Don Giovanni
Standard Italian libretto, with complete English translation. Convenient and thoroughly portable—an ideal companion for reading along with a recording or the performance itself. Introduction. List of Characters. Plot Summary.
Broadway Bookshelf — For Actors — Page 17
Biographies, show books, musical scores, history, and must-read theatre books.
Browse by Category
For Actors Books
Performing Literary Texts: Concepts and Skills
PERFORMING LITERARY TEXTS (WITH INFOTRAC) gives you the skills and strategies you need for success in your oral interpretation course. Offering a performance-oriented approach, you'll see you to take into account the audience and the occasion as well as diversity and culture as it relates to performance, storytelling, and analysis. You'll also learn to cope with performance anxiety, Performing Literary Texts provides you with what you need to effectively perform and analyze literary texts for di...
The Technique of Acting
Adler, among the most acclaimed actresses and teachers of acting, has written a dynamic book that is sure to become a classic. After the forward by former pupil Marlon Brando, Adler explains her technique, which is based on the methods of Stanislavskishe was a student of the famous Russian. The 12 chapters cover goals, body and speech control, imagination, action, and character; the book also includes a very useful listing of scenes from well-known plays. Adler made her stage debut in 1906 at th...
Making It on Broadway: Actors' Tales of Climbing to the Top
Countering the misperceptions about Broadway performers leading glamorous lives, the words of more than 150 Broadway stars provide unprecedented insight into their struggle for stardom. With an introduction by Jason Alexander and candid interviews with today's most celebrated Broadway stars, this book offers stories to entertain and astonish theater lovers, as well as serve as a sobering reality check for those considering careers on the stage. This book shares firsthand accounts of professional...
The Duchess of Malfi
The evils of greed and ambition overwhelm love, innocence, and the bonds of kinship in this dark tragedy concerning the secret marriage of a noblewoman and a commoner. John Webster’s great Jacobean drama detailing the fiendish schemes of two brothers who desire their wealthy sister’s title and estates ends with a bloody and horrifying climax. A dynamic plot brimming with poetic lyricism, this provocative and profoundly original work will appeal to general readers, students, and teachers of ...
Process: An Improviser's Journey
Author, teacher, and improviser Michael Gellman was given a mission by Del Close himself: “[T]o create improvised one-act plays of literary quality from scratch.” Already steeped in the world of improvisation, he took it upon himself to do this, in the form of a class for other improvisers in which they would build the skills necessary to execute such a seemingly tall order. Scruggs and Gellman’s book, modeled after Stanislavski’s timeless An Actor Prepares, follows a fictional young act...
Uncle Vanya
So, what happens in Uncle Vanya? Not much; just life, played out over four acts. There are rich people, and there are people who work for the rich people, whom the rich people don't really care about. There is a gun fired in anger and desperation, but there aren't any bodies to carry off stage. There are men making fools of themselves over women. There are those who accept their fates and wait for their rewards in heaven, and there are others who don't care one way or another. There is a charac...
The Oresteia of Aeschylus
In the last year of his life, Ted Hughes completed translations of three major dramatic works: Racine's Phedre, Euripedes' Alcestis, and the trilogy of plays known as at The Oresteia, a family story of astonishing power and the background or inspiration for much subsequent drama, fiction, and poetry. The Oresteia--Agamemnon, Choephori, and the Eumenides--tell the story of the house of Atreus: After King Agamemnon is murdered by his wife, Clytemnestra, their son, Orestes, is commanded by Apol...
Mary Stuart
Many have told the tragic tale of Mary Queen of Scots - it is irresistible - but none more powerfully than Friedrich Schiller. Like Mary Stuart herself and the legends which pursued her to her death, Schiller's drama continues to captivate the modern imagination nearly two centuries later. Eric Bentley's lean, forceful rendering of the German masterpiece will command the attention of theatre audiences for years to come.
The Monologue Audition: A Practical Guide for Actors
A founder of the Atlantic Theater Company, where she now teaches, and an acclaimed director, Karen Kohlhaas exposes what auditors are looking for in The Monologue Audition, the first book of its kind to show actors how to stage monologues using specific, step-by-step directing and acting techniques. Applicable to auditions for theaters, agents, casting directors, and training programs, this is an indispensable guide for any actor looking to master their audition approach.
The Savoy Operas: The Complete Gilbert and Sullivan
A treasury of all fourteen of the beloved Savoy Operas GILBERT AND SULLIVAN’S comic operas are some of the world’s best-loved musical works, delighting audiences with their joyous wit and extravagant wordplay. From the triumphant comic romps The Pirates of Penzance, HMS Pinafore, and The Mikado to less frequently performed gems such as the partially lost work Thespis, all appear here in their most accurate and faithful form. Including fascinating new commentary on each work, performance ...
Scenes for Young Actors
A One-Of-A-Kind Acting Aid With Young Talent In Mind In drama classes and at auditions, young actors have continually had to resort to performing roles written for much older men and women -- roles that are often difficult for them to identify with or to fully understand. But this innovative scenebook gives younger performers the opportunity to portray characters their own age. From the classics to the finest in contemporary drama -- from Shakespeare, Shaw, and Chekov to Miller, Will...
The Well of the Saints
Is blindness a curse or a blessing? Is a cure always the blessing one might think or is it sometimes not what a person really wants? J M Synge (1871 - 1909) was an Irish poet and playwright. He participated in the founding of the Abbey Theatre. The Well of the Saints is a three-act comedy. Synge used a story of bind people cured by a well on the Aran Islands told to him by Martin Conneely as a basis for his play. Martin and Mary are a blind couple who believe themselves to be beautiful. When a ...
Theatre and Performance Design: A Reader in Scenography
Theatre and Performance Design: A Reader in Scenography is an essential resource for those interested in the visual composition of performance and related scenographic practices. Theatre and performance studies, cultural theory, fine art, philosophy and the social sciences are brought together in one volume to examine the principle forces that inform understanding of theatre and performance design. The volume is organised thematically in five sections: looking, the experience of seeing...
275 Acting Games: Connected: A Comprehensive Workbook of Theatre Games for Developing Acting Skills
With almost three hundred performance-tested acting games this is the largest collection published to date. They were compiled from numerous workshops and study sessions. Includes a wide variety of proven activities for learning acting and theatre industry skills. The book is divided into thirty-three sections including: Audition, Concentration and Focus, Voice, Ensemble, Action and Reaction, Improvisation, Knowing Your Objective, Performance, Thinking outside the Box, Spatial Awareness, Nonver...
This World's Eternity (Margaret Frazer Tales)
It was a quiet murder. A painless one. Not a trace of blood. There wasn’t even a body. But it was a poison true as arsenic: The poison of the human heart. Award-winning and nationally best-selling author Margaret Frazer plunges into the darkest depths of the 15th century in this stunning tale of kings and witchcraft, revealing the hidden hand behind the throne of England. Join Queen Margaret and the Duke of Gloucester as they gamble for the fate of kingdoms in a tale woven out of Shakes...
Fuente Ovejuna (Spanish Edition)
A bi-lingual verse translation of one of the greatest plays by the outstanding dramatist of Spain's Golden Age.
Later Plays Of Eugene O'Neill
Eugene Gladstone O'Neill (16 October 1888 – 27 November 1953) was an American playwright, and Nobel laureate in Literature. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into American drama techniques of realism earlier associated with Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish playwright August Strindberg. His plays were among the first to include speeches in American vernacular and involve characters on the fringes of society, where they...
The Way of the World
One of the greatest of all Restoration comedies, this knowing comedy of manners depicts the scheming of a nest of shallow, deceitful aristocrats to prevent two lovers from marrying. The play abounds with felicitous phrasing, delicious verbal battles of the sexes and a depth of feeling and sensitivity that elevate it far above other plays in the genre. This inexpensive edition, complete and unabridged, makes it widely available to today’s readers. Note. New footnotes. "Commendatory Verses" by ...
Don Carlos
This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed wor...
Movement for Actors
One would think that "moving" would be as natural as falling off a log, and yet when we stand in front of an audience, our hands grow large and heavy and our feet root to the floor. Marshall (physical acting, Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, London) and the contributors to the collection by Potter (theater, Marymount Manhattan Coll.) are well aware of this problem and take different approaches to solving it. Marshall tends to focus on the inner being and the actor's inner response. Concepts such...
City of Angels
The script to the Tony winning music featuring a book by Larry Gelbart, music by Cy Coleman, and lyrics by David Zippel. The book also includes an introduction by Larry Gelbart, illustrations by Al Hirschfeld, production photographs, and original costume designs. Paperback
Queen Mary and Harold
Two dramas of English Monarchs, one Saxon the other Tudor
The Dixie Swim Club
Five Southern women, whose friendships began many years ago on their college swim team, set aside a long weekend every August to recharge those relationships. Free from husbands, kids and jobs, they meet at the same beach cottage on North Carolina's Outer Banks to catch up, laugh and meddle in each other's lives. THE DIXIE SWIM CLUB focuses on four of those weekends and spans a period of thirty-three years. Sheree, the spunky team captain, desperately tries to maintain her organized and "perfec...
Training of the American Actor
Successful acting must reflect a society’s current beliefs. The men and women who developed each new technique were convinced that previous methods were not equal to the full challenges of their time and place, and the techniques in this book have been adapted to current needs in order to continue to be successful methods for training actors. The actor’s journey is an individual one, and the actor seeks a form, or a variety of forms, of training that will assist in unlocking his own creativ...
Becket
Portrays the conflict of loyalties between church and state as they influenced the lives of two powerful men in English history.
Sensational Scenes for Kids: The Scene Study-Guide for Young Actors
Sensational Scenes For Kids: The Scene Study-guide for Young Actors! provides 7-12 year-olds with true-to-life comedic and dramatic scenes, all 100% teen tested. Chambers introduces young actors to the challenges of performing scenes written in true industry-standard style in preparation for professional stage and screen auditions. +30 kid-friendly scenes are incorporated. The foreword by 2-time Tony Award-winning producer Kristin Caskey gives kids clear advice on how to develop a successful sc...
The Age of Shakespeare
While the age of Shakespeare overlapped with the both the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras, Kermode's compact, erudite appreciation of the Bard is less about Shakespeare's private life and turbulent times than his theatrical milieu and the worlds he created for the stage. Quick summaries of the pressing political issues of the Protestant Reformation and the successor Queen Elizabeth are followed by up-to-date surveys of the debates over Shakespeare's possible crypto-Catholicism and his "missing" y...
The Sanford Meisner Approach Workbook II : Emotional Freedom
Shortly before his death, Sanford Meisner arranged for Larry Silverberg to create a written legacy of his teaching techniques. This book is the second of four books in the Sanford Meisner series. <P>In this extraordinary new book, Silverberg demystifies the emotional demands of acting and leads the actor through a process aimed at tapping into and deepening his own emotional instrument. Not only will actors gain insight into the whole realm of the emotions, they will see very clearly the traps ...
Theory/Theatre: An Introduction
This is a new and enlarged edition of Mark Fortier's very successful and widely used essential text for students. Theory/Theatre provides a unique and engaging introduction to literary theory as it relates to theatre and performance. Fortier lucidly examines current theoretical approaches, from semiotics, poststructuralism, through cultural materialism, postcolonial studies and feminist theory. This new edition includes: * More detailed explanation of key ideas * New 'Putting it into practic...
The Best American Short Plays 2008-2009
Applause is proud to continue the series that for over 60 years has been the standard of excellence for one-act plays in America. From its inception, The Best American Short Plays has identified new, cutting-edge playwrights who have gone on to establish award-winning careers, including Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, Wendy Wasserstein, Terrence McNally, and David Mamet. The complex and diverse plays that make up this collection reflect both personal concerns and social issues. The 2008-2009 ...
Improvising Better: A Guide for the Working Improviser
Improvising Better is an easy to read self-help book created with the new generation of improviser in mind. It's written for today's performers, looking for a quick fix to their performance problems. This book is a fast read with long-lasting results. Jimmy Carrane and Liz Allen have improvised, taught, and directed in Chicago for over thirty years combined, and have either seen or experienced the most common problems facing improvisers today. Improvising Better will give you simple tools fo...
101 Drama Games and Activities: Theatre Games for Children and Adults, including Warm-ups, Improvisation, Mime and Movement
Gain access to a personal collection of 101 highly effective drama games and activities suitable for children or adults. Sections include improvisation, mime, ice-breakers, group dynamics, rehearsal, story-telling, voice and warm-ups. This unique book has been developed over a thirty year career in education and theatre, through workshops with actors, teachers and children around the world. The pages are packed with tried and tested ideas for a whole range of activities useful for drama lessons...
The Modern Monologue: Women
The Modern Monologue in two volumes, one for men and one for women, is an exciting selection of speeches drawn from the landmark plays of the 20th century. The great playwrights of the British, American and European theatre-- and the plays most constantly performed on stage throughout the world--are represented in this unique collection. Monologues of all types--both serious and comic, realistic and absurdist--provide a dynamic challenge for all actors: the student, the amateur and the profess...
Nathan the Wise
Excerpt from book: J Nathan. Because canals, alike impossible To fill or stay, are feeding from it. Dervise. Right ! Nathan. I know it all. Dervise. When princes are the vultures Amidst the carrion, that is bad enough ; But when they are the carrion 'midst the vultures, Tis ten times worse. Nathan. Oh, never, never that ! Dervise. Ah, you may talk !—But come, what will you give If I resign my office to you ? Eh ? Nathan. What yields your office ? Dervise. Me indeed not much ; But for yourself...
Rhesus
Rhesus (Greek: ?????, R?sos), possibly 350 BC, is transmitted among the plays of Euripides, and was indeed believed to be genuinely Euripidean in the Hellenistic, Imperial, and Byzantine periods.
The Domestic Crusaders
The Domestic Crusaders focuses on a day in the life of a modern Muslim Pakistani-American family of six eclectic, unique members, who convene at the family house to celebrate the twenty-first birthday of the youngest child. With a background of 9-11 and the scapegoating of Muslim Americans, the tensions and sparks fly among the three generations, culminating in an intense family battle as each "crusader" struggles to assert and impose their respective voices and opinions, while still attempt...
1776: A Musical Play
1776 The musical was produced on Broadway in 1969, running for 1,217 performances, and was made into a film of the same name in 1972. The show was nominated for five Tony Awards and won three, including Best Musical.
The Road to Damascus
This great trilogy 'probes into those depths where the problems of God, and death, and eternity become terrifying realities'
Blasted (Modern Plays)
Depicting rape, torture, and violence, this uncompromising and brutal play exposes a society at war with itself.
24 Favorite One Act Plays
Two dozen classic dramas by some of the finest and most famous playwrights of the last hundred years--Anton Chekhov, Noel Coward, Oscar Wilde, Arthur Miller, and A.A. Milne.
The Performance Studies Reader
Following on from the highly successful first anthology of critical and theoretical writings on performance studies, this is an updated and significantly expanded second edition which brings the anthology up to date with current debate. The new edition contains expanded introductory essays, eight entirely new pieces, and is cross-referenced with Richard Schechner's second edition of Performance Studies: An Introduction. The two volumes combine perfectly to offer a unique and complete teachin...
Art by Committee: A Guide to Advanced Improvisation
This series contains both a book and DVD. It is a guide to advanced improvisation. This sequel to the best-selling improv book "Truth in Comedy" is designed to help improv performers move up to the more advanced levels of improvisation. Accompanying the book is a DVD featuring performers in action demonstrating the instructions and ideas covered in the book. The DVD includes performances by four popular improv groups: Upright Citizens Brigade, Beer Shark Mice, Armando Diaz Theatrical Experience...
Thom Pain (Based on Nothing)
When Will Eno’s one-person play Thom Pain opened in New York in February 2005, it became something rare—an unqualified hit, which soon extended through July. Before that, the play was a critical success in London and received the coveted Fringe First Award at the Edinburgh Festival. Dubbed “stand-up existentialism” by The New York Times, it is lyrical and deadpan, both sardonic and sincere. It is Thom Pain—in the camouflage of the common man—fumbling with his heart, squinting into t...
Frost/Nixon: A Play
By 1972 Richard Nixon had ended the Vietnam war, achieved diplomatic breakthroughs with Russia and China, presided over a period of economic stability at home, and was on the verge of a landslide re-election . . . until he decided to cover up a third-rate burglary. Watergate was one of the largest scandals in American history and two years later Nixon would resign the presidency--but with neither an admission of guilt nor any sign of remorse. In a drama "as thought-provoking as it is grippi...
Performance Studies: An Introduction
The second edition of an important introductory textbook by a prime mover in the field of Performance Studies, which was a defining moment for the discipline. It provides a lively and accessible overview of the full range of performance for undergraduates at all levels and beginning graduate students in performance studies, theatre, performing arts and cultural studies. It includes discussion of the performing arts and popular entertainment, rituals, play and games as well as the performances o...
Why is That So Funny?: A Practical Exploration of Physical Comedy
This unique exploration of the principles and practice of physical comedy starts with a discussion of the various types of laughter that can be provoked by performance. It then presents graduated sequences of over a hundred games and exercises devised to demonstrate and investigate the whole range of comic possibilities open to a performer. The result is an intensely practical and thoroughly stimulating investigation of how comedy works in physical terms.
Man and Superman
Man and Superman by George Bernard Shaw was written in 1903 as a four act drama, responding to those who had questioned Shaw as to why he had never written a play based on the Don Juan theme. Man and Superman opened at The Royal Court Theatre in London on 23 May 1905 without the performance of the 3rd Act. A part of the act, Don Juan in Hell (Act 3, Scene 2), was performed when the drama was staged on June 4, 1907 at the Royal Court. The play was not produced in its entirety until 1915 by the T...
Mitch Albom's Tuesdays with Morrie
Tuesdays with Morrie is a 1997 non-fiction novel by American writer Mitch Albom. The story was later adapted by Thomas Rickman into a TV movie of the same name directed by Mick Jackson, which aired on 5 December 1999 and starred Jack Lemmon and Hank Azaria. The book topped the New York Times Non-Fiction Bestsellers of 2000. This novel tells the true story of retired sociology professor Morrie Schwartz and his relationship with his students. On his graduation, Mitch Albom, the narrator, tells h...
The Musical Theatre Writer's Survival Guide
David Spencer has written a book full of truths a young writer will not find articulated anywhere else. Most of us in the theatre gained our "experience" by making mistakes and learning from them. David's book lets you gain the "experience" and skip the mistakes part. Anyone maneuvering the treacherous waters of musicals will find it not nearly so lonely or baffling with this remarkable volume as a companion. - Richard Maltby, Jr., Director/Lyricist, Miss Saigon, Ain't Misbehavin', Baby Con...
Tickets From $59
Tickets From $70
Tickets From $106
Tickets From $75