Plays

If there ever has been a groundbreaking edition that likewise returns the reader to the original Shakespeare text, it will be the Applause Folio Texts. If there has ever been an accessible version of the Folio, it is this edition, set for the first time in modern fonts. The Folio is the source of all other editions. The Folio text forces us to re-examine the assumptions and prejudices which have encumbered over four hundred years of scholarship and performance. Notes refer the reader to subsequent editorial interventions, and offer the reader a multiplicity of interpretations. Notes also advise the reader on variations between Folios and Quartos. The heavy mascara of four centuries of Shakespearean glossing has by now glossed over the original countenance of Shakespeare's work. Never has there been a Folio available in modern reading fonts. While other complete Folio editions continue to trade simply on the facsimile appearance of the Elizabethan look, none of them is easily and practically utilized in general Shakespeare studies or performances.

Filled with invaluable advice for all actors and vocalists, this guidebook by Beatrice Manley addresses such topics as: how to clear the body of emotional debris how to get feedback from your body what to do with your hands how to release habitual tension the inner structure of feeling avoiding overpreparation and many more.

This is the definitive memoir of the private Noel Coward by the only man with the compassionate insight and first-hand experience to write it. Graham Payn, star of many of Coward's shows, shared the Master's professional and private life for thirty years. When Coward kept the rest of the world at bay, Payn remained at his side as confidant and friend. No one else was as privy to Coward's doubts and dreams.

This is the definitive memoir of the private Noel Coward by the only man with the compassionate insight and first-hand experience to write it. Graham Payn, star of many of Coward's shows, shared the Master's professional and private life for thirty years. When Coward kept the rest of the world at bay, Payn remained at his side as confidant and friend. No one else was as privy to Coward's doubts and dreams.

Though New York remains the de facto capital of American theater, much of the most daring and interesting work today is done by regional theaters. This is doubly true of plays by African American authors, who, despite a few notable exceptions (August Wilson, George C. Wolfe), suffer under a commercial apartheid that keeps black plays off Broadway. Of necessity, African American theater artists have to create their own venues from the ground up. This wide-ranging anthology edited by the founder of the New Federal Theater celebrates the work of that company's black-owned, black-run peers by presenting work by 11 dramatists. Among the most interesting are Jeff Stetson's moving The Meeting, which imagines a meeting between Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., and Shauneille Perry's fascinating updating of In Dahomey, the 1903 musical hit that was the first 'all-Black show' on Broadway. - Jack Helbig, Booklist

In 1950, the terms American theatre and Broadway were virtually synonymous. As the new century begins, Broadway is only a small part of a vital, creative, and varied national theatrical scene. This lively and authoritative book combines a history of the many changes - the spread of regional and non-profit theatres, the rise of Off-Broadway and other alternatives, the decline of Broadway - with an analysis of their implications and the problems they have brought, a look at new audiences, the causes of failure, and the unexpected complications of success. Hardcover.

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

Seven hits that have been the staples of the American dramatic repertoire. Myron Matlaw's introduction provides a splendid survey of the development of American drama. Individual prefaces focus each work in the perspective of its historical context.

Oklahoma! opened nearly sixty years ago and instantly made musical theatre history. It was a daring ahead-of-its-time piece of dazzlingly inventive theatre that exploded every myth about what constitutes a successful musical. Revised and updated to include a special section on the Roayl National Theatre's production that Cameron Mackintosh is presenting on Broadway in spring of 2002, OK! The Story of Oklahoma! celebrates this watershed work that has taken its place in the pantheon of American musical theatre.