Plays

Includes: Rachel Crothers' A Man's World; Susan Glaspell's Trifles; Georgia Douglas Johnson's Plumes; Sophie Treadwell's Machinal, Zona Gale's Miss Lulu Bett.

Three editors, each associated with theatre, collaborated on this book of monologues for actresses. What they discovered, besides bravura pieces for auditions, acting classes, and study, was the pulse of the millennial theatrical scene. A follow-up to the popular previous edition from the 1990s, One on One: The Best Women's Monologues for the 21st Century includes the work of over 70 playwrights, spotlighting the best of Broadway, Off-Broadway, regional, and experimental writings since 2000. A special introduction also explains how to choose, practice, and perform a speech for auditions. Comic or serious - or both - the monologues are written for young, old, and multicultural players by famous names and up-and-coming talent. Anna Deavere Smith records abuse in real relationships (House Arrest); August Wilson relates trials of those who survived coming to America - and those who did not (Gem of the Ocean); and William Gibson recreates the dark, fledgling days of Israel (Golda's Balcony). Additional works include Are You Ready? by David Auburn, Bad Dates by Theresa Rebeck, The Committee by Brian Dykstra, and many others.

A series of 13 written workshops covering: conflict and character: the dominant image: Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller Overheard voices: Ibsen and Shakespeare The solo performance piece: listening for stories Terror and vulnerability: Ionesco The point of absurdity: creating without possessing: Pinter and Beckett and much more.

Warning: The plays of Political Stages do not make for a quiet evening of theatre. These are the plays which got audiences out of their seats, and sometimes out into the streets. Their words and ideas rumbled ominously down the marble hallways of legislatures and challenged, even threatened, and often changed, the thinking of millions. These are the plays which either lit or reflected the fires of those political controversies which blazed across the American Twentieth Century. Individually, each is a molotov cocktail tossed onto the stage, each a political movement encapsulated in dramatic form. Combined, they constitute both a conflagration and a record of American political and theatrical ideology. Never before, however, have they been collected in one explosive volume. In Political Stages, they have at last been preserved, ever ready to serve at the barricades of subsequent eras. Includes works by Tennessee Williams, Emily Mann, Clifford Odets, Langston Hughes, and others.

Television history was made on April 30, 1997, when comedian Ellen DeGeneres and her sitcom alter-ego Ellen Morgan, came out to her close friends and 36 million viewers. This groundbreaking episode represented a significant milestone in Amerian television. For the first time, a TV series centered around a lesbian character who was portrayed by an openly gay actor. The millions of viewers who tuned in that historic night were witnesses to a new era in television. THE PRIME TIME CLOSET offers an entertaining and in-depth glimpse into homosexuality on television from the 1950s through today. Divided into four sections, each devoted to a major television genre, this unique book explores how gay men and lesbians have been depicted in over three hundred television episodes and made-for-TV films. These include medical series, police/detective shows, situation comedies and TV dramas. THE PRIME TIME CLOSET also reveals how television's treatement of homosexuality has reflected and reinforced society's ignorance about and fear of gay men and lesbians. At the same time, it celebrates programs like Ellen and Will & Grace that have broken new ground in their sensitive and enlightened approach to homosexuality and gay-related themes. This book is witty and insightful, accessible and illuminating, a look into what has become an integral part of American media culture.

QED is a seductive mix of science, human affections, moral courage and comic eccentricity... not to be missed.- John Simon, New York Magazine The play itself is a kind of proof, dramatically illustrating how a man who happens to be a genius elegantly and movingly works through the human problem of how to face the end of his life. - Nancy Franklin, The New Yorker With a moving and powerful introduction from Alan Alda. Who knew that quantum electrodynamics could make for a dramatic read? In the hands of the late, great physicist Richard Feynman, it does. Feynman's theory of QED is just one of the many topics the playwright Peter Parnell explores in this nearly-one-man show, a recent Broadway triumph for star Alan Alda as Feynman. Set in Feynman's office on the weekend of his realization that he has terminal cancer, this play is an intellectual tour-de-force that captures the unique, hilarious, and puckish genius that Feynman was. From his work on the Manhattan Project to the death of his beloved first wife, from his mission to reconstruct the Challenger space shuttle tragedy to his Nobel-prize winning physics ideas, the resume of Feynman's life is fascinating. But Parnell gives us more, letting fill in the details of his life. When he reads a letter he wrote to his wife after her death, or flirts with a student, or chillingly recalls walking around Manhattan calculating the damage an atomic bomb could do, we grow to love the man behind the scientist. And we read in fascination as he puzzles out the problem of his own death. Combining the current interest in science and math in the entertainment world with one of the most entertaining scientists in U.S. history, QED is a tour-de-force.

At the beginning of 1992, no one had heard of Quentin Tarantino. By mid-1995, Quentinmania was in high gear, and he was being hailed as the hip new Oscar-toting messiah of film making. In this irreverant personal biography and in-depth study, Jeff Dawson interrogates Tarantino about his early influences, his use of violence, and accusations of plagiarism. Dawson takes the reader behind the scenes of Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs and Destiny Turns on the Radio, to get a glimpse of Quentin through the eyes of Harvey Keitel, John Travolta, Bruce Willis, Tim Roth and other Tarantino gang members interviewed for this book. Includes dialogue that didn't make it into the final cut, as well as the original plot twists for True Romance and Natural Born Killers that got axed by the censors. Includes great color and black & white photos throughout.

A witty, sensitive and exemplary biography on Sir Ralph Richardson, a prominent acting figure of the 20th Century. Proof-read and edited by Richardson himself, this provides an otherwise unknown insight into Sir Ralph's background and acting career.

In the same way that Shakespeare himself continued to meditate and transform his own ideas and the shape they took, Marowitz gives us license to continue that meditation in productions extrapolated from Shakespeare's work. Shakespeare becomes the greatest of all catalysts who stimulates a constant re-formulation of the fundamental questions of philosophy, history and meaning. Marowitz introduces us to Shakespeare as an active contemporary collaborator who strives with us to yield a vibrant contemporary theatre.

In the same way that Shakespeare himself continued to meditate and transform his own ideas and the shape they took, Marowitz gives us license to continue that meditation in productions extrapolated from Shakespeare's work. Shakespeare becomes the greatest of all catalysts who stimulates a constant re-formulation of the fundamental questions of philosophy, history and meaning. Marowitz introduces us to Shakespeare as an active contemporary collaborator who strives with us to yield a vibrant contemporary theatre.