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Stone the Crows
by David L. PatersonDrama / 2m, 1f / Interior / Lydia Johansen is teetering between a collapsing marriage and self destruction when a new man arrives on her doorstep. This stranger is her husband's long distant brother and a self proclaimed professional drifter. He claims to be passing through on his way to Alaska. Charmed by his self deprecating humor and easy going existence, Lydia attempts to seduce him. Within a twenty four hour period, the bonds of marriage, family and friendship are challenged to the breaking point while secrets better left buried are revealed.
The Stonemason: A Play in Five Acts
by Cormac MccarthyBen Telfair has given up his education to apprentice himself to his grandfather, a man who knows that true masonry is not held together by cement but by the warp of the world.
Stop the Show!: A History of Insane Incidents and Absurd Accidents in the Theater
by Brad SchreiberStop the Show! is the first book to assemble humorous, frightening and bizarre anecdotes about the history of all that went wrong during live theatrical productions in the U.S. and the United Kingdom. It is the publishing equivalent of TV bloopers for the legitimate stage. This book includes stories from top directors, actors, playwrights and technicians from New York, Los Angeles, and points in between, to the United Kingdom, from the 19th century to today. There are stories about missed entrances and exits, onstage unscripted fights between performers, improvised lines, accidental pratfalls, falling scenery, and costume, lighting and makeup screwups. The backstage provides sordid tales of practical jokes, treachery, misplaced props, wild arguments, and generally the kinds of things Michael Frayn created for his farce about a theatrical disaster, Noises Off. This book doesn't leave out the theatergoers either, who snore, fight with each other, talk back to the performers, search for their seats, become suddenly ill, eat, drink, make merry, and are yelled at by the performers - all of which sometimes prompts the show to stop, even though we've always been told it must go on.
Stoppard's Theatre: Finding Order amid Chaos
by John FlemingWith a thirty-year run of award-winning, critically acclaimed, and commercially successful plays, from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1967) to The Invention of Love (1997), Tom Stoppard is arguably the preeminent playwright in Britain today. His popularity also extends to the United States, where his plays have won three Tony awards and his screenplay for Shakespeare in Love won the 1998 Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.<P><P>John Fleming offers the first book-length assessment of Stoppard's work in nearly a decade. He takes an in-depth look at the three newest plays (Arcadia, Indian Ink, and The Invention of Love) and the recently revised versions of Travesties and Hapgood, as well as at four other major plays (Rosencrantz, Jumpers, Night and Day, and The Real Thing). Drawing on Stoppard's personal papers at the University of Texas Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center (HRHRC), Fleming also examines Stoppard's previously unknown play Galileo, as well as numerous unpublished scripts and variant texts of his published plays.
Storefront Church
by John Patrick Shanley"Some of Shanley's sharpest comic writing in years... His intense engagement with questions of religion and ethics remains distinctive and invigorating." - Charles Isherwood, New York Times"There's a deeper philosophical vein that the author mines, allowing his language to acquire the heft and timbre of a serious moral debate...We taste bitterness, but also much that is sweet." - David Cote, TimeOut New York"A postmodern morality play that's as funny as it is bracing." - Karen D'Souza, San Jose Mercury NewsConcluding the "Church and State" trilogy of plays that began with Doubt and Defiance, Storefront Church tells the story of a Bronx Borough President who is forced by the mortgage crisis into a confrontation with a local minister. Blending earthy humor and philosophical reflection, this compassionate morality tale is an exploration of the often thorny relationship between spiritual experience and social action.John Patrick Shanley is the author of Doubt: A Parable (Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Tony Award for Best Play), Outside Mullingar (Tony nomination for Best Play), Defiance, Danny and the Deep Blue Sea and Dirty Story, among many other plays. He wrote the teleplay for Live from Baghdad (Emmy nomination for Outstanding Writing of a Miniseries, Movie or Dramatic Special) and the screenplays for Congo, Alive, Five Corners, Joe Versus the Volcano, Doubt (Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay) and Moonstruck (Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay).
Stories About the Old Days
by Bill HarrisA former blues singer living in a decaying church in Detroit never ventures out into the world that rejected him. While playing checkers he and Ivy, one the last members of the congregation, move from animosity to friendship. Both have secrets from the old days: he conceals his struggle of faith and despair and she withholds a searing loss as they rescue each other from emotional numbness and terminal loneliness. This wonderful play with superb roles for older Black actors was produced to acclaim in New York at the Henry Street Settlement.
Stories From Shakespeare
by Anna ClaybournePresents prose retellings of ten of Shakespeare’s plays, and includes summaries and main character lists for his other plays.
Stories I Ain't Told Nobody Yet
by Jo CarsonFifty-four monologues and dialogues, a remarkable distillation of rhythms and nuances from the region of the heart.
The Storm at Sea: Political Aesthetics in the Time of Shakespeare
by Christopher PyeThe Storm at Sea: Political Aesthetics in the Time of Shakespeare counters a tradition of cultural analysis that judges considerations of aesthetic autonomy in the early modern context to be either anachronistic or an index of political disengagement. Pye argues that for a post-theocratic era in which the mise-en-forme of the social domain itself was for the first time at stake, the problem of the aesthetic lay at the very core of the political; it is precisely through its engagement with the question of aesthetic autonomy that early modern works most profoundly explore their relation to matters of law, state, sovereignty, and political subjectivity. Pye establishes the significance of a “creationist” political aesthetic—at once a discrete historical category and a phenomenon that troubles our familiar forms of historical accounting—and suggests that the fate of such an aesthetic is intimately bound up with the emergence of modern conceptions of the political sphere. The Storm at Sea moves historically from Leonardo da Vinci to Thomas Hobbes; it focuses on Shakespeare and English drama, with chapters on Hamlet, Othello, A Winter’s Tale, and The Tempest, as well as sustained readings of As You Like It, King Lear, Thomas Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy, and Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus. Engaging political thinkers such as Carl Schmitt, Giorgio Agamben, Claude Lefort, and Roberto Esposito, The Storm at Sea will be of interest to political theorists as well as to students of literary and visual theory.
Storm is Breaking
by Jim DamicoComedy / 1 m., 1 f. (off stage), 1 boy / Ext. / Winner of the first National Collegiate Playwriting Contest, this is a portrait of a boy who has been following an ant along the sidewalk for several hours. It is a picture that is hard to put out of your mind, and its intimations leave lasting thoughts. The boy prevents a man from stepping on the bug-- insect, the boy corrects him. For to the boy, everything on earth has size and significance.
Storm Warning
by Norm FosterSet in cottage country in 1953, Jack Forrester, a damaged World War II vet, has retreated from life. Then one weekend he meets Emma Currie, an amphetamine-popping chart writer for a big band. Both lives will change forever as these two opposites collide.
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle: A Novel
by David WroblewskiAn Oprah's Book Club Pick#1 New York Times Bestseller“A mystery, a thriller, a ghost story, and a literary tour de force . . . an authentic epic, long and lush, full of back story and observed detail . . . the author exercises a certain magic that catches and holds our attention, a magic that is undeniably his own.”—Los Angeles Times Book ReviewBorn mute, speaking only in sign, Edgar Sawtelle leads an idyllic life on his family’s farm in remote northern Wisconsin, where they raise and train an extraordinary breed of dog. But when tragedy mysteriously strikes, Edgar is forced to flee into the vast neighboring wilderness, accompanied by three yearling dogs. He comes of age in the wild, struggling for survival, until the day Edgar is forced to choose between leaving forever and returning home to learn the truth behind what has happened.Filled with breathtaking scenes—the elemental north woods, the sweep of seasons, an iconic American barn, a fateful vision rendered in the falling rain—The Story of Edgar Sawtelle is a meditation on the limits of language and what lies beyond, a brilliantly inventive retelling of an ancient story, and an epic tale of devotion, betrayal, and courage in the American heartland.
The Story of Lin-Manuel Miranda: An Inspiring Biography for Young Readers (The Story of Biographies)
by Frank BerriosDiscover the life of Lin-Manuel Miranda—a story about creating change through art, for kids ages 6 to 9 Lin-Manuel Miranda is an award-winning composer, actor, and playwright—best known for the hit musical Hamilton, which he created! Before he changed the world of entertainment, Lin-Manuel was an intelligent young boy who loved music and musicals. He was inspired to write his own songs and plays, and his life changed when the plays he wrote became huge successes on Broadway. This book explores how Lin-Manuel went from being an artistic boy growing up in New York City to a rising star and Pulitzer Prize winner.Independent reading—This Lin-Manuel Miranda biography is broken down into short chapters and simple language so kids 6 to 9 can read and learn on their own.Critical thinking—Kids will learn the Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How of Lin-Manuel's life, find definitions of new words, discussion questions, and more.A lasting legacy—Discover how Lin-Manuel has transformed the performing arts and brought Broadway plays to a wider audience.How will Lin-Manuel's dedication to his art and activism inspire you?Discover activists, artists, athletes, and more from across history with the rest of the Story Of series, including famous figures like: Selena Quintanilla, Frida Kahlo, Stan Lee, Maya Angelou, and Audrey Hepburn.
The Story of the Iliad: A Dramatic Retelling of Homer’s Epic and the Last Days of Troy
by Simon ArmitageAward-winning poet Simon Armitage dramatizes the story of Troy, animating this classic epic for a new generation of readers. Following his highly acclaimed dramatization of the Odyssey, Simon Armitage here takes on the fate of Troy, bringing Homer's Iliad to life with refreshing imaginative vision. In the final days of the Trojan War, the Trojans and the Greeks are caught in a bitter stalemate. Exhausted and desperate after ten years of warfare, gods and men battle among themselves for the glory of recognition and a hand in victory. Cleverly intertwining the Iliad and the Aeneid, Armitage poetically narrates the tale of Troy to its dire end, evoking a world plagued by deceit, conflict, and a deadly predilection for pride and envy. As with the Odyssey, Armitage reveals the echoes of ancient myth in our contemporary war-torn landscape, and reinvigorates the classic epics with adventure, passion, and, surprisingly, Shakespearean wit.
The Story of the Night: Studies in Shakespeare's Major Tragedies
by John HollowayFirst published in 1961. Critiquing the critics, and examining the vocabulary of twentieth century criticism of the Shakespearean tragedies, John Holloway's book covers Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, Timon of Athens and the themes of Shakespearean Tragedy and the idea of human sacrifice and the concepts of myth and ritual in literature.
Story Theatre
by Paul SillsFables / 5m, 3f / Stage, projections / Mr. Sills started in New Haven, journeyed to the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, and wound up on Broadway with this group of famous fables from the Grimm Brothers and Aesop. Here you will meet again Henny Penny, the Golden Goose, Venus and the Cat, the Fisherman and His Wife, The Robber Baron, the Bremen Towson Musicians, and other favorites. The fables require talented actors with expressive bodies. And make no mistakes about the quality: this is top drawer adult theatre.
Storytelling in Participatory Arts with Young People: The Gaps in the Story (Palgrave Studies In Play, Performance, Learning, and Development)
by Catherine HeinemeyerThis book draws on the author’s experience as a storyteller, drama practitioner and researcher, to articulate an emerging dialogic approach to storytelling in participatory arts, educational, mental health, youth theatre, and youth work contexts. It argues that oral storytelling offers a rich and much-needed channel for intergenerational dialogue with young people.The book keeps theory firmly tethered to practice. Section 1, ‘Storyknowing’, traces the history of oral storytelling practice with adolescents across diverse contexts, and brings into clear focus the particular nature of the storytelling exchange and narrative knowledge. Section 2, ‘Telling Stories’, introduces readers to some of the key challenges and possibilities of dialogic storytelling by reflecting on stories from the author’s own arts-based practice research with adolescents, illustrating these with young people’s artistic responses to stories. Finally, section 3, ‘Story Gaps’, conceptualises dialogic storytelling by exploring three different ‘gaps’: the gap between storyteller and listener, the gaps in the story, and the gaps which storytellers can open up within institutions. The book includes chapters taking a special focus on storytelling in schools and in mental health settings, as well as guided reflections for readers to relate the issues raised to their own practice.
Storytelling, Special Needs and Disabilities: Practical Approaches for Children and Adults
by Nicola GroveNow in a fully revised and updated second edition, this innovative and wide-ranging book shows how storytelling can open new worlds for individuals with special educational needs and disabilities. Providing a highly accessible combination of theory and practice, the contributors to this book define their own approaches to inclusive storytelling, describing the principles and theory that underpin their practice, whilst never losing sight of the joy at the heart of their work. Topics include therapeutic storytelling; language and communication; interactive and multi-sensory storytelling; and technology. Each chapter includes top tips, and signposts further training for practitioners who want to start using stories in their own work, making this book a crucial and comprehensive guide to storytelling practice with diverse learners. This new edition: · has been fully updated to reflect the way in which this field of storytelling has grown and developed · uses a broad range of chapters, structured in a way that guides the reader through the conceptualisation of a storytelling approach towards its practical application · includes an additional chapter, sharing the lived experiences of storytellers who identify as having a disability. Full of inspiring ideas to be used with people of all ages and with a range of needs, this book will be an invaluable tool for education professionals, as well as therapists, youth workers, counsellors and theatre practitioners working in special education.
Straight Acting: The Hidden Queer Lives of William Shakespeare
by Will ToshA dazzling and "highly readable" (Guardian) portrait of Shakespeare as a young artist, revealing how his rich and complex queer life informed the plays and poems we treasure today &“Was Shakespeare gay?&” For years the question has sent experts and fans into a tailspin of confusion. But as scholar Will Tosh argues, this debate misses the point: sex, intimacy, and identity in Elizabethan England were infinitely more complex—and queer—than we have been taught. In this incisive biography, Tosh reveals William Shakespeare as a queer artist who drew on his society&’s nuanced understanding of gender and sexuality to create some of English literature&’s richest works. During Shakespeare&’s time, same-sex desire was repressed and punished by the Church and state, but it was also articulated and sustained by institutions across England. Moving through the queer spaces of Shakespeare&’s life—his Stratford schoolroom, smoky London taverns and playhouses, the royal court—Tosh shows how strongly Shakespeare&’s early work was influenced by the queer culture of the time, much of it totally integrated into mainstream society. He also uncovers the surprising reason why Shakespeare veered away from his early work&’s gender-bending homoeroticism. Offering a subversive sketch of Elizabethan England, Straight Acting uncovers Shakespeare as one of history&’s great queer artists and completely reshapes the way we understand his life and times.
Straight White Men: Untitled Feminist Show
by Young Jean LeeTwo plays by the award-winning dramatist, the first Asian-American female playwright to be produced on Broadway. <p><p>In Straight White Men, it's Christmas Eve, and Ed has gathered his three adult sons to celebrate with matching pajamas, trash-talking, and Chinese takeout. But when a question they can't answer interrupts their holiday cheer, they are forced to confront their own identities. <p><p>In Untitled Feminist Show, six charismatic stars of the downtown theatre, dance, cabaret, and burlesque worlds come together to invite the audience on an exhilaratingly irreverent, nearly-wordless celebration of a fluid and limitless sense of identity.
Strange Bedfellows
by Florence RyersonComedy \ 7 m., 11 f. \ Int. \ Senator Cromwell, an old line politician who keeps his women under stern rule, has a new daughter in law. When he learns Matthew's bride is a feminist leader campaigning for the Women's Rights Bill due to come up in the same election Matthew is running in for re election to Congress, there is an explosion which shakes the family and threatens Matthew's marriage. \ "If you're looking for laughs, don't miss Strange Bedfellows ." N.Y. Mirror
The Strange Career of Porgy and Bess
by Ellen NoonanCreated by George Gershwin and DuBose Heyward and sung by generations of black performers, Porgy and Bess has been both embraced and reviled since its debut in 1935. In this comprehensive account, Ellen Noonan examines the opera's long history of invention and reinvention as a barometer of twentieth-century American expectations about race, culture, and the struggle for equality. In its surprising endurance lies a myriad of local, national, and international stories.For black performers and commentators, Porgy and Bess was a nexus for debates about cultural representation and racial uplift. White producers, critics, and even audiences spun revealing racial narratives around the show, initially in an attempt to demonstrate its authenticity and later to keep it from becoming discredited or irrelevant. Expertly weaving together the wide-ranging debates over the original novel, Porgy, and its adaptations on stage and film with a history of its intimate ties to Charleston, The Strange Career of "Porgy and Bess" uncovers the complexities behind one of our nation's most long-lived cultural touchstones.
A Strange Eventful History: The Dramatic Lives of Ellen Terry, Henry Irving, and Their Remarkable Families
by Michael HolroydPLEASE NOTE: THIS EBOOK DOES NOT CONTAIN PHOTOS INCLUDED IN THE PRINT EDITION.Deemed "a prodigy among biographers" by The New York Times Book Review, Michael Holroyd transformed biography into an art. Now he turns his keen observation, humane insight, and epic scope on an ensemble cast, a remarkable dynasty that presided over the golden age of theater.Ellen Terry was an ethereal beauty, the child bride of a Pre-Raphaelite painter who made her the face of the age. George Bernard Shaw was so besotted by her gifts that he could not bear to meet her, lest the spell she cast from the stage be broken. Henry Irving was an ambitious, harsh-voiced merchant's clerk, but once he painted his face and spoke the lines of Shakespeare, his stammer fell away to reveal a magnetic presence. He would become one of the greatest actor-managers in the history of the theater. Together, Terry and Irving created a powerhouse of the arts in London's Lyceum Theatre, with Bram Stoker—who would go on to write Dracula—as manager. Celebrities whose scandalous private lives commanded global attention, they took America by stormin wildly popular national tours.Their all-consuming professional lives left little room for their brilliant but troubled children. Henry's boys followed their father into the theater but could not escape the shadow of his fame. Ellen's feminist daughter, Edy, founded an avant-garde theater and a largely lesbian community at her mother's country home. But it was Edy's son, the revolutionary theatrical designer Edward Gordon Craig, who possessed the most remarkable gifts and the most perplexing inability to realize them. A now forgotten modernist visionary, he collaborated with the Russian director Stanislavski on a production of Hamlet that forever changed the way theater was staged. Maddeningly self-absorbed, he inherited his mother's potent charm and fathered thirteen children by eight women, including a daughter with the dancer Isadora Duncan.An epic story spanning a century of cultural change, A Strange Eventful History finds space for the intimate moments of daily existence as well as the bewitching fantasies played out by its subjects. Bursting with charismatic life, it is an incisive portrait of two families who defied the strictures of their time. It will be swiftly recognized as a classic.Please note: This ebook edition does not contain photos and illustrations that appeared in the print edition.
Strange Fruit: The Biography Of A Song
by David MargolickRecorded by jazz legend Billie Holiday in 1939, "Strange Fruit" is considered to be the first significant song of the civil rights movement and the first direct musical assault upon racial lynchings in the South. Originally sung in New York's Cafe Society, these revolutionary lyrics take on a life of their own in this revealing account of the song and the struggle it personified. Strange Fruit not only chronicles the civil rights movement from the '30s on, it examines the lives of the beleaguered Billie Holiday and Abel Meeropol, the white Jewish schoolteacher and communist sympathizer who wrote the song that would have an impact on generations of fans, black and white, unknown and famous, including performers Lena Horne, Eartha Kitt, and Sting.
A Strange Proximity: Stage Presence, Failure, and the Ethics of Attention
by Jon Foley ShermanWhat happens in the relationship between audience and performer? What choices are made in the space of performance about how we attend to others? A Strange Proximity examines stage presence as key to thinking about performance and ethics. It is the first phenomenological account of ethics generated from, rather than applied to, contemporary theatrical productions. The ethical possibilities of the stage, argues Jon Foley Sherman, rest not so much in its objects—the performers and the show itself—as in the “how” of attending to others. A Strange Proximity is a unique perspective on the implications of attention in performance.