The first comprehensive study of August Wilson's drama introduces the major themes and motifs that unite Wilson's ten-play cycle about African American life in each decade of the twentieth century. Framed by Wilson's life experiences and informed by his extensive interviews, this book provides fresh, coherent, detailed readings of each play, well-situated in the extant scholarship. It also provides an overview of the cycle as a whole, demonstrating how it comprises a compelling interrogation of ...
In this follow-up to her critically acclaimed memoir, Home, Julie Andrews shares reflections on her astonishing career, including such classics as Mary Poppins, The Sound of Music, and Victor/Victoria. In Home, the number one New York Times international bestseller, Julie Andrews recounted her difficult childhood and her emergence as an acclaimed singer and performer on the stage. With this second memoir, Home Work: A Memoir of My Hollywood Years, Julie picks up the story with her arrival...
When she was fifteen years old, Heidi Schreck earned money for her college tuition by giving speeches about the U.S. Constitution. Decades later, she traces the effect this document has had on four generations of women in her family. Deftly examining how the United States? founding principles are inextricably linked with our personal lives, Schreck also explores the ways in which their misuse has engendered violence and inherited trauma. With passion and wit, this galvanizing new play acknowl...
In 2008, in an alternate universe where anything can happen, a woman named Hillary Clinton is running for president in the United States of America. Struggling in Iowa against her more charismatic opponent (?The Other Guy?), she calls on her husband Bill for support. Bill offers her a deal, but when Hillary agrees to his help, she gets far more than she bargained for. Bucking the traditional trappings of the political play, Hnath takes a layered look at a political climate much like our own and...
Richard Wesley was witness to a revolution. As both a celebrated participant and eager student of the Black Theater Movement in the late 1960s, he became part of a seismic force in American culture, breaking down barriers and helping to disrupt the cultural landscape. It?s Always Loud in the Balcony: A Life in Black Theater, from Harlem to Hollywood and Back is both history and memoir, tracing Wesley?s roots from riot-torn Newark, New Jersey, across the rocky terrain of Harlem, and finally to H...
Never have musicals been more popular than they are today. With live television broadcasts of shows like Rent and Hairspray and films like Mean Girls and Shrek being adapted to the stage, musicals?as well as the creators and artists who bring them to life?are at the forefront of popular culture. In 100 Most Important People in Musical Theatre, Andy Propst profiles the individuals who have helped shape this beloved art form. Songwriting greats such as Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Richard Rodge...
A comprehensive companion to the six-part Emmy-winning PBS documentary series, Broadway: The American Musical is the gold standard of musical theater history books, tracing the roots of the art form at the turn of the twentieth century through the smashing successes of the new millennium. The in-depth text is lavishly illustrated with a treasure trove of photographs, scenic renderings, production stills, and rehearsal shots, many previously unpublished. With a foreword by Julie Andrews, thi...
With an Introduction by the author. "The prolific master of suburban mayhem has still got his mojo."?Evening Standard Time of My Life "One of Mr. Ayckbourn's most virtuosic experiments in postmodern narrative."?Wall Street Journal Neighbourhood Watch "Ayckbourn?s tartly topical, pitch-black comedy, a startling evocation of the panic induced by nightmarish notions of ?broken Britain?... An arresting, nastily comic cautionary tale."?The Times Arrivals and Departures "Ayckbourn's ge...
Andr and Madeleine have been in love for over fifty years. This weekend, as their daughters visit, something feels unusual. A bunch of flowers arrive, but who sent them? A woman from the past turns up, but who is she? And why does Andr feel like he isn't there at all? Christopher Hampton's translation of Florian Zeller's The Height of the Storm was first performed at Richmond Theatre, London, and opened in the West End at Wyndham's Theatre in October 2018.
Seventeen-year-old Emma Nolan wants only one thing before she graduates: to dance with her girlfriend at the senior prom. But in her small town of Edgewater, Indiana, that's like asking for the moon. Alyssa Greene is her high school's "it" girl: popular, head of the student council, and daughter of the PTA president. She also has a secret. She's been dating Emma for the last year and a half. When word gets out that Emma plans to bring a girl as her date, it stirs a community-wide uproar...
The Routledge Companion to the Contemporary Musical is dedicated to the musical?s evolving relationship to American culture in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. In the past decade-and-a-half, international scholars from an ever-widening number of disciplines and specializations have been actively contributing to the interdisciplinary field of musical theater studies. Musicals have served not only to mirror the sociopolitical, economic, and cultural tenor of the times, but have helped shap...
In the Long Run: A Cultural History of Broadway?s Hit Plays presents in-depth analysis of 15 plays that ran over 1,000 performances, examining what made each so popular in its time?and then, in many cases, fall into obscurity. Covering one hundred years of theatre history, it traces the long-running Broadway play as a distinct cultural phenomenon that rises and falls from 1918 to 2018. Each chapter focuses on the longest-running plays of a particular decade, synthesizing historical research ...
Actor. Director. Visionary. Sam Wanamaker is best known as the man who spent the last twenty five years of his life campaigning to reconstruct Shakespeare?s Globe near its original site in London. Born in the USA, he trained as an actor in Chicago and began his career during the golden age of radio drama, before moving on to Broadway. A vocal left wing activist, Wanamaker moved to the UK during the turbulent era of the House Un-American Activities Committee and the anti-Communist witch hunts. H...
There has never been a show business book quite like The Show Won't Go On, the first comprehensive study of a bizarre phenomenon: performers who died onstage. From the comedy magician who dropped dead on live television to the amateur thespian who expired during a play called The Art of Murder, the book is a celebration of lives both famous and obscure, as well as a dramatic and accurate recounting of events leading to the moments they died "doing what they loved." The Show Won't Go On covers a...
This updated edition of one of the bestselling and comprehensive Broadway reference books, first published in 1985, has been expanded to include many of the most important and memorable productions of American musical theater, including revivals. Arranged chronologically, beginning with musicals from just after the Civil War, each successive edition of the book has added valuable updates about trends in musical theater as well as capsule features on the most significant musicals of the day. The...
A Journey through the Founding of America A richly illustrated and concise companion book to Hamilton: The Exhibition which delves into the historical events that inspired the phenomenally popular musical about Alexander Hamilton?s life and the Revolutionary War era. The Hamilton musical, says Lin-Manuel Miranda, is ?a story about America then, told by America now.? The phenomenally popular show has inspired a hunger for knowledge about the American Revolution and Alexander Hamilton, unti...
The Road to Wicked examines the long life of the Oz myth. It is both a study in cultural sustainability-- the capacity of artists, narratives, art forms, and genres to remain viable over time--and an examination of the marketing machinery and consumption patterns that make such sustainability possible. Drawing on the fields of macromarketing, consumer behavior, literary and cultural studies, and theories of adaption and remediation, the authors examine key adaptations and extensions of Baum's 1...
Leo, Misha, Ralph, and Dawn are old friends. The two couples have a lot in common?good educations, progressive politics, a taste for culture. But when a racially motivated incident with the cops leaves Leo shaken, he decides he must take extreme measures in order to survive. Suzan-Lori Parks? newest work reveals how easily fissures can form in the social contracts we build with one another when confronted with difficult questions about race and identity.
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play Cost of Living, Martyna Majok has quickly earned recognition for her ability to give a voice to the voiceless through her work. In this new collection, which includes her plays queens, Ironbound, and Sanctuary City, Majok tells the stories of those who would otherwise go unheard?stories about immigrant women and the challenges they face while trying to make it in America. Throughout the plays in the collection, Majok explores the vulnerability...
Chicago is a bona fide theater town, bursting with an explosive, innovative vitality that?s fed every sector of the entertainment industry?from Hollywood to Broadway to Studio 8H?for as long as it?s delighted adoring local fans. Ensemble is an in-depth, first-of-its-kind history of Chicago?s internationally celebrated theater scene, spanning 65 years and told through first-person accounts from the people who made it happen. Among many other topics, this book explores the early days of the fa...
Come From Away: Welcome to the Rock - a fully illustrated companion volume to the hit Tony Award-winning Broadway musical, featuring the book and lyrics for the first time in print. Come From Away tells the remarkable true story of 38 planes and 6,579 passengers that were forced to land in Gander, Newfoundland, on September 11, 2001, doubling the population of one small town on the edge of the world. The people of Newfoundland opened their arms to the displaced, offering food, shelter, and f...
The book commemorates the tenth anniversary of the playwright?s death and coincides with Pinter at the Pinter, a celebratory season staging twenty of his one-act plays at the Harold Pinter Theatre, London, 2018.
The book commemorates the tenth anniversary of the playwright?s death and coincides with Pinter at the Pinter, a celebratory season staging twenty of his one-act plays at the Harold Pinter Theatre, London, 2018.
(Piano/Vocal/Guitar Songbook). The soundtrack to this new 2019 live action Disney film, adapted from the original animated movie, features new lyrics by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul. Our songbook features 8 songs: Arabian Nights * Friend like Me * One Jump Ahead * One Jump Ahead (Reprise) * One Jump Ahead (Reprise 2) * Prince Ali * Speechless (Full) * A Whole New World. Includes 6 pages of full color artwork from the film.
Jeremy Heere is your average high school dork. Day after day, he stares at beautiful Christine, the girl he can never have, and dryly notes the small humiliations that come his way. Until the day he learns about the "squip." A pill-sized supercomputer that you swallow, the squip is guaranteed to bring you whatever you most desire in life. By instructing him on everything from what to wear, to how to talk and walk, the squip transforms Jeremy from geek to the coolest guy in class. Soon he is ...
Dancer Robert Barnett trained under legendary choreographer Bronislava Nijinska. His professional ballet career was launched when he joined the Colonel de Basil Original Ballet Russe company. In the late 1940s, when George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein formed the New York City Ballet, Barnett was among the first generation of dancers. Under Balanchine's direction, he rose from corps de ballet to soloist.
Stunning concept art, powerful behind-the-scenes photography, and fascinating interviews with the cast and crew pack The Art and Making of The Lion King, offering an inside perspective on how director Jon Favreau and his talented team used the most advanced virtual cinematography and computer graphics techniques to craft a film of both legend and hyperrealism. The story of The Lion King has entered the pantheon of cultural mythology, as has its iconic music. In revisiting this tale, the filmmak...
John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Trask?s Hedwig and the Angry Inch opened on Valentine?s Day,1998, in New York City, and ever since it and its genderqueer heroine have captivated audiences around the world. As the first musical to feature a genderqueer protagonist as its lead, the show has had an extraordinary life on film, Broadway and in the music field. A glam rock musical with a complex relationship to issues related to art, eroticism and matters of identity formation, Hedwig and the Angry...
More often, theatrical producers who make it big on Broadway start their climb from the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City, not the raucous frontier. Even fewer would dream of becoming a successful theatre owner in the storied West End of London. A third generation Oklahoman, Max Weitzenhoffer?s life story is as unique and colorful as you will find, a remarkable blend of risk-taking, glamour and glitz that has been enriched by saloon keepers, oil wildcatters, wealthy art patrons, art...
Hollywood's conversion to sound in the 1920s created an early peak in the film musical, following the immense success of The Jazz Singer. The opportunity to synchronize moving pictures with a soundtrack suited the musical in particular, since the heightened experience of song and dance drew attention to the novelty of the technological development. Until the near-collapse of the genre in the 1960s, the film musical enjoyed around thirty years of development, as landmarks such as The Wizard of O...
Celebrating its eightieth birthday since being rebuilt in 1938, Liverpool's Royal Court Theatre is a vital part of the city's cultural identity. There has been a theatre on the site for nearly two hundred years, since Cooke's New Circus started life as the result of an argument about a broken sewer in 1826. Quickly renamed the Royal Amphitheatre (and affectionately known as the Amphi), the theatre went on to serve the city in a number of guises. From an establishment where horses were the enter...
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints adopted the vocal and theatrical traditions of American musical theater as important theological tenets. As Church membership grew, leaders saw how the genre could help define the faith and wove musical theater into many aspects of Mormon life. Jake Johnson merges the study of belonging in America with scholarship on voice and popular music to explore the surprising yet profound link between two quintessentially American institutions. Throughout t...
This book showcases a lesser-known aspect of Maurice Sendak's oeuvre--his set designs for operas and ballets. Maurice Sendak is well-known for his acclaimed children's books, but he was also an avid music lover and designed a number of opera and ballet productions, among them Mozart's Magic Flute, Jan cek's Cunning Little Vixen, Prokofiev's Love for Three Oranges, Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker, and an opera composed by Oliver Knussen based on Where the Wild Things Are. This book brings together n...
Continuing in her tradition of crafting thought-provoking, socially-conscious dramas, Lynn Nottage?s latest offering tells the story of Mlima, a majestic elephant struck down by poachers for his tusks. Beginning in a game park in Kenya and traveling around the world to a billionaire?s penthouse in the West, the play tracks the trajectory of Mlima?s tusks through the ivory trade market while Mlima?s phantom follows close behind?marking all those involved as complicit in his death. Inspired by th...
One of the few studies covering both Broadway and Hollywood musicals, this book explores most of the most famous musicals of the past two centuries, along with many others. Presented as an introductory text for musical, dance and theater majors, as well as for musical lovers, the book includes references for nearly 1000 internet video examples of dance and song.
The oldest daughter of revered composer/conductor Leonard Bernstein offers a rare look at her father on the centennial of his birth in a deeply intimate and broadly evocative memoir The composer of On the Town and West Side Story, chief conductor of the New York Philharmonic, television star, humanitarian, friend of the powerful and influential, and the life of every party, Leonard Bernstein was an enormous celebrity during one of the headiest periods of American cultural life, as well as th...
Few actors have had a career as dynamic as that Kathleen Turner's; success has followed her from the television screen to major blockbusters, from indie films to the theater stage. Over her 40-year career, Turner has developed an instinctual knowledge of what it takes to be a successful actor, and, in her conversations with esteemed film professor Dustin Morrow, she shares these lessons with the world. With her iconic wit on full display, Turner dazzles listeners with her shrewd insights on ...
No one's any right to be what father is - never questioned, never answered back... First staged in 1912 and described as "the most powerful play produced in England in this decade," Githa Sowerby's Edwardian classic on family and labour enjoyed huge success in London and New York before disappearing from view. In a Northern industrial town, John Rutherford rules both factory and family with an iron will. But even as the furnaces burn relentlessly at the Glassworks, at home his children be...
In this fast-moving, candid, conversational, and entertaining memoir, Harold Prince, the most honored director/producer in the history of the American theater looks back over his seventy-year (and counting!) career. In 1974, Prince released his first book, Contradictions: Notes on Twenty-Six Years in the Theatre. Although Contradictions has since attained cult status among producers, directors, and actors alike, Prince, in hindsight, believes he wasn't ready to publish such a tome at that po...
In this fast-moving candid conversational and entertaining memoir Harold Prince the most honored director/producer in the history of the American theater looks back over his seventy-year (and counting!) career. In 1974 Prince released his first book Contradictions: Notes on Twenty-Six Years in the Theatre . Although Contradictions has since attained cult status among producers directors and actors alike Prince in hindsight believes he wasn't ready to publish such a tome at that point in his ...
The Theatre of Eugene O'Neill offers a new comprehensive overview of O'Neill's career and plays in the context of the American theatre. Organised thematically, it considers his modernist intervention in the theatre, offers readers detailed analysis of the plays, and assesses the recent resurgence in his reputation and new approaches to staging his work. It includes a study of all his major plays?The Emperor Jones, The Hairy Ape, The Iceman Cometh, Long Day?s Journey Into Night, A Moon for the...
The most frequently asked question about writing musicals is, "Which comes first, the music or the lyrics?" As anyone on Broadway will tell you, the answer is, "The book." Tony-winning book writer Robert L. Freedman takes you through the process of writing a new musical, including story structure, song placement, dialogue, character development, and more that led to the creation of A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder , the 2014 Best Musical Tony winner. With candor and insight, Freedman desc...
Academy Award, Tony Award, and Golden Globe Award winning performer, Joel Grey's early passion for flowers and plants helped form a life-long love for nature's beauty. From the tender age of just 10 years old, Grey recalls a childhood spent poring over seed catalogs searching for the perfect flower he hoped to someday nurture with love. Growing up adjoining an undeveloped parcel of land just outside of Cleveland, Ohio, Grey enjoyed the magic and splendor of flora while exploring this dark an...
Full-Length Musical | "Filled with quick-witted jokes and buoyant energy!? ?TheaterMania | Frank is an aspiring magician with an unexpected best friend: Neurosis, his anxieties personified in a character that only he can see. When Frank meets marketing executive Abby, sparks fly, but it turns out that she has a neurosis of her own. With love, therapy, and a set of guilt-inducing parents in tow, will Frank and Abby choose their fears or each other? NEUROSIS is a modern musical comedy with a psyc...
?The deftly crafted blend of shocking exaggeration and believability, politeness and fury?makes Appropriate land with the kind of thump you rarely encounter in the theater.? ?Chicago Tribune ?So energetic, funny, and entertainingly demented, you can?t look away.? ?New York on An Octoroon A double-volume containing two astonishing breakout plays from one of the theatre's most exciting and provocative young writers. In Appropriate, strained familial dynamics collide with a tense un...
For the 50th anniversary of The Who?s most legendary album, Tommy, comes the definitive illustrated guide to the album, featuring a foreword from Pete Townshend as well as new interviews with the legend himself and showcasing original art from the artist of the album's iconic case. On May 23, 1969, The Who released their breakthrough album, Tommy. It was their fourth studio album and would sell more than twenty million copies, receive wide critical acclaim, and be inducted into the Grammy Ha...
For generations, residents of New York's Capital District have flocked to the region's numerous theaters. The history behind the venues is often more compelling than the shows presented in them. John Wilkes Booth brushed with death on stage while he and Abraham Lincoln were visiting Albany. The first exhibition of broadcast television was shown at Proctor's Theater in Schenectady, although the invention ironically contributed to the downfall of theaters across the nation. A fired manager of the...
On Streisand begins with a broad year-by-year outline of the landmark achievements, followed by a short biography, some chapters exploring key points in the artistry, then-the major part of the book-a work-by-work analysis. The work-by-work section is broken down into separate chapters, each organized chronologically: the stage shows, then the television shows and concerts, then the movies, and last (because longest) the recordings. Throughout, Mordden follows Streisand's independence, which he...
Since man first walked the Earth...in heels, no other art form has wielded as unique an influence on pop culture as Drag. Drag artists have now sashayed their way to snatch the crowns as the Queens of mainstream entertainment. Through informative and witty essays chronicling over 100 years of drag, readers will embark on a Priscilla-like journey through pop culture, from television shows like The Milton Berle Show, Bosom Buddies, and RuPaul's Drag Race, films like Some Like It Hot, To Wong Foo...
Norma Jeane Baker of Troy is a partly spoken, partly sung performance piece by poet, essayist, and scholar Anne Carson, and an exploration of the lives and myths of Marilyn Monroe and Helen of Troy?iconic beauties who lived millennia apart. A thrilling and thoughtful meditation on the destabilising and destructive power of beauty, this had its world premiere at The Shed in New York City, starring Ben Whishaw and Ren e Fleming.
