Theatre studies

From Josh Brolin, a unique and decidedly un-celebrity memoir, by turns affecting, funny, uncanny, and unforgettable. A remarkable and an unforgettable read. Weaving a latticework of different strands, moving back and forth through time, Josh Brolin...

On October 20, 1882, future actress Margaret Dumont was born in Brooklyn, New York. A Broadway regular by the 1920s, Dumont found lasting fame once she started appearing with the Marx Brothers. Tall and regal in bearing, her character provided the...

Not many can boast of careers that lasted successfully for nearly seventy years, but that is what both Googie Withers and John McCallum achieved. She acted everything from brazen murderesses to Lady Bracknell, taking in blonde nitwits, wartime Resistance...

There’s a saying: the door to magic is closed, but it’s not locked. In How Magicians Think, professional magician and bestselling author Joshua Jay not only opens that door, he brings us inside and turns on the light, revealing the artistry, inside...

We’d like to propose a toast…to Broadway! Learn the spirited history of drinking on stage (and off) and how to make cocktails inspired by the most iconic shows from Broadway.Broadway has always raised a glass to celebrate itself—what’s an opening night...

A madcap adventure through a tight-knit world of drag performers making art and mayhem in the greatest city on earth.Ten years ago, an aimless coat check girl better known today as Merrie Cherry sweet-talked her boss into giving her $100 to host a drag...

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...

In a roving, shimmering conversation that took place in May 2021, scholar, poet, and activist Alexis Pauline Gumbs and playwright, songwriter, performance artist, and educator Daniel Alexander Jones discuss love as a foundational principle of...

How playwrights from Alfred Jarry and Samuel Beckett to Tom Stoppard and Simon McBurney brought the power of abstract mathematics to the human stage.The discovery of alternate geometries, paradoxes of the infinite, incompleteness, and chaos theory...

Cabaret has historically existed on the fringes, populated by those who find themselves, voluntarily or involuntarily, falling outside of conventional society. It pushes the boundaries of gender, politics, identity, power, and social norms. It's live and...

2023 Tony Award winner for Best Musical! Now on Broadway:Kimberly Akimboopened fall 2022 at the Booth Theatre on Broadway. Winner of Numerous Awards:Awards forKimberly Akimboinclude the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, the Drama Desk Award, the...

On February 25, 1963, Columbia Records released The Barbra Streisand Album. The first song was "Cry Me a River," and with that a star was born. Barbra Joan Streisand had a zany personality backed by a talent that Stephen Sondheim once described as "one...

Stanislavski was the first person to develop a cogent and practical system of acting. Throughout his life he sought the answers to such fundamental questions as: "What is great acting?" and "How can you find inspiration in every performance?"...

Richard III: The 30-Minute Shakespeare This edition of Richard III features seven scenes, opening with the Duke of Gloucester's villainous "Winter of our discontent" speech and followed by his audacious wooing of Lady Anne. Queen Margaret's...

Age range 12+This edition of Henry V presents eight scenes, using all actors as Chorus. Included in this riveting cutting are Henry's inspiring "band of brothers" oration to his men, a merry interlude with Bardolph and friends, and an...

Age range 12+Drawing on his eighteen years of experience as a teaching artist for Folger Shakespeare Library, Nick Newlin offers eighteen scenes to get young actors on their feet performing Shakespeare with confidence, understanding, and fun!Each scene...

Age range 12+Julius Caesar: The 30-Minute Shakespeare presents eight spellbinding scenes from this timeless masterpiece. The action begins as the soothsayer warns Caesar of the Ides of March and continues as Brutus conspires against Caesar...

Age range 12+The Two Gentlemen of Verona: The 30-Minute Shakespeare presents six captivating scenes from this high-spirited play. Proteus pledges his love to Julia, but then falls in love with Silvia, who had planned to elope with Proteus's...

Age range 12+Hamlet: The 30-Minute Shakespeare offers five scenes from this enduring tragedy. The Ghost of Hamlet's father calls for vengeance, and Hamlet uses the players to prove Claudius guilty. The cutting includes the murder of Polonius,...

Age range 12+King Henry IV, Part I: The 30-Minute Shakespeare combines comedy, tragedy, and history into a rollicking six-scene drama performable in a half hour.This adaptation includes tavern revelry, highway robbery, and the telling...

Age range 12+Othello: The 30-Minute Shakespeare is a gripping seven-scene interpretation of this Shakespearean masterpiece.There is a dramatic build as each successive event draws Othello closer to jealous rage. Iago convinces Othello that...

Age range 12+King Lear: The 30-Minute Shakespeare renders six powerful scenes from this enduring tragedy. Starting with Lear's banishment of Cordelia, the plot advances irresistibly, featuring scenes of brother Edmund's villainous plotting and...

Age range 12+The Comedy of Errors: The 30-Minute Shakespeare offers five raucous scenes from this extravaganza of mistaken identity.The abridgement begins with a dramatic physical enactment of the twins' separation at sea. The play continues...

Age range 12+Love's Labor's Lost: The 30-Minute Shakespeare plays three action-packed scenes from this tale of King Navarre and his three lords, who have vowed to retire from women for three years. Naturally, the Princess of France and her three...

Age range 12+Planning a school or amateur Shakespeare production? The best way to experience the plays is to perform them, but getting started can be a challenge: The complete plays are too long and complex, while scene selections or simplified language...

Age range 12+Planning a school or amateur Shakespeare production? The best way to experience the plays is to perform them, but getting started can be a challenge: The complete plays are too long and complex, while scene selections or simplified language...

"Punchy, spiky, and flush with a young writer's love of language, the collection often deglamourizes the acting business. A great find."-Library JournalWith insightful poetry that is quite serious yet has fun with metaphor, imagery, and language, Amber...

Widely studied, frequently staged-verbatim theatre is everywhere. In this new book, Mark Wheeller, the author of verbatim hitsToo Much Punch for Judy,Hard to Swallow,Missing Dan NolanandGame Over, and the most performed living playwrights in the UK,...

Throughout the late-eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, historical events were tremendously popular as adaptations for the stage. From the Revolutionary War to the French Revolution, stage dramas brought history vividly to life through powerful...

Forker's critical edition fills the need for a fully annotated, historically contextualised and modernised text of the most important Elizabethan chronicle play apart from Shakespeare and Marlowe's Edward II.Now attributed definitely to George Peele,...

Age range 12+Planning a school or amateur Shakespeare production? The best way to experience the plays is to perform them, but getting started can be a challenge: The complete plays are too long and complex, while scene selections or simplified language...

Age range 12+Planning a school or amateur Shakespeare production? The best way to experience the plays is to perform them, but getting started can be a challenge: The complete plays are too long and complex, while scene selections or simplified language...

A must-have resource for aspiring actors: both monologues to audition with and a step-by-step guide on the best monologue audition preparation!Great Monologues: And How to Give Winning Auditionsis primarily for actors looking for excellent acting...

Advice Culled from Interviews with More Than 100 Experts in the Field In Running Theaters, management consultant and author Duncan M. Webb reveals the best practices that consistently lead to successful theater operations. Culled from surveys and...

Becoming a director is not just about making a film, webseries, commercial, or music video. The opportunity to direct for television is not a given because you've successfully completed a project in another medium. Turning your passion into your...

Based on her experiences at the legendary Herbert Berghof studio in New York City, Carol Rosenfeld’s Acting and Living in Discovery is an essential workbook for actors of all types that focuses the actor’s homework—the work...

Moss is the founder of Playwrights Horizons, one of the most influential theaters in New York<BR> He has also been Artistic Director of the Hangar Theatre in Ithaca and Syracuse Stage<BR> He has directed at theaters around the...

When Bella Baird, an isolated creative writing professor at Yale, begins to mentor a brilliant but enigmatic student named Christopher, the two form an unexpectedly intense bond. As their lives and the stories they tell about themselves become...

"There is a muscularity, not to mention wisdom and truth, to Seth's techniques. He is a wonderful teacher, and I know that having him as my first guide is one of the luckiest things to have happened to me in my career and life." -Anne Hathaway, from her...

Thinking Shakespeare gives theater artists practical advice about how to make Shakespeare's words feel spontaneous, passionate, and real. Based on Barry Edelstein's thirty-year career directing Shakespeare's plays, this book provides the tools that...

In his introduction, Christopher Bayes describes the pursuit of the clown as the search for "the authentic, playful self and its unique relationship to the comic world." An essential read for performers of all kinds, this text takes a deep dive into...

In his five decades of work in theatre, Richard Foreman has become known as the figurehead of the "downtown" scene, the king of all things experimental and unconventional. This brand new anthology is a tribute to his mammoth acclaim, including such...

"Cho's playwriting style...lures us into caring about characters who never fail to surprise us with their simple humanity."-Los Angeles Times"...a strength of Cho's writing is her empathy for those who stumble toward and slip away from intimacies they...

"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...

Audition monologues from recent works by American playwrights.

"Ms. Finley hasn't lost the power to disturb."-Ben Brantley, The New York TimesNo other performing artist has captured the psychological complexity of this decade as Karen Finley has. In her inimitable style, she has embodied some of the most troubling...

This collection brings together studies of popular performance and politics across the nineteenth century, offering a fresh perspective from an archivally grounded research base. It works with the concept that politics is performative and performance is...

This book deals with Shakespeare's role in contemporary culture. It looks in detail at the way that Shakespeare's plays inform modern ideas of cultural value and the work required to make Shakespeare part of modern culture. It is unique in using social...