|
Polaroid Stories
(1/1/1999) Naomi Iizuka’s 1997 play, Polaroid Stories, consciously uses stories, characters and themes from Ovid’s Metamorphoses to tell the stories of street kids living on the edge in a desolate, urban landscape. Because these characters are named after Orpheus and Eurydice, and Echo and Narcissus, or based on stories of Dionysus, and Ariadne and Theseus, and because scenes are entitled “The Story of Semele” or “Theseus in the Labyrinth,” Iizuka creates a world that has two dimensions: the g... |
 |
|
Hey Mr. Producer! the Musical World of Cameron Mackintosh
(12/31/1969) Sir Cameron Mackintosh ... is the most successful producer in the entire history of the stage musical, on Broadway, on London's West End, and in other theater capitals. He has been responsible for an amazing succession of hits, including Cats, Les Miserables, The Phantom of the Opera, and Miss Saigon. This book is the first ever to tell the story of the man behind so many of the triumphs of the contemporary musical stage. The authors, who have known Mackintosh since his earliest days in the thea... |
 |
|
Black Musical Theatre: From Coontown to Dreamgirls
(12/31/1969) Black Musical Theatre begins its historical survey with Clorindy, the Origin of the Cakewalk and A Trip to Coontown, in 1898, and concludes with the Broadway smash Dreanigirls, in 1981. The section on the ragtime pianist and composer Eubie Blake and his popular 1920s show, Shuffle Along, attests to early black influence in American musical theater. Prior to the 1920s, black musical theater was enriched by Walker and Williams, Cole and Johnson, Miller and Lyles, and Ernest Hogan. White producers ... |
 |
|
The Broadway Musical: Collaboration in Commerce and Art
(12/31/1969) Three out of four Broadway-bound musicals fail to get there, and many of those that do, ultimately fail. The Broadway Musical takes an engrossing look at the industry's successes and failures in an effort to understand the phenomenon of mass collaboration that is Broadway. The authors investigate the complicated machinery of show business from its birth around the turn of the century through its survival of the cost explosions of the 1980s. Through interviews with many of Broadway's top produce... |
 |
|
Staging Musical Theatre
(12/31/1969) This all-in-one book is designed to help you become a superior producer, director or choreographer, or even a triple threat. You'll learn everything you need to know to put a show on the boards. It starts with selecting a musical, then addresses how to analyze and intepret your choice, coordinate the scenery and lights, costumes and props, and other technical elements. You'll be able to cast the top talent through efficient, well-organized auditions, and conduct productive rehearsals for music, ... |
 |
|
Sondheim's Broadway Musicals
(12/31/1969) With thirteen Broadway musicals to his credit, Stephen Sondheim's career in the musical theater has outdistanced those of most of his contemporaries. Each of his shows has presented new challenges to audiences, and each has cast fresh perspectives on the nature and potential of the American musical, as well as probing deeply, often painfully, into the nature of our culture. Sondheim's Broadway Musicals is the first book to take an in-depth look at Sondheim's work. Stephen Banfield examines eac... |
 |
|
How to Direct a Musical
(12/31/1969) How to Direct a Musical is a lively and practical guide to the seemingly overwhelming task of directing a musical. David Young brings to this handbook his extensive experience as a director of over 100 productions and more than 250 workshops in the US, China, Senegal and Brazil. Young takes a pragmatic, do-it-yourself approach, guiding the reader from planning to casting, rehearsal to opening night. Topics covered include script analysis, collaboration with designers, musical directors, choreogr... |
 |
|
The World Of Musical Comedy
(12/31/1969) Acclaimed through three editions for its uniquely informative and entertaining style, this fourth edition of Stanley Green’s World of Musical Comedy updates and enlarges the theatrical scope to include such recent shows as A Chorus Line, Barnum, They’re Playing Our Song, and Annie. In a format that provides biographies of all the leading figures in the musical’s development, Stanley Green manages to convey the spirit of the Broadway stage, its musical make-believe, and yet remain objective... |
 |
|
The American Musical Theatre Song Encyclopedia
(12/31/1969) The first encyclopedia of theatre songs from Broadway shows ranging from The Black Crook (1866) to the 1994 Tony-Award-winning PAssion, this handy guide features over 1800 songs from over 500 musicals. It gives such information as the songs' authors, original performers, and dates and history of recordings. Each song is described and briefly analyzed, explaining how the song fit in the original production and what is notable about its music, lyrics, and presentation. Thoroughly indexed by song ... |
 |
|
Sing Out, Louise!: 150 Stars of the Musical Theatre Remember 50 Years on Broadway
(12/31/1969) This ultimate Broadway insider's book is based on extensive interviews with hundreds of performers, including Lauren Bacall, Carol Channing, Barbara Cook, Nanette Fabray, Rex Harrison, Dorothy Loudon, Jerry Orbach, Tony Randall, Elaine Stritch, and Gwen Verdon, sharing personal recollections of dozens of shows. It's a backstage glimpse at the jealousy and heartbreak, the passion and commitment that have made Broadway the center of the American musical theatre for more than half a century. |
 |
|
America's Musical Stage: Two Hundred Years of Musical Theatre
(12/31/1969) Mates shows the musical stage in all its guises--from burlesque to musical comedy to grand opera--from its beginnings in pre-Revolutionary America to the present day. He deals sensitively with the recurrent aesthetic question of popular versus highbrow art and also looks at critical reactions to popular theatrical forms of musical entertainment. He introduces the reader to various types of theatrical companies, the changing repertory, and the many kinds of musical performers who have animated th... |
 |
|
Musical Theatre Classics
(12/31/1969) A fantastic series featuring the best songs from Broadway classics. Collections are organized by voice type and each book includes recorded piano accompaniments on CD. 13 songs, including: Falling in Love With Love * Hello, Young Lovers * Mister Snow * So in Love * In My Life * and more. |
 |
|
Next!: Auditioning for the Musical Theatre
(12/31/1969) A complete and concise guide for the actor auditioning for musicals. |
 |
|
Theatre in the Victorian Age
(12/31/1969) This book examines all major aspects of theater practice and dramatic literature of the Victorian period. Michael Booth's comprehensive survey explores the social and cultural context of the theater including theater management, the audience, architecture and production methods, acting and the job of the actor, as well as the drama itself. Within this framework, Booth discusses such topics as the effect on theater of population growth and the spread of the railway system, the typical organizatio... |
 |
|
Great Musicals of the American Theatre
(12/31/1969) Originally published in 1973 under the title Ten great musicals of the American theatre. Includes the librettos of Of thee I sing, Porgy and Bess, One touch of Venus, Brigadoon, Kiss me Kate, West Side story, Gypsy, Fiddler on the roof, 1776, and Company. |
 |
|
Staging A Musical
(12/31/1969) Musicals are undoubtedly one of the most popular forms of entertainment in the theatre today. They are also one of the most complex, since they often rely for their effect upon a combination of music, drama, dance, and spectacle. This book is an easy-to-read, step-by-step guide to the whole process of putting on a musical, placing a firm emphasis on good organization and careful planning. In Staging a Musical, Matthew White describes all the elements involved in putting on a musical production, ... |
 |
|
Beautiful Mornin': The Broadway Musical in the 1940s
(12/31/1969) Once again establishing that he is as impressive a nonfiction writer as he is a novelist (How Long Has This Been Going On?; Buddies), Mordden analyzes the many notable hits (and egregious flops) of the 1940s, and describes how they figured intoAand indeed establishedAthat period's importance to the Broadway musical theater. It was a decade of many milestones, chief among which was the emergence of Rodgers and Hammerstein with 1943's unlikely groundbreaker, Oklahoma ("all Broadway gaped as these... |
 |
|
Red Hot & Blue: A Smithsonian Salute to the American Musical
(12/31/1969) This luxuriant coffee table book is packed with photos, posters, design sketches and drawings that accompanied American musicals from 1866 to the present. The book was published to coincide with the Washington, DC, exhibition of the same name running through July 1997 at the National Portrait Gallery, which co-created both exhibition and book with the National Museum of American History. The book has two main strengths: One, it treats the musicals of Broadway and Hollywood as part of the same p... |
 |
|
From Assassins to West Side Story: The Director's Guide to Musical Theatre
(12/31/1969) The subtitle "director's guide" is somewhat misleading and could do this fine book a significant disservice. Although it will certainly assist directors in planning productions with greater depth and impact, it should also attract a much broader audience?actors, production staff, teachers, theater enthusiasts, and the like. Director, composer, and lyricist Miller offers a creative look at 16 musical icons, including Cabaret, Into the Woods, Les Miserables, Sweeny Todd, Gypsy, Carousel, and more... |
 |
|
How to Audition for the Musical Theatre: A Step-By-Step Guide to Effective Preparation
(12/31/1969) Preparation is the key to a successful audition. Donald Oliver shares his many years of Broadway experience and will show you how to build your song portfolio, what not to sing, where to find songs, how to work with a vocal coach and what to do if you forget the lyrics. All the details of good and effective preparation are discussed in a plain and straightforward way. Also included is a list of the most overdone songs. This is a book to help the novice and aid the professional do a better and mo... |
 |
|
Musicals!: Directing School and Community Theatre
(12/31/1969) Musicals! is an illustrated sourcebook for total theatre training, emphasizing the director's role in the three main building blocks for mounting a performance: preparation, production, and performance. Boland and Argentini provide a comprehensive, step-by-step theatre primer which will prove invaluable to musical directors, teachers, administrators, students, and actors. After the initial decisions are made, specific guidelines in preparing the stage picture, holding auditions and casting, and ... |
 |
|
Deconstructing Harold Hill: An Insider's Guide to Musical Theatre
(12/31/1969) Miller contends that Americans don't take American musicals seriously; more precisely, American directors don't. That is why, he argues, most of the most imaginative and daring recent Broadway revivals have been directed by Brits and Australians. American directors are less willing to plumb the depths of musicals and to uncover, for instance, Camelot's dark subtext or the deep structure of The Music Man. Miller strives to set things aright by analyzing Camelot, Chicago, The King and I, March of ... |
 |
|
Encyclopedia Of The Musical Theatre
(12/31/1969) Drawing equally from Viennese operetta, Parisian cabaret, vaudeville, and Tin Pan Alley, the American musical theatre has thrived in an unprecedented variety of forms and styles as our truest hybrid art. From Show Boat and Oklahoma! to West Side Story, Fiddler on the Roof, and A Chorus Line, the musical has attracted our finest actors, composers, writers, directors, and choreographers. The greats and near-greats are finally brought together in this essential reference guide to over 2,000 persona... |
 |
|
Auditioning for the Musical Theatre
(12/31/1969) Proven tactics and techniques from a leading New York vocal coach on how to "act" a song, choose the right material, handle a callback, what to wear, how to use eye contact, select a voice teacher and vocal coach, and more. Includes 130 excellent yet unusual audition songs for all types of situations and performers, including juveniles and dancers. |
 |
|
King Henry VI
(12/31/1969) Henry VI, Part 1 or The First Part of Henry the Sixt (often written as 1 Henry VI) is a history play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1591, and set during the lifetime of King Henry VI of England. Whereas 2 Henry VI deals with the King's inability to quell the bickering of his nobles, and the inevitability of armed conflict, and 3 Henry VI deals with the horrors of that conflict, 1 Henry VI deals with the loss of England's French territories and the political machination... |
 |
|
Henry V
(12/31/1969) Henry V is a historical play by William Shakespeare, written in 1599. It is based on the life of King Henry V of England, and focuses on events immediately before and after the Battle of Agincourt (1415) during the Hundred Years' War. The play is the final part of a tetralogy, preceded by Richard II, Henry IV, part 1 and Henry IV, part 2. The original audiences would thus have already been familiar with the title character, who was depicted in the Henry IV plays as a wild, undisciplined lad... |
 |
|
Spunk
(12/31/1969) Zora Neale Hurston was an American folklorist, anthropologist, and author during the time of the Harlem Renaissance. Of Hurston's four novels and more than 50 published short stories, plays, and essays, she is best known for her 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. |
 |
|
Warsaw Visitor, Tales from the Vienna Streets: The Last Two Plays of William Saroyan
(12/31/1969) Late in life Saroyan wrote: “In 1943 I turned my back on Broadway, but I did not stop writing plays… I wrote new plays every year… and they are part of the real American theatre, and of the real world theatre, even though they have not been produced, performed, and witnessed.” In fact, William Saroyan left some 150 unpublished plays, two of which are offered here. Typically Saroyan in their graceful, acrobatic use of language, these plays have a breadth, a universality, and a somber... |
 |
|
The Seesaw Log: A Chronicle of the Stage Production, with the Text, of Two for the Seesaw
(12/31/1969) A day-by-day candid account of the creativity, conflict and compromise involved in the making of a smash-hit Broadway play. |
 |
|
Uncommon Women and Others
(12/31/1969) Comprised of a collage of interrelated scenes, the action begins with a reunion, six years after graduation, of five close friends and classmates at Mount Holyoke College. They compare notes on their activities since leaving school and then, in a series of flashbacks, we see them in their college days and learn of the events, some funny, some touching, some bitingly cynical, that helped to shape them. Each of the group is a distinct individual, and it is their varying reaction to the staid, shel... |
 |
|
Ichabod: A New Musical Adaptation of the Legend of Sleepy Hollow
(12/31/1969) Play Script. Beware! The horseman rides through a hollow that is anything but sleepy in this nimble new musical. Space staging. Cast of 6 males, 4 females, but flexible and may be larger. Imaginative traditional costumes. The classic tale of Washington Irving emerges transformed by the theatrical genius of Jones and the musical talent of Cole. We are challenged to look our fears squarely in the face - - or hoof, as the case may be. Schoolmaster Ichabod offers a new twist in teaching as his st... |
 |
|
Tony Kushner in Conversation
(12/31/1969) In the Fall of 1992, Millennium Approaches, the first part of Tony Kushner's Angels in America, won England's prestigious Evening Standard award as the season's Best Play. By the Spring of 1993, Millennium had come to Broadway and won its highest honor, the Tony Award for Best Play, and the distinguished Pulitzer Prize for drama as well. Through its epic theatrical panorama of the intimate and political dynamics that arise when individuals, histories, and cultures intersect, Millennium captured... |
 |
|
The Rez Sisters
(12/31/1969) Winner of the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Best New Play Nominated for the Governor General's Award This award-winning play by Native playwright Tomson Highway is a powerful and moving portrayal of seven women from a reserve attempting to beat the odds by winning at bingo. And not just any bingo. It is THE BIGGEST BINGO IN THE WORLD and a chance to win a way out of a tortured life. The Rez Sisters is hilarious, shocking, mystical and powerful, and clearly establishes the creative voice of ... |
 |
|
The Real Thing
(12/31/1969) A talented ensemble cast brings to life Stoppard's classic play featuring the loves and loves lost of playwright Henry; his wife, Charlotte; an actor named Max; and his activist wife, Annie. Featuring a play within a play, this production is superbly performed if slightly confusing in audiobook format—it's often difficult to keep track of who is speaking and to keep track of the endlessly reconfiguring relationships. Henry searches for meaning both in art and romantic relationships as he atte... |
 |
|
A Mad World, My Masters
(12/31/1969) The Globe Quartos is a ground-breaking new series of forgotten plays co-published with Shakespeare's Globe in London. It marks the astonishing discovery of work by Shakespeare's contemporaries, and for some of the plays, this is the first time they have been in print in over 400 years. Middleton's craft and wit abound in this masterly satire of London Society at the turn of the 17th century. Disjointed and dysfunctional families wrangle and plot, cuckold and gull, 'but women's wit is ever at fu... |
 |
|
A Game at Chess
(12/31/1969) Thomas Middleton's notorious play, A Game at Chess, provoked a scandal when it was first performed in 1624. Through a masterly use of the metaphor of chessplay, this satire of men in high places was immediately recognized. The play was performed nine times to large theater audiences before the Privy Council closed the Globe theatre. Numerous contemporary reports and official documents relating to the scandal (printed in the appendix, some for the first time ever), provide a rich content for thi... |
 |
|
Summer & Smoke
(12/31/1969) The play is a simple love story of a somewhat puritanical Southern girl and an unpuritanical young doctor. Each is basically attracted to the other but because of their divergent attitudes toward life, each over the course of years is driven away from the other. Not until toward the end does the doctor realize that the girl's high idealism is basically right, and while she is still in love with him, it turns out that neither time nor circumstances will allow the two ultimately to come together. ... |
 |
|
Theatre of Tennessee Williams, Vol. 4: Sweet Bird of Youth / Period of Adjustment / The Night of the Iguana
(12/31/1969) The Theatre of Tennessee Williams brings together in matching format the plays of one of America's most persistently influential and innovative dramatists. Arranged in chronological order, this ongoing series includes the original cast listings and production notes for all full-length plays. |
 |
|
Not About Nightingales
(12/31/1969) Written in 1938 when Williams was 27, still living at home and a good six years away from Broadway, Not about Nightingales is as much writing exercise as fully realized drama. It lacks the originality and depth of The Glass Menagerie, written only a few years later, and his later masterworks. Nevertheless, it is of considerable interest, not least because it was inspired by a real occurrence in which several unruly prisoners were cooked alive as punishment. And after all, it is Williams' first f... |
 |
|
The Spectator: Talk About Movies and Plays With Those Who Made Them
(12/31/1969) A collection of interviews with screen and stage actors, directors, playwrights and critics, Terkel's latest richly entertaining oral history is a departure from his bestselling interview books on weightier themes (Working; Hard Times; Race). Here, Terkel offers interviewsAmany of them reading almost like monologues, Terkel says so littleAfirst heard on the Chicago radio program he has hosted for the past 45 years. Many of the exchanges feel dated, and there is an awful lot of chitchat. Neverth... |
 |
|
Picasso at the Lapin Agile and Other Plays
(12/31/1969) Ever wonder what it would have been like if wild and crazy Steve Martin had written an episode of "The Twilight Zone"? Well, wonder no more. The zany actor/comedian made playwright rookie of the year with this, the script of his first comedy, set in a bar in 1904 Paris. Two of the regulars, twentysomethings Pablo Picasso and Albert Einstein, argue about the art of physics and the physics of art as they try to impress and bed a pretty girl. And then the space/time/culture continuum ruptures, and... |
 |
|
Harold Prince and the American Musical Theater
(12/31/1969) This book follows the career of the producer/director of such shows as "Pyjama Game", "Damn Yankees", "Fiddler of the Roof" and "West Side Story" and who has collaborated in many productions of Stephen Sondheim's works. |
 |
|
Plays and Stories: Arthur Schnitzler
(12/31/1969) Arthur Schnitzler, Viennese playwright, novelist, short story writer, and physician, was a sophisticated writer much in vogue in his time. He chose themes of an erotic, romantic, or social nature, expressed with clarity, irony, and subtle wit. Reigen, a series of ten dialogues linking people of various social classes through their physical desire for one another, has been filmed many times as La Ronde. As a Jew, Schnitzler was sensitive to the problems of anti-Semitism, which he explored in the... |
 |
|
Babbitt
(12/31/1969) First published in 1922, Babbitt is an authentic modern American classic, a biting satire of middle-American values that retains much of its poignancy today. George F. Babbitt, Lewis's outwardly successful but inwardly unhappy real estate salesman, still seems real. His story makes engrossing reading and is ideal for audio listening. With Babbitt himself at the center of every scene, it is impossible for listeners plagued by frequent interruptions to lose track of the story line. Narrator Wolfr... |
 |
|
Stagestruck: Theater, AIDS, and the Marketing of Gay America
(12/31/1969) Schulman, a lesbian activist and 1997 winner of the Stonewall Award, joined ACT UP in 1987. Shortly thereafter, she completed her fourth novel, People in Trouble (NAL Dutton, 1991), which featured a group of East Village artists struggling with homelessness and AIDS and was based on her personal experiences. After attending a performance of Rent in February 1996 and writing a review of it, Schulman realized that the storyline of this mega-hit was, in fact, taken directly from her novel. Stagestr... |
 |
|
The Theatrical Notebooks of Samuel Beckett: Krapp's Last Tape v. 1
(12/31/1969) Samuel Beckett directed "Krapp's Last Tape" on four separate occasions, and this volume offers a facsimile of his 1969 Schiller-Theater notebook. The notebook contains what is probably some of the most explicit analysis by Beckett of his own work ever revealed. The revised text incorporates many of the changes Beckett made in the 1969 Schiller production, as well as subsequent changes in later productions. Professor Knowlson worked closely with Beckett over these revisions - and deviations from... |
 |
|
The Theatrical Notebooks of Samuel Beckett: Waiting for Godot v. 3
(12/31/1969) Following "Endgame" and "Krapp's Last Tape", this book looks at Beckett's notebook for "Waiting for Godot". The volume is in part a facsimile of the notebook kept by Beckett for Berlin's Schiller-Theater production in 1975. It contains a full set of directional notes and discloses, section-by-section, a total system that works by repitition and analogy, musical rhythm and echo, establishing subtle patterns of sound, movement and gestures. |
 |
|
Shorter Plays, Volume 4: The Theatrical Notebooks of Samuel Beckett
(12/31/1969) Shorter Plays follows Waiting for Godot, Endgame, and Krapp's Last Tape in this highly praised series of Beckett's notebooks, which show for the first time the extensive revisions made by Beckett during revivals of his plays. From the mid-1960s, Samuel Beckett himself directed all his major plays in Berlin, Paris or London. For most of these productions he meticulously prepared notebooks for his personal use. The Theatrical Notebooks of Beckett that are reproduced in facsimile here offer a rem... |
 |
|
States of Shock
(12/31/1969) The evening begins with a bang. The deceptive calm of a family restaurant, filled with two disgruntled customers and an inept waitress, is disrupted by offstage sounds of war and destruction. The real disruption begins with the entrance of the Colonel, a middle-aged brute of a man wearing the medals and uniform of a commander, who wheels on Stubbs, a mute paraplegic veteran who served with the Colonel's son. According to the Colonel, they have come "to toast the death of my son and have a nice d... |
 |
|
Chicago And Other Plays
(12/31/1969) Includes: Chicago, Icarus's Mother, Red Cross, Fourteen Hundred Thousand, Melodrama Play. |
 |
Videos