Directing the Action: Acting and Directing in the Contemporary Theatre (Applause Acting Series) Review

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(More customer reviews)I'm reading this book now for the second time. Charles Marowitz has an interesting style of writing, the kind that you have to stop and think about it for a little while every other page or so. I often go back and re-read some sentences just to make sure I fully understood the whole meaning and the context. It's a very professional view on theatre in all it's aspects. It's not usual to find an author that does not mind sharing his point of view and breaking taboos (I like the way he disagrees with Method acting in some aspects ). This book has helped me in my work as an actor and director.

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Product Description:
Every actor and director who enters the orbit of Marowitz's major work will find himself challenged to a deeper understanding of his art and propelled into further realms of exploration on his/her own. Marowitz meditates on all the sacred precepts of theatre practice including auditions, casting, design, rehearsal, actor psychology, dramaturgy, and the text.

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The Servant of Two Masters & Other Italian Classics (Paperback) (Eric Bentley's Dramatic Repertoire) Review

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(More customer reviews)We had to read this for a graduate class but it seems to be a good books for a range of students from upper highschool to PhD depending on how deeply you study the texts.

As my title suggests, this book is a good starting point to the study of Italian classics.

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An anthology of four classic Italian plays edited by Eric Bentley. Also includes directorial and technical notes.

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One-Act Comedies of Moliere: Seven Plays (Actor's Moliere, Vol 4) Review

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(More customer reviews)If you're producing Moliere for an American audience, Bermel's translations/adaptations are the BEST! His texts play magnificently and his ability to transcode Moliere's sense of humor into an American-accessible format is extraordinary.

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These are the best of MolireÕs masterful one-acts, blending broad farce and pointed wit to express his never-ending delight in human foibles. But Molire is more than just the "master of the laugh", for behind the comic gestures of these matchless rogues, tight-fisted masters, possessive lovers and elegant ladies lurk fears, insecurities and their consequences.

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Theatre World 1990-1991, Vol. 47 Review

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(More customer reviews)This book contains a wealth of information about every show running in the '90-'91 season, including musicals, plays, Broadway, Off-Broadway, and even some notable out-of-town productions. There are black and white photos of each show, cast lists, and information on the production. There is also a thorough index which enables easy searching for specific actors or productions.

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Product Description:
Theatre World, the statistical and pictorial record of the Broadway and off-Broadway season, touring companies, and professional regional companies throughout the United States, has become a classic in its field. The book is complete with cast listings, replacement producers, directors, authors, composers, opening and closing dates, song titles, and much, much more. There are special sections with biographical data, obituary information, listings of annual Shakespeare festivals and major drama awards.

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At This Theatre (Applause Books) Review

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(More customer reviews)For any theatre fan or history buff, Louis Botto's At This Theatre is an enjoyable and informative collection of colorfully-illustrated chapters chronicling the many productions and personalities playing at the existing theatres which together constitute "Broadway" today, this revised edition covering all current Tony-eligible houses with a history of legitimate productions (plus a few more theatrical venues in New York City), and including a useful index -- something missing from the first edition. One wishes, though, that this hefty volume could be even thicker, but for the many Broadway theatres now gone. However, of those legitimate stages which remain or which have been returned (or are returning) to theatrical glory, this book is an affectionate tribute to a century of plays and musicals on the Broadway stage and the many theatres which house them, some of which have become like a second home to some of us theatregoers. And at a time when corporations and other commercial producers have made it easy for a wary public to be cynical about the crass commercialism which has taken over so much of mainstream culture (including the renaming of some refurbished or rebuilt Broadway theatres), Brian Stokes Mitchell's thoughtful preface reminds us that there is a very human history and a living tradition at these theatres worth knowing and keeping in spite of it.

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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 wecall 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!

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Childsplay: A Collection of Scenes and Monologues for Children (Limelight) Review

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(More customer reviews)I was hoping for a collection of fun, intelligent, and imaginative scenes and monologues for my kids to perform.Instead, I find a bunch of hackneyed dross about children as victims--victims of bullying, victims of bad parents, victims of society,etc.Scene after scene is about children who've lost parents, or children in poverty, or children abused.And the scenes are so over the top as to make the characters almost comical.The only thing designed to challenge children are the contrived plot lines through which the character reveals how she/he has lost her/his parents/grandparent/sibling and is now living on the streets/running away/one meal away from starvation.What child wouldn't like to tackle the monologue entitled "The Day My Father Died."Most of the scenes and monologues are also written at a low reading level.Yuck. The only reason I didn't give this pitiable book one fewer star is because there are two or three adequate scenes and monologues. I found a much better book of plays--Plays Children Love, Volume II.Edited by Coleman Jennings.

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A selection from over fifty sources including published and unpublished plays, blockbuster movie hits, independent films, foreign films, teleplays, poetry, and diaries.

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Seeds of Modern Drama (Paperback) (Applause Books) Review

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(More customer reviews)I think it's probably safe to assume that this type of anthology, which offers a sampling of representative authors of certain "schools" or time periods or types of literature, is aimed primarily at college students who are required to imbibe at least a minimum of this sort of stuff in order to be considered well-rounded. And, evidently, when the books have served their purpose of conferring a bit of culture to their owners, said students are eager to divest themselves of the no longer needed baggage, for these little collections are a dime-a-dozen, or more literally, a quarter apiece, at library sales.

After these anthologies have made their descents to the stratum of library sales and garage sales, frugal bibliophiles such as myself guiltily purchase them, knowing full well they will probably collect dust for decades, but still unable to resist such a bargain in critically acclaimed world literature.

I am happy to report this book escaped the fate of bookshelf oblivion. Knowing that I was soon going to watch a film adaptation of Strindberg's "Miss Julie', I retrieved the book, for that is one of the plays contained therein. I was quite impressed with the Strindberg play. Though it was set in the 19thcentury, and the conventions of society were much more rigid and class-conscious than we're used to today, it is evident that Strindberg had a perceptive grasp of psychological influences on behavior, for the people in his play were motivated by the same compulsions, obsessions, and formative familial influences as people in our permissive modern society. The difference is, that people of that earlier age were more apt to suffer horribly for not conforming to their contemporary rules of convention.

But there was something else, perhaps of more importance from an artistic viewpoint, which I noticed about this play. That is that I was surprised at how real and life-like Strindberg made the characters seem, just through the use of dialog. I had avoided reading plays, because of my preconception that dramas were essentially stripped down novels or prose stories. Somehow, the idea had become ingrained that a narrative device which explained the action was necessary to give a full rendering of a story. On the contrary, 'Miss Julie' seemed to be more powerful just because the character of the players was revealed through dialog.

This discovery led me to check out the other plays in the volume, and to my surprise, I found they all were engrossing tales which revealed powerful stories just through the use of dialog and minimal stage descriptions. In a short time I had read all five plays, and was on the internet checking out other works and biographical information on these playwrights. To anyone who, like myself, loves great literature, but has somehow sidestepped drama, I would highly recommend this sampler to see what you may have been missing.

The plays included are: Therese Raquin, by Emile Zola
An Enemy of the people, by Henrik Ibsen
Miss Julie, by August Strindberg
The Weavers, by Gerhart Hauptmann
The Sea Gull, by Anton Chekhov

There is a nice introduction which briefly describes the plays and gives a short biographical glimpse of the authors' lives. All of these plays are supposed to be representative of the naturalist movement, which arose in opposition to what was considered the unrealistic idealism of the romantic movement. But that knowledge is not necessary to the enjoyment of the plays. In all of the plays, we see the characters trying somehow to adapt to the environment in which they find themselves, either by some sort of accommodation, or by trying to change it.

I was particularly struck byHauptmann's 'The Weavers'. Not to be preachy, but I think it would do us all good to consider how well off we are today, in this country at least, in comparison to the abominable conditions exposed in supposedly "civilized" Europe in relatively modern times. But Hauptmann's play is not an ideological pamphlet, but a work of art with vivid existential portraits of the lives of unbelievably exploited workers who had no advocate to defend them against their oppressors.

In reading this anthology, I came to learn why these playwrights merit the stature they have been accorded, and why their reputations have withstood the test of time. These are not stories with happy endings, but they show us vivid and artistically rendered pictures of the human condition.

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Product Description:
Five great forces - Checkhov, Hauptmann, Ibsen, Strindberg and Zola - dramatists whose work define, embrace and transcend the trends and genres of the modern stage, meet here in this extraordinary exhibition of their sustained and sustaining power in todayÃ-s theatre.

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The Unseen Hand and Other Plays by Sam Shepard (Applause Books) Review

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(More customer reviews)WOW! This book is absolutely electrifying.I was first turned on to Sam Shepard from reading "True West", one of his later amazing plays.As I read more and more I thought I had a good understanding of hiswriting:until I read this book.This book contains many of Shepard'searlier plays from the time he first landed in New York and, as hisroommate Charles Mingus Jr. has said "Would go into a room with a reamof paper and come out two hours later with a finished play".If youhave really enjoyed some of Shepard's later stuff, I definetly recommendthis book to give you a fresh perspective on someone who literally turns"conventional theatre" upside down.If you are new to Shepard,you might want to tryhis later works first, only because they are easier tofollow.These earlier works are very much like the "Beatgeneration"- throwing out speeches and sentences without punctuation,with tons of craziness happening on every inch of the stage.Sometimes theplays may be hard to follow, or confusing, but if you really"get" what Shepard is doing, you will love this book.Just bewarned that all the plays are far from conventional theatre.If you are an"Our Town" type of person this isn't for you.If you enjoy Albeeand Beckett, if you enjoy equal parts peace and chaos on stage, then checkthis book out.

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Product Description:
The complete scripts to six Sam Shepard plays: The Unseen Hand ¥ Forensic and the Navigators ¥ The Holy Ghostly ¥ Back Bog Beast Bait ¥ Shaved Splits ¥ 4-H Club.

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