Broadway Bookshelf - Must Read Theater Books

Biography of writer Tom Stoppard by Hermione Lee, with his cooperation and access to a trove of hitherto unseen material.

Shines a light on the play's continued impact in the 21st century and makes a case for the healing powers of Wilder's text to a world confronting multiple crises. Through extensive interviews with more than 100 artists about their own experience of the play and its impact on them professionally and personally—and including background on the play's early years and its pervasiveness in American culture ... shows why this particular work remains so important, essential, and beloved.

The time is 1927. The place is a run-down recording studio in Chicago. Ma Rainey, the legendary blues singer, is due to arrive with her entourage to cut new sides of old favorites. Waiting for her are her black musician sidemen, the white owner of the record company, and her white manager. What goes down in the session to come is more than music. It is a riveting portrayal of black rage, of racism, of the self-hate that racism breeds, and of racial exploitation.

Stories from renowned performers, dance educators, and other avid dance adventurers ... about epic dance adventures across North America, Europe, South America, Asia, and Africa highlight various dance traditions, as well as unique aspects of each country's geography, history, demographics and educational systems.

Collection of personal essays, poems and even amusement park maps on the subjects of insecurity, fame, anxiety, and much more. Told in her unique voice (sometimes singing voice).

Autobiography (with photos) by stage and film actor David Suchet. Discusses his London upbringing and love of the city, his Jewish roots and how they have influenced his career, the importance of his faith, how he really feels about fame, his love of photography and music, and his processes as an actor. He looks back on his fifty-year career, including reflections on how the industry has changed, his personal highs and lows, and how he wants to be remembered.

Pulling Harvey Out of Her Hat chronicles the story of how Mary Chase—a housewife with three children from a working-class Irish community in Denver, Colorado—became a Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright for Harvey, a Broadway comedy about a gentle soul and his invisible six-foot-and-one-half-inch-tall rabbit friend. This entertaining and inspiring account traces how Chase achieved her dream of becoming a famous playwright while remaining in Denver—where she worked for the Rocky Mountain News, mar...

First volume in series, covering the years 1970-1995. Overview of ensemble-based creation within the general historical and cultural contexts of the period, followed by a detailed study of the evolution of ensemble-based work. Contributors examine matters such as influence, funding, production and legacies, as well as the forms of collective devising and creation, while presenting close readings of the companies' most prominent works.

Chronicle of the Grammy-winning 1995 Alanis Morissette album and the new Broadway musical it inspired. Photos (Matthew Murphy) and interviews from Morissette, bookwriter Diablo Cody, creative team members, and cast members, as well as a full annotated libretto and an exploration of the album's cultural significance.

Account of recent Broadway history—spanning from the debut of Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Sunset Boulevard to Disney’s The Lion King. Drawing upon more than 150 insider interviews, Riedel walks us through the Broadway we know and love today: an industry awash in big hits and bigger money, while also being an industry split between its adherence to old art forms and the allure of popular culture.

Part of Broadway Legacies series. Study of the musical theater works of Rida Johnson Young (ca. 1869-1926), one of the most prolific female playwrights of her time, as well as a lyricist and librettist in the musical theater. She wrote more than thirty full-length plays, operettas, and musical comedies, 500 songs, and four novels, including Naughty Marietta, Lady Luxury, The Red Petticoat, and When Love is Young. 192 pages. Using archival materials such as original typescripts, correspondence, ...

Cordelia Lynn's version, from a literal translation by Helen Rappaport, first performed at the Almeida Theatre, London, in April 2019, in a production directed by Rebecca Frecknall.

Exercises to energise, excite and inspire ... alongside some firm favourites, redesigned to be played within the necessary constraints.

Records the seven-decade history of this distinguished theatre from its nightclub origins to its current status as a Tony Award-winning Broadway institution. Based on years of research as well as interviews conducted with Circle in the Square's major contributing artists.

In meditative portraits, often shot in the intimate space of the dressing room, Annand captures the focus and tension of world-class actors right before they go on the stage. Including Cate Blanchett, Orlando Bloom, Anthony Hopkins, Jake Gyllenhaal and Judi Dench.

Lucy Prebble is one of Britain's foremost writers for the stage and screen. This eagerly anticipated play collection brings together her landmark plays for the first time, showcasing her work from 2003 to 2019. Beginning with her George Devine Award-winning play The Sugar Syndrome it continues through her explosive look at the biggest financial scandal in history, concluding with her pointed dramatization of the one of the most shocking news stories of the 2010s.

Features the words and lyrics from David Byrne's recording and subsequent theatrical concert, with artwork by Maira Kalman (who designed the art for the Broadway show's curtain). Edited and designed by Alex Kalman/What Studio?.

The classic novelization of one of Broadway’s most enduring and beloved musicals (based on a conception by Jerome Robbins, book by Arthur Laurents, music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, directed and choreographed by Jerome Robbins), updated with a new cover.

Presents a basic understanding of this most American of art forms, the musical theatre, including a very brief history of musicals, a survey of important and well-known shows, examples of the wide and wild variety of musicals, a look at the amazing people who create musicals, and a sense of how Broadway musicals reflect and comment on our culture.

Twenty-seven interviews and profiles ranging over more than five decades tell Mike Nichols and Elaine May stories in their own words.

Part of Applause Acting Series. Thirty new ten-minute plays.

Are the musical's progressive politics rooted in its embrace of regressive entertainments like burlesque and minstrelsy? Shows how musicals return again and again to this question, and grapple with a guilt that its joyous pleasures are based on exploiting the laboring bodies of its performers. Rogers argues that the discourse of "integration"—which claims that songs should advance the plot—has functioned to deny the radical work that the musical undertakes every time it transitions into song an...

Documents how black women theater artists and activists—many of whom worked behind the scenes as directors, designers, producers, stage managers, and artistic directors—disseminated the black aesthetic and emboldened their communities. Draws on nearly thirty original interviews with well-known artists such as Ntozake Shange and Sonia Sanchez, as well as less-studied figures including distinguished lighting designer Shirley Prendergast, dancer and choreographer Halifu Osumare, and three-time To...

Alexandra Kitty curates Sherlock Holmes' theatrical world throughout the decades: from unlikely Off-Broadway musicals to lauded slapstick comedies, to more traditional and gripping portrayals of his iconic stories and new incarnations. 172 pages.

Looks through the apparent carnival of vaudeville performance and asks: what made the theater so popular and transformative? Monod makes the case that vaudeville became so popular because it offered audiences a guide to a modern urban lifestyle.

Biography by Earl Hess and Pratibha A. Dabholkar. Offers a full picture of Gene Kelly as the Renaissance man he actually was—dancer, choreographer, actor, clown, singer, director, teacher, and mentor. Photographs. 552 pages.

Fully revised and updated version of 2017 book by drama critic Michael Coveney, with photographs by Peter Dazeley. Stories of the architecture, the people, and the productions which have defined each theatre, with photographs of the public areas, auditorium and backstage, Updated to include ten additional theatres, including the Victoria Palace Theatre, the Sondheim Theatre, the Bridge Theatre and the Noël Coward Theatre. Foreword by Mark Rylance. 288

Book of lyrics and stories from Hadestown from its author, songwriter Anaïs Mitchell, with a foreword by Steve Earle. 272 pages.

Kindle edition of 1998 book about Peggy Ramsay, the influential British play agent (Joe Orton, Eugene Ionesco, John Mortimer, Robert Bolt, Christopher Hampton, Edward Bond, Caryl Churchill, Howard Brenton, David Hare, Willy Russell and Alan Ayckbourn). The author was granted complete freedom of access to all the records and correspondence accumulated over the forty years of her agency's existence, including hundreds of impassioned letters between Peggy and her authors.

Presents Ann Miller's career in the context of her fascinating life, beginning with child acting and including three Hollywood studio contracts, two retirements for marriage, and appearances in film, stage, variety shows, sitcoms, her comeback in the stage musical Sugar Babies, and appointment as an international spokesperson for MGM in the ailing years of the studio.

Paul Edmondson and Stanley Wells, editors. Assembles all of Shakespeare's sonnets in their probable order of composition. The introduction debunks long-established biographical myths about Shakespeare's sonnets and proposes new insights about how and why he wrote them. Explanatory notes and modern English paraphrases of every poem and dramatic extract illuminate the meaning of these witnesses to Shakespeare's inner life and professional expertise. 208 pages.

At 50 years old, Wheeler is moving into an apartment of his own. Divorce and a dead-end job leave him faced with the challenge of building a brand new life as a middle-aged man. Wheeler’s hilarious, tangled journey in Linda Vista is punctuated with complications, both painful and joyful, as he forges a new path. With a deftly crafted blend of humor and humanity, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tracy Letts demonstrates the ultimate midlife crisis: the bewildering search for self-discovery once...

Poetry, thoughts, and musings on communing with the unseen, expressions of love, and the nuances of desire.

Usher is a black, queer writer, working a day job he hates while writing his original musical: a piece about a black, queer writer, working a day job he hates while writing his original musical. Michael R. Jackson’s blistering, momentous new musical follows a young artist at war with a host of demons — not least of which, the punishing thoughts in his own head — in an attempt to capture and understand his own strange loop.

Chronicle of the Grammy-winning 1995 Alanis Morissette album and the new Broadway musical it inspired. Photos (Matthew Murphy) and interviews from Morissette, bookwriter Diablo Cody, creative team members, and cast members, as well as a full annotated libretto and an exploration of the album’s cultural significance

With illustrations by Rachael Dean. "A is for arabesque, B is for Baryshnikov, and C is for Coppélia" in this illustrated, rhyming, alphabetic picture book, filled with ballet stars, dances, positions, and terminology

"Stan Grozniak, the once-rising star of 1990s gay cinema, shares how he almost self-sabotaged a prestigious directing gig after casting his rediscovered teenage summer stock crush. While still haunted by the death of Rick Dacker, the sexy star of his cult favorite action trilogy, Stan attempts a romance with actor Lance Holtzer, his 'Tulsa' from a small town Ohio production of the musical Gypsy."

New reprint of Meredith Willson's 1959 memoir. Reflections on the ups and downs, surprises and disappointments, and finally successes of making one of America’s most popular musicals. New foreword by foreword by Michael Feinstein. 208 pages.

All five scripts from the 43rd annual cycle of world premieres: Everybody Black by Dave Harris; The Thin Place by Lucas Hnath; The Corpse Washer, adapted for the stage by Ismail Khalidi and Naomi Wallace, from the novel of the same name by Sinan Antoon; How to Defend Yourself by Liliana Padilla; and We've Come to Believe, a collaboratively-written play by Kara Lee Corthron, Emily Feldman, and Matthew Paul Olmos.

Novel by Ayad Akhtar (Disgraced). Audio versions narrated by the author.

Illustrated book by graphic designer Paula Scher, who turned her first major project as a partner at Pentagram into a formative twenty-five-year relationship with the Public Theater in New York. Chronicles over two decades of brand and identity development and an evolving creative process in a unique "autobiography of graphic design."

Play by Ishmael Reed that " critiques the acclaimed historical musical Hamilton through a depiction of a fictionalized version of ... Lin-Manuel Miranda, who is visited by several historical figures missing from the musical in a style similar to Dickens' A Christmas Carol ... echoes many critiques made by historians, such as the whitewashing of Alexander Hamilton." Debuted in 2019 at Nuyorican Poets Cafe. 80 pages.

New volume in Dan Dietz' series of books (which previously covered the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s). Includes detailed information about every musical that opened on Broadway from 2010 through the end of 2019. Discusses the decade's major successes, notorious failures, and musicals that closed during their pre-Broadway tryouts, and also highlights revivals and personal-appearance revues. Plot summaries; cast members; names of all important personnel, including ...

Features the words and lyrics from David Byrne's recording and subsequent theatrical concert, with artwork by Maira Kalman (who designed the art for the Broadway show’s curtain). Edited and designed by Alex Kalman/What Studio?.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in drama as well as Tony Awards for best play and best actor, Tracy Letts has emerged as one of the greatest playwrights of the twenty-first century. Understanding Tracy Letts, the first book dedicated to his writing, is an introduction to his plays and an invitation to engage more deeply with his work―both for its emotional power and cultural commentary.

Play by James Graham, which appeared on Broadway in 2019. 144 pages.

Songs from the 2017 musical adaptation of the 1998 DreamWorks film of the same name. Score by Stephen Schwartz. "All I Ever Wanted (with Queen's Reprise)," "Always on My Side," "Dance to the Day," "Deliver Us," "Faster," "Footprints on the Sand," "For the Rest of My Life," "Heartless," "Make It Right," "Never in a Million Years," "Through Heaven's Eyes," "When You Believe."

23 songs are included in the matching folio to this 2019 Broadway musical inspired by Alanis Morissette's 1995 hit album of the same name. Vocal lines with piano accompaniment are presented for songs from the original album.

Revised edition of 2007 book which tells the full story of the beloved Rodgers and Hammerstein musical. Now, Carter draws further on recently released sources, including the Rouben Mamoulian Papers at the Library of Congress, with additional correspondence, contracts, and even new versions of the working script used—and annotated—throughout the show's rehearsal process. Carter also focuses on the key players and concepts behind the musical, including Lynn Riggs's "Green Grow the Lilacs," and th...

Originally commissioned by The Bunker Theatre as a festival that ran in 2019. 23 letters that engage with a range of topics, from racial tensions, microaggressions and emotional labour, to queer desire, prejudice and otherness. Includes work from Zia Ahmed, Travis Alabanza, Fatimah Asghar, Nathan Bryon, Matilda Ibini, Jammz, Iman Qureshi, Anya Reiss, Somalia Seaton, Nina Segal, Tolani Shoneye, Lena Dunham, Inua Ellams, Rabiah Hussain, Mika Johnson, Jasmine Lee-Jones, Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan, Shi...