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The Bacchae and Other Plays: Ion the Women of Troy Helen the Bacchae
by Philip VellacottThe plays of Euripides have stimulated audiences since the fifth century BC. This volume, containing Phoenician Women, Bacchae, Iphigenia at Aulis, Orestes, and Rhesus.
The Bacchae of Euripides: A New Translation with a Critical Essay
by Euripides Donald SutherlandThis new translation of The Bacchae—that strange blend of Aeschylean grandeur and Euripidean finesse—is an attempt to reproduce for the American stage the play as it most probably was when new and unmutilated in 406 B.C. The achievement of this aim involves a restoration of the "great lacuna" at the climax and the discovery of several primary stage effects very likely intended by Euripides. These effects and controversial questions of the composition and stylistics are discussed in the notes and the accompanying essay.
Bach at Leipzig: A Play
by Itamar MosesLeipzig, Germany, 1722: Johann Kuhnau, revered organist of the Thomaskirche, suddenly dies, leaving his post vacant. In order to fill the position, the city council invites a small number of musicians to audition for the appointment, including Johann Sebastian Bach. This, however, is not his story. Based on actual events, Bach at Leipzig imagines with uncommon intelligence and wit how six little-known musicians resorted to bribery, blackmail, and betrayal in an attempt to secure the most coveted musical post in all of Europe.
Back Back Back; Celebrity Row; Outrage: Three Plays
by Itamar MosesItamar Moses has been hailed as one of America's most talented young playwrights since his critically acclaimed Bach at Leipzig debuted in 2005. In this anthology of three new plays, Moses blurs the line between fact and fiction, dramatizing today's most infamous news stories. In Back Back Back, the pressures of performance and reputation get the best of three professional baseball players when they are forced to reveal their not-so-natural secrets to winning the game. In Celebrity Row, Moses imagines what Timothy McVeigh, Ted Kaczynski, the 1993 World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef, and the Latin Kings leader Luis Felipe would have philosophized about when they were inhabitants of the same maximum security prison in Colorado. Finally, in Outrage, the dangerous teacher-disciple relationship calls all of academia into question with the help of none other than Socrates and Bertolt Brecht.
The Back Stage Guide to Stage Management, 3rd Edition
by Thomas A. KellyThe Most Widely Used Manual For Aspiring And Veteran Stage Managers - Now Revised and ExpandedThe next best thing to shadowing a Broadway stage manager, this detailed, behind-the-scenes book as been brought completely up to date. First published in 1991, it is widely used and has been lauded as the most comprehensive, educational book on stage management available. From preproduction planning and first rehersals to opening night and final strike, all the essentials of the profession are presented here in a friendly, engaging style.Blending how-to information with anecdotes from his own career, author Thomas A. Kelly explains the entire theatrical process, including:- Organizing all rehearsals and performances- Maintaining the working script, cue sheets, and daily records- Supervising the technical aspects of the show- Running shows outdoors and at other non-theatrical venues- Dealing with performers and crew members on all levelsThis new edition reflects all the latest developments and innovations in the industry and adds a totally new chapter on opera stage management, complete with an in-depth breakdown of the challenges this style of production presents. The text is supported by sample documents, diagrams, and charts that straddle time-honored approaches with what can be generated by today's computer software. All the latest stage machinery is discussed, along with tips on finding employment. This guide remians the first choice for anyone who works in any branch of the profession, whether amateur, educational, or professional.From the Trade Paperback edition.
Back to Methuselah
by George Bernard ShawBack to Methuselah (A Metabiological Pentateuch) is a 1921 series of five plays and a preface by George Bernard Shaw. The five plays are:In the Beginning: B.C. 4004 (In the Garden of Eden); The Gospel of the Brothers Barnabas: Present Day; The Thing Happens: A.D. 2170; Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman: A.D. 3000; As Far as Thought Can Reach: A.D. 31,920 The plays were published with a preface titled The Infidel Half Century, and first performed in 1922 by the New York Theatre Guild at the Garrick Theatre.
The Backstage Handbook: An Illustrated Almanac of Technical Information
by Paul Carter George ChiangFirst published in 1988, Backstage Handbook is one of the most widely used stagecraft textbooks in the United States, with about 10,000 copies sold every year. <p><p> This handy reference book brings together under one cover an incredible variety of information useful to designers, technicians and students who work behind the scenes in theatre, film and television. Its sturdy leatherette binding will stand up to years of constant use. <p><p> The third edition updates this popular reference book with new terminology and materials, and adds dozens of new illustrations of grip hardware, film lighting equipment and painting tools. Backstage Handbook includes chapters on Tools, Hardware, Materials, Electrics, Shop Math, Architecture and Theatre. There are hundreds of illustrations, tables and charts which cover everything from the stock sizes and specs of wood screws, to safe working loads for several kinds of rope, to illustrations of twenty-two types of standard lamp bases.
Backstage with a Ghost
by Joan Lowery NixonBrian and Sean investigate a series of suspicious accidents at a theater waiting to be torn down.
Backwards and Forwards: A Technical Manual for Reading Plays
by David BallConsidered an essential text since its publication thirty-five years ago, this guide for students and practitioners of both theater and literature complements, rather than contradicts or repeats, traditional methods of literary analysis of scripts. <p><p>The author developed his method during his work as literary director at the Guthrie Theater, building his guide on the crafts playwrights of every period and style use to make their plays stage-worthy. The text is full of tools for students and practitioners to use as they investigate plot, character, theme, exposition, imagery, conflict, theatricality, and the other crucial parts of the superstructure of a play. <p><p>Also included are guides for discovering what the playwright considers a play' s most important elements, thus permitting interpretation based on the foundation of the play rather than its details. Using Shakespeare's Hamlet as illustration, the author assures a familiar base for clarifying script-reading techniques as well as exemplifying the kinds of misinterpretation readers can fall prey to by ignoring the craft of the playwright. Of immense utility to those who want to put plays on the stage (actors, directors, designers, production specialists) Backwards & Forwards is also a fine playwriting manual because the structures it describes are the primary tools of the playwright.
Bad Blood: Staging Race Between Early Modern England and Spain (RaceB4Race: Critical Race Studies of the Premodern)
by Emily WeissbourdBad Blood explores representations of race in early modern English and Spanish literature, especially drama. It addresses two different forms of racial ideology: one concerned with racialized religious difference—that is, the notion of having Jewish or Muslim “blood”—and one concerned with Blackness and whiteness. Shakespeare’s Othello tells us that he was “sold to slavery” in his youth, a phrase that evokes the Atlantic triangle trade for readers today. For many years, however, scholars have asserted that racialized slavery was not yet widely understood in early modern England, and that the kind of enslavement that Othello describes is related to Christian-Muslim conflict in the Mediterranean rather than the rise of the racialized enslavement of Afro-diasporic subjects.Bad Blood offers a new account of early modern race by tracing the development of European racial vocabularies from Spain to England. Dispelling assumptions, stemming from Spain’s historical exclusion of Jews and Muslims, that premodern racial ideology focused on religious difference and purity of blood more than color, Emily Weissbourd argues that the context of the Atlantic slave trade is indispensable to understanding race in early modern Spanish and English literature alike. Through readings of plays by Shakespeare, Lope de Vega, and their contemporaries, as well as Spanish picaresque fiction and its English translations, Weissbourd reveals how ideologies of racialized slavery as well as religious difference come to England via Spain, and how both notions of race operate in conjunction to shore up fantasies of Blackness, whiteness, and “pure blood.” The enslavement of Black Africans, Weissbourd shows, is inextricable from the staging of race in early modern literature.
Bad Boy Nietzsche! and Other Plays
by Richard ForemanRichard Foreman has been at the leading edge of the theatrical avant-garde in the United States and throughout the world since 1968. His legendary productions, written and directed by him at his Ontological-Hysteric Theatre have influenced two generations of theater artists. This new anthology collects plays written and performed over six years, including Now That Communism Is Dead My Life Feels Empty, Maria del Bosco, Panic (How to Be Happy!), Bad Boy Nietzsche!, Bad Behavior and King Cowboy Rufus Rules the Universe.Richard Foreman founded the Ontological-Hysteric Theatre in 1968. The theater is currently in the historic St. Marks Church, where he rehearses and produces one of his new plays each year, each play performing for 16 weeks every winter.
A Bad Day At Gopher's Breath
by Al Ver SchureFarceCharacters: 14 male, 4 female (including 1 male narrator guitarist and 1 male or female piano player), plus extras. Area or platform staging. . After many failures due to ineptitude, the notorious Rawlins gang rides into Gopher's Breath to rob the bank. While Rawhide Rawlins dreams of a farm for his ma, Sheriff Crutchwaffle representing all that's rotten in town also has his designs on the loot. He needs money to escape the clutches of Fat Jack Caldwell, the most feared man in the West. The outlaws and the sheriff force each other to alter their plans and the banker's niece enters the plot. Stricken by love, a Rawhide tries desperately to go straight, but his gang carries on and Crutchwaffle manipulates them to his own evil ends. Predictably, love deals Crutchwaffle a bad draw in the end and Bambi and Rawhide ride happily into the sunset. Riddled with all the traditional cliches of the classic western, Gopher's Breath becomes the setting for hilarious happenings.
Bad for me
by Divino B'AtistaLuck seems to be in Matthew's favor as soon as he gets a job at the restaurant where Andrew, the boy of his dreams, works. Being the incurable romantic he is, Matthew faithfully believes that he can turn friendship into a long-awaited romance, the problem is that life is full of surprises, and one of them will completely shake the boy's heart, making him understand that love is not always simple and pink as we imagine. Bad for Me is a light story with an engaging and humorous plot that will make the reader laugh and thrill to the last page
Bad Jews: A Play
by Joshua HarmonIt's about what you choose to believe, when you're chosen. Bad Jews tells the story of Daphna Feygenbaum, a “Real Jew” with an Israeli boyfriend. When Daphna’s cousin Liam brings home his shiksa girlfriend Melody and declares ownership of their grandfather’s Chai necklace, a vicious and hilarious brawl over family, faith and legacy ensues.
The Bad Seed
by William March Maxwell AndersonPresents a dramatization of March's novel featuring Rhoda Penmark, who uses her strange powers and talent for evil to force others to give her what she wants.
Bafana Republic and Other Satires: A collection of monologues and revues
by Mike van GraanThis collection of satirical sketches takes readers on a sometimes cynical, sometimes hilarious trip through many of the issues that face democratic South AfricaThe seed of this collection was sown in 2007 when South Africa won the right to host the 2010 FIFA World Cup. The debate about huge amounts of public funds being spent on a 'vanity project' instead of being used to improve the lives of the majority of the country’s citizens inspired Mike van Graan, one of South Africa's leading contemporary political playwrights, to use sport as an entry point for satirical commentary. Van Graan follows this with piercing attention towards matters of the state. With themes ranging from the World Cup to the political football of land, from the violent abuse of women to state capture, this selection of satirical sketches takes readers on a rollercoaster trip through many of the issues that face democratic South Africa. The sketches come from six one-person revues, Bafana Republic (2007), Bafana Republic: Extra Time (2008), Bafana Republic: Penalty Shootout (2009), Pay Back the Curry (2016), State Fracture (2017) and Land Acts (2018). Van Graan uses a potent mix of comedy, poetry and drama to make points that hit hard at core issues which 21st-century South Africans are struggling with. Readers will laugh and cringe and sometimes cry, but one thing they will not be able to do is remain unaffected.
Bag Of Green Apples
by Jean Lennox ToddiePatricia, a young woman of twenty, returns to the scene of her childhood-- her aunt Ester's beach house. She hopes to learn from her aunt, who raised her, answers about her past so that she can better understand who she is in the present. She interacts with Patty (her ten year old self) as well as with Ester of past and present. She finally decides to stay. FEE: $35 per performance.
"The Bagnios of Algiers" and "The Great Sultana"
by Aaron J. Ilika Miguel De Cervantes Barbara FuchsBest known today as the author of Don Quixote--one of the most beloved and widely read novels in the Western tradition--Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547-1616) was a poet and a playwright as well. After some early successes on the Madrid stage in the 1580s, his theatrical career was interrupted by other literary efforts. Yet, eager to prove himself as a playwright, shortly before his death he published a collection of his later plays before they were ever performed.With their depiction of captives in North Africa and at the Ottoman court, two of these, "The Bagnios of Algiers" and "The Great Sultana," draw heavily on Cervantes's own experiences as a captive, and echo important episodes in Don Quixote. They are set in a Mediterranean world where Spain and its Muslim neighbors clashed repeatedly while still remaining in close contact, with merchants, exiles, captives, soldiers, and renegades frequently crossing between the two sides. The plays provide revealing insights into Spain's complex perception of the world of Mediterranean Islam.Despite their considerable literary and historical interest, these two plays have never before been translated into English. This edition presents them along with an introductory essay that places them in the context of Cervantes's drama, the early modern stage, and the political and cultural relations between Christianity and Islam in the early modern period.
Bakhtin and Theatre: Dialogues with Stanislavski, Meyerhold and Grotowski
by Dick MccawWhat did Bakhtin think about the theatre? That it was outdated? That is ‘stopped being a serious genre’ after Shakespeare? Could a thinker to whose work ideas of theatricality, visuality, and embodied activity were so central really have nothing to say about theatrical practice? Bakhtin and Theatre is the first book to explore the relation between Bakhtin’s ideas and the theatre practice of his time. In that time, Stanislavsky co-founded the Moscow Art Theatre in 1898 and continued to develop his ideas about theatre until his death in 1938. Stanislavsky’s pupil Meyerhold embraced the Russian Revolution and created some stunningly revolutionary productions in the 1920s, breaking with the realism of his former teacher. Less than twenty years after Stanislavsky’s death and Meyerhold’s assassination, a young student called Grotowski was studying in Moscow, soon to break the mould with his Poor Theatre. All three directors challenged the prevailing notion of theatre, drawing on, disagreeing with and challenging each other’s ideas. Bakhtin’s early writings about action, character and authorship provide a revealing framework for understanding this dialogue between these three masters of Twentieth Century theatre.
Bakkhai
by Anne Carson EuripidesA stunning, new translation by the poet and classicist Anne Carson, first performed in 2015 at the Almeida Theatre in London Anne Carson writes, “Euripides was a playwright of the fifth century BC who reinvented Greek tragedy, setting it on a path that leads straight to reality TV. His plays broke all the rules, upended convention and outraged conservative critics. The Bakkhai is his most subversive play, telling the story of a man who cannot admit he would rather live in the skin of a woman, and a god who seems to combine all sexualities into a single ruinous demand for adoration. Dionysos is the god of intoxication. Once you fall under his influence, there is no telling where you will end up.”
Balanchine: A special issue of the journal Choreography and Dance
by Robert P. CohanThis detailed portrait of George Balanchine presents new approaches to his choreography. The book examines Balanchine from diverse perspectives and discusses unexplored aspects of his work, such as the notion of Balanchine as an architect, and his experiments with the African-American dance tradition. The articles complement and reinforce each other, taking interdisciplinary perspectives and encouraging a reexamination of, and expansion of, existing opinions.
Balancing Acts: Behind the Scenes at London's National Theatre
by Nicholas HytnerFrom the Tony Award and Laurence Olivier Award-winning former director of London's National Theatre--this is a fascinating, candid, eloquent memoir about his career directing theater, producing films and opera, and working closely with some of the world's most celebrated actors. The list of Nicholas Hytner's accomplishments is long and distinguished: as Artistic Director of London's National Theatre from 2003-2015, he directed and produced a great number of their most popular and memorable plays and musicals, many of which have come to Broadway: Carousel, Richard Bean's One Man, Two Guvnors, David Hare's Stuff Happens among them. He directed both the London and Broadway productions of Miss Saigon, each of which ran for ten years. He directed Alan Bennett's The Madness of George III on both stage and screen. In short: He is one of today's most successful and admired theatrical impresarios. In Balancing Acts, Hytner gives us a detailed behind-the-scenes look at his creative process. From reviving classic musicals and mastering Shakespeare to commissioning new plays, he shows theater making to be a necessarily collaborative exercise, and he writes insightfully about the actors and playwrights he's worked with: Derek Jacobi, Richard Griffiths, Helen Mirren, Maggie Smith, Michael Gambon, Harold Pinter, and Tom Stoppard among them. With a cultural range that spans from The Mikado to The Lady in the Van, Balancing Acts is not only a memoir but a gathering of illuminating notes on the art of directing and a thoughtful meditation on the purpose of theater.
Balconville
by David FennarioBalconville is Canada's first bilingual play. Three families and Thibault, the neighbourhood delivery boy, sit on their balconies in the heat of a Montreal summer. It is election time and Gaétan Bolduc is running for re-election for the Liberals. His broadcast truck roams the streets making election promises in English and in French, and playing the music of Elvis Presley. The English and the French-Canadian working class take on the Establishment in this award-winning play.
The Balcony: A Play (Faber Library #Vol. 27)
by Jean GenetIn the midst of a war-ravished city, a brothel caters to the elaborate role-playing fantasies of men from all walks of life. These perverse costumed masquerades parody and stylize the nature of the anarchic political struggle that rages outside. In a stunning series of macabre scenes, Genet presents his caustic view of man and society.
The Bald Soprano: & Other Plays (Books That Changed the World)
by Eugène IonescoThis Absurdist masterpiece by the author of Rhinoceros “is explosively, liberatingly funny…a loony parody with a climax which is an orgy of non-sequiturs” (The Observer).Written in 1950, Eugene Ionesco’s first play, The Bald Soprano, was a seminal work of Absurdist theatre. Today, it is celebrated around the world as a modern classic for its imagination and sui generis theatricality. A hilarious parody of English manners and a striking statement on the alienation of modern life, it was inspired by the strange dialogues Ionesco encountered in foreign language phrase books.Ionesco went on to become an internationally renowned master of modern drama, famous for the comic proportions and bizarre effects that allow his work to be simultaneously hilarious, tragic, and profound. As Ionesco has said, “Theater is not literature. . . . It is simply what cannot be expressed by any other means.”