Plays

David Merrick is the most astonishing showman of our time, and perhaps of all time. No other producer, not even Florenz Ziegfeld nor the combined lights of the Shubert brothers, has equalled his percentage of hits or his demonic flair for publicity. In this first-ever biography, Howard Kissel from his decade-long investigation reveals the man, the mask, and the myth of David Merrick. The charismatic and reclusive mogul emerges as a Broadway version of Howard Hughes, with his own panoply of eccentricities, genius and neuroses. Merrick's much publicized and oftentimes staged battles and feuds are re-ignited here full force with such major personalities as Barbra Streisand, Jackie Gleason, Ethel Merman, Lena Horne, Woody Allen, Peter Ustinov, Andy Griffith, Anthony Newley, Peter Brook, and Carol Channing. Over a hundred interviews with the major players in Merrick's drama - from his pre-Merrick St. Louis childhood as David Margoulies to his latest divorce - has yielded the first serious interrogation of a life that until now has been the sole creation of Merrick's own invention and press wizardry.

The script to one of the most tender yet devastating plays of the Drexlerian oeuvre is the musical romance Dear. It takes place in the Eisenhower Fifties, the early years of television. There is an elegiac quality for the tragicomedy punctuated by the sentimental music of the era...The play is about Jessie Clup, a Queens housewife whose philandering husband has deserted her. Her only culpa is her fixation on Perry Como, the ex-barber, crooner kin, reigning TV star. - Rosette Lamont, StageView.

Kirkwood, the co-writer of the book of the great musical A Chorus Line, also wrote the stage play Legends, for which Carol Channing and Mary Martin embarked on a nationwide, bound-for-Broadway tour. This book chronicles the slow disintigration of the whole project, thanks to bickering divas, greedy producers, hostile reviewers, and general chaos. Kirkwood's fine eye for detail and general good humor keep this book lighhearted and funny, even as sadness lingers in the wings. A wonderful book for anyone who loves the theatre.

Every actor and director who enters the orbit of Marowitz's major work will find himself challenged to a deeper understanding of his art and propelled into further realms of exploration on his/her own. Marowitz meditates on all the sacred precepts of theatre practice including auditions, casting, design, rehearsal, actor psychology, dramaturgy, and the text.

Over one-hundred and thirty great scenes erupt from page to stage in this addition to the Applause Acting Series. Each scene has been selected as a freestanding dramatic unit offering two actors a wide range of theatrical challenge and opportunity. Each scene is set up with a synopsis of the play, character descriptions and notes on how to propel the scene to full power outside the context of the play. DUO! offers a full spectrum of age, region, genre, character, level of difficulty, and non-traditional casting potential.

Mel Gussow's critically-acclaimed biography of the three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright (Seascape, A Delicate Balance, The Zoo Story), who first electrified the American theatre scene in the 1960s with his groundbreaking The Zoo Story followed by the legendary Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Boisterous and unrestrained like the age itself, the Elizabethan theatre has long defended its place at the apex of English dramatic history. Shakespeare was but the brightest star in this extraordinary galaxy of playwrights. The stage boasted a rich and varied repertoire from courtly and romantic comedy to domestic and high tragedy, melodrama, farce, and histories. The Gassner-Green anthology revives the whole range of this universal stage, offering us the unbounded theatrical inventiveness of the age. Elizabethan Drama is designed to provide the modern reader with complete access to the plays, as well as the beguiling Elizabethan world which was their backdrop. John Gassner's classic introduction is supplemented by his and William Green's superb prefaces to the individual plays. Marginal glosses and footnotes throughout keep the immediacy of the Elizabethan stage within easy reach.

From Richard Hornby's preface: This book is written for those who act, those who teach acting, and those who are interested in seeing it. It is both a theoretical work and a call for action. This book is an unashamed attack on the American acting establishment ... The concepts derive from my graduate seminars in acting theory and history in the School of Theatre at Florida State University ... Much of the feistiness of those classes carries over into this book ... If my arguments serve only to stimulate new dialogue, they will have been valuable.

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.