Theatre Books

It's quite difficult to find a good book on toy theatres and this one is excellent. I didn't expect the colour plates and the large number of pictures! Lots of scenes and character sheets, dating back to the very earliest toy theatres and precursor entertainments.

As a reader who knows little about home theater or stereo systems, I've read a fair number of books and found that none come close to this one in its ease of comprehension.

Some books, including those written by well-known authors, are not written in plain English even though they're supposedly targeted at laymen.

I don't even know of any other current book or magazine that covers old formats like reel-to-reel.

Kudos To Ian Spielberg!!!

This enchanting work brings the burlesque back to life! When Lydia Thompson hit New York theaters in 1868, she and her troupe were an immediate success. But she also initiated a vituperative debate over the appropriate limits for the female performer. Robert Allen vividly describes how Americans increasingly put aside their religious reservations and took to the theater by the mid-19th century. He first examines the physical and social arrangement of space within the theater auditorium. He then takes his reader on a journey through the male-impersonating, revealingly attired, slang-spouting, minstrel-dancing burlesque women to their descendants - the cooch dancers and modern day striptease. A unique book for entertainment buffs and feminist thinkers alike. To read actual burlesque plays see "The Best Burlesque Sketches".

This superb book combines literary criticism of some fascinating texts-both rare ones and classics-with the social history of the English Revolution. It has a breathtaking sweep from Elizabethan to late Restoration times, but the author manages to ascribe a remarkable degree of unity to an era that historians normally chop into several periods. Burks argues that modern political discourse dates not from the end of the seventeenth century but from at least the middle of the sixteenth century. A major recurring theme of that discourse was sexual violation. Defenders of the prerogative employed it to warn of the consequences if crown authority collapsed: men's possessions, including their women and children, would be ravaged. John Foxe and other martyrologists used it to heighten their readers' horror at royal tyranny, and seventeenth-century writers from Margaret Cavendish to Aphra Behn evoked vulnerable womanhood to support political positions on the left or the right. Written in a graceful, jargon-free style, illustrated with hair-raising execution scenes from Foxe, and structured with nice bridges from one literary gem to the next, the book shows how the English were swayed in the general direction of their eighteenth-century constitution by the spectacle of violation.

I found this play to be a really funny, smart, and enjoyable read. A great comedic short play for two actors and a small production budget.

Knowledgeably written by Tess Collins (a professional theater manager of twenty-five years' experience), How Theater Managers Manage is a very practical and straightforward guidebook to the business of running a community theater. From dealing with unions, to the nuts and bolts of determining ticket prices, to a sample budget, to building forms, and a great deal more How Theater Managers Manage is an invaluable resourceful guide which is very highly recommended for anyone starting out in theater management, or who is contemplating the business side of a theatrical management career.

David Carter has written a very short, very concise book on the craft of writing a play. It deeply explores all important aspects of playwriting i.e. plot, theme, character, dialogue, structure, the first draft and the re-write all in about 135 pages. The book is written in a very clear organised manner that is easily understood by the most inexperienced writer. There is very little about playwriting not included in this book.

Humpty Dumpty is like an f'd up fairy tale reminiscent of the film The Trigger Effect. I was fortunate enough to see it at Princeton's McCarter Theater when it premiered 3 years ago. Griller (which I have now read but have yet to see performed) is a fun backyard piece featuring a handful of personae Bogosian developed in his solos. But I think my favorite of the three is Red Angel. I had the great pleasure of seeing Bogosian perform in Angel in Williamstown 3 years ago and it's a very powerful play, sort of a postmodern Pygmalion. This edition also includes a bonus one-act, apparently commissioned by the McCarter. Buy this book, get the rights, and stage one of these shows!

In "I Sent a Letter to My Love," story & score combine to make certain that the two CDs in this package will return many times to your CD player. Melissa Manchester succeeds here in the most difficult of song writing tasks, creating melodies that are at once complex and catchy, and the story they help tell is similarly engaging (the book here was adapted by Jeffrey Sweet from a Bernice Ruben novel by the same name). Three main characters, Amy, Stan, and Gwen, follow different paths with the same ache for love; yet this is really Amy's story. In her most particularly, we see our needs and wounds, our moments of blindness and of insight. With her we sympathize as we witness again love's ability to draw and repel, to afflict and to redeem.

These conventional, though ever-fresh, themes are explored in a somewhat unconventional plot. We meet Amy (played here by Melissa Manchester) in Maine in 1955. She has never married and has given her life to caring for her brother, Stan (Stephen Bogardus), a man crippled by childhood polio. The familiar and settled ways of their lives are altered one summer after Amy impulsively decides to place a "Lady Seeks Gentleman" correspondence ad to which Stan alone--unaware--replies. This conflict and contest unfolds as the sister and brother rent a cottage they own near their home to Gwen (Megan Mullally), a woman finding herself on her own for the first time and uncertain about her place in the world.

Ms. Manchester, Mr. Bogardus, and Ms. Mullally deliver strong, impassioned, and witty performances, supported here by the equally-impressive work of Megan Fay and Paul Anthony Stewart. The singing in this recording--which was produced by L.A. Theater Works and broadcast on NPR--is spectacular. All of the colors of Ms. Manchester's deservedly-celebrated voice are present amid Mr. Bogardus' soaring tenor and Ms. Mullally's very-satisfying mix. Though not yet a widely produced work, this recording makes it clear that "I Sent A Letter to My Love" deserves a prominent place in the musical theater repertoire.

Having just journeyed to Melbourne (from Sydney) to see Miss Caldwell in Durenmatt's "The Visit", which is part of the Melbourne Theatre Company's 50th anniversary season (she was also in their first production in 1953),I chanced upon her "semi-autobiography" in a local bookshop. This covers the first half of her dazzling life. Her prose is like her acting: direct, simple, intelligent, moving, riveting and unforgettable. Anyone even remotely interested in the theatre should take the opportunity to read this marvellous book. And if there is ever a chance to see the lady on a stage, RUN, don't walk, to get in line. A great book by a great artist.