Broadway Bookshelf — For Actors — Page 18

Biographies, show books, musical scores, history, and must-read theatre books.

Browse by Category

Biographies Show Books Autobiography For Actors Musical Scores Reference Books History

For Actors Books

The Musical Theatre Writer's Survival Guide

(2005)

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...

The Musical Theatre Writer's Survival Guide

Access Accents: General American: An accent training resource for actors

(2010)

Access Accents bring the highly sought-after voice techniques of top voice coach Penny Dyer to the actor's audio device. They offer a unique opportunity to prepare for auditions at short notice. Included in this programme: A description of the accent and region. Examples of resident speakers Penny Dyer and actor Samuel Barnett working on the accent and text. Penny Dyer is an internationally renowned Voice and Dialect coach and a leading specialist in her field of theatre, film, and TV work. G...

Access Accents: General American: An accent training resource for actors

The Physicists

(1994)

The world’s greatest physicist, Johann Wilhelm Möbius, is in a madhouse, haunted by recurring visions of King Solomon. He is kept company by two other equally deluded scientists: one who thinks he is Einstein, another who believes he is Newton. It soon becomes evident, however, that these three are not as harmlessly lunatic as they appear. Are they, in fact, really mad? Or are they playing some murderous game, with the world as the stake? For Möbius has uncovered the mystery of the universe...

Second Plays

(2010)

1921. The creator of Winnie-the-Pooh, Milne wrote many different kinds of books, humorous verses and light comedies as a staff member of Punch as well as the detective novel The Red House Mystery. A collection of Milne's plays including Make-Believe, Mr. Pim Passes By, the Camberley Triangle, The Romantic Age and The Stepmother.

Process of Dramaturgy

(2009)

A new introduction to understanding the process of production dramaturgy. The book provides specific exercises, examples, and models to assist the student or emerging dramaturg in developing the ability to: 1) apply critical methodologies (among them literary theory) to production; 2) better communicate with directors, designers and playwrights within the context of rehearsal and production; the overall goal being to show how a dramaturg can make thoughtful, creative contributions to a producti...

Young Women's Monologs From Contemporary Plays: Professional Auditions For Aspiring Actresses

(2004)

A collection of 94 monologues for women from recently produced contemporary plays for auditions, contests, workshops and acting classes.

Young Women's Monologs From Contemporary Plays: Professional Auditions For Aspiring A

Bash Latterday Plays

(2001)

A trio of brilliantly scathing plays by the renowned writer-director of In the Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbors. With the success of his first two films, In The Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbors, writer-director Neil LaBute has been hailed as a first-rate dramatic talent with a caustic wit reminiscent of Stanley Kubrick. bash--a collection of three stunning one-act plays that mark LaBute's return to the New York stage after ten years--forms a trio of unforgettable p...

The Little Dog Laughed

(2007)

The Little Dog Laughed is a play by Douglas Carter Beane. The four characters are an actor, Mitchell, his acerbic agent Diane, a hustler named Alex, and Alex's girlfriend Ellen. When Mitchell and Alex become involved in a physical relationship, Diane is concerned that what she describes as Mitchell's "slight recurring case of homosexuality" will derail his career before it gets started. The play originally was produced off-Broadway at the Second Stage Theatre. It opened on 10 January 2006 and...

99 Film Scenes for Actors

(1999)

Looking for a great piece to work on in your scene study class? For an audition? You want something fresh, juicy, well-written-something you haven't seen in every scene book. Give Chekov a rest and turn to memorable characters and scenes from the silver screen. This remarkable anthology offers an incredible range of contemporary dialogues from the pens of the industry's finest talents-scenes that pulsate with emotional life, scenes that live on their own, out of context. Blistering drama and c...

The Good Woman of Setzuan

(1999)

The Good Woman of Setzuan is a play written by the German theatre practitioner Bertolt Brecht, in collaboration with Margarete Steffin and Ruth Berlau. The play was begun in 1938 but not completed until 1943, while the author was in exile in the United States. It was first performed in 1943 at the Zürich Schauspielhaus in Switzerland, with a musical score and songs by Swiss composer Huldreich Georg Früh. Today, Paul Dessau's composition of the songs from 1947–48, also authorized by Brecht, i...

An Enemy of the People

(2003)

This series presents a wide choice of 20th-century drama. The books offer scene-by-scene analysis, structured questions and assignment suggestions for GCSE. This play deals with political and environmental issues which still have relevance today.

Speaking Shakespeare

(2004)

Although Shakespeare is the most famous-and lauded-writer in English, most adult readers, theatergoers and students would be hard pressed to admit they fully understand the complexity or complete meaning of his language. Rodenburg, the director of voice at London's National Theater, has written an excellent training guide for actors tackling the Bard, methodically escorting the amateur or professional thespian from understanding individual words to reading lines to performing entire speeches, e...

Grove Book of Operas

(2009)

This definitive update of Sadie's The New Grove Book of Operas (Oxford Univ., 2003; o.p.) includes, as did the earlier edition, full-plot synopses, cast lists from premiere performances, and biographical data on composers, all alphabetically arranged by opera. Seven minor operas have been cut from this work (including Der Barbier Von Bagdad and Penelope), and eight new hopefuls have been added (among them Emmeline, The Mother of Us All, and Sophie's Choice). Otherwise, the text is, word for wor...

Jersey Boys: The Story of Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons

(2007)

How did four blue-collar kids become one of the greatest successes in pop music history? You ask four guys, you get four different answers. Have we got a story for you! Everyone knows their songs. Few know their story. Named for a bowling alley that refused to book them, The Four Seasons—Frankie, Tommy, Bob, and Nick—were four high school dropouts who emerged from New Jersey to become true American Idols: one of the biggest American pop music sensations of all time. With a shiny doo-wop so...

Jersey Boys: The Story of Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons

Women Laid Bare

(2006)

7 Revealing New Plays about Women: Audience of One Dancing In The Dark The Disintegration of Della Longstreet I Went To A Marvelous Party Kingdom By The Sea The Liberation of Linda Dworkin Lulu In Babylon

Improvisation Starters

(1992)

Includes 900 situations for improvisation which use character conflict, contrasts, obstacles in solo improvisation, physical positions for one or two actors, props, the environment, and lines of dialogue.

How Sondheim Found His Sound

(2007)

There have been so many books written about Stephen Sondheim and his revolutionary scores that it's hard to believe anything's left to analyze. But Swayne has found a new angle, and in this scholarly tome, he examines the impact other artists and mediums have had on Sondheim's work. The Dartmouth music professor offers some fascinating and fresh insights into possible inspirations behind characters and musical moments in shows including Follies, A Little Night Music, Sunday in the Park with Geo...

Shakespeare's Wordcraft

(2007)

Written for readers who have a passion for Shakespeare, Shakespeare's Wordcraft takes a comprehensive look at Shakespeare's stellar use of language devices throughout his plays, devices he used to ink memorable lines like these: * I must be cruel only to be kind * Fair is foul, and foul is fair * Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more! * Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears! In a clear, accessible, non-academic style - using plain terms, modern quotes, and several thousand...

Molly Sweeney.

(1998)

Molly Sweeney, by the great Irish playwright Brian Friel, tells the story of married couple Molly and Frank, who live in a remote Irish village. Molly has been blind since birth, but now a surgeon Mr. Rice believes he may be able to restore her sight. In a series of interwoven monologues, Molly Sweeney takes us into the minds of three people with very different expectations of what will happen when Molly regains her vision.

The Plays and Fragments

(2008)

The greatest writer of Greek New Comedy and the founding father of European comedy, Menander (c.341-290 BC) wrote over one hundred plays, of which only one complete play and substantial fragments of others survive. Until the twentieth century he was known to us only by short quotations in ancient authors. Since 1907 papyri found in the sand of Egypt have brought to light more and more fragments and in 1958 the papyrus text of a complete play was published, The Bad-Tempered Man (Dyskolos). His r...

Cabaret: The Illustrated Book and Lyrics

(1999)

One of the hottest tickets on Broadway last season was the breathtaking revival of the musical Cabaret, which featured incomparable--and Tony-awarded--performances by Alan Cumming as the master of ceremonies and Natasha Richardson as Sally Bowles. Cabaret is rooted in Christopher Isherwood's wonderful book The Berlin Stories, in which the late British writer immaculately captured Weimar Germany of the 1930s. After several stage and movie permutations, voila!--the current revival that set the Ne...

Cabaret: The Illustrated Book and Lyrics

The Real Inspector Hound and Other Plays

(1998)

Culled from nearly 20 years of the playwright's career, a showcase for Tom Stoppard's dazzling range and virtuosic talent, The Real Inspector Hound and Other Plays is essential reading for fans of modern drama. The plays in this collection reveal Stoppard's sense of fun, his sense of theater, his sense of the absurd, and his gifts for parody and satire. They include The Real Inspector Hound, After Margritte, Dirty Linen, New-Found-Land, Dogg's Hamlet, and Cahoot's Macbeth.

The Real Inspector Hound and Other Plays

The Second City Almanac of Improvisation

(2004)

The Second City Almanac of Improvisation is not so much a narrative or how-to book as a collection of essays and advice from Second City's more prestigious alumni. Throughout its seven chapters, author Anne Libera addresses the guidelines and goals of courses taught through Second City's Training Center, of which she is the artistic director.

Audition Success

(2001)

Audition Success presents a groundbreaking method that has already made Don Greene one of the country's leading audition trainers. Combining specially designed self-tests and real-life examples from the careers of two performers, Audition Success will help performers understand what prevents them from nailing an audition and give them the tools to reach their goals.

Hair: The Story of the Show that Defined a Generation

(2010)

More than 40 years ago, the first rock musical made off-Broadway history. No one had ever seen anything quite like Hair, which celebrated hippie values and earned its notoriety as much for its nudity as for its use of rock music and its controversial themes. It addressed topics (race, sexual liberation, youth culture) that were unheard of at the time. This illustrated authorized history chronicles the musical’s beginnings from its off-Broadway roots in New York’s East Village in 1967 to its...

Hair: The Story of the Show that Defined a Generation

Speak the Speech!: Shakespeare's Monologues Illuminated

(2002)

Over 150 of the Bard's monologues are reprinted and explained for the aspiring actor or director in Speak the Speech! Shakespeare's Monologues Illuminated. The knowledgeable and breezy commentary ("Dial Lady M for Murder," reads one section heading) by acting coach Rhona Silverbush and playwright Sami Plotkin offers a brief context for each monologue, explains unfamiliar vocabulary and expressions, examines the relationship between mood and meter and even reminds readers what words to elide or ...

Speak the Speech!: Shakespeare's Monologues Illuminated

Avenue Q: The Book

(2006)

With its cast of furry puppets, its shockingly politically incorrect lyrics, and its hilarious upending of children’s television,Avenue Q took Broadway by storm. The New York Times declared it "a breakthrough musical," and after a two-year run, the Golden Theater is still selling out eight shows a week. Its success is not limited to the Great White Way, however: This summer, the cast will be swearing, drinking, and ennui-ing their way across the country. As smart, risqué, and downright en...

Irreverent Acting

(1992)

IRREVERENT ACTING is a CRAFT HANDBOOK offering a practical, applicable approach to acting, with very specific techniques used to create the emotional life of the character. The craftual process of "Obligation/Choice/Choice approach" is fully explained in terms of the actor's responsibilities to a piece of material whether it be a monologue, scene, play or film. This book contains 22 of Eric's 27 "choice approaches" and score of other techniques which make it possible for the actor to fulfill al...

Acting as a Business: Strategies for Success

(2009)

Since its original publication, Acting as a Business has earned a reputation as an indispensable tool for working and aspiring actors. Avoiding the usual advice about persistence and luck, Brian O’Neil provides clear-cut guidelines that will give actors a solid knowledge of the business behind their art. It’s packed with practical information–on everything from what to say in a cover letter to where to stand when performing in agent’s office–including: •How to craft a winning the...

Acting as a Business: Strategies for Success

Tips : Ideas for Actors

(2000)

Until recent times, acting wisdom was passed on through an oral tradition called "tips". Presented here are 250 tips, including the way to set a laugh, the use of opposites, a clear definition of "actions", how to use a "breath score", and even how to react if you're fired.

Writing The Broadway Musical [Paperback]

(2000)

A classic updated to include the developments of the 1990s-the first book to explore in detail how to create a Broadway musical Brimming with advice and techniques, this essential reference for book and song writers clearly explains the fundamentals of the three crafts of a musical-book, music, and lyrics. Using copious examples from classic shows, Frankel has created the quintessential musical writers' how-to. Among the topics: - Definitions of musical theater - Differences between musica...

Writing The Broadway Musical [Paperback]

Blackbird

(2007)

Fifteen years ago Una and Ray had a relationship. They haven't set eyes on each other since. Now, years later, she's found him again... --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

The Lee Strasberg Notes [Paperback]

(2010)

The Lee Strasberg Notes reproduces the original teachings of a unique voice in actor training, for the very first time. It is a stunning document in the history and ongoing practice of Strasberg’s Method. Compiled and edited by Lola Cohen, the book is based on unpublished transcripts of Strasberg’s own classes on acting, directing and Shakespeare. It recreates his theoretical approach, as well as the practical exercises used by his students, and brilliantly conveys his approach and perso...

The Moving Body: Teaching Creative Theatre [Paperback]

(2002)

In The Moving Body, translated into English for the first time, Lecoq shares his unique philosophy of performance, improvisation, masks, movement, and gesture. Neutral mask, character masks and counter-masks, bouffons, acrobatics, commedia, clowns: all the famous Lecoq techniques are include here. The Moving Body is the written legacy of a great theatrical imagination.

The Moving Body: Teaching Creative Theatre [Paperback]

Frozen

(2004)

One evening, ten-year-old Rhona goes missing. Her mother, Nancy, retreats into a state of frozen hope. Agnetha, an academic, comes to England to research a thesis entitled "Serial Killings: A Forgivable Act?" Then there's Ralph, a loner with a bit of a record who's looking for some distraction . . . Drawn together by horrific circumstances, these three embark upon a long, dark journey that finally curves upward into the light.

Freeing Shakespeare's Voice: The Actor's Guide to Talking the Text

(1993)

A practical approach to breaking through the barriers of restraint and incomprehension when faced with Shakespeare. Pre-eminent voice teacher, actor and director Kristin Linklater goes beyond the techniques in her classic text, Freeing the Natural Voice, to a passionate exploration of the words of Shakespeare. Beginning with exercises designed to break long-held habits and allow the development of a visceral, Elizabethan relationship to language, she analyses Shakespeare's strategies for ...

Freeing Shakespeare's Voice: The Actor's Guide to Talking the Text

Truth: Personas, Needs, and Flaws in The Art of Building Actors and Creating Characters

(2007)

Stanislavski, Strasberg, Meisner, Adler, Berghoff, Hagen, Mamet...now Batson. Like all great performers, Nicole Kidman approached her role in The Hours as a creative collaboration. Kidman knew that portraying Virginia Woolf on screen required a truth that she as the actor and Woolf as the character shared. Enter acting "alchemist" and "technician of the spirit" (The New Yorker) Susan Batson. Batson's process gave Kidman the tools to find that truth and honed her performance from the inside out...

Truth: Personas, Needs, and Flaws in The Art of Building Actors and Creating Characte

Tips: Ideas for Directors

(2002)

Until very recently, directing wisdom was passed on in the form of "tips". Continuing this tradition, you will find them ranging from the way set a scene to directing the actor on the way to laugh. The tips are clear, concise, evocative, and constructed to give you a better day in rehearsal and performance. A buffet of ways to improve immediately that you'll refer to over and over again!

My Name Is Rachel Corrie

(2007)

I have been in Palestine for two weeks and one hour now, and I still have very few words to describe what I see. I don’t know if many of the children here have ever existed without tank-shell holes in their walls. You just can’t imagine it unless you see it. And even then your experience is not at all the reality . . . [due to] the fact that I have money to buy water when the army destroys wells, and of course, the fact that I have the option of leaving. I am allowed to see the ocean.—Rac...

Acting Class: Take a Seat

(2008)

Previously only available to Katselas' students at the prestigious Beverly Hills Playhouse, Acting Class presents the concepts and methods that have helped lead a generation of actors to success on stage, in cinema, and on television. Now for the first time, this all-encompassing book is available to the general public, taking readers and sitting them in the legendary acting class of Milton Katselas, where he not only covers techniques and methods, but also includes valuable discussions on the ...

The Two Noble Kinsmen

(2002)

Part of "The New Penguin Shakespeare" series, this text looks at "The Two Noble Kinsmen" with an introduction, a list of further reading, commentary and a short account of the textual problems of the play. The series is used and recommended by the Royal Shakespeare Company. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Auditioning: An Actor-Friendly Guide

(2001)

Experienced acting teacher and casting director Merlin, who has worked with such luminaries as James Ivory, Bernardo Bertolucci, and Stephen Sondheim, provides comprehensive instruction here on how actors can improve their auditions. The author's writing style is friendly and straightforward while still being technically focused. She takes a variety of dramatic scenes and breaks them down to show how an actor can use a short section of a play to make a big impression. She includes special advic...

Lysistrata

(2007)

Aristophanes' great anti-war drama, with comedic overtones, glorifies the power of fertility in the face of destruction. Plays for Performance Series.

You Can Act!: A Complete Guide for Actors

(2009)

What do Halle Berry, Jamie Kennedy, Keanu Reeves, Sean Penn, Dustin Hoffman and Robert DeNiro have in common? They were all coached by or participated in seminars with D. W. Brown master acting teacher. The definitive nature of this book and its extensive compendium of reference information make it an invaluable manual every actor should keep close at hand.

You Can Act!: A Complete Guide for Actors

The History of Troilus and Cressida

(2005)

In Troy, there lies the scene. From isles of Greece The princes orgillous, their high blood chaf'd, Have to the port of Athens sent their ships Fraught with the ministers and instruments Of cruel war. Sixty and nine that wore Their crownets regal from th' Athenian bay Put forth toward Phrygia; and their vow is made To ransack Troy, within whose strong immures The ravish'd Helen, Menelaus' queen, With wanton Paris sleeps-and that's the quarrel. To Tenedos they come, And the deep-drawing barks do...

Jitney

(2003)

Set in the 1970s in Pittsburgh’s Hill District, and depicting gypsy cabdrivers who serve black neighborhoods, Jitney is the seventh in Wilson’s projected 10-play cycle (one for each decade) on the black experience in twentieth-century America. A thoroughly revised version of a play Wilson first wrote in 1979, Jitney was produced in New York for the first time in spring 2000, winning rave reviews and the accolade of the New York Drama Critics Circle as the best play of the year. One of cont...

Strike Up the Band: A New History of Musical Theatre

(2006)

The way some histories portray the advent of musicals, you'd think the genre emerged fully formed with Show Boat. Yet in truth, it took root decades earlier. In Strike Up the Band Scott Miller tells the whole story of musicals, pulling back the curtain on the amazing innovation and adventurousness of the art form, revealing its political and social conscience, and chronicling its incredibly rapid evolution over the last century. Strike Up the Band focuses not only on what happened on stage b...

Strike Up the Band: A New History of Musical Theatre

A Night at the Opera: An Irreverent Guide to The Plots, The Singers, The Composers, The Recordings

(1998)

The author, a former deputy chairman of the Royal Opera House, may well become the Anna Russell of print with this irreverent guide to plots, singers, composers, and recordings of more than 80 operas. Forman's criteria for selection is that of recorded popularity--the opera must have had three or more versions listed in the Gramophone CD catalog of December 1992. Operas are alphabetically arranged from the backstage tragedy Adriana Lecouvreur to the psychiatric tragedy, Wozzeck. All are descri...

A Night at the Opera: An Irreverent Guide to The Plots, The Singers, The Composers, T

A Woman of No Importance

(1996)

A Woman of No Importance is a play by Irish playwright Oscar Wilde. The play premièred on 19 April 1893 at London's Haymarket Theatre. It is a testimony of Wilde's wit and his brand of dark comedy. It looks in particular at English upper class society and has been reproduced on stages in Europe and North America since his death in 1900. A film based on this play is in production and is due to be released in 2011.

Fine on Acting: A Vision of the Craft

(2009)

Heralded as "Best Acting Teacher in LA" by Back Stage magazine, Hollywood’s most sought after acting teacher Howard Fine reveals the winning technique that has garnered his students international acclaim and the industry’s highest honors in his astonishing book FINE ON ACTING. During his twenty-five years as a teacher and director, Fine has developed a technique that is both useful and exciting. Emmy Award®-winning actor Michael Chiklis (THE SHIELD, FANTASTIC FOUR) writes in the foreword f...

View all Videos

Tickets From $58

Tickets From $80

Tickets From $67

Tickets From $59