Biographies, show books, musical scores, history, and must-read theatre books.
A collection of eleven short plays from 1989. Includes: "The AuthorÕs Voice" - Richard Greenberg; "San Antonio Sunset" - Willy Holtzman; "There Is No John Garfield" - Ernest A. Joselovitz; "The Mask of Hiroshima" - Ernest Ferlita; "Penguin Blues" - Ethan Phillips; "Haiku" - Katherine Snodgrass; "Chemical Reactions" - Andrew Foster; "Dolores" - Edward Allan Baker; "April Snow" - Romulus Linney; "Trout" - William R. Lewis; "A Poster of the Cosmos" - Lanford Wilson.
To those for whom the monologue has always been synonymous with terror, The Monologue Workshop will prove an indispensable ally. Jack PoggiÕs new book answers the long-felt need among actors for top-notch guidance in finding, rehearsing, and performing monologues. For those who find themselves groping for a speech just hours before their "big break," this book is their guide to salvation. The Monologue Workshop supplies the tools to discover new pieces before they become over-familiar, excavat...
Over one-hundred and thirty great scenes erupt from page to stage in this addition to the Applause Acting Series. Each scene has been selected as a freestanding dramatic unit offering two actors a wide range of theatrical challenge and opportunity. Each scene is set up with a synopsis of the play, character descriptions and notes on how to propel the scene to full power outside the context of the play. DUO! offers a full spectrum of age, region, genre, character, level of difficulty, and non-tra...
The voices of five major playwrights offering a vibrant range of styles and themes can be heard here as they resound from the stage of The WomenÕs Project. Cassandra Medley - Ma Rose; Lavonne Mueller - Five in the Killing Zone; Marlane Meyer - Etta Jenks; Maria Irene Forenes - Abingdon Square; Sally Nemeth - Mill Fire.
Boisterous and unrestrained like the age itself, the Elizabethan theatre has long defended its place at the apex of English dramatic history. Shakespeare was but the brightest star in this extraordinary galaxy of playwrights. The stage boasted a rich and varied repertoire from courtly and romantic comedy to domestic and high tragedy, melodrama, farce, and histories. The Gassner-Green anthology revives the whole range of this universal stage, offering us the unbounded theatrical inventiveness of ...
Collected here for the first time are plays - many of which have been unavailable for decades - which pronounce a black American struggle for freedom, advancement and equality from the days of slavery to the era of civil rights. Includes: Emperor of Haiti by Langston Hughes; Nat Turner by Randolph Edmonds; In Splendid Error by William Branch; Harriet Tubman by May Miller; Paul Robeson by Phillip Hayes Dean; I, Marcus Garvey by Edgar White; and Roads of the Mountain Top by Roy Milner.
Pip Broughton has translated the play for The Old Vic with reverence for Brecht, an understanding of the social relationships in the play and last but not least with a fine feeling for the language.
"Love? What does love mean in this fearsome drama? Not much that is affirmative. Not much to heat the heart of a sentimental spectator. It signifies a passion that amounts to illness, an alternately aching and frantic desire that cannot be slaked. The three characters who love strive to conquer love by straining their will power to its elastic limits.And what does loved mean here? Not the ecstasy of glowing with selflessness and basking in another's affection, but a tormenting burden that cannot...
Includes: Rachel Crothers: A ManÕs World ¥ Susan Glaspell: Trifles ¥ Georgia Douglas Johnson: Plumes ¥ Sophie Treadwell: Machinal ¥ Zona Gale: Miss Lulu Bett.
A translation of four great Spanish dramas: Calderon de la Barca - Life is a Dream; Miguel de Cervantes - Siege of Numantia; Lope de Vega - Fuente Ovejuna - Tirso de Molina - The Trickster of Seville.
All the farces of RussiaÕs greatest dramatist are rendered here in the classic lively translations which audiences and scholars alike applaud on the stage and in the classroom. The blustering, stuttering eloquence of ChekhovÕs unlikely heroes has endured to shape the voice of contemporary theatre. This volume presents seven minor masterpieces: Harmfulness of Tobacco, Swan Song, The Brute, Marriage Proposal, Summer in the Country, A Wedding, The Celebration.
Rich anthologies of dramatic art and critical insight - varied, stimulating, broad in its view and deep in its perceptions...exciting variety of translations...enlightening essays from some of the most stiumlating minds of the century.- Leonard C. Pronko, author, Theatre East and West, Chair, Dept. of Theatre, Pomona College Includes: Aristophanes: Lysistrata, translated by Donald Sutherland; The Birds, translated by Walter Kerr; Menander: The Grouch, translated by Sheila DÕAtri; Plautus: Th...
The rich tapestry of medieval belief, morality, and manners, shines through this comprehensive anthology of the twenty-four major plays that bridge the dramatic worlds of medieval and Tudor England. Here are the plays that paved the way to the Renaissance and Shakespeare. In John GassnerÕs extensively annotated collection, the plays regain their timeless appeal and display their truly international character and influence. Medieval and Tudor Drama remains the indispensable chronicle of a drama...
Nothing square about this place. Dreams and fears come in every size and shape as they take their places in John-Michael Williams' arresting new play. No scenery, no elaborate props; Senior Square is set in the human heart, and bursts with humor, wit and a warm understanding of a generation coming of age. Thirteen high school students stand at the crossroads of senior year. Where have they come from and where are they going? Easy to produce and delightful to direct, Senior Square offers challeng...
In one of Moliere's most popular plays, Scapin, that monarch of con men, puts his store of ingenuity to work, getting two lovesick young men married to the girls they pine for and, along the way, taking revenge on their grasping old fathers. Closed down after its first, highly successful run because of opposition from powerful enemies of the playwright, Don Juan was performed in a bowdlerized version for almost two hundred years, until actors, directors and critics restored the original text, re...
Harpagon, the most desperate, scheming miser in literature, starves his servants, declines to pay them, cheats his own children if he can save (or make) a few coins, and when his hoard of gold disappears, insanely accuses himself of being the thief. Dandin, in this rousing classic, not previously available in English for sixty years, is a man in a plight that everybody but him will find entertaining.
Your one-stop classical workshop! At last, over 175 of ShakespeareÕs finest and most performable monologues taken from all thirty-seven plays are here in two easy-to-use volumes (Men and Women). Selections travel the entire spectrum of the great dramatistÕs vision, from comedies, wit and romances, to tragedies, pathos and histories. Soliloquy! is an excellent and comprehensive collection of ShakespeareÕs speeches. Not only are the monologues wide-ranging and varied, but they are superbly ann...
This collection of 75 solo speeches and performance pieces for actors has been selected from the finest material being written today for theatre in America and England. For the reader who wants to know and for the artist who must know, SOLO! presents dramatic monologues on the cutting edge. All selections include acting notes along with the quick and easy guide to the art of auditioning.
Sophocles, Holderlin, Brecht, Malina - four major figures in the world's theatre - have all left their imprint on this remarkable dramatic text. Friedrich Holderlin translated Sophocles into German, Brecht adapted Holderlin, and now Judith Malina has rendered Brecht's version into a stunning English incarnation. Available for the first time in English.
The English Channel, the United States Government, Hitler, cancer - these are a few of the obstacles which these extraordinary women hurdle on their way to ticker tape parades, prison cells and anonymous fates. These are not theatrical accolades to daring public feats; the inner frontiers we learn, are the most treacherous to navigate. So these figures are not statues in the park being polished for public view. And not "heroines" in a male melodrama, but heroes in their own right, and in their o...
An anthology of four classic Italian plays edited by Eric Bentley. Also includes directorial and technical notes.
The complete play scripts to: The Misanthrope by Moliere, English version by Richard Wilbur; Phaedra by Racine, English version by Robert Lowell; The Cid by Corneille, English version by James Schevill; and FigaroÕs Marriage by Beaumarchais, English version by Jacques Barzun.
Five great forces - Checkhov, Hauptmann, Ibsen, Strindberg and Zola - dramatists whose work define, embrace and transcend the trends and genres of the modern stage, meet here in this extraordinary exhibition of their sustained and sustaining power in todayÕs theatre.
"These are sharp, tightly constructed pieces with small casts, as readable as they are actable - just the sort of thing community players and other small ensembles will find practical." - Booklist
It is virtually impossible to discuss modern acting or actor training without first mentioning the Russian thoerist and director Konstantin Stanislavsky. Complete in one volume, Mel Gordon explores the actor training systems of Stanislavsky and his two most important disciples, Evgeni Vakhtangov and Michael Chekhov, tracing the major teachings and refinements over the first 50 years of use by actors. Gordon reconstructs the actual exercises taught at the Moscow Art Theatre and various Russian ac...
A Spanish Romeo and Juliet, Celestina was published in 1499 and became Spain's first-ever bestseller. Readers thrilled to the salty character of Celestina and her world of prostitutes and black magic even as they mourned the fate of Calisto and Melibea, the young lovers she unites using her wiles as a seller of perfumes and potions. Fernando de Rojas's exhilarating mix of street wit, obscenity, and cultured rhetoric mark Celestina as a masterpiece: an original, explosive, genre-defying work tha...
The complete scripts to six Sam Shepard plays: The Unseen Hand ¥ Forensic and the Navigators ¥ The Holy Ghostly ¥ Back Bog Beast Bait ¥ Shaved Splits ¥ 4-H Club.
Book by Burt Shevelove and Larry GelbartIntroduction by Larry Gelbart"This brazenly retro Broadway musical, inspired by Plautus, is as timeless as comedy itself." - Vincent Canby, The New York Times * "The most urbane and literate musical comedy text ever conceived." - John Simon, New York Magazine
This class introduces you to the five subtext exercises that are the heart of the David Craig teachings. As with the entire series, this tape involves you in every stage of performance technique. Having done these exercises, you will have the foundation to transform any song into a memorable audition. 90 minutes.
This lecture series introduces you to the world of the musical theatre as seen through the eyes, style and performance techniques of David Craig. Covers music, lyrics and phrasing, and includes a 40-page study guide. 90 minutes.
Applause is proud to continue the series that for over sixty years has been the standard of excellence for one-act plays in America. Our new editor Barbara Parisi has selected the following 15 plays: The Other Woman, by David Ives; The Hunchback of Central Park West, by Murray Schisgal; Props, by Michael Roderick; It's a ... Baby, by Cara Restaino; Kong by Pamela Sneed; Love on the B-Line, by Adam Kraar; The Mysteries of the Castle, by James Armstrong; Crab Cakes, by Joan Lipkin; Small Things, b...
Stanislavski's simple exercises fire the imagination, and help readers not only discover their own conception of reality but how to reproduce it as well.
6 working actors describe their methods and philosophies of the theater. All have worked with playwright David Mamet at the Goodman Theater in Chicago.
Chosen as the best play of the year by over 10 newspapers and magazines, Doubt is set in a Bronx Catholic school in 1964, where a strong-minded woman wrestles with conscience and uncertainty as she is faced with concerns about one of her male colleagues. This new play by John Patrick Shanley-the Bronx-born-and-bred playwright and Academy Award-winning author of Moonstruck-dramatizes issues straight from today's headlines within a world re-created with knowing detail and a judicious eye. (Source...
Michael Shurtleff has been casting director for Broadway shows like Chicago and Becket and for films like The Graduate and Jesus Christ Superstar. His legendary course on auditioning has launched hundreds of successful careers. Now in this book he tells the all-important HOW for all aspiring actors, from the beginning student of acting to the proven talent trying out for that chance-in-a-million role!
There is no subject on which more dangerous nonsense is talked and thought than marriage. If the mischief stopped at talking and thinking it would be bad enough; but it goes further, into disastrous anarchical action. Because our marriage law is inhuman and unreasonable to the point of downright abomination, the bolder and more rebellious spirits form illicit unions, defiantly sending cards round to their friends announcing what they have done. Young women come to me and ask me whether I think t...
This Prestwick House Literary Touchstone Edition includes a glossary and notes to help the modern reader contend with Ibsen's approach to complex human interactions and the relationship between the sexes. Norwegian-born Henrik Ibsen's classic play about the struggle between independence and security still resonates with readers and audience members today. Often hailed as an early feminist work, the story of Nora and Torvald rises above simple gender issues to ask the bigger question: To what ext...
Adult/High School-Twenty-five-year-old Catherine, who sacrificed college to care for her mentally ill father (once a brilliant, much-admired mathematician), is left in a kind of limbo after his death. Socially awkward and a bit of a shut-in, she is gruff with Hal, a former student who shows up even before the funeral wanting to root through the countless notebooks her father kept in the years of his decline, hoping to find mathematical gold. On the heels of his arrival comes Claire, Catherine's ...
This guide to playreading for students and practitioners of both theater and literature complements, rather then contradicts or repeats, traditional methods of literary analysis of scripts. Ball developed his method during his work as Literary Director at the Guthrie Theater, building his guide on the crafts playwrights of every period and style use to make their plays stageworthy. The text is full of tools for students and practitioners to use as they investigate plot, character, theme, expo...
4 plays about an existential portrayal of Hell, the reworking of the Electra-Orestes story, the conflict of a young intellectual torn between theory and conflict and an arresting attack on American racism.
Caesar and Cleopatra, a play written in 1898 by George Bernard Shaw, was first staged in 1901 and first published with Captain Brassbound's Conversion and The Devil's Disciple in his 1901 collection, Three Plays for Puritans. It was first performed at Newcastle-on-Tyne on March 15, 1899. The first London production was at the Savoy Theatre in 1907. The famous scene in which Cleopatra, concealed in a rolled-up carpet, is smuggled into Caesar's presence was credited by Otto Skorzeny as the inspi...
Moises Kaufman and his Tectonic Theater Project have written a play documenting the aftermath of the savage killing of Matthew Shepard, including the perspectives of both friends and strangers: The Laramie Project. This innovative theatrical composition, structured not in scenes, but in "moments," addresses the various issues relating to the tragedy of Shepard, a young gay man whose murder has since become a symbol for America's struggle against intolerance. Kaufman's approach is actor-based, as...
In her introduction to Respect for Acting, actress and teacher Uta Hagen talks about a time when she herself had no respect for the art of acting. "I used to accept opinions such as: 'You're just born to be an actor'; 'Actors don't really know what they're doing on stage'; 'Acting is just instinct--it can't be taught.'" But this attitude of "you got it or you don't" is fundamentally one that denigrates the craft, as she points out. Great actors do not perform effortlessly, or merely through lear...
Romeo and Juliet is a Tragedy written by English playwright William Shakespeare, who is widely considered to be the greatest writer of the English language. Romeo and Juliet is a play about star-crossed teenage lovers from two prominent familes that are at war against one another. Romeo and Juliet is an important work of William Shakespeares, and is highly recommended for fans of his works as well as those discovering his plays for the first time.
When it was first produced in 1959, A Raisin in the Sun was awarded the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for that season and hailed as a watershed in American drama. A pioneering work by an African-American playwright, the play was a radically new representation of black life.
The Tragedy of Macbeth (commonly called Macbeth) is a play by William Shakespeare about a regicide and its aftermath. It is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy and is believed to have been written sometime between 1603 and 1607. The earliest account of a performance of what was probably Shakespeare's play is April 1611, when Simon Forman recorded seeing such a play at the Globe Theatre. It was first published in the Folio of 1623, possibly from a prompt book for a specific performance. Shakespeare'...
Many consider the tragedy of "Hamlet" to be Shakespeare's masterpiece and one of the greatest plays of all time. It has entertained audiences for centuries and the role of Hamlet is one of the most sought after by actors. It is the story of Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark who learns of the death of his father at the hands of his uncle, Claudius. Claudius murders Hamlet's father, his own brother, to take the throne of Denmark and to marry Hamlet's widowed mother. Hamlet is sunk into a state of grea...
One of Shakespeare’s later plays, best described as a tragic-comedy, the play falls into two distinct parts. In the first Leontes is thrown into a jealous rage by his suspicions of his wife Hermione and his best-friend, and imprisons her and orders that her new born daughter be left to perish. The second half is a pastoral comedy with the “lost” daughter Perdita having been rescued by shepherds and now in love with a young prince. The play ends with former lovers and friends reunited after...
Filled with detailed explanations, captivating illustrations, and entertaining trivia, this clearly written, lively, and uniquely-designed book is a first-of-its-kind introduction to the world of the Theatre, from the box office to backstage, and beyond. From one side of the book, the reader enters via the front door, where the people and activities of the "front of house" can be examined. From the book's other side, the reader enters the "Stage Door," where the behind-the-scenes world of the "B...
The title is coy, if not downright misleading. Directing is only one of several issues the venerable director-dramatist discusses in fascinating, detailed dissections of Gypsy and, to a lesser extent, West Side Story (a few other musicals get inspected, too), by someone who should know of what he writes. Laurents wrote the books for both Gypsy and WSS, and directed, late in life (he is 90), a highly praised, hit revival of the former. (Even as this is written, he is directing a bilingual WSS ope...
