A Chorus Line
"A Chorus Line is purely and simply magnificent, capturing the very soul of our musical theatre." - Martin Gottfried - "In case you missed A Chorus Line on Broadway, you can still catch it between the hard covers ... the first volume to contain the complete libretto and lyrics of the show." - Associated Press
The Physical Comedy Handbook
Although there are numerous books that examine physical comedy from a historic or aesthetic perspective, few provide guidance in how to do it. So where can actors and teachers go for instruction? To The Physical Comedy Handbook. The Physical Comedy Handbook is a one-of-a-kind resource for actors, teachers, and directors interested in physical comedyfrom slapstick pratfalls to the theater of the absurd. Davis Robinson believes that the basic physical skills of comedy can be taught to anyone. His twenty years of practical experienceincluding workshops with Jacques LeCoq, Tony Montanaro, Bill Irwin, Avner Eisenberg, Mark Morris, and Ronlin Foreman--have taught him so. Robinson shares what he has learned in this book, providing a thorough explanation of a range of techniques for developing comic timing, writing original material, and working with scripts. The book includes numerous hands-on exercises designed to help anyone, regardless of experience, develop their sense of play. Acting students will learn how to sharpen their physical skills. Teachers will learn how to structure and guide their students work. Actors will explore a range of comic styles. Directors will discover a number of tools for bringing comedy to life.
Written in Stone
From concept stage through production in Egypt to release of the film: Katherine Orrison carefully recreates the behind-the-scenes story of Cecil B. DeMille's beloved epic.
The Theatre of the Holocaust
This second volume of The Theatre of the Holocaust, when combined with the first, represents the most significant and comprehensive international collection of plays on the Holocaust. Since the appearance of Volume 1 in 1982, theatre and Holocaust studies have undergone astonishing transformations. In Volume 2, Skloot presents six plays acknowleding the most recent theatrical forms in our post-modern age.
Stage Makeup
This up-to-date, full-color makeup manual is designed to lie open on the makeup table right as a guide for student, amateur, or professional performers.
Theatre for Children
One of the world's leading children's dramatists provides a practical handbook of the skills involved in entertaining and involving audiences of children. "A marvelous contribution to the world of Youth Theater...a must."-Robyn Flatt, Dallas Children's Theater. "He has often been called the National Playwright for Children and he deserves it."-Cameron Mackintosh.
Acting Scenes and Monologs for Young Women
Finally! Here is a stirring book of original scenes and monologs that is gender specific! This is not just another book of scenes but a wide variety of topics and situations fine-tuned to recreate the day-to-day experiences of young women. This wonderfully diversified collection of monologs, dialogs, trios, and quartets deals with subjects of self-discovery, survival in the real world, and daunting decisions from tragic to trivial. These sixty characterizations will make both performers and audiences laugh, cry, and know themselves better. The material is excellent for speech contests, acting exercises, or auditions. With lengths varying from two minutes to six minutes each, this is a superb book for any drama library.
The Theatre Audition Book
Here's the most comprehensive book of monologues ever compiled, with 144 audition pieces conveniently grouped into historical "periods" from the classical to the contemporary. The monologues selected for each historical period are representative of the competitive material you might expect to discover at auditions. Each selection also includes a brief character analysis. This text is more than just a fine collection, however. It's also a "how-to" guide, with the first chapters presenting a blueprint for preparing auditions and selecting audition materials. The fundamental performance principle that Ratliff develops in the introductory chapters suggests guidelines and strategies to enrich your distinct and individual audition style. There is also a chapter of interesting "non-dramatic" monologues adapted or edited from sources other than theatre playscripts that should challenge your skills in interpretation and characterization. Finally, there are a number of valuable resource materials that include selected readings, a survey of period dates, and a glossary of useful audition terms.
Stage Managing and Theatre Etiquette
Here is a practical introduction to one of the most complex jobs in theatre. Linda Apperson clearly and concisely leads the reader through the procedures and responsibilities of stage management, from auditions to closing night. This is a resource book that will become a constant companion for both the novice and the experienced theatre person. Stage Managing and Theatre Etiquette includes samples of prompt scripts and other essential stage manager's tools. "Concise, complete, accessible, and full of the joy of making live theatre." -Robert Kelley, TheatreWorks.
Light on the Subject
Offers a problem-solving approach that provides a thorough knowledge of the craft. Also draws from literary quotations on light and its effects. "David Hays has always been a brilliant designer. Now he is a brilliant teacher." - Hal Prince
2-Minute Monologs
With several best-selling original monologue books under his belt, screen writer, actor, and highly respected monologue/audition acting coach Glenn Altermann considers this his best book yet. These 48 monologues--evenly split between men's and women's--each tell a compelling story that has a beginning, a middle, and an end while presenting the actor with an identifiable emotional journey. The wide variety of characterizations offers many choices for actors seeking challenging new roles in a professional audition length. The tones of these pieces range from gritty, real life drama to comedy, and have all been tested and fine-tuned to receive the most enthusiastic responses from both actors and directors.
O Solo Homo
O Solo Homo is a diverse, definitive, and hugely entertaining collection representing the cutting edge of queer solo performance. The pieces in O Solo Homo touch nerves that run deep -- from sex, politics, community, and health to the struggles and joys of family, friends, and lovers. Peggy Shaw, of Split Britches, revisits how she learned to be butch. The late Ron Vawter, of the Wooster Group, juxtaposes the lives of two very different men who died of AIDS: diva filmmaker Jack Smith and Nixon crony Roy Cohn. Tim Miller, one of the NEA Four, surveys the landscape of gay desire before and after the advent of AIDS. And Carmelita Tropicana, the "National Songbird of Cuba," makes an unforgettable, hilarious return to Havana.
Seinfeld Scripts: The First and Second Seasons
Jerry. George. Elaine. Kramer. We've followed their misadventures for nearly ten years on Thursday nights. Here, finally, are the scripts of the first two seasons that will take you back to the beginning of "Seinfeld." Featuring the first 17 episodes ever aired, "The Seinfeld Scripts" contains all the great lines that have kept us laughing for years: the pilot episode, "The Seinfeld Chronicles, " where it all began; George introduces his importer/exporter altar ego Art Vanderlay in "The Stakeout"; Kramer becomes obsessed with cantaloupe in "The Ex-Girlfriend"; Jerry and George meet Elaine's dad in "The Jacket"; is Jerry responsible for a poor Polish woman's death when he makes "The Pony Remark"?; Jerry and Elaine decide to become intimate again in "The Deal"; what will George do when he is banned from the executive bathroom in "The Revenge"?; and Jerry, George, and Elaine wait for a table in "The Chinese Restaurant." It's all here: the award-winning writing of "Seinfeld, " "the defining sitcom of our age." Created by Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld. Elaine: My roommate has Lyme disease. Jerry: Lyme disease? I thought she had Epstein-Barr syndrome? Elaine: She has this in addition to Epstein-Barr. It's like Epstein-Barr with a twist of Lyme disease. George: She calls me up at my office she says, "We have to talk." Jerry: The four worst words in the English language. Kramer: What a body. Yeeaaah...that's for me. Jerry: Yeah and you're just what she's looking for, too--a stranger, leering through a pair of binoculars ten floors up.
Radio On: A Listener's Diary
There are approximately 502 million radios in America. For this savvy, far-reaching diary, celebrated journalist and author Sarah Vowell turned hers on and listened--closely, critically, creatively--for an entire year. As a series of impressions and reflections regarding contemporary American culture, and as an extended meditation on both our media and our society, this keenly focused book is as insightful as it is refreshing. Throughout Radio On, "Vowell's touch is about as delicate as Teddy Kennedy's after a pitcher of martinis" (Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times).
Contemporary American Monologues for Women
Audition monologues from recent works by American playwrights.
The Actor’s Script
The real star of any play or film is the script. Every creative choice is focused on making this abstract compilation of dialogue and actions come to breathing, believable life. The Actor's Script offers a clear, concise, and easily assimilated technique for beginning scriptwork specifically tailored to actors' requirements and sensibilities. Included are: techniques actors need to make the script a powerful and limitless resource for creativity, passion, and transformation processes for breaking scenes into playable beats and actions character analysis from textual information, themes, and larger ideas specific playwriting styles and many excerpts and applications from both contemporary and classic texts. All discussions are applied to actors' unique needs with humor and clarity. Actors who read this book will learn how to break down a script, create the richest and most varied characters, embody the time period and script's unique world, and allow the highest themes and ideas to empassion their choices. Charles S. Waxberg, playwright, director, and actor, has been developing his technique for script analysis since 1981. He has taught script analysis, playwriting, and acting for Carnegie-Mellon University, Stella Adler Conservatory, New York University--Tisch School of the Arts, and the Roundabout Theatre Conservatory, which he founded and where he served as Conservatory Director. Mr. Waxberg has performed in over 25 productions throughout the East Coast and New York City.
Making Musicals
The lyricist/librettist of The Fantasticks, the longest-running show in the history of the American theater, takes on a new role as your guide through the magical world of the stage musical.
Shopping and Fucking
Shopping and F***ing is...Falling in love with your best friend - if you can get the right mix of Es and whizz...Passion buried beneath layers of bubble and wrap and cellophaneA world where microwaves are the only source of heatA place where Shopping is sexy and F***ing is a job...And if you killed someone what would it feel like? Or maybe there are no feelings left...Shopping and F***ing is a witty and shocking look at a corrosive disposable world whose values have been determined by a disinherited generation.SHOPPING AND FUCKING: "is a darkly humorous play for today's twenty-somethings ... a real coup de theatre" - Nicholas de Jongh, Evening Standard
Music/Ideology
First Published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Passion
Winner of the 1994 Tony Awards for Best Book, Best Music and Lyrics, and Best Musical "Easily among Sondheim's best--subtle, rhapsodic and full of emotional depth." --David Patrick Stearns, USA Today "Hypnotic, rigorous, very risky...a major work." --Vincent Canby, New York Times "Held me in its grip...had me sobbing uncontrollably...Sondheim's deepest, most powerful work." --Robert Brustein, New Republic Passion is the third original collaboration between Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine. Their first, Sunday in the Park with George, earned them a Pulitzer Prize. Their second, Into the Woods, won Tony, Grammy, Drama Desk, and Drama Critics Circle awards.
Kindness of Strangers PB
This is the first complete, critical biography of Tennessee Williams (1911-1983), one of America's finest playwrights and the author of (among many important works) The Glass Menagerie, Summer and Smoke, A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Suddenly Last Summer, and The Night of the Iguana. Award-winning biographer Donald Spoto gives us not only a full and accurate account of Williams's life, he also reveals the intimate connections between the playwright's personal dramas and his remarkably autobiographical art. From his birth into a genteel Southern family, through his success, celebrity, and wealth, to his drug addictions, promiscuity, and creative struggles, Tennessee Williams lived a life as gripping as his plays. The Kindness of Strangers, based on Williams's own papers, his mother's diaries, and interviews with scores of friends, lovers, and professional associates, is, in the author's words, a portrait of "a man more disturbing, more dramatic, richer and more wonderful than any character he created."
The Theory of the Modern Stage
Including Antoin Artaud, Bertolt Brecht, E. Gordon Craig, Luigi Pirandello, Konstantin Stanislavsky, W. B. Yeats, and Emile Zolaing.
Play Directing in the School
Directing plays in schools is far different than directing for community or professional theatre. This invaluable text effectively details and explains the world of producing plays in the school environment. In ten comprehensive chapters, we are provided with ideas for consistently successful shows... while avoiding the pitfalls and the problems that often block the way. From the selecting of the script to casting to rehearsals to building your theatre program, Grote supplies the key to opening the curtain to successful productions. Whether it's budgeting, scheduling, or the motivating and management of students, this is a must for anyone directing in an educational institution.
Acting in Film
ACTING IN FILM PPBK EDITION REVISED & EXPANDED EDITION
A Sourcebook of Feminist Theatre and Performance
This outstanding collection includes key texts by theorists such as Elin Diamond, Peggy Phelan and Lynda Hart and interviews with practitioners including Anna Deveare Smith and Robbie McCauley.
The Production Notebooks
The first book of its kind, offerring an inside view of theatre today from the literary manager's point of view.
Style
This book isn't a critical examination of high comedy. Rather, it's a collection of suggestions for the middlemen: the actors who have to catch the comic spark from the playwright and pass it on to the audience. The effort involved must be imperceptible: one has to acquire the cleverness, the articulacy, the febrility of the characters - and then make the whole laborious exercise seem like swimming through silk...The characters in high comedies don't find verbal sophistication difficult or unfamiliar; they enjoy it as you might enjoy slang.
The Orton Diaries
"To be young, good-looking, healthy, famous, comparatively rich and happy is surely going against nature." When Joe Orton (1933-1967) wrote those words in his diary in May 1967, he was being hailed as the greatest comic playwright since Oscar Wilde for his darkly hilarious Entertaining Mr. Sloane and the farce hit Loot, and was completing What the Butler Saw; but less than three months later, his longtime companion, Kenneth Halliwell, smashed in Orton's skull with a hammer before killing himself. The Orton Diaries, written during his last eight months, chronicle in a remarkably candid style his outrageously unfettered life: his literary success, capped by an Evening Standard Award and overtures from the Beatles; his sexual escapades-at his mother's funeral, with a dwarf in Brighton, and, extensively, in Tangiers; and the breakdown of his sixteen-year "marriage" to Halliwell, the relationship that transformed and destroyed him. Edited with a superb introduction by John Lahr, The Orton Diaries is his crowning achievement.
Everything About Theatre!
The purpose of a high school drama or theatre arts program is to introduce students to as many aspects of drama as possible, to allow them to experience for themselves the diversity and excitement of theatre and to encourage them to develop the love of theatre which is necessary for the successful production of a play at any level. So here it is, all in one book-a complete overview of all aspects of theatre! The history, the crafts and the art of the stage are presented in eighteen easy-to-understand units. Theatre history in four parts gives the text an orderly structure. Between these "family album" sections are chapters on acting, improvisation, makeup, lighting, props, costumes and more. Each craft is described with examples, illustrations, and hands-on exercises where appropriate. To guide any director or teacher in introducing students to theatre, this is an incredibly comprehensive survey of the arts and crafts of the stage.
Amazon All Stars
AMAZON ALL-STARS: THIRTEEN LESBIAN PLAYS
Directing for the Stage
Appropriate for both beginning and advanced courses in directing, this is the only theatre text that combines theory with active student participation. The 42 exercises detailed here provide both the instructor and the student a 'user-friendly' workshop structure. With the basic concepts of directing presented progressively, the approach is totally hands-on. The student discovers the demands and problems of directing by actually doing it step-by-step, and through the process, his or her own directing style emerges. Every exercise is presented in great detail and includes both an overview and a section on how to critique a student's work whether you're the director or a classmate. Creativity and confidence building are the central benefits of this excellent workshop text that includes seven sequential chapters: Creating the Directing Workshop, The Silent Seven, Justifying Movement, Ground Plan Exercises, Open Scene Exercises, Closed Scene Exercises and Supporting Parts.
Script into Performance
"An analysis of script interpretation for the theater. The text includes theories on performance as well as examples from the works of Shelley, Ibsen and Pinter. In his new preface, Hornby laments the modernization of classic plays which he believes subverts the original text." -Library Journal
Getting the Part
"At last, an in-depth book about the casting process that tells actors what it is like to be on the other side of the desk, and a must read for the aspiring casting director!" -Marilyn Henry, coauthor, How to Be a Working Actor
Next Season
Noted director Michael Blakemore is renowned for such Broadway successes as Joe Egg, Noises Off and City of Angels. In the introduction, Simon Callow says of Blakemore's book, "There have been remarkable novels of the theatre, but no other book has so truly depicted the creative anarchic excitement of acting. Next Season is the finest fictional celebration of the passionate craft of the actor ... about the demands and rewards of acting, what it takes from you, what it gives you back. Acting as work, work as possion!" "An outstanding theatre novel ... extremely readable and informative." - The London Times
Childsplay
"Childsplay is a very charming and enchanting book - and an important book for children who want to act! Not only can they use this wonderful collection as a guide to the sorts of plays and parts that are available to them, they will discover here how plays ca be read just for pleasure. And they will particularly enjoy the selections written by children themselves." -Julie Harris
Calderon De LA Barca
This volume brings together four long out-of-print Honig translations: Secret Vengeance for Secret Insult, Devotion to the Cross, The Phantom Lady, and The Mayor of Zalamea, joined by the ever popular Life is a Dream and the newly translated, never before published version of The Crown of Absalom. Six Plays will make Calderon's work available to a new generation of readers.
Drama Worlds
Drama Worlds examines the complex improvised event called process drama and identifies it as an essential part of today's theatre. Cecily O'Neill considers process drama's sources and connections with more familiar kinds of improvisation: the texts it generates, the kinds of roles available, factors such as audience and dramatic time, and the leader's function in the event. She provides examples of several process dramas and identifies key dramatic strategies and characteristics. The explicit associations between theatre form and process drama make this approach accessible and its purposes and possibilities easy to understand, particularly to those working in actor training and theatre. Teachers and directors will discover effective ways to explore drama worlds and achieve a significant dramatic experience for all participants.
Working on a New Play
"璽The瓊 invaluable Working on a New Play...arrived, to my overwhelming delight and mental profit; I began and finished it in one long, insatiable, and educational night. Everything in it is new, illuminating and informative, lively and clarifying." -Cynthia Ozick
Mark Kistler's Imagination Station/Learn How to Draw in 3-D With Public Television's Favor
Host of public television's Mark Kistler's Imagination Station, shows young artists the cool and fun way to draw in 3-D! Hey, you! Open this book and learn how to draw in three dimensions! Mark Kistler's Imagination Station has thirty-six exciting drawing adventures. Mark teaches you the different skills you need in order to create such masterpieces as: * Dinosaurs in the Sky * The Cool Cloud Colony * The Magnificent Moon Base * The Delightful Diving Dolphins * Professional Pollution Patrollers * Super Solar System * And thirty other excellent adventures that will have you drawing like this: There's also a special guide for parents and teachers at the end of the book.
As She Likes It
Looks at the way five of the comedies have been staged over the last 50 years, asking how gender politics affects the production of the comedies, and how gender is represented, both in the text and on stage.
Brecht on Theatre
This volume offers a major selection of Bertolt Brecht's groundbreaking critical writing. Here, arranged in chronological order, are essays from 1918 to 1956, in which Brecht explores his definition of the Epic Theatre and his theory of alienation-effects in directing, acting, and writing, and discusses, among other works, The Threepenny Opera, Mahagonny, Mother Courage, Puntila, and Galileo. Also included is "A Short Organum for the Theatre," Brecht's most complete exposition of his revolutionary philosophy of drama. Translated and edited by John Willett, Brecht on Theater is essential to an understanding of one of the twentieth century's most influential dramatists.
Environmental Theater
Here are the exercises which began as radical departures from standard actor training etiquette and which stand now as classic means through which the performer discovers his or her true power of transformation. This expanded edition offers a new generation of theater artists the gospel according to Richard Schechner, the guru whose principles and influence have influenced a quarter century of theater.
Broadway Theatre
In this fascinating and affectionate account of a unique theatrical phenonemon, Andrew Harris takes an intriguing look at the reality and myth behind the heart and soul of American drama.
Art Of Dramatic Writing
Learn the basic techniques every successful playwright knows! Amid the hundreds of "how-to" books out there, there have been very few which attempted to analyze the mysteries of play construction. Lajos Egri's classic, The Art of Dramatic Writing, does just that, with instruction that can be applied equally well to a short story, novel, or screenplay. Examining a play from the inside out, Egri starts with the heart of any drama: its characters. All good dramatic writing hinges on people and their relationships, which serve to move the story forward and give it life, as well as an understanding of human motives--why people act the way that they do. Using examples from everything from William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet to Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House, Egri shows how it is essential for the author to have a basic premise--a thesis, demonstrated in terms of human behavior--and to develop the dramatic conflict on the basis of that behavior. Using Egri's ABCs of premise, character, and conflict, The Art of Dramatic Writing is a direct, jargon-free approach to the problem of achieving truth in writing.
On the Technique of Acting
The most authoritative, authentic text of a classic guide to actingIn the four decades since its first publication, Michael Chekhov's To the Actor has become a standard text for students of the theater. But To the Actor is a shortened, heavily modified version of the great director/actor/teacher's original manuscript, and On the Technique of Acting is the first and only book ever to incorporate the complete text of that brilliant manuscript. Scholars and teachers of Chekhov's technique have hailed On the Technique of Acting as the clearest, most accurate presentation of the principles he taught Yul Brynner, Gregory Peck, Marilyn Monroe, Anthony Quinn, Beatrice Straight, and Mala Powers, among others.This new, definitive edition of Chekhov's masterful work clarifies the principles outlined in To the Actor concerning the pivotal role of the imagination in actors' understanding of themselves and the roles they play. On the Technique of Acting also expands on Chekhov's previously published work with many unique features, including: Thirty additional exercisesA chapter devoted to screen actingMore thorough explanations of the Psychological Gesture, inner tempo vs. outer tempo, and other key concepts of Chekhov's approachFor actors, directors, and anyone interested in the theater, On the Technique of Acting is an essential handbook.
Improve With Improv!
This book is a complete improvisational curriculum program divided into twenty class-length workshops. Each workshop contains carefully selected exercises designed to help students focus on one aspect of a character's personality. Students learn how to create characters from their own imaginations using solo and ensemble pantomime, physicalizing, vocal technique, props, and more. Gestures, facial expressions, voice, and body language are studied in isolation. Many ensemble sketches are included, along with a final improv sketch with enough roles for all members of a large class. The book also includes a class syllabus and guidelines, a character outline sheet, character examples, and a reading list. This is a must for any drama program wanting to teach improvisation, but not knowing where to start.
Creating a Character
For over 20 years, Moni Yakim has taught his unique blend of physical training and emotional exploration to a generation of American actors that include Meryl Streep, Sigourney Weaver, and Kevin Kline. Now, for the first time, his acting process is available to every actor and theater professional.
