyricist Lorenz Hart, together with composer Richard Rodgers, wrote some of the most memorable songs ever created. More than half a century after their collaboration ended, Rodgers & Hart songs are indispensable to the repertoire of nightclub singers eve...

Hers

(7/1/2012)

Chosen by theater professionals for their compelling stories and rich characters, these 40 female monologues have been culled from the most important and entertaining plays of the last decade. Each piece, from the deeply emotional to the scathingly hilarious, is accompanied by context from the play it comes from, past production information, and helpful commentary from professionals who previously performed the piece. Professional and amateur actors, acting students, and drama teachers will find...

TRANS(per)FORMING Nina Arsenault

(6/15/2012)

Transgendered playwright, performer, columnist, and sex worker Nina Arsenault has undergone more than sixty plastic surgeries in pursuit of a feminine beauty ideal. In TRANS(per)FORMING Nina Arsenault, Judith Rudakoff brings together a diverse group of contributors, including artists, scholars, and Arsenault herself to offer an exploration of beauty, image, and the notion of queerness through the lens of Arsenault’s highly personal brand of performance art. Illustrated throughout with photogr...

Shakespeare

(6/1/2012)

For any lover of Shakespeare, the thought of time-traveling back to London to see one of his plays at the Globe represents the ultimate theatrical fantasy. The look and feel of Shakespeare's London, the streets, shops, and churches the poet would have visited; the bookstalls where he found source material; the objects that appeared on his stages or sparked his imagination--what were they like? Shakespeare: Staging the World presents an extraordinary collection of objects that evoke London in...

Shakespeare and I

(5/17/2012)

Following the ethos and ambition of the Shakespeare NOW! series, and harnessing the energy, challenge and vigour of the 'minigraph' form, Shakespeare and I is a provocative appeal and manifesto for a more personal form of criticism. A number of the most exciting and authoritative writers on Shakespeare examine and scrutinise their deepest, most personal and intimate responses to Shakespeare's plays and poems, to ask themselves if and how Shakespeare has made them the person they are. Their resp...

The Piscator Notebook

(5/15/2012)

"Piscator is the greatest theatre man of our time." Bertolt Brecht Judith Malina and The Living Theatre have been icons of political theatre for over six decades. What few realise is that she originally studied under one of the giants of twentieth century culture, Erwin Piscator, in his Dramatic Workshop at The New School in New York. Piscator founded the Workshop after emigrating to New York, having collaborated with Brecht to create "epic theatre" in Germany. The Piscator Notebook docum...

African American Women Playwrights Confront Violence

(5/15/2012)

The Beauty of the Real

(5/9/2012)

Even as actresses become increasingly marginalized by Hollywood, French cinema is witnessing an explosion of female talent—a Golden Age unlike anything the world has seen since the days of Stanwyck, Hepburn, Davis, and Garbo. In France, the joy of acting is alive and well. Scores of French actresses are doing the best work of their lives in movies tailored to their star images and unique personalities. Yet virtually no one this side of the Atlantic even knows about them. Viewers who feel shor...

Staging Holocaust Resistance

(5/8/2012)

"Focusing on Jews and Gentiles who defied the Nazis by resisting decrees and orders, protesting Nazi genocidal policies, or rescuing Jews, Plunka argues that drama is the ideal art form to revitalize the collective memory of Holocaust resistance. Drama of and about the Holocaust can be staged worldwide, thereby introducing the Shoah to diverse audiences. Moreover, theater affects us emotionally, subliminally, or intellectually (sometimes simultaneously) in a direct way (between actor and audienc...

Readings in Performance and Ecology

(5/8/2012)

Identifies, illuminates, and complicates ecocritical concerns as they relate to theatre and performance.

Showbiz, A Novel

(4/26/2012)

Dress Circle Publishing announces the release of Showbiz, A Novel, the debut novel from award winning Broadwayproducer Ruby Preston. This Broadway beach read offers a fictionalized account of opening night intrigue, backstage romances, Broadway gossip, and colorful characters that inhabit American musical theater. Showbiz, A Novel is available on Kindle and paperback at Amazon.com, Nook, iTunes and the Drama Book Shop. Showbiz, A Novel follows Scarlett Savoy, the under-appreciated apprentic...

Now You Tell Me

(4/18/2012)

Say Lynn Redgrave was your favorite aunt, or Dave Oyelowo was your favorite uncle, and you sat down together and asked him or her to give you their honest advice and guidance. That same advice and insider knowledge, delivered with the same sense of honesty and intimacy, is what readers will gain from Now You Tell Me! 12 Actors Give the Best Advice They Never Got. This book cuts 20 years off the learning curve of anyone who wants to go into acting and fascinates anyone interested in the entert...

Shakespeare on Theatre

(4/10/2012)

Shakespeare scholar Nick de Somogyi draws together all the set pieces such as "All the world's a stage," Hamlet's encounters with the Players, and Bottom's amateur dramatics, along with less well-known but equally revealing passages. Interspersed throughout are insights into theater practices from Shakespeare's contemporaries.

Chekhov on Theatre

(4/10/2012)

What one of the world's greatest dramatists had to say about the theater. Collected here in Stephen Mulrine's vivid translations, these writings reveal Anton Chekhov's many and varied insights into the way theater works – and how best to realize his own intentions as a theater writer.

The Afterlife of Ophelia

(4/10/2012)

"The Afterlife of Ophelia presents Ophelia in a broader and more comprehensive range of contexts than previous scholarship and forges connections among fields that are typically pursued as separate lines of inquiry within Shakespeare studies, including: film and new media studies; theatre and performance studie; historicist and contextual perspectives; and studies of popular culture"--

Theatre World

(4/1/2012)

Now in its 67th year, Theatre World is the most comprehensive record of the theatrical season-Broadway, Off-Broadway, and Off-Off-Broadway, including listings for over 60 regional companies. Detailing more than 2,000 productions, each entry includes photos, a complete cast listing, producers, directors, authors, composers, opening and closing dates, song titles, and plot synopses. Theatre World also features the year's obituaries, a listing of all nominees and winners of the major theatrical aw...