Theatre Books

It is hard to select one theatre as the epitome of what a movie palace should be, but the story of San Francisco's "Fabulous Fox" as told in this magnificent 12-inch high by 9-inch wide by 1-1/2-inch thick volume will convince most anyone! Both the theatre and its book can only be described in superlatives: the 5,000-seat theatre deserves this 380-page hardbound book with its 600 some illustrations on heavy, glossy paper. The research is so complete that not only are the original blueprints presented along with every area of the building being shown in photos, but the author even counted the ornaments in the theatre amoung which were "900 tassels" on the elaborate draperies throughout the building and the fact that it cost $800,000.00 for just the furnishings in 1929! The author's meticulous research reproduces the Inaugural Programme and includes lengthy chapters on the early theatres in San Francisco (both pre- and post-earthquake/fire) and a wonderful exposition of the artistry and technique which made possible the elaborate cast plaster decor of such theatres. A section of color plates and a complete listing of the theatre's activities from its opening to its closing in 1963 follows the interesting discussion of the FOX's sad demise: a cautionary tale for other cities which will regret loosing an architectural masterpiece! Other books on theatres as a group have appeared, and there have been a few on individual structures, but none compare to this Magnum Opus, this seven-pound Labor of Love! If the late author, Preston J. Kaufmann, could be with us today, he would beam with pride at the high water mark he had set, and therefore maybe even the high prices of used copies may be justified.

What a magnificant book! All the copies that I have seen have sold between $300-$1000, but are worth every penny. I won't repeat what the others have said so well, but I loved the section where they listed every film that played the theater, including the gross for each one. Very revealing, since the Fox was home for the premiere showings of Cinemascope films in San Francisco, from "The Robe" onward. The grosses reveal that the process only had a real boxoffice effect for slightly more than a year. No wonder marginal theaters that made the investment in a last-ditch effort to save themselves went under anyway. Fascinating in every way, and every theater lover should have a copy-no collection of theater literature is complete without it!

There isn't much I can add to the previous review. This is a compelling book - a theatre as a character. The meticulous detail of the history speaks for itself: the circumstances of the times that made the theatre possible, the planning and design, the construction, its' operation over the years, the characters that peopled it and - finally - the circumstances that led to and the chronicling of its' undeserved demolition. All of this history accompanied by photographs, illustrations, the opening night program - even all of the newspaper ads that heralded the opening in an avalanche of hype. I read this book in a single night. You would be hard pressed to find a book that captures the essence of the birth, life and death of a building as this one does. Copies are nearly impossible to find and the sticker shock on the ones you do are likely to send you running. For those interested in the short lived phenomenon that was the movie palace, however, this is indeed "the last word" on the subject, if only through a single example.

So much of the critical reaction to the work of Tennessee Williams was colored by the prevailing social attitudes toward homosexuality. Michael Pallers GENTLEMEN CALLERS: TENNESSEE WILLIAMS, HOMOSEXUALITY, AND MID-TWENTIETH-CENTURY DRAMA provides a fascinating critical study of Williamss work in the context of his sexual orientation and the particular time in which he lived. In the 50s he was criticized for being too gay. By the 1970s, he was criticized for being not gay enough and was labeled as a self-loather. Mr. Pallers book puts the arguments into perspective and provides a calm, well-documented argument that Williams never denied that he was gay and never wrote male characters disguised as females. He presented the American theatre of the 1950s only unapologetically gay character in CAMINO REAL. While the unsavory homosexual character in his grim 1970 play SMALL CRAFT WARNINGS was such a smoking gun for the scathing criticism of Williams from gay critics, Paller convincingly argues that the heterosexual characters in that play fare no better.

Parts of the book I consider brilliant, especially the section analyzing Williams's neglected one-act "Something Unspoken," which portrays a power struggle between two latent lesbians. (Now I want to see this play performed!) This section alone makes the book essential reading for any serious scholar of Williams's work, but the whole book offers one eye-opening passage after another. I would highly recommend this book to any theatre artist planning to direct or act in a Williams play as well as to lovers of Williams's work in general. Five stars.

Gentlemen Callers is a penetrating look at the work of Tennessee Williams in the context of his homosexuality and the pervasive homophobia in the midst of which he grew up and created some of the most moving and significant works of drama in the English language. Gentlemen Callers describes in all its chilling reality the emergence of intense homophobia in the mid-20th century, intentionally fostered by government agencies, and discusses how this homophobia impacted his life and his work. Author Paller makes a particular effort to point out the wrongmidedness of latter day gay liberationist critics who pilloried Williams for supposedly creating characters from an internalized homophobia, criticism which failed to appreciate the process of artistic creation and the characters themselves in their dramatic settings. Paller analyzes a number of the most developmentally significant of Williams' plays in the light of the homosexuality that was such an important motif in his oeuvre. Gentlemen Callers is an engaging study, and the most substantial examination of this writer in the context of the homosexuality that so signficantly informed his work.

This book is kind of a mixture. Partly it's a biographical sketch of Tennesee Williams, partly it's a review of the struggles gay and lesbian people had during the 1940's and '50's, partly it's an analysis of the homosexuality in Williams plays, partly it's an analysis of the critics writing about his plays. And all of that is a lot to put in one rather small book.

Strangely enough, even with all that in the book, Mr. Paller pulls it off quite well. He is able to describe the gay-bashing of the time, and the tremendous internal struggles that this created in Williams. His descriptions of the critics analysis of the plays tells us a lot about the critics themselves, more about them than the plays.

It's too much to say that this is a book that you can't put down. Instead I found it's a book that you read for a while, and then you want to think about what you've read before you go on.

Tennessee Williams is probably America's foremost playwright. Some like Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire and more are still among the best plays ever done. The anguish in the writer in facing first his own discovery of his homosexuality and then finding it in the opressive eyes of the time make for quite a story.

This is a great book that I recommend any and every teacher should own, it is great for discussions, drama, shows, and others. Again "A book that gives teenagers a chance to laugh at themselves and still feel good about it. Not a easy task!!". This book handles issues important to teens, the perils of becoming a adult with topics like drinking and driving, teenage parties, smoking, alcoholic parents and much more and it sets all this to a fun and upbeat tone!

My 12-year-old boy, who has an agent, was asked to come in and perform a 2-4 minute monolog. The library had material much too difficult, but this book is perfect for teens and has topics that they can relate to. A wonderful book and now I want to own it for his "future career."

The book Get in the Act is a great book. It is perfect for teens or young aduts who like to act and enjoy drama. It has plays, dialogues, and monulogues they can relate to. My friend and I did a couple of the skits and preformed them to our friends and family. We had such a fun time with this book. We have renewed it 5 times from the library already. Thanks this is a great book!

grea

I found this book to be very informitive about the Greek culture and mythological creatures. I really liked how Homer expressed the contour of each character, and they're features. In my opinion this book could of used a bit more action and excitment

The Odyssey is the sun which gives enlightment to those able to see its greatness, it is newer than the newspaper I read today morning. For his sense of reality, desire of sublimity, taste for human feelings and witty use of words, Homer is not just a great poet, he is the greatest poet humanity ever had.

This riveting romp of a read is as deep as the reader is prepared to probe--a rollicking airport diversion, or an insightful examination of man's condition.
For those who crave celebrities in unusal positions--naked Kirk Douglas raging at the staff of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (the stage version)for example,this will delight. For those who hunger for universal timeless truths, this will be a feast.
For theater aficionados as well as for history buffs this is a must read.

This book is the story of how the now-classic Broadway musical "Man of La Mancha" came to be written, and of its various productions, including the much-maligned 1972 film version. Its 87 year old author, Dale Wasserman, not only wrote the script of the musical as well as the film's screenplay, but also wrote its source, the 1959 non-musical TV play, "I, Don Quixote", which was broadcast during the Golden Age of live TV drama and, as of now, still has never been repeated on television nor issued on video. It would make fascinating viewing--if a copy can be found on kinescope and restored.(Those curious about the play can actually read it; the entire text is included in this book, and despite a few changes, it strongly resembles its musical counterpart, right down to the dialogue.)

Wasserman is a highly opinionated, outspoken and entertaining writer who spares nothing and nobody, and he takes us through the various phases in the writing of the show. He is pointedly emphatic in declaring that it was never intended as a dramatic adaptation of "Don Quixote" ; he believes strongly that an attempt at adapting the episodic 1,000 page novel into a coherent and interesting play, much less a film, is as impossible as Don Quixote's own attempt to defeat that famous windmill. He was/is not interested in the actual novel as a potential play. Wasserman intended both "I, Don Quixote" and "Man of La Mancha" as a tribute to Miguel de Cervantes, author of the novel, and to demonstrate how, in all spiritual ways, Cervantes and his fictional creation were close kin. Perhaps critics who review "Man of La Mancha" should take closer notice of this.


One fascinating aspect of the book is that though he is critical of the 1972 film version of "Man of La Mancha" starring Peter O'Toole and Sophia Loren, both non-singing actors, he is by no means as hostile to it as those critics that howled that a great musical had been desecrated on its way to the screen. He compliments its stars on their performances, and his biggest beef with the production seems to lie in the necessity of the film's having to use realistic, literal scenery, something that the stage version deliberately avoided.

Where Wasserman may alienate some people, however, is in his very politically incorrect and scathing criticism of some of the countries that produced the foreign language productions. But one can hardly blame him; if his account is as accurate as it seems, the liberties some of them took are horrifying.

But to divulge any more of this book would be unfair. Theatre buffs should eagerly lap it up, and anyone else interested in knowing how a literate Broadway musical play was put together should enjoy it highly.

I saw "Man of La Mancha" in, probably, its second night of previews in New York. I had cajoled a group of friends into coming based on my fandom for its star, Richard Kiley. I was a bit worried that they, or indeed I, might not like the show. What was a big musical like this doing opening in a rickety, "temporary" theater W-A-A-y off-broadway? I couldn't get any reading on my friends' reactions during the show (which was performed without intermission) but, as the lights came up at the end, I saw that I had done good. There wasn't a dry eye along the row we had commandeered. We stood by our seats and raved as the audience filed out. It turned out to be a damn good thing that we did, too, as we were just one row in front of Kiley's wife! All of which is to say that I pride myself on having loved the show longer than most. Thus, I was thrilled to hear that this book was coming out. Then I got worried. What if it didn't live up to its subject? What if it told me things I didn't want to know? Sure, Dale Wasserman is a superior playwright/screenwriter, but that's not a BOOK (and if you think writing is writing, try some of David Mamet's novels... not his essays, which are brilliant, his novels). Anyway, I needn't have worried. This is the book "...La Mancha" deserves, and the one any lover of the play or the theater will cherish.

Carole Zucker has just given us the finest book ever written on British actors.'In the Company of Actors...' is an entertaining, informative and thorough investigation into the lives and craft of some of Britain and Ireland's most popular and accomplished thespians. This particular book is so far away from the standard "actor's biography" that it would be futile to compare it to any other publication around today. It simply stands apart on all level. It is most certainly destined to become a classic. Meeting with such famous figures as Eileen Atkins, Alan Bates, Nigel Hawthorne, Stephen Rea and Miranda Richardson (among others), the author is cleverly dissolving herself into the background of the interviewing process, thus allowing the actors to really open up and to freely speak about what constitutes acting for theatre, film and television. Zucker succeeds in creating a climate of intimacy never before reached (in any given interview), and her book will make you feel like a privileged reader with a direct access into the minds of these extremely talented people. There are even moments of self-revelation which makes 'In the Company of Actors..' a brillant excercise in deep social interaction. It is an impressive display of professional savoir-faire on the part of Mrs. Zucker and a major contribution to acting studies as a whole. For the aspiring actor, the book also offers a lot of insights into the business. Whether it be Stephen Rea explaining the differences between the Irish, British and American film industries, or Academy Award nominee Janet McTeer discussing the difficulty of being a woman actor (in a male-dominated world), the book covers all bases from all angles, and no stones are left unturned. Subtely broaching theoretical and practical concerns about acting, 'In the Company of Actors...' is accessible to both, the neophyte and the acting student. If you are interested in knowing more about this wonderful and crazy profession, do yourself a favor and go buy this amazing book now!

Don't let the "reflections" of the title throw you: this is no drowsy academic tome. This is a fascinating read for anyone interested in actors and acting. Many of the subjects are relatively unknown on this side of the Atlantic, but if you care about the process of real acting, this book will take you in, chapter by chapter. Critic Kenneth Tynan said "The study of actors should be a full-time task, worthy of the same passionate scholarship which lepidopterists devote to butterflies." What we have here is that passion's result, and Carole Zucker has given voice to the butterflies.

Carole Zucker has just given us the finest book ever written on British actors.'In the Company of Actors...' is an entertaining, informative and thorough investigation into the lives and craft of some of Britain and Ireland's most popular and accomplished thespians. This particular book is so far away from the standard "actor's biography" that it would be futile to compare it to any other publication around today. It simply stands apart on all level. It is most certainly destined to become a classic. Meeting with such famous figures as Eileen Atkins, Alan Bates, Nigel Hawthorne, Stephen Rea and Miranda Richardson (among others), the author is cleverly dissolving herself into the background of the interviewing process, thus allowing the actors to really open up and to freely speak about what constitutes acting for theatre, film and television. Zucker succeeds in creating a climate of intimacy never before reached (in any given interview), and her book will make you feel like a privileged reader with a direct access into the minds of these extremely talented people. There are even moments of self-revelation which makes 'In the Company of Actors..' a brillant excercise in deep social interaction. It is an impressive display of professional savoir-faire on the part of Mrs. Zucker and a major contribution to acting studies as a whole. For the aspiring actor, the book also offers a lot of insights into the business. Whether it be Stephen Rea explaining the differences between the Irish, British and American film industries, or Academy Award nominee Janet McTeer discussing the difficulty of being a woman actor (in a male-dominated world), the book covers all bases from all angles, and no stones are left unturned. Subtely broaching theoretical and practical concerns about acting, 'In the Company of Actors...' is accessible to both, the neophyte and the acting student. If you are interested in knowing more about this wonderful and crazy profession, do yourself a favor and go buy this amazing book now!

This is a fabuoulos book!!! Very fun and perfect for story time. Just LOVE IT!!!

We bought this book as a gift for our 1 year old. He LOVES sticking his face through the hole and making the animal sound. It has been a fun way to introduce him to animals and their sounds. He also loves it when Mommy or Daddy pretend along with him!! The pictures and the story are really cute!

I picked this book up at the zoo - but liked it so much I have bought more copies from Amazon for other kids. My 13 month old is very amused by this book. Each page has an animal head - with a face missing. My son always giggles when someone picks up the book and makes a face through the page opening. He is even amused when we put him in front of a mirror with the book open with his face in the opening!

I studied under Ms. Levin at the College of Santa Fe for 4 years in the English dept.
I heard readings from this book long before it was published and even still went to readings AFTER it had been published and I was well-versed in the material.
Dana loves blood imagery, she loves sexual imagery and, man, does she love the underbelly of the world.
Read her work if you want the view of one of the ONLY great poets still living today.
And if you want more read her contemporary, and one of my faves, Jon Davis. Whose book SCRIMMAGE OF APPETITE will change your life forever.
Thanks, Dana!

I love this book and found a great review by Susan Conley in Ploughshares:...Winner of the inaugural APR/Honickman First Book Prize, selected by Louise Gluck, this fiercely intelligent book is grounded firmly in the realm of American confessional poetry, but Levin wisely and skillfully manipulates conventional boundary lines. The "future of the body" is in question here, and the rich symbolism of this corporeal and spiritual investigation supports this volume in a complex architecture. Lines between truth and fiction, history and autobiography, continuously blur in the book's dark, elliptical explorations....What amazes in this collection is how various speakers hover over bloody bodies, over wreckage of nuclear families and inconsolable anger, and still choose to go back into the body because they "can't bear not feeling."....Yet, it is often the device of the angels that holds these...poems together. Much is asked of these harbringers of life. Angels instead of surgeons handle the scalpels in the title poem, presiding over the sick....Like Rilke's angels in the Duino Elegies, Levin's angels know pain and despair, but ultimately they are transcendent witnesses who give this fine book its wings.

After having read the book, I heard Ms. Levin read in Chelsea, and I must say, I was amazed. My word will never be sufficient....

Intercultural Communication : A Reader by Larry A. Samovar (Editor), Richard E. Porter Paperback 9th edition (July 1999) Wadsworth Pub Co;

I have taught with several of the major readers on the market: Samovar and Porter's, Nakayama and Martin, and others. This text has the most well written readings and contains articles on many seminal issues, context (Hall), time (Hall), etc. This text has the LEAST blatantly fluff filled articles intended only to titillate and pander to students. Additionally, if you review some of the other texts, you will see that they often have poorly referenced articles and the work is less than scholarly. It is possible to write a chapter for a reader such as this and support your content with support and references. The articles here are interesting, well written, well referenced, and more-grounded in theory and research than a lot of the competition. I recommend it highly. MLK

I was lucky enough to take a class from Professor Samovar. This was a great book and a good introduction to intercultural communication.

Jerome Robbins was a hard act to follow. Deborah Jowitt's Jerome Robbins: His Life, His Theater, His Dance should be placed upon every public library shelf, alphabetically, before William Shakespeare, for only he could. Robbins is to 20th Century American Modern Dance Theater what Shakespeare was to the Elizabethan Stage, an author of infinite variety, a man for all ages.

Ms. Jowitt gives us a scholarly blueprint for amateur, musical theater lover, and balletomane; one that should be made available to all engaged in the academic pursuits of the Arts, Letters, and Sciences. Jerome Robbins, legendary theatrical genius, is brilliantly extolled in exacting detail and rendered with the loving care of a biographer dedicated to communicating this great artist's "message." He was the least difficult of men. All he wanted was boundless love.

Deborah Jowitt's Jerome Robbins is written in a trenchant prose style, a cross between WCBS TV celebrity correspondent Walter Cronkite's You Are There, and Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace.

Her tone is one of a high-powered sports newscaster delivering to her audience a polished blow-by-blow description of celebrity "plays." These are not professional precision ball passing reports; they are larger than life descriptive interactions of 20th Century Show Business's great personalities Robbins knew and loved.

Jowitt presents us with an eyeful. It were as though she uses a high definition, technicolor, movie screen attached to a time machine to fly us, like a motion picture director's crane, throughout multiple three dimensional scenes Jerome Robbins choreographs, before our eyes. In Jerome Robbins: His Life, His Theater, His Dance, Deborah Jowitt has delivered a state-of-the art biography that goes beyond the intricate prose of great fiction.

Jowitt instantaneously captures "the moment," and translates into words that in effect rolls a continuous major motion picture before us, without skipping a beat. One can almost hear the music that Robbins brilliantly illustrates. Jowitt delineates visions of Robbins forging The Great White Way for talented choreographers to follow: Bob Fosse, Michael Bennett, Twyla Tharp.

Jowitt's dance training and choreographic practice is revealed in her ability to poetically describe Robbins at work. "...he excelled at the artificed use of the apparently accidental. When a moment in a Robbins ballet looks contrived, it can be because one is not simply moved by it but aware of how the choreographer calculated its effect...."

A culmination of five years of writing, and an historical perspective of thirty-five years of looking at the dance, Deborah Jowitt has emerged as America's Dean of 21st Century Dance; following in the tradition of a great poet's translation of classical ephemera, the work of Edwin Denby, a chronicler of The New York City Ballet. Her Jerome Robbins is a masterpiece. Deborah Jowitt's Jerome Robbins: His Life, His Theater, His Dance should remain on the public library shelf beside William Shakespeare's The Complete Works for all time.

All in all, I'm touched by Deborah Jowitt's well meaning and comprehensive biography of Jerry Robbins. She digs under the surface of his ballet and Broadway work and finds a whole lot more than I had ever imagined. Again and again she returns to the paradox of the name, how "Jerry Robbins" was a fake, all-American and showbizzy place name for the real, suffering, inward, outcast Jerome Wilson Rabinowitz, and how Robbins could never be happy knowing this. He loathed himself from the inside out and the outside in: no wonder he treated others so terribly. Deborah Jowitt's years of research into the Robbins papers, those revealing scrapbooks and journals, have really paid off, for although I think in general Greg Lawrence's biography better in most ways, Jowitt's contains innumerable examples of revelation right from the horse's mouth, scraps of diaristic strip-tease that really pay off in almost every case. We can see how, in Gypsy, there had to be a strip-tease number in which three women explain, "You Gotta Have a Gimmick," because Robbins realized early on that was the path to artistic greatness--not the gimmick per se, but the emotional and psychological undressing.

Along the way Jowitt sketches in many portraits, some of them ravishingly done. Leonard Bernstein has never seemed so much himself before. John Kriza, the gadabout dancer from Ballet Theater days, seems as "Fancy Free" as the roles he created in Robbins' early work. Jowitt's greatest "creation" as it were is Tanaquil Le Clercq, the tragic, French-born ballerina who came down with polio while Balanchine's fourth wife. Le Clercq is the real heroine of the book: everything we think about, oh, say, Audrey Hepburn was really Tanaquil Le Clercq gone commercial: gorgeous, radiant, utterly chic, loveable, wildly talented in many different areas. I had just barely heard of her before and now I want me my Tanaquil Le Clercq! I'm going to have to go down to the Robbins Foundation and watch some primitive kinescopes of her. Jowitt actually saw her dance and has apparently never gotten over it. Her next book should be all about "Tanny"!

I did think that Jowitt is a bit sklmpy in her treatment of the HUAC thing. Growing up, I got the sense that Robbins' naming names made hum utterly despised. Even I, as a child of five, knew what he had done made him scum. And yet you never get a sense of what it was like for Robbins living, if not with guilt, then with the simple fact that thousands of people abhorred him. Likewise I think Jowitt isn't exactly the right person to write about Robbins' sex life, and when AIDS enters the picture, she seems bound and determined to avoid the glum subject once and for all. Finally, her lack of editorializing is all very well, but I for one do not believe that the later, experimental work is on a par with INTERPLAY, THE GUESTS, THE CAGE, AFTERNOON OF A FAUN or THE CONCERT. Why not? We don't get an explanation. It was the sixties, pretty much, and Robbins started taking the drugs and stopped wearing suits. But there must have been more to it. WATERMILL is no picnic.

Any valid bio of Robbins would have to result in a narrative of the development of dance and musical theatre in America, since the 1940s. While Jowitt gives us the, often sad, milestones in this man's life, her major thrust throughout this long and always exciting book is on his work. She delves into virtually every creation of his, including his generally poorly received occasional forays into non-musical theatre. Detailed attention is given to both concept, creation and execution of his prolific endeavors. Her in depth analysis of each of his works, often quite technical, VIVIDLY recall many great performances of these masterpieces.
While not necessarily for those with a casual interest in dance, the facts of his life, as well as the cavalcade of his shows and ballets, makes for a read that is always more than just factual. Interestingly, Jowitt seems never to editorialize on Robbins' work. But then again, why attempt to laud a universally acclaimed genius ?