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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

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.
Così è (se vi pare) Cover
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.
Learning Through Drama: Report of the Schools Council Drama, Teaching Project  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.
Polly: an opera Cover
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.
All For Love: A Tragedy Cover
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 ...
Politics and the Arts Cover
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...
The Feast At Solhoug Cover
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.
Max: A Play Cover
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...
You Never Can Tell Cover
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.
Selected Plays 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.
Mariana Pineda Cover
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...
The Zoo Story and the Sandbox Cover
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...
Writing in Restaurants Cover
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.
My Life in Art Cover
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).
Glued to the Box: Television Criticism from the  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 1 (Part 1) (1985)

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 1 (Part 1) Cover
AWAKE AND SING. A PLAY IN THREE ACTS (1935)

Awake and Sing! is a drama written by American playwright Clifford Odets. The play was initially produced by The Group Theatre in 1935. The play is set in The Bronx in 1933; it concerns the impoverished Berger family and their conflicts as the parents scheme to manipulate their children's relationships to their own ends, while their children strive for their own dreams.
AWAKE AND SING. A PLAY IN THREE ACTS Cover
How to Enjoy Opera (1987)

Discusses the essential elements of opera, surveys the history of opera, and describes the plots of one hundred popular operas.
How to Enjoy Opera Cover
Visions of Simone Machard, The: Schweyk in the Second World War (1987)

Schweik in the Second World War is a play by German dramatist and poet Bertolt Brecht. It was written by Brecht in 1943 while in exile in California, and is a sequel to the 1923 novel The Good Soldier Švejk by Jaroslav Hašek. It is set in Prague and on the Russian Front during World War II. It is a satirical tale of a common man, Schweyk, who is forced into war and manages to survive. He overcomes dangerous situations in Gestapo Headquarters, a military prison, and a Voluntary Labor Service. ...
Visions of Simone Machard, The: Schweyk in the Second World War  Cover
Saint Joan of the Stockyards (1970)

"A major Brecht play in an outstanding translation with an expert and up-to-date preface." -- Eric Bentley "... a fine translation.... Jones has handled Brecht's meters with great skill." -- Choice
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Open Letters to the Intimate Theater (1966)

Swedish playwright, novelist, and short-story writer, who combined in his works psychology, naturalism, and later elements of new literary forms. Strindberg was married three times – several of his plays drew on the problems of his marriages and reflected his constant interest in self-analysis. A sensitive and controversial writer, who suffered from hostile reviews, Strindberg represented the 19th-century ideal of artist as a free personality, unrestrained by convention.
Open Letters to the Intimate Theater Cover
After the Fall: A Play in Two Acts (1980)

A lost character draws upon events in his past as he searches for life's meaning in Miller's powerful play.
After the Fall: A Play in Two Acts Cover
Salesman in Beijing (1984)

" In 1983 Arthur Miller was invited to direct a Chinese version of his play, "Death of a Salesman." "Salesman in Beijing" is his day by day account of his experience. Most of the book focuses on the problems of communication with the Chinese actors as a result of linguistic and cultural differences. He feels that he was able to overcome these difficulties because of the dedication of the actors and the fact that the play itself deals with universal qualities that transcend local culture. He ...
Salesman in Beijing Cover
Cats: The Book of the Musical (1983)

A richly illustrated book that re-creates the making of one of Broadway’s biggest hits, based on Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. Color photographs and drawings by John Napier.
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One Act Plays for Acting Students: An Anthology of Short One-Act Plays for One, Two or Three Actors (1987)

23 short length plays for a cast of one, two, or three. 5 minutes acting time for each character. Performance times vary from 8-15 minutes.
One Act Plays for Acting Students: An Anthology of Short One-Act Plays for One, Two o Cover
A Short History of Opera (1965)

When first published in 1947, A Short History of Opera immediately achieved international status as a classic in the field. Now, more than five decades later, this thoroughly revised and expanded fourth edition informs and entertains opera lovers just as its predecessors have. The fourth edition incorporates new scholarship that traces the most important developments in the evolution of musical drama. After surveying anticipations of the operatic form in the lyric theater of the Greeks, medi...
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The Fervent Years: The Group Theatre And The Thirties (1983)

The Group Theatre was perhaps the most significant experiment in the history of American theater. Producing plays that reflected topical issues of the decade and giving a creative chance to actors, directors, and playwrights who were either fed up with or shut out of commercial theater, the ”Group” remains a permanent influence on American drama despite its brief ten-year life. It was here that method acting, native realism, and political language had their tryouts in front of audiences who...
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The Studio (1985)

In 1967, John Gregory Dunne asked for unlimited access to the inner workings of Twentieth Century Fox. Miraculously, he got it. For one year Dunne went everywhere there was to go and talked to everyone worth talking to within the studio. He tracked every step of the creation of pictures like "Dr. Dolittle," "Planet of the Apes," and "The Boston Strangler." The result is a work of reportage that, thirty years later, may still be our most minutely observed and therefore most uproariously funny po...
The Studio Cover
Don Giovanni (1985)

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.
Don Giovanni Cover
A Source Book in Theatrical History: Twenty-five centuries of stage history in more than 300 basic documents and other primary material (1959)

A rich resource for students of theater and theater historians, this volume features an annotated collection of more than 300 unusually interesting and detailed articles. Passages by contemporary observers from ancient Greece to modern times include notes on acting, directing, make-up, costuming, stage props, machinery, scene design, and much more.
A Source Book in Theatrical History: Twenty-five centuries of stage history in more t Cover
Later Plays Of Eugene O'Neill (1967)

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...
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Godspell: Vocal Selections (1983)

13 vocal selections from the perennial favorite, including the songs: All Good Gifts * By My Side * Day by Day * Learn Your Lessons Well * O Bless the Lord, My Soul * Prepare Ye (The Way of the Lord) * and more.
Godspell: Vocal Selections Cover
The Harold Arlen Songbook (P/V/G Composer Collection) (1985)

A "must-own" collection of 76 songs of Harold Arlen. Includes his major works and some previously unpublished titles. Highlights include: Come Rain or Come Shine * Get Happy * Let's Fall in Love * The Man That Got Away * Over the Rainbow * Stormy Weather * and more!
The Harold Arlen Songbook (P/V/G Composer Collection) Cover
1776: A Musical Play (1976)

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.
1776: A Musical Play Cover
24 Favorite One Act Plays (1963)

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.
24 Favorite One Act Plays Cover
Guys and Dolls: Vocal Selections (1982)

12 vocal selections from the Broadway staple, including: Adelaide's Lament * A Bushel and a Peck * Fugue for Tinhorns * Guys and Dolls * I've Never Been in Love Before * If I Were a Bell * Luck Be a Lady * Sit down You're Rockin' the Boat * and more.
Guys and Dolls: Vocal Selections Cover
Jesus Christ Superstar: A Rock Opera (Vocal Selections) (1985)

Highly acclaimed show by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice. Songs include: HEAVEN ON THEIR MINDS . EVERYTHING'S ALRIGHT . HOSANNA . PILATE'S DREAM . I DON'T KNOW HOW TO LOVE HIM . THE LAST SUPPER ;. I ONLY WANT TO SAY (GETHSEMANE) . KING HEROD'S SONG . SUPERSTAR
Jesus Christ Superstar: A Rock Opera (Vocal Selections) Cover
Prometheus Bound and Other Plays: Prometheus Bound, The Suppliants, Seven Against Thebes, The Persian (1961)

Aeschylus (525-456 BC) brought a new grandeur and epic sweep to the drama of classical Athens, raising it to the status of high art. In "Prometheus Bound", the defiant Titan Prometheus is brutally punished by Zeus for daring to improve the state of wretchedness and servitude in which mankind is kept. "The Suppliants" tells the story of the fifty daughters of Danaus who must flee to escape enforced marriages, while "Seven Against Thebes" shows the inexorable downfall of the last members of the c...
Prometheus Bound and Other Plays: Prometheus Bound, The Suppliants, Seven Against The Cover
The Actor's scenebook: Scenes and monologues from contemporary plays (1984)

Schulman and Mekler provide 78 new, fully playable scenes with story notes, including more monologues for men and women from today's best new plays. A diverse selection of scenes and characters to challenge the full range of readers' talents as actors.
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No Acting Please (1979)

No Acting Please-Beyond the Method a Revolutionary Approach to Acting and Living. Foreword by Jack Nicholson
No Acting Please Cover
The Best Broadway Songs Ever (1985)

We've made this book even better with the addition of songs from some of Broadway's latest blockbusters such as Miss Saigon, The Phantom of the Opera, Aspects of Love, Les Miserables, and more - over 70 songs in all! Highlights include: All I Ask of You * As Long As He Needs Me * Bess, You Is My Woman * Bewitched * Camelot * Climb Ev'ry Mountain * Comedy Tonight * Don't Cry for Me Argentina * Everything's Coming Up Roses * Getting to Know You * I Could Have Danced All Night * I Dreamed a Dream *...
The Best Broadway Songs Ever Cover
The Actor's Book of Contemporary Stage Monologues (1987)

This is the only book that offers a comprehensive collection of contemporary stage monologues for a complete range of roles. An invaluable tool for actors looking for new audition material or for anyone interested in theater.
The Actor's Book of Contemporary Stage Monologues Cover
The Beggar's Opera (1987)

Written in 1728, John Gay’s opera caricatures society, marriage and Italian operatic style in this comic satire which is considered revolutionary because it took on poverty and corruption as its subject as told by the thieves, prostitutes and villains of the slums and prisons of 18th century London. The lyrics were set to famous songs the day making it hugely popular with audiences and a radical departure from traditional opera. Bertolt Brech and Kurt Weill’s The Threepenny Opera is based on...
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Les Miserables: Vocal / Piano Selections (1987)

This terrific songbook features 14 vocal selections from the beloved Broadway musical: At the End of the Day * Bring Him Home * Castle on a Cloud * Do You Hear the People Sing? * Drink with Me (To Days Gone By) * Empty Chairs at Empty Tables * A Heart Full of Love * I Dreamed a Dream * In My Life * A Little Fall of Rain * Master of the House * On My Own * Stars * Who Am I?. Also includes beautiful full-color photos from the production.
Les Miserables: Vocal / Piano Selections Cover
Theater Games for the Classroom: A Teacher's Handbook (1986)

Based on the best-selling book by Viola Spolin, this new CD-ROM of Theater Games for the Classroom offers the most comprehensive theater instruction for all types of students, from small children to young adults. It includes over 130 theater games and exercises, instructional strategies, video examples, a lesson planning section, alignment to other curricular areas, and alignment to California Theatre Arts standards. First developed by Spolin, the originator of modern improvisational theater tec...
Theater Games for the Classroom: A Teacher's Handbook Cover
The Sound of Music: Vocal Selections (1981)

11 songs: Climb Ev'ry Mountain * Do-Re-Mi * Edelweiss * I Have Confidence * The Lonely Goatherd * Maria * My Favorite Things * Sixteen Going on Seventeen * So Long, Farewell * Something Good * The Sound of Music.
The Sound of Music: Vocal Selections Cover
Sense of Direction: Some Observations on the Art of Directing (1984)

By the founder of the famous American Conservatory Theatre (A.C.T.) in San Francisco - a candid account of his working method as a director. A Sense of Direction represents a life's work in directing. William Ball engages his audience in a wide-ranging discussion of the director's process, from first read-through to opening night. An informative, insightful, and often astonishingly clear look at the the process of making theatre.
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