Plays

This is the ultimate backstage tour of Broadway! AT THIS THEATRE tells the complete history of Broadway in the 20th century, theatre by theatre. This gorgeous book is now updated, revised and with a larger format, covering 1900 to 2001. PLAYBILL's columnist, Louis Botto, along with Robert Viagas, opens the doors and lets readers explore the 40 active Broadway theatres in New York. From the conception and design of the buildings, to their original creators, and on to the theatres' transformation, often under duress, from legitimate houses to vaudeville and Burlesque, to movie houses and then back to their original purpose, this book captures the magical world of Broadway. It is a complete and authoritative history that only Botto, the curator of PLAYBILL's incomparable 116-year-old archives, can tell. Expanded from his popular column in PLAYBILL magazine, AT THIS THEATRE is the biography of those living, breathing buildings we call theatres. In this substantially updated version, Botto includes the histories of all the theatres rescued from the wrecker in the last ten years, including the American Airlines Theatre, Disney's New Amsterdam, and the Lyric and the Apollo, now combined into the Ford Center. AT THIS THEATRE is filled with great stories featuring a cast of characters including Ethel Merman, David Merrick, Katharine Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart and Spencer Tracy. And it's also a theatrical spectacle boasting lavish illustrations of posters, programs, and photographs throughout. This is the gift book for every theatre lover on your list, including yourself!

The totally restored, revamped and researched blow-by-blow recounting of the most spectacular title bout in the blood-soaked history of Hollywood. This book documents in rare detail the back-room haggling and the attempted ego-bashing that is part of the movie business. - Gene Siskel; Told with the passion of an advocate yet with the objectivity of a crack reporter, The Battle of Brazil is a chilling, inevitably hilarious account of a great film that almost got away. - USA Today.

Martin Sherman's worldwide hit play Bent took London by storm in 1979 when it was first performed by the Royal Court Theatre, with Ian McKellen as Max (a character written with the actor in mind). The play itself caused an uproar. It educated the world, Sherman explains. People knew about how the Third Reich treated Jews and, to some extent, gypsies and political prisoners. But very little had come out about their treatment of homosexuals. Gays were arrested and interned at work camps prior to the genocide of Jews, gypsies, and handicapped, and continued to be imprisoned even after the fall of the Third Reich and liberation of the camps. The play Bent highlights the reason why - a largely ignored German law, Paragraph 175, making homosexuality a criminal offense, which Hitler reactivated and strengthened during his rise to power.

Eric Bentley's graceful look at George Bernard Shaw was first published over 50 years ago, and time has only strengthened the conviction of his ideas and arguments about Shaw. When it arrived in the late 1940's, this book was hailed by the great poet William Carlos Williams as the best treatise on contemporary manners I think I have ever read. I was fascinated and rewarded in the depths of my soul. Even Shaw himself described the book as the best critical description of my public activities I have yet come across.

A collection of 12 short plays from 1990. Includes: Salaam, Huey Newton, Salaam - Ed Bullins; Naomi in the Living Room - Christopher Durang; The Man Who Climbed the Pecan Trees - Horton Foote; Teeth - Tina Howe; Sure Thing - David Ives; Christmas Eve on Orchard Street - Allan Knee; Akhmatova - Romulus Linney; Unprogrammed - Carol Mack; The Cherry Orchard - Richard Nelson; Hidden in This Picture - Aaron Sorkin; Boy Meets Girl - Wendy Wasserstein; Abstinence - Lanford Wilson.

Scripts for 12 short plays complete with bios on each author. Includes: Salaam Huey Newton, Salaam (Ed Bullins) Naomi in the Living Room (Christopher Durang) The Man Who Climbed the Pecan Trees (Horton Foote) Teeth (Tina Howe) Sure Thing (David Ives) Christmas Eve on Orchard Street (Allan Knee) Akhmatova (Romulus Linney) Unprogrammed (Carol Mack) The Cherry Orchard (Richard Nelson) Hidden in This Picture (Aaron Sorkin) Boy Meets Girl (Wendy Wasserstein) Abstinence (Lanford Wilson).

Theodore Apstein Laura Cahill Billy Goda Dave DeChristopher Arlene Hutton Tony Kushner David Mamet John Ford Noonan Jules Tasca Tom Topor Cherie Vogelstein.

Complete scripts for: The Likeness (Theodore Apstein) Home (Laura Cahill) Fifteen Minutes (Dave Dechristopher) No Crime (Billy Goda) I Dream Before I Take the Stand (Arlene Hutton) Reverse Transcription (Tony Kushner) The Jade Mountain (David Mamet) What Drove Me Back to Reconsidering My Father (John Ford Noonan) Deus-X (Jules Tasca) Boundary County, Idaho (Tom Topor) All About Al (Cherie Vogelstein).

Pearl Cleage David Dozer, Rich Orloff Jacquelyn Reingold Murray Schisgal Nicky Silver Shel Silverstein Wendy Wasserstein donald Steele Billy Aronson.

For over 60 years, The Best American Short Plays series has set the standard for excellence in one-act plays. In this latest edition, we are pleased to present a group of fresh-voiced, cutting-edge plays for the new millenium. Among the twelve plays included are Sheri Wilner's poignant Relative Strangers, which chronicles a young woman's yearning for the mother she never knew; Gary Sunshine's lyrical Al Takes a Bride, in which two young southern women fantasize about marrying each other; Rosemary Moore's The Pain of Pink Evenings, which charts the emotional terrain of a grieving young widow; Brian Silberman's Walkin' Backwards, in which an outcast teenage boy runs away from home on the day of his mother's funeral; and Laurence Klavan's darkly humorous The Summer Sublet, which probes an unexpected affair between a young man and his landlord. From 19th century Memphis to present-day Washington DC, from sexual politics to coming of age, the plays in this volume are sure to inspire, challenge and entertain.