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Broadway Bookshelf

Biographies, show books, musical scores, history, and must-read theatre books.
Biographies Show Books Autobiography For Actors Musical Scores Reference Books History

Readers Theatre: What It is and How to Stage It (1995)

A complete guide to Reader's Theatre--what it is and how to stage it--including four award-winning scripts by Charles LaBorde, Jo Davidsmeyer, Caroline E. Wood, and Robert Hawkins. (Performing Arts)
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Così è (se vi pare) (1980)

osì è (se vi pare) (English: Right you are (if you think so)) is an Italian drama by Luigi Pirandello. It premiered 18 June 1917 in Milan.
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Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore (1993)

Six Characters in Search of an Author (Italian: Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore) is a play by the Italian writer Luigi Pirandello. The play is a satirical tragicomedy. It was first performed in 1921 at the Teatro Valle in Rome, to a very mixed reception, with shouts from the audience of "Manicomio!" ("Madhouse!"). Subsequently the play enjoyed a much better reception. This improved reception was helped in 1925 when, with the third edition of the play, Pirandello provided a foreword clarifying...
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Black Magic: A Pictorial History of the African-American in the Performing Arts (1990)

Black Magic Langston Hughes's last book, presents the vast, sweeping story of African-American entertainers--the artists and the musicians, the singers and the dancers, the obscure and the illustrious--from the tragic beginnings in slavery to he triumphant artistic achievements of the late 1960s. Long considered the most comprehensive history of African-Americans in the performing arts, this milestone in black history features hundreds of rare and beautiful illustrations. Covering both the obst...
Black Magic: A Pictorial History of the African-American in the Performing Arts Cover
Scriptwork: A Director's Approach to New Play Development (1995)

Despite the popular myth that plays arrive at the theater fully formed and ready for production, the truth is that for centuries, most scripts have been developed through a collaborative process in rehearsal and in concert with other theater artists. David Kahn and Donna Breed provide the first codified approach to this time-honored method of play development, with a flexible methodology that takes into account differing environments and various stages of formation. Directors can use this un...
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Learning Through Drama: Report of the Schools Council Drama, Teaching Project (1977)

A guide to teaching drama. It stresses the place of drama in the school curriculum and makes detailed recommendations both on the organization and on the content of drama teaching.
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Inwardness and Theater in the English Renaissance (1995)

Katharine Eisaman Maus explores Renaissance writers' uneasy preoccupation with the inwardness and invisibility of truth. The perceived discrepancy between a person's outward appearance and inward disposition, she argues, deeply influenced the ways English Renaissance dramatists and poets conceived of the theater, imagined dramatic characters, and reflected upon their own creativity.
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Black Theatre and Performance: A Pan-African Bibliography (1990)

"This important work contains just short of 4,000 citations to monographs, chapters in monographs, journal articles, dissertations, audio tapes, video tapes, and reviews. Drawn American and Western European as well as African imprints. The main body of the work is divided into three sections: `Cultural History and the Arts,' `African Theatre,' and `Black Theatre and Performance in the Diaspora.' . . . Because of its arrangement, it is an easy bibliography to browse. Four separate indexes (artist...
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Action Art: A Bibliography of Artists' Performance from Futurism to Fluxus and Beyond (1993)

This comprehensive international bibliography is the first to attempt documentation of this diverse field, covering the history of "Artist's Performance." It focuses on its early twentieth-century antecedents in such movements as Futurism, Dada, Russian Constructivism, and the Bauhaus as well as its peak period in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s with such developments as Gutai, Fluxus, Viennese Actionism, Situationism, and Guerrilla Art Action. Major emphasis is also given to sources on 115 individu...
Action Art: A Bibliography of Artists' Performance from Futurism to Fluxus and Beyond Cover
Polly: an opera (1922)

Trapes. There it is now! Whoever heard a man of fortune in England talk of the necessaries of life? If the necessaries of life would have satisfy'd such a poor body as me, to be sure I had never come to mend my fortune to the Plantations. Whether we can afford it or no, we must have superfluities. We never stint our Expence to our own fortunes, but are miserable, if we do not live up to the profuseness of our neighbours.
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All For Love: A Tragedy (207)

Although John Dryden the poet is best known for his alexandrine epics, John Dryden the playwright is most honored for this blank verse tragedy. The summit of Dryden's dramatic art, All For Love (1677) is a spectacle of passion as felt, feared, and disputed in the suspicious years following the English Civil War.
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Politics and the Arts (1968)

This excellent translation makes available a classic work central to one of the most interesting controversies of the eighteenth century: the quarrel between Rousseau and Voltaire. Besides containing some of the most sensitive literary criticism ever written (especially of Molière), the book is an excellent introduction to the principles of classical political thought. It demonstrates the paradoxes of Rousseau's though and clearly displays the temperament that led him to repudiate the hopes of ...
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The Blacks: A Clown Show (1994)

'One evening,' wrote Jean Genet in a prefatory note to The Blacks, 'an actor asked me to write a play for an all-black cast. But what exactly is a black? First of all, what's his colour?' - which is, perhaps, as good an introduction as any to this immensely interesting and exciting play. Translated by Bernard Frechtman, The Blacks is another striking example of the intensity, the depth and the complete originality that was Genet's view of life
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The Difficulty Of Being (1995)

Writer, filmmaker, visual artist, and celebrated leader of the French avant-garde, Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) once announced, "One must know how to go too far." The astounding scope of his work stands as a testament to that revolutionary spirit. Throughout his life he boldly experimented in almost every medium and achieved enduring success in them all: novels like Les Enfants Terribles; films such as The Blood of a Poet, Beauty and the Beast, and Orphee; as well as plays, ballets, drawings, poem...
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Ghosts and Other Plays (1964)

The plays in this volume focus on the family and how it struggles to stay together by telling lies - and exposing them. In "Ghosts", Osvald Alving returns home only to discover the truth about the father he always looked up to, and learns the horrific effect his father's debauchery has had on him. It was Ibsen's most provocative drama, stripping away the surface of a middle-class family to expose layers of hypocrisy and immorality. "A Public Enemy" sets two brothers against each other when one w...
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The Feast At Solhoug (208)

Henrik Ibsen's "The Feast at Solhoug" is set at the annual feast to celebrate the wedding anniversary of Margit and Bengt Guateson. Knut Gesling, the King's sheriff, comes prior to the feast to ask for Margit's approval for marrying her sister, Signe. Knowing that Knut can be a brutal and violent man, Margit gives her permission on the condition that Knut can demonstrate he can be peaceful for a period of one year. In typical Ibsen fashion, anything but a peaceful outcome ensues. Written in 1855...
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Other Places: Three Plays (1994)

Book jacket/back: When this triptich of new plays by Harold Pinter opened in London in October 1982 it was celebrated by critics and audiences alike as an electrifying theatrical event that confirmed once again the author's undisputed place in the forefront of today's dramatists. "The first two plays in 'Other Places' are strange, comic, ansd fascinating, but you would know they were Pinter if you met them in yoru dreams. However, the third play, 'A Kind of Alaska,' (which strikes me on ins...
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Max: A Play (1972)

A play that satirizes the political confusions of both youthful activists and middle-aged believers in gradual reform. Translated by A. Leslie Willson and Ralph Manheim. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book.
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The Collected Plays (1995)

A reissue of a volume of Graham Greene's eight plays: "The Return of A.J. Raffles", "Carving a Statue", "The Complaisant Lover", "The Living Room", "The Potting Shed", "Yes and No", "For Whom the Bell Chimes" and "The Great Jowett".
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You Never Can Tell (1981)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ACT III The Clandons' sitting room in the hotel. An expensive apartment on the ground floor, with a French window leading to the gardens. In the centre of the room is a substantial table, surrounded by chairs, and draped with a maroon cloth on which opulently bound hotel and railway guides are displayed. A visitor e...
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Back to Methuselah: A Metabiological Pentateuch (1988)

"Back to Methuselah" (A Metabiological Pentateuch) is a 1921 series of five plays and a preface by George Bernard Shaw. The five plays are: "In the Beginning: B.C. 4004" (In the Garden of Eden); "The Gospel of the Brothers Barnabas: Present Day"; "The Thing Happens: A.D. 2170"; "Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman: A.D. 3000"; and, "As Far as Thought Can Reach: A.D. 31,920". The plays were published with a preface titled The Infidel Half Century, and first performed in 1922 by the New York Theatre ...
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Selected Plays (1978)

Francis Russell O'Hara (March 27, 1926 – July 25, 1966) was an American writer, poet and art critic. He was a member of the New York School of poetry.
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Four Puppet Plays: Play without a Title, The Divan Poems and Other Poems, Prose Poems, and Dramatic Pieces (1990)

From Lorca's prologue to a puppet play: 'This is not the first time that I, the drunken puppet who marries Dona Rosita, leaves the hand of Federico Garcia Lorca on the stage, where I live and never die. The first time was in the house of this poet- remember that, Federico? It was spring in Granada, and the drawing rooom of your house was full of children who were saying: ' the puppets are flesh and bone, so how come they remain children and never grow up?' The famous Manuel de Falla was at the ...
Four Puppet Plays: Play without a Title, The Divan Poems and Other Poems, Prose Poems Cover
Mariana Pineda (1984)

Una joven granadina es encarcelada en 1831 por haber mandado bordar la bandera que servira de insignia a una insurreccion liberal. Le prometen la libertad si delata a los jefes de esta, pero, al negarse, es condenada a muerte y ejecutada.
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The Complete Plays of Frances Burney, 2 Volumes (1995)

In the plays, as in her novels, Burney satirizes the social conventions and pretensions of her day. The Witlings (1779), her first play, is a biting satire on the Bluestockings; it was never performed, however, for fear of a possible scandal. The violent, the grotesque, and the macabre also figure strongly in her writings. Contents Volume 1: The Comedies Introduction Chronology The Witlings (1778-80) Love and Fashion (1798-99) A Busy Day (1800-02) The Woman-Hater (1800-02) Volume 2: The Tragedie...
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Rhinoceros, And Other Plays (1994)

Presents three dramatic works by the contemporary French experimental playwright: The Leader, The Future Is in Eggs or It Takes all Sorts to Make a World, and Rhinoceros
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The Zoo Story and the Sandbox (1959)

The Zoo Story is American playwright Edward Albee's first play; written in 1958 and completed in just three weeks. It was originally titled Peter and Jerry. The play explores themes of isolation, loneliness, miscommunication as anathematization, social disparity and dehumanization in a commercial world. Initially the play was rejected by New York producers. Albee first had it staged in Europe, premiering in West Berlin at the Schiller Theater Werkstatt on September 28, 1959. In its first Ameri...
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Plays, Movies, and Critics (1994)

This exceptional collection explores the mutual concerns of dramatic theater, film, and those who comment on them. Plays, Movies, and Critics opens with an original play by Don DeLillo. In the form of an interview, DeLillo's short play works as a kind of paradigm of the theatrical or cinematic event and serves as a keynote for the volume. DeLillo's interview play is accompanied in this collection by interviews with theater director Roberta Levitow, Martin Scorsese, and film/theater critic Stan...
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Peter Brook: A Theatrical Casebook (1988)

Peter Stephen Paul Brook CH, CBE (born 21 March 1925) is an English theatre and film director and innovator, who has been based in France since the early 1970s.
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The Cabin: Reminiscence and Diversions (1993)

This pleasurable amalgam of travelogue and reminiscence explores Mamet's early years in Chicago and New York and his current life as a successful playwright.
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Some Freaks (1991)

A new collection of prose writings from the author of "Writing in Restaurants". Mamet discusses his parallel experience in cinema as screenwriter ("The Untouchables") and writer-director ("House of Games"). There are also pieces on being a Jew, politics, acting and Disneyland.
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Writing in Restaurants (1987)

The title of Mamet's first collection of essays and speeches certainly doesn't suggest the themes of commitment and excellence. Nevertheless, if a collection of 28 essays on a variety of topics can be said to have an overarching theme or themes, then surely commitment and excellence sound clearly. These essays, apparently written over a considerable span of years, treat topics ranging from radio drama through middle-class fashion trends to the Academy Awards and the use of amplification in theat...
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The Tricks of the Trade (1991)

When Dario Fo won the 1997 Nobel Prize for literature, establishments everywhere erupted in anger. Here was an anticlerical, obscene, communist clown receiving the world's top literary accolade. As this collection of his essays and lectures shows, Fo has such a unique vision that his mission as clown/playwright requires him to be all those other things. What's interesting about The Tricks of the Trade is not his politics, but the incredible amount of research he's done on 2,000 years' worth of ...
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My Life in Art (1987)

Written with the same warmth, liveliness and ability to re-create reality that made Stanislavski a great actor, his autobiography tells of his childhood in the world of Moscow's wealthy merchants, his successes and failures as an amateur actor, how he studied human beings, and developed what has come to be known as the "Stanislavski Method," how his group of dedicated amateurs became "perhaps the greatest acting group the world has ever known (Washington Post)," The Moscow Art Theatre.
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Creating A Role (1989)

This volume completes, with An Actor Prepares and Building a Character, the trilogy in which Stanislavski set down his life's accomplishment. Creating a Role describes the elaborate preparation that precedes actual performance. Stanislavski here relates the techniques he describes in his preceding books to analyzing specific plays and their roles.
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Glued to the Box: Television Criticism from the (1984)

Collection of the Australian-born writer's TV criticism published in the London 'Observer' during the period 1979-82. It is a paperback edition of a volume first published by Jonathan Cape in 1983. His earlier volumes of TV criticism are 'Visions Before Midnight' (1977 & 1981) and 'The Crystal Bucket' (1983). They were published in a single volume with a new introduction and index as 'Clive James on Television' (1991).
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New Theatre Quarterly 15 (Part 3) (1988)

New Theatre Quarterly provides a vital international forum where theatrical scholarship and practice can meet and where prevailing dramatic assumptions can be subjected to vigorous critical questioning. It shows that theatre history has a contemporary relevance, that theatre studies need a methodology and that theatre criticism needs a language. The journal publishes news, analysis and debate within the field of theatre studies.
New Theatre Quarterly 15 (Part 3) Cover
New Theatre Quarterly 14 (Part 2) (1988)

New Theatre Quarterly provides a vital international forum where theatrical scholarship and practice can meet and where prevailing dramatic assumptions can be subjected to vigorous critical questioning. It shows that theatre history has a contemporary relevance, that theatre studies need a methodology and that theatre criticism needs a language. The journal publishes news, analysis and debate within the field of theatre studies.
New Theatre Quarterly 14 (Part 2)  Cover
New Theatre Quarterly 13 (Part 1) (1988)

New Theatre Quarterly 13 (Part 1) Cover
New Theatre Quarterly 11 (Part 3) (1987)

New Theatre Quarterly provides a vital international forum where theatrical scholarship and practice can meet and where prevailing dramatic assumptions can be subjected to vigorous critical questioning. It shows that theatre history has a contemporary relevance, that theatre studies need a methodology and that theatre criticism needs a language. The journal publishes news, analysis and debate within the field of theatre studies.
New Theatre Quarterly 11 (Part 3) Cover
New Theatre Quarterly 10: Volume 3, Part 2 (1987)

One of a series discussing topics of interest in theatre studies from theoretical, methodological, philosophical and historical perspectives. The books are aimed at drama and theatre teachers, advanced students in schools and colleges, arts authorities, actors, playwrights, critics and directors.
New Theatre Quarterly 10: Volume 3, Part 2 Cover
New Theatre Quarterly 12 (Part 4) (1987)

One of a series discussing topics of interest in theatre studies from theoretical, methodological, philosophical and historical perspectives. The books are aimed at drama and theatre teachers, advanced students in schools and colleges, arts authorities, actors, playwrights, critics and directors. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
New Theatre Quarterly 12 (Part 4) Cover
New Theatre Quarterly 42: Volume 11, Part 2 (1995)

New Theatre Quarterly provides a valuable international forum where theatrical scholarship and practice can meet, and where prevailing dramatic assumptions can be subjected to vigorous critical questioning. It shows that theatre history has a contemporary relevance.
New Theatre Quarterly 42: Volume 11, Part 2 Cover
New Theatre Quarterly 40: Volume 10, Part 4 (1994)

New Theatre Quarterly provides an international forum where theatrical scholarship and practice can meet, and where prevailing dramatic assumptions can be subjected to vigorous critical questioning.
New Theatre Quarterly 40: Volume 10, Part 4 Cover
New Theatre Quarterly 36: Volume 9, Part 4 (1993)

Providing an international forum for the discussion of topics of current interest in theatre studies, this edition of New Theatre Quarterly presents articles including the Gershwins in Britain; a discussion by Kott and Marowitz on 'Measure for Measure'; and Gramsci on Ibsen and Pirandello.
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New Theatre Quarterly 34: Volume 9, Part 2 (1993)

This is edition number 34 of the New Theatre Quarterly, which provides a lively international forum for discussion of topics of current interest in theatre studies, whether from the perspective of theory, methodology, philosophy or history.
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New Theatre Quarterly 32: Volume 8, Part 4 (1993)

Part 32 of the New Theatre Quarterly, which provides a lively international forum for discussion of topics of current interest in theatre studies. This edition includes articles on and theatre versus reality, the economics of apathy, feminist theatre in Britain and more.
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New Theatre Quarterly 28: Volume 7, Part 4 (1992)

One of a series which discusses topics of interest in theatre studies from various perspectives. Part 28 includes discussions of 'Mother Courage' at the Citizens, 1990, by Margaret Eddershaw, and Wole Soyinka's 'Death and the King's Horseman', at the Royal Exchange, 1990, by Martin Banham.
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New Theatre Quarterly 26 (Part 2) (1991)

One of a series which discusses topics of interest in theatre studies from various perspectives. Part 26 includes reconstructions of John Barrymore's interpretation of 'Hamlet' and of Edward Booth's 'Jackets', and a discussion of sexuality and structure in expressionist drama.
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New Theatre Quarterly 25 (Part 1) (1991)

One of a series which discusses topics of interest in theatre studies from various perspectives. Part 25 includes an interview with Kaethe Ruelicke-Weiler on the artistic direction and management of the Berliner Ensemble, Bertolt Brecht and Helena Weigel.
New Theatre Quarterly 25 (Part 1)  Cover

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