- Table View
- List View
The Last "Darky": Bert Williams, Black-On-Black Minstrelsy, and the African Diaspora
by Louis Chude-SokeiThe Last "Darky" establishes Bert Williams, the comedian of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth, as central to the development of a global black modernism centered in Harlem's Renaissance. Before integrating Broadway in 1910 via a controversial stint with the Ziegfeld Follies, Williams was already an international icon. Yet his name has faded into near obscurity, his extraordinary accomplishments forgotten largely because he performed in blackface. Louis Chude-Sokei contends that Williams's blackface was not a display of internalized racism nor a submission to the expectations of the moment. It was an appropriation and exploration of the contradictory and potentially liberating power of racial stereotypes. Chude-Sokei makes the crucial argument that Williams's minstrelsy negotiated the place of black immigrants in the cultural hotbed of New York City and was replicated throughout the African diaspora, from the Caribbean to Africa itself. Williams was born in the Bahamas. When performing the "darky," he was actually masquerading as an African American. This black-on-black minstrelsy thus challenged emergent racial constructions equating "black" with African American and marginalizing the many diasporic blacks in New York. It also dramatized the practice of passing for African American common among non-American blacks in an African American-dominated Harlem. Exploring the thought of figures such as Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, and Claude McKay, Chude-Sokei situates black-on-black minstrelsy at the center of burgeoning modernist discourses of assimilation, separatism, race militancy, carnival, and internationalism. While these discourses were engaged with the question of representing the "Negro" in the context of white racism, through black-on-black minstrelsy they were also deployed against the growing international influence of African American culture and politics in the twentieth century.
Life Is a Dream
by Gregary Racz Pedro Calderon de la BarcaThe masterwork of Spain's preeminent dramatist--now in a new verse translation Life Is a Dream is a work many hold to be the supreme example of Spanish Golden Age drama. Imbued with highly poetic language and humanist ideals, it is an allegory that considers contending themes of free will and predestination, illusion and reality, played out against the backdrop of court intrigue and the restoration of personal honor. In the mountainous barrens of Poland, the rightful heir to the kingdom has been imprisoned since birth in an attempt by his father to thwart fate. Meanwhile, a noblewoman arrives to seek revenge against the man who deceived and forsook her love for the prospect of becoming king of Poland. Richly symbolic and metaphorical, Life Is a Dream explores the deepest mysteries of human experience.
The Lives and Loves of Daisy and Violet Hilton: A True Story of Conjoined Twins
by Dean JensenTHE LIVES AND LOVES OF DAISY AND VIOLET HILTON follows the poignant life story of twin sisters who were literally joined at the hip, set against the tumultuous backdrop of America during the first half of the 20th century. Daisy and Violet and an unforgettable cast of show-business characters come alive on the pages of this carefully researched and sensitively written biography.Reviews"Jensen'¬?s book is a testament to the fickleness of the entertainment world."-Tampa Bay Tribune"It is an affecting story, gently and honestly told without frills, without sensation. In Jensen'¬?s hands, the twins are always human, individuals, never freaks joined at the hips as the world saw them after their birth in 1908. . . Here, their story is pure."-Milwaukee Journal SentinelFrom the Trade Paperback edition.
Looking
by Norm FosterComedy / 2m, 2f / From one of Canadas most popular playwrights comes this hilarious comedy. Val is an O.R. nurse, Andy is in the storage business, Nina is a police officer and Matt is the host of a morning radio show. Theyre middle-aged, single and looking. Val agrees to meet Andy after answering his personal ad in the newspaper and Nina and Matt are coaxed into joining their friends for support. What follows is hilarious, touching and so very true to life.
Love and Human Remains
by Brad FraserDavid McMillan is a former actor, current waiter on the verge of turning thirty. Together with his book-reviewing roommate, Candy, and his best friend, Bernie, David encounters a number of seductive strangers in their search for love and sex. But the games turn ugly when it appears one of their number might be a serial killer. A compelling study of young adults groping for meaning in a senseless world. Love and Human Remains was immediately controversial for its violence, nudity, frank dialogue, and sexual explicitness. It was quickly acclaimed by critics and audiences alike and was named one of the ten best plays of the year by Time Magazine. The play has been produced worldwide, translated into multiple languages, and received many awards.
Love Me Like No Other
by A.C. ArthurTwo Can Play at This Game!Lincoln can’t believe it—that beautiful babe who owes his casino $5,000 is Jade. He’s never stopped thinking about her since that one hot night years ago. Now she’s in his debt! Of course, he doesn’t want her money….At first, Jade’s outraged—pose as his fiancée for one week or he’ll call the police! But then…how about some sweet revenge? So while he’s playing Mr. Seducer, she’ll be Miss Tease. Before the week is up, she’ll have him on his knees—just before she walks away! That is, if she can convince her heart she’s not still in love….
Mahadevbhai, 1892-1942, and Insomnia
by Ramu Ramanathan Ninaz KhodaijiMAHADEVBHAI (1892 - 1942) is a one-person play, which attempts to remind us of the times that were, and their devotion to truth. INSOMNIA consists of 4 Monologues by Ninaz Khodaiji.
Maiden's Progeny
by Le WilhelmFull length, drama / 1m, 2f / Interior / Frederick M Winship (UPI) writes regarding MAIDEN's PROGENY, "It was high time that someone wrote a play about Mary Cassatt, the only American member of the original Impressionist coterie of artists. Le Wilhelm, has met the challenge with flying colors with MAIDEN's PROGENY." This intellectually entertaining drama takes the audience to Cassatt's chateau outside Paris on a spring afternoon when Wynford Johnston comes calling uninvited. What follows is living discussion, of two very head strong individuals, that ultimately results in an understanding and growth in both characters. Never falling into the category of a lecture, this play provides insight and understanding of the art and times at the dawning of the 20th century.
Making History
by Brian FrielDrama / 4m, 2f / This brilliant work by Ireland's pre eminent playwright plunges into the world of Hugh O'Neill, an Irish hero who led an ill fated uprising in alliance with Spain against the British in 1591, a conflict which culminated in ignominious defeat at the Battle of Kinsale. The play begins shortly after O'Neill's controversial marriage to the sister of the British "Butcher Bagenal" who is famous for slaughtering Irish villagers. The battle occurs between acts and then the myth of O'Neill is created by his biographer, Archbishop Peter Lombard. O'Neill ends up a hapless drunk in Rome while Lombard rewrites history to satisfy the Irish craving for legend.
Measure for Measure, Troilus and Cressida, and All's Well that Ends Well
by William ShakespeareAn exciting new edition of the complete works of Shakespeare with these features: Illustrated with photographs from New York Shakespeare Festival productions, vivid readable readable introductions for each play by noted scholar David Bevington, a lively personal foreword by Joseph Papp, an insightful essay on the play in performance, modern spelling and pronunciation, up-to-date annotated bibliographies, and convenient listing of key passages.From the Paperback edition.
The Merry Wives of Windsor
by William Shakespeare Paul Werstine Dr Barbara MowatShakespeare's "merry wives" are Mistress Ford and Mistress Page of the town of Windsor. The two play practical jokes on Mistress Ford's jealous husband and a visiting knight, Sir John Falstaff. Merry wives, jealous husbands, and predatory knights were common in a kind of play called "citizen comedy" or "city comedy." In such plays, courtiers, gentlemen, or knights use social superiority to seduce citizens' wives. The Windsor wives, though, do not follow that pattern. Instead, Falstaff's offer of himself as lover inspires their torment of him. Falstaff responds with the same linguistic facility that Shakespeare gives him in the history plays in which he appears, making him the "hero" of the play for many audiences. The authoritative edition of The Merry Wives of Windsor from The Folger Shakespeare Library, the trusted and widely used Shakespeare series for students and general readers, includes: -Freshly edited text based on the best early printed version of the play -Full explanatory notes conveniently placed on pages facing the text of the play -Scene-by-scene plot summaries -A key to the play's famous lines and phrases -An introduction to reading Shakespeare's language -An essay by a leading Shakespeare scholar providing a modern perspective on the play -Fresh images from the Folger Shakespeare Library's vast holdings of rare books -An annotated guide to further reading Essay by Natasha Korda The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, is home to the world's largest collection of Shakespeare's printed works, and a magnet for Shakespeare scholars from around the globe. In addition to exhibitions open to the public throughout the year, the Folger offers a full calendar of performances and programs. For more information, visit Folger.edu.
The Messenger Bag
by Jillian Powell Charlotte AlderStacey finds a beautiful old bag. She takes it everywhere. She soon finds a secret hidden in the bag that's meant only for her.
Miss Julie
by David French August StrindbergDavid French's adaptation of August Strindberg's disturbing and enduring drama of the transgressive affair between the daughter of a count and the count's man-servant has an eerie contemporary feel about it. French has sharpened the psychodramas of the original - scenes of desire, anger, jealousy, coercion, manipulation, exploitation, arrogance, dominance, submission, and deceit. Cast of 2 women and 1 man.
Miss Witherspoon and Mrs. Bob Cratchit's Wild Christmas Binge: Two Plays (Books That Changed the World)
by Christopher DurangFrom one of theater’s most outrageous comic talents, two plays—one a Pulitzer Prize in Drama finalist, the other a twisted take on Christmas classics.In this book, Christopher Durang, the criminally funny author of Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You, presents two plays about death, religion, and a creamy Christmas pudding. In Miss Witherspoon—named one of the Ten Best Plays of 2005 by both Time and Newsday—Veronica, a recent suicide whose cantankerous attitude has not improved in the afterlife, discovers that the one thing worse than the world she left behind is having to go back for seconds. Ordered to cleanse her “brown tweedy aura,” Veronica resists being reincarnated (as a trailer-trash teen or an overexcited Golden Retriever), only to find that she may be mankind’s last, best hope for survival. In Mrs. Bob Cratchit’s Wild Christmas Binge, a sassy ghost once again attempts to shake Scrooge from his holiday humbug, but the whole family-friendly affair is deliciously derailed by Mrs. Cratchit’s drunken insistence on stepping out of her miserable, treacly role. Morals are subverted, starving yet plucky children sing carols, and somebody’s goose is cooked as Durang lovingly skewers A Christmas Carol, It’s a Wonderful Life, and many more to create a brand-new, cracked Christmas classic.
A Moon for the Misbegotten
by Eugene O'NeillEugene O’Neill’s last completed play, A Moon for the Misbegotten is a sequel to his autobiographical Long Day’s Journey Into Night. Moon picks up eleven years after the events described in Long Day’s Journey Into Night, as Jim Tyrone (based on O’Neill’s older brother Jamie) grasps at a last chance at love under the full moonlight. This paperback edition features an insightful introduction by Stephen A. Black, helpful to anyone who desires a deeper understanding of O’Neill’s work.
The Musical as Drama
by H. Scott McMillinDerived from the colorful traditions of vaudeville, burlesque, revue, and operetta, the musical has blossomed into America's most popular form of theater. Scott McMillin has developed a fresh aesthetic theory of this underrated art form, exploring the musical as a type of drama deserving the kind of critical and theoretical regard given to Chekhov or opera. Until recently, the musical has been considered either an "integrated" form of theater or an inferior sibling of opera. McMillin demonstrates that neither of these views is accurate, and that the musical holds true to the disjunctive and irreverent forms of popular entertainment from which it arose a century ago. Critics and composers have long held the musical to the standards applied to opera, asserting that each piece should work together to create a seamless drama. But McMillin argues that the musical is a different form of theater, requiring the suspension of the plot for song. The musical's success lies not in the smoothness of unity, but in the crackle of difference. While disparate, the dancing, music, dialogue, and songs combine to explore different aspects of the action and the characters. Discussing composers and writers such as Rodgers and Hammerstein, Stephen Sondheim, Kander and Ebb, Leonard Bernstein, and Jerome Kern, The Musical as Drama describes the continuity of this distinctively American dramatic genre, from the shows of the 1920s and 1930s to the musicals of today.
My Antonia
by Charles JonesDrama / 11m, 7f, 7 children / Unit set This faithful adaptation brings the wonderful romantic novel's profoundly human characters and its expansive view of 19th century American frontier life vibrantly to the stage. The play celebrates Antonia's story and her extraordinary delight in the happenings of daily life. It moves from the raw hardships of her immigrant family's first year as settlers on the plains through her joyful and rebellious youth to her fulfillment as a farm wife and mother. "No romantic novel ever written in America is one half so beautiful as My Antonia." -H.L. Mencken
Neil LaBute: A Casebook (Casebooks on Modern Dramatists)
by Gerald C. WoodNeil LaBute: A Casebook is the first book to examine one of the most successful and controversial contemporary American playwrights and filmmakers. While he is most famous, and in some cases infamous, for his early films In the Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbors, Labute is equally accomplished as a playwright. His work extends from the critique of false religiosity in Bash to examinations of opportunism, irresponsible art, failed parenting, and racism in later plays like Mercy Seat, The Shape of Things, The Distance From Here, Fat Pig, Autobahn, and the very recent This Is How It Goes and Some Girls. Like David Mamet, an acknowledged influence on him, and Conor McPhereson, with whom he shares some stylistic and thematic concerns, LaBute tends to polarize audiences. The angry voices, violent situations, and irresponsible behavior in his works, especially those focusing on male characters, have alienated some viewers. But the writer's religious affiliation and refusal to condone the actions of his characters suggest he is neither exploitive nor pornographic. This casebook explores the primary issues of the writer's style, themes, and dramatic achievements. Contributors describe, for example, the influences (both classical and contemporary) on his work, his distinctive vision in theater and film, the role of religious belief in his work, and his satire. In addition to the critical introduction by Wood and the original essays by leading dramatic and literary scholars, the volume also includes a bibliography and a chronology of the playwright's life and works.
A New Guide to Italian Cinema
by Carlo Celli Marga Cottino-JonesA Student's Guide to Italian Film (1983, 1993) . This guide retains earlier editions' interest in renowned films and directors but is also attentive to the popular films which achieved box office success among the public.
A Nice Family Gathering
by Phil OlsonComedy / Winner of the 2000 Rochester Playwright Festival / 4m, 3f / Interior Set / A NICE FAMILY GATHERING is a story about a man who loved his wife so much, he almost told her. It's Thanksgiving Day and the first family gathering at the Lundeen household since the Patriarch died. At the gathering, Dad comes back as a ghost with a mission; to tell his wife he loved her, something he neglected to tell her while he was alive. After all, they were only married for 41 years. The problem is, she can't hear or see him. The trouble begins when Mom invites a date for dinner. / "Hilarious and touching!" - LA Weekly Pick of the Week.
Not a Genuine Black Man: Or, How I Claimed My Piece of Ground in the Lily-White Suburbs
by Brian CopelandBased on the longest-running one-man show in San Francisco history--now coming to Off-Broadway--a hilarious, poignant, and disarming memoir of growing up black in an all-white suburb In 1972, when Brian Copeland was eight, his family moved from Oakland to San Leandro, California, hoping for a better life. At the time, San Leandro was 99.4 percent white, known nationwide as a racist enclave. This reputation was confirmed almost immediately: Brian got his first look at the inside of a cop car, for being a black kid walking to the park with a baseball bat. Brian grew up to be a successful comedian and radio talk show host, but racism reemerged as an issue--only in reverse--when he received an anonymous letter: "As an African American, I am disgusted every time I hear your voice because YOU are not a genuine Black man!" That letter inspired Copeland to revisit his difficult childhood, resulting in a hit one-man show that has been running for nearly two years--which has now inspired a book. In this funny, surprising, and ultimately moving memoir, Copeland shows exactly how our surroundings make us who we are.
Not the Other Avant-Garde: The Transnational Foundations of Avant-Garde Performance
by James Martin Harding John RouseAlmost without exception, studies of the avant-garde take for granted the premise that the influential experimental practices associated with the avant-garde began primarily as a European phenomenon that in turn spread around the world. These ten original essays, especially commissioned for Not the Other Avant-Garde, forge a radically new conception of the avant-garde by demonstrating the many ways in which the first- and second-wave avant-gardes were always already a transnational phenomenon, an amalgam of often contradictory performance traditions and practices developed in various cultural locations around the world, including Africa, the Middle East, Mexico, Argentina, India, and Japan. Essays from leading scholars and critics-including Marvin Carlson, Sudipto Chatterjee, John Conteh-Morgan, Peter Eckersall, Harry J. Elam Jr., Joachim Fiebach, David G. Goodman, Jean Graham-Jones, Hannah Higgins, and Adam Versényi-suggest collectively that the very concept of the avant-garde is possible only if conceptualized beyond the limitations of Eurocentric paradigms. Not the Other Avant-Garde is groundbreaking in both avant-garde studies and performance studies and will be a valuable contribution to the fields of theater studies, modernist studies, art history, literature, and music history.
Nunsense: The Mega-Musical Version
by Dan GogginMusical . Characters: 1 male, 9 female, chorus, and extras . Unit Set . "Nunsense: The Mega-Musical Version" is here! All the fun of the original "Nunsense" has been super-sized! If you're looking for a Large Cast Musical Comedy this award-winning show is the perfect choice. "Mega-Nunsense" starring the original five nuns features five new (male and female)characters including the never- before-seen infamous convent cook, Sister Julia, Child of God. In addition there is a large chorus of men, women and children. A new song ("One Last Hope") and two expanded dance numbers have been added as well as an optional guest spot for a local celebrity. "Nunsense", the winner of four Outer Critics Circle Awards including Best Musical was called "A hail of fun and frolic" by the New York Times. And now it's bigger and better than ever! It would be a sin to pass up the opportunity to present it!
O Let Us Howle Some Heavy Note: Music for Witches, the Melancholic, and the Mad on the Seventeenth-Century English Stage
by Amanda Eubanks WinklerIn the 17th century, harmonious sounds were thought to represent the well-ordered body of the obedient subject, and, by extension, the well-ordered state; conversely, discordant, unpleasant music represented both those who caused disorder (murderers, drunkards, witches, traitors) and those who suffered from bodily disorders (melancholics, madmen, and madwomen). While these theoretical correspondences seem straightforward, in theatrical practice the musical portrayals of disorderly characters were multivalent and often ambiguous.O Let Us Howle Some Heavy Note focuses on the various ways that theatrical music represented disorderly subjects--those who presented either a direct or metaphorical threat to the health of the English kingdom in 17th-century England. Using theater music to examine narratives of social history, Winkler demonstrates how music reinscribed and often resisted conservative, political, religious, gender, and social ideologies.
Office Hours
by Norm FosterIt's a Friday afternoon in the big city and, in six different offices, six different stories are unfolding at the same time. However, they are all connected somehow, from the figure skater on the ledge, to the novelist in the closet. A madcap race towards quitting time.