Labors Lost: Women's Work and the Early Modern English Stage - by Natasha Korda
Labors Lost offers a fascinating and wide-ranging account of working women's behind-the-scenes and hitherto unacknowledged contributions to theatrical production in Shakespeare's time. Natasha Korda reveals that the purportedly all-male professional stage relied on the labor, wares, ingenuity, and capital of women of all stripes, including ordinary crafts- and tradeswomen who supplied costumes, props, and comestibles; wealthy heiresses and widows who provided much-needed capital and credit; wives, daughters, and widows of theater people who worked actively alongside their male kin; and immigrant women who fueled the fashion-driven stage with a range of newfangled skills and commodities.
Combining archival research on these and other women who worked in and around the playhouses with revisionist readings of canonical and lesser-known plays, Labors Lost retrieves this lost history by detailing the diverse ways women participated in the work of playing, and the ways male players and playwrights in turn helped to shape the cultural meanings of women's work. Far from a marginal phenomenon, the gendered division of theatrical labor was crucial to the rise of the commercial theaters in London and had an influence on the material culture of the stage and the dramatic works of Shakespeare and his contemporaries.
On December 2, 2025, Penguin Workshop will publish DOLLY PARTON’S BILLY THE KID DANCES HIS HEART OUT, the third standalone children’s picture book in Parton’s bestselling series featuring French bulldog, her god-dog, Billy the Kid.
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GHOSTLIGHT RECORDS has released the new EP from Tony Award winner and Grammy Award nominee Lena Hall, Songs from Your Friends & Neighbors. Listen here!
Gypsy: 2024 Broadway Cast Recording – starring six-time Tony Award winner Audra McDonald – will be released. BroadwayWorld has your exclusive first listen to “All I Need Is the Girl” performed by Kevin Csolak here!
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Jeffrey Seller, the Tony Award-winning producer behind Hamilton, Rent, Avenue Q, and In the Heights is releasing his new memoir Theater Kid—and he's taking it on the road. Learn more about upcoming events.
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In celebration of DRAG: The Musical’s dynamite off-Broadway run at New World Stages, the team behind the show will release ‘DRAG: The Musical LIVE (The Cast Recording)’ on April 25th.
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Theatre Communications Group will publish Stereophonic by David Adjmi, featuring original songs by Will Butler of Arcade Fire. Learn more about Stereophonic here!
To celebrate Record Store Day 2025, multi-platinum artist and songwriter Sam Smith will release a very special recording of their acclaimed BBC Proms performance from London’s iconic Royal Albert Hall on 2xLP vinyl on April 12th.
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Craft Recordings will reissue six records from Original Jazz Classics, including newly remastered editions of Bill Evans’ Interplay and Moon Beams, Lee Morgan’s Here’s Lee Morgan, and more.
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Sutton Foster, Michael Urie, Daniel Breaker, Will Chase, Ana Gasteyer, and Nikki Renée Daniels will appear at The Museum of Broadway on April 22nd to perform a few selections from the Once Upon a Mattress cast recording and to sign CDs.
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Frank Wildhorn’s Your Lie in April: The Musical (Original London Cast Recording) will available in streaming and digital formats Friday, April 4. BroadwayWorld has your exclusive first listen to '4.9 (Speed of Sound)' from the album here!
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The book—like the documentary—describes how the first scrappy local production of Godspell launched the careers of Eugene Levy, Martin Short, Gilda Radner, Victor Garber, Paul Shaffer, Andrea Martin, and Dave Thomas.