Description:
Thirteen plays by the Oscar-winning author of Moonstruck. Includes: “The Big Funk,” “Savage in Limbo,” “Danny & The Deep Blue Sea,” “Welcome to the Moon,” “The Red Coat,” “Down & Out,” “Let Us Go Out Into the Starry Night,” “Out West,” “A Lonely Impulse of Delight,” “Women of Manhattan,” “The Dreamer Examines His Pillow,” “Italian-American Reconciliation,” and “Beggars in the House of Plenty.” Also includes an introduction by the author.

 

Sam Shepard (Artist)
 

Description:
“A tapestry of plays, stories, and letters artistically woven together to form a beautiful new work worthy of Chekhov's own heart and hand. The American artists Sharon Gans and Jordan Charney have reconceived Chekhov in their duets and arias with sensitivity and passion of the finest dramatic caliber. The true wonder and character of Chekhov shines through...enlightening!” – Moscow Contemporary Theater

 

Description:
It is hard to believe that over 25 years have passed since A Chorus Line first electrified a New York audience. The memories of the show's birth in 1975, not to mention those of its 15-year-life and poignant death, remain incandescent – and not just because nothing so exciting has happened to the American musical since. For a generation of theater people and theatergoers, A Chorus Line was and is the touchstone that defines the glittering promise, more often realized in lengend than in reality, of the Broadway way. This impressive book contains the complete book and lyrics of one of the longest running shows in Broadway history with a preface by Samuel Freedman, an introduction by Frank Rich and lots of photos from the stage production.

 

Description:
Paul Sills, the master of improvisation and found of The Second City and creator of Story Theatre – and who has influenced some of theatre's most important directors, writers and actors – adapts for stage one of the classic works of literature, Charles Dickens' masterpiece, A Christmas Carol.

Included as well are some of the exercises devised for Story Theater by Viola Spolin, renowned for her work with games and improvisation and whose best-selling text has become the definitive guide to improvisational practice.

 

Description:
“Mr. Noonan is quite a skillful jokesmith. He has a fine ear for language...and a sense of timing that is pretty much faultless.” - New York Times

 

Description:
Complete screenplay from this outrageous comedy.



“Wanda defies gravity, in both senses of the word, and redefines a great comic tradition.” – Time

“The meanest, most consistently hysterical film in ages ... the writing is sharply pointed and delightfully irreverent.” – Gannett Newspapers

 

Description:
Ten French farces as translated by Norman R. Shapiro, including the title play by Feydeau and: The Poor Beggar and the Fairy Godmother (Allais) • Boubouroche, or She Dupes to Conquer (Courteline) • It's All Relative (Labiche) • Mardis Gras (Meilhac and Halevy) • and more.

 

Description:
Book by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart

Introduction by Larry Gelbart

“This brazenly retro Broadway musical, inspired by Plautus, is as timeless as comedy itself.” –Vincent Canby, The New York Times

“The most urbane and literate musical comedy text ever conceived.” –John Simon, New York magazine

Stephen Sondheim (Composer)
 

Description:
“Throwing caution to the winds, I assert that A Little Night Music comes as close as possible to being the perfect romantic comedy musical.” –Brendan Gill, The New Yorker

“Heady, civilized, sophisticated and enchanting. Good God! An adult musical.” –Clive Barnes, The New York Times

Stephen Sondheim (Composer)
 

Description:
If there has ever been a groundbreaking edition that likewise returns the reader to the original Shakespeare text, it will be THE APPLAUSE FOLIO TEXTS. If there has ever been an accessible version of the Folio, it is this edition, set for the first time in modern fonts. The Folio is the source of all other editions. The Folio text forces us to re-examine the assumptions and prejudices which have encumbered over four hundred years of scholarship and performance. Notes refer the reader to subsequent editorial interventions, and offer the reader a multiplicity of interpretations. Notes also advise the reader on variations between Folios and Quartos. Prepared and annotated by Neil Freeman, Head, Graduate Directing Program, University of British Columbia.

 

Description:
This Applause edtiion allows the reader and student to look beyond the scholarly reading text to the more sensuous, more collaborative, more malleable performance text which emerges in conjunction with the commentary and notes. Readers and students are faced with real theatrical choices in each speech as the editors point out the challenges and opportunities to the actor and director at each juncture. Readers will not only discover an enlivened Shakespeare, they will be empowered to rehearse and direct their own productions of the imagination in the process.

 

Description:
A Performer Prepares is a 13-part master class on how to perform on any stage from bleak rehearsal room to the Palace Theatre. The class covers the basic Broadway song numbers, from show ballad to showstopper. With precise, logical steps and dynamic and entertaining dialogues between himself and his students, David Craig takes anyone with the desire to shine from an audition to final curtain call. These lessons on the pages recreate as closely as possible the unique interpersonal dyamic of Craig's legendary coaching encounters in New York, Los Angeles and across the country.

 

Description:
“There is no book about Hollywood as riveting as this documentary.” - Allan Carr, Vanity Fair There is no question that the 1954 version of A STAR IS BORN holds a special place in the pantheon of classic movies. It was director George Cukor's first foray into musicals, his first color film, and it was, without a doubt, Judy Garland's greatest screen performance.With incredible detail and color, Ronald Haver gives us the fascinating story of the making, marketing and restoration of this groundbreaking classic. Here is how producer Sid Luft orchestrated the deal for his wife, how Cukor was selected to direct, how James Mason was cast to co-star and how Moss Hart's script was developed. Here are the myriad techincal problems, the clashes of personalities and the shocking emotional ups and downs of the film's star. Here, finally, is the author's own mission to restore the film to its original length and glory in the 1980s.

 

Description:
Winner of Best Non-Fiction for 2002 Award from the Los Angeles Times Book Review!

Samuel Fuller was one of the most prolific and independent writer-director-producers in Hollywood. His 29 tough, gritty films made from 1949 to 1989 set out to capture the truth of war, racism and human frailties, and incorporate some of his own experiences. His film Park Row was inspired by his years in the New York newspaper business, where his beat included murders, suicides, state executions and race riots. He writes about hitchhiking across the country at the height of the Great Depression. His years in the army in World War II are captured in his hugely successful pictures The Big Red One, The Steel Helmet and Merrill's Marauders. Fuller's other films include Pickup on South Street; Underworld U.S.A., a movie that shows how gangsters in the 1960s were seen as “respected” tax-paying executives; Shock Corridor, which exposed the conditions in mental institutions; and White Dog, written in collaboration with Curtis Hanson (L.A. Confidential), a film so controversial that Paramount's then studio heads Jeffrey Katzenberg and Michael Eisner refused to release it.

In addition to his work in film, Samuel Fuller (1911-1997) wrote eleven novels. He lived in Los Angeles with his wife and their daughter. A Third Face was completed by Jerome Henry Rudes, Fuller's longtime friend, and his wife, Christa Lang Fuller.

“Fuller wasn't one for tactful understatement and his hot-blooded, incident-packed autobiography is accordingly blunt ... A Third Face is a grand, lively, rambunctious memoir.”

– Janet Maslin, The New York Times

“Fuller's last work is a joy and an important addition to film and popular culture literature.”

– Publishers Weekly

“If you don't like the films of Sam Fuller, then you just don't like cinema.”

– Martin Scorsese, from the book's introduction

 

Description:
First time in paperback, a very personal portrait of an actor audiences loved, written by his actor son.

Jack Lemmon (1925-2001) was one of our most beloved movie stars, a two-time Academy Award winner for Mister Roberts and Save the Tiger. In A Twist of Lemmon, Chris Lemmon shares family tales, intimate father-son conversations, and anecdotes from and about his dad. Joining Chris are first-person tributes from Blake Edwards, Andy Garcia, Julie Andrews, Tony Curtis, Neil Simon, Shirley MacLaine, and Cliff Robertson, among others.

 

Description:
An instruction video that teaches you how to balance the body, free and warm up your voice, center the body, develop a greater range, get rid of tension, keep the voice healthy, develop efficient breathing, speak so that people want to listen and support your voice.

Patsy Rodenburg (Composer)
 

Description:
When a routine burglary in an elegant, upscale Virginia mansion goes awry, career thief Luther Whitney finds himself witness to a brutal murder involving none other than Alan Richmond, the youthful, charming, and thoroughly corrupt President of the United States. Torn between fear for his life and devotion to his family and country, Luther must make a decision that will change not only his own destiny, but the destiny of the world as we know it. Based on the best-selling thriller by David Baldacci, described as “relentlessly entertaining” by The Atlanta Journal & Constitution, William Goldman's screenplay captures the paranoia, greed, and corruption of politics through the ages and around the world.

 

Description:
An exploration into the mysteries of creativity in life and art. Powerfully written of life, families, fathers, mothers, sons, of the price of talent and the burden of fame.

 

Description:
Based on his own experience and the teachings of his celebrated but distant father, Lee, John Strasberg defines the talent of becoming real in a role. He surveys the traditional partition between life and theatre, and urges actors to make it a dynamic living membrane through which vital elements may pass. John Strasberg has written his own intensely personal story about his father's work and the Strasberg dynasty. It is a painful odyssey during which he relives the often demanding role he played as son to a man who was the central father figure to a generation of American actors.

 

Description:
A master actor who's appeared in an enormous number of films, starring with everyone from Nicholson to Kermit the Frog, Michael Caine is uniquely qualified to provide his view of making movies. This new revised and expanded edition features great photos throughout, with chapters on: Preparation, In Front of the Camera – Before You Shoot, The Take, Characters, Directors, On Being a Star, and much more.

“Remarkable material ... A treasure ... I'm not going to be looking at performances quite the same way ... FASCINATING!”

– Gene Siskel

 

Description:
Mr. Caine gives you a once-in-a-lifetime chance to rob him blind! The man who's hypnotized the camera lenses for a quarter of a century reveals the most closely guarded secrets on script preparation. working with the director, forming a character, voice, sound, and movement. Pearl by pearl he lays out the Caine wisdom on everything from set politics to set decorum, the film bureaucracy and more!



“A treasure ... I'm not going to look at performances quite the same way ... A grand entertainment with more drama than most movies ... He's a marvelous teacher ... A real clear-cut lesson that every critic should see and everbody who goes to the movies should see...” – Gene Siskel, Siskel & Ebert



“I watched the video and had my doubts ... I thought a lot of what he said was horseshit, but halfway through the movie I thought: The son of a bitch is right!” –Howard Stern

 

Description:
“A lively session on high comedy, with examples from Coward, Wilde, Sheridan, and Congreve revealing the spark that transforms a routine reading into a vibrant one in a scene from Private Lives which by the time Aitken has finished with it has attained something close to brilliance.” –The London Times

 

Description:
“Through the climactic scene of La Traviata the good doctor clowned, interpreted, gestured and flung his eminently quotable metaphors at us and a performance began miraculously to take shape. The problem for singers is that opera is difficult enough as music, let alone as stagecraft. Miller cajoled, joked, visibly eased tensions between contending forces, provided props, explained nuances. By the end, drama had emerged from opera. Magic, underpinned by a great deal of hard work.” –The Listener

 

Description:
“Taking scenes from The Relapse by John Vanbrugh as the text, Callow directs a workshop of young actors and subjects them to his own rigorous and scrupulous appraisal.” –Radio Times



The art of acting in Restoration Comedy, the buoyant, often bawdy romps which celebrated the re-opening of the English theatres after Cromwell's dour reign, is the subject of Simon Callow's bold investigation. There is cause again to celebrate as Callow, one of Britain's foremost actors and directors, aims to restore the form to all its original voluptuous vigor. Callow shows the way to attain the clarity and hilarity in some of the most delightful roles ever conceived for the theatre.

 

Description:
The art of acting in restoration comedy, the buoyant, often bowdy romps which celebrated the reopening of the English theatres after Cromwell's dour reign, is the subject of Simon Callow's bold investigation. There is cause again to celebrate as Callow, one of Britain's foremost actors, aims to restore the form to all its original voluptuous vigor. Callow shows the way to attain clarity and hilarity in some of the most delightful roles ever conceived for the theatre.

Maria Aitken (Arranger)
Simon Callow (Composer)
 

Description:
“Suzman is a major classical actress: she is also a born teacher... Beneath her flame colored hair, Suzman burned, and her students duly caught fire ... she persistently came out with striking, stimulating remarks with workshop snippets of Much Ado, As You Like It, and Twelth Night.” – Benedict Nightingale, The London Times



“Totally and incisively in charge, her unscripted preamble is a dramatic lesson in itself; with all the right places to create a dramatic effect you can cut with a knife. Her dissertation on the difference between tragedy and comedy is masterly.” – Sunday Times, London.

 

Description:
In this terrific 60-minute master class, Brian Cox covers the fine points of tragic acting. The London Times calls this video, “Full of common sense ... In the end, it is we actors who are on the spot ... Scenes that start rehearsal as straightforward Shakespeare babble assume dramatic shape ...”



“Tragedy. A rollicking good time he has with it too – menacing whispers, daggers and blood obviously have their funny side, at least with his fascinated young audience. Among the young thespians taking note are Cathy Tyson and the late Lord Olivier's youngest daughter, Tamsin.” –The London Daily Mail

 

Description:
From the London Sunday Telegraph: Acting Shakespeare is extraordinary. The tone of the voice is unmistakably Sir John's, the atmosphere congenial. We're in the company of our greatest actor, who holds in his hands the last links of a chain of tradition leading to Shakespeare himself ... this book is crucial for anyone who believes that Shakespeare on the stage should be Shakespeare at his greatest ... Gielgud is by turns, wise, witty and wicked, but unfailingly modest.

 

Description:
In this book adapted from a television master class, actress Janet Suzman has crafted a superbly concise and clearly written account of how to develop fully realized characters in Shakespeare. Here she shares her poignant observations. Includes a foreword, and great photos throughout.

Also available: DVD, HL00314739

Janet Suzman (Composer)