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Who's Who in Shakespeare (Who's Who)
by Hamish Johnson Peter QuennellWho's Who in Shakespeare presents a complete and handy guide to the men and women who throng Shakespeare's plays. It provides:* detailed biographical information on each leading figure* analyses of the role and significance of each minor figure* a reliable guide to the huge Shakespearian canon for student and teacher* quotations from famous critics* useful information on some of Shakespeare's sources.From Antonio to Yorick, Macbeth to Mercutio, this book embraces the breadth and depth of the world's most important playwright.
Who's Who in Shakespeare: A Dictionary of Characters and Proper Names (Dover Books On Literature And Drama Ser.)
by Francis Griffin StokesAlthough many of Shakespeare's allusions would have been familiar to the theater-goers of his day, we've come a long way from the language of the Globe Theater. This indispensable dictionary helps modern readers and audiences find their way back to the Elizabethan stage. With more than 3,000 entries, it encompasses all of the plays as well as the poems and sonnets. In addition to the historical, mythical, and fictitious characters themselves, the coverage extends to their references to other people, places, literature, and legends.Who's Who in Shakespeare offers an alphabetical guide to these names. It provides a specific identity and context for each, with quotations from the works in which they appear, from the sources which Shakespeare may himself have used, and from the writings of his contemporaries. The author has also contributed his own comments on the accuracy of some of the historical and geographical references, and on the links between the playwright's life and his choices of names.Entries for major characters feature brief analyses of their roles, arranged scene by scene. The plays appear under their individual titles, with details of their original publication and probable date of composition. A useful appendix contains family trees of the important ruling and noble houses at the time of the Wars of the Roses, plus a catalog of works included in the First Folio.
Whose Improv Is It Anyway?: Beyond Second City (Studies in Popular Culture Series)
by Amy E. SehamOn both sides of the stage improv-comedy's popularity has increased exponentially throughout the 1980s and '90s and into the new millennium. Presto! An original song is created out of thin air. With nothing but a suggestion from the audience, daring young improvisers working without a net or a script create hilarious characters, sketches, and songs. Thrilled by the danger, the immediacy, and the virtuosity of improv-comedy, spectators laugh and cheer. American improv-comedy burst onto the scene in the 1950s with Chicago's the Compass Players (best known for the brilliant comedy duo Mike Nichols and Elaine May) and the Second City, which launched the careers of many popular comedians, including Gilda Radner, John Belushi, and Mike Myers. Chicago continues to be a mecca for young performers who travel from faraway places to study improv. At the same time, the techniques of Chicago improv have infiltrated classrooms, workshops, rehearsals, and comedy clubs across North and South America, Europe, Australia, and Japan. Improv's influence is increasingly evident in contemporary films and in interactive entertainment on the internet. Drawing on the experiences of working improvisers, Whose Improv Is It Anyway? provides a never-before-published account of developments beyond Second City's mainstream approach to the genre. This fascinating history chronicles the origins of "the Harold," a sophisticated new "long-form" style of improv developed in the '80s at ImprovOlympic and details the importance and pitfalls of ComedySports. Here also is a backstage glimpse at the Annoyance Theatre, best known on the national scene for its production of The Real Live Brady Bunch. Readers will get the scoop on the recent work of players who, feeling excluded by early improv's "white guys in ties," created such independent groups as the Free Associates and the African American troupe Oui Be Negroes. There is far more to the art of improv than may be suggested by the sketches on Saturday Night Live or the games on Whose Line Is It Anyway? This history, an insider's look at the evolution of improv-comedy in Chicago, reveals the struggles, the laughter, and the ideals of mutual support, freedom, and openness that have inspired many performers. It explores the power games, the gender inequities, and the racial tensions that can emerge in improvised performance, and it shares the techniques and strategies veteran players use to combat these problems. Improv art is revealed to be an art of compromise, a fragile negotiation between the poles of process and product. The result, as shown here, can be exciting, shimmering, magical, and not exclusively the property of any troupe or actor.
Whose Wives Are They Anyway?
by Michael ParkerComedy / 3m, 5f / The Ashley Maureen Cosmetics Company has been sold and two of its vice presidents, David McGrachen and John Baker, have planned a weekend off before the new C.E.O. arrives on Monday. With their wives safely off on a shopping spree in New York City, they check into The Oakfield Golf and Country Club intending to "golf their brains out." They unexpectedly encounter their new boss, Ms. Hutchison, and she insists on meeting the wives, commenting blithely "no one who went golfing for a weekend without his wife would ever work for me." So ... David and John have to produce wives. John persuades Tina, the hotel's sexy receptionist, to play the role of his wife, but the only one who can pretend to be David's wife is John. Inevitably everything goes wrong as John moves in and out of bedrooms, changing from male to female at a frantic pace. Hilarious chaos ensues when the hotel phone system goes on the blink, Tina has too much champagne and can't keep her clothes on, and, yes, the real wives arrive!
Why Acting Matters
by David ThomsonDoes acting matter? David Thomson, one of our most respected and insightful writers on movies and theater, answers this question with intelligence and wit. In this fresh and thought-provoking essay, Thomson tackles this most elusive of subjects, examining the allure of the performing arts for both the artist and the audience member while addressing the paradoxes inherent in acting itself. He reflects on the casting process, on stage versus film acting, and on the cult of celebrity. The art and considerable craft of such gifted artists as Meryl Streep, Laurence Olivier, Vivien Leigh, Marlon Brando, Daniel Day-Lewis, and others are scrupulously appraised here, as are notions of "good" and "bad" acting. Thomson's exploration is at once a meditation on and a celebration of a unique and much beloved, often misunderstood, and occasionally derided art form. He argues that acting not only "matters" but is essential and inescapable, as well as dangerous, chronic, transformative, and exhilarating, be it on the theatrical stage, on the movie screen, or as part of our everyday lives.
Why Fiction? (Stages)
by Jean-Marie SchaefferOne of the most important works of narrative theory to come out of France in recent years―Jean-Marie Schaeffer understands fiction not as a literary genre but, in contrast to all other literary theorists, as a genre of life. The result is arguably the first systematic refutation of Plato’s polemic against fiction and a persuasive argument for regarding fiction as having a cognitive function. <P><P> For Schaeffer fiction includes not only narrative fiction but also children’s games, videos, film, drama, certain kinds of painting, opera―in short, all the intentional structures arising from shared imaginative reality. Because video games and cyber-technologies are the new sites of entry for many children into such an imagined universe, studying these cyber-fictions has become integral to our understanding of fiction. Through these avenues, Schaeffer also explores the foundations of mimeticism in order to explain the important effect fiction has on human beings. His work thus establishes fiction as a universal aspect of human culture and offers a profound and resounding answer to the question: Why fiction?
Why Lyrics Last
by Brian BoydIn Why Lyrics Last, the internationally acclaimed critic Brian Boyd turns an evolutionary lens on the subject of lyric verse. He finds that lyric making, though it presents no advantages for the species in terms of survival and reproduction, is âeoeuniversal across cultures because it fits constraints of the human mind. âe#157; An evolutionary perspectiveâe" especially when coupled with insights from aesthetics and literary historyâe"has much to tell us about both verse and the lyrical impulse. Boyd places the writing of lyrical verse within the human disposition âeoeto play with pattern,âe#157; and in an extended example he uncovers the many patterns to be found within Shakespeareâe(tm)s Sonnets. Shakespeareâe(tm)s bid for readership is unlike that of any sonneteer before him: he deliberately avoids all narrative, choosing to maximize the openness of the lyric and demonstrating the power that verse can have when liberated of story. In eschewing narrative, Shakespeare plays freely with patterns of other kinds: words, images, sounds, structures; emotions and moods; argument and analogy; and natural rhythms, in daily, seasonal, and life cycles. In the originality of his stratagems, and in their sheer number and variety, both within and between sonnets, Shakespeare outdoes all competitors. A reading of the Sonnets informed by evolution is primed to attend to these complexities and better able to appreciate Shakespeareâe(tm)s remarkable gambit for immortal fame.
Why Teachers Go Nuts
by Preston PowellBurlesque, Comedy, Short Play \ 8m, 7f \ An insane discussion of the age old problem: "are teachers driven nuts or are teachers nuts to begin with?" Moving, unperturbed, in a veritable bedlam of a classroom, and accepting the most insane answers as logical and academically correct, Miss Abigail fails to so much as notice the frantic efforts of her pupils to reduce the classroom to shambles. A godsend to the director who has neither time nor talent at his disposal. All parts, except that of the teacher, are short and easily memorized.
Why the Chimes Rang: A Play in One Act
by Elizabeth Apthorp McfaddenWhy the Chimes Rang' is a beautifully written story based on an old legend. It has wonderful evocative symbolism, the old church with a bell tower soaring into the sky, touching the clouds waiting for a perfect gift for the Christ child, a perfect gift of love.
Why the Theatre: In Personal Essays, College Teachers, Actors, Directors, and Playwrights Tell Why the Theatre Is So Vital to Them
by Sidney HomanWhy the Theatre is a collection of 26 personal essays by college teachers, actors, directors, and playwrights about the magnetic pull of the theatre and its changing place in society. The book is divided into four parts, examining the creative role of the audience, the life of the actor, director, and playwright in performance, ways the theatre moves beyond the playhouse and into the real world, and theories and thoughts on what the theatre can do when given form onstage. Based on concrete, highly personal examples, experiences, and memories, this collection offers unique perspectives on the meaning of the theatre and the beauty of weaving the world of the play into the fabric of our lives. Covering a range of practices and plays, from the Greeks to Japanese Butoh theatre, from Shakespeare to modern experiments, this book is written by and for the theatre instructor and theatre appreciation student.
Why Theatre Matters
by Kathleen GallagherWhat makes young people care about themselves, others, their communities, and their futures? In Why Theatre Matters, Kathleen Gallagher uses the drama classroom as a window into the daily challenges of marginalized youth in Toronto, Boston, Taipei, and Lucknow. An ethnographic study which mixes quantitative and qualitative methodology in an international multi-site project, Why Theatre Matters ties together the issues of urban and arts education through the lens of student engagement. Gallagher's research presents a framework for understanding student involvement at school in the context of students' families and communities, as well as changing social, political, and economic realities around the world.Taking the reader into the classroom through the voices of the students themselves, Gallagher illustrates how creative expression through theatre can act as a rehearsal space for real, material struggles and for democratic participation. Why Theatre Matters is an invigorating challenge to the myths that surround urban youth and an impressive study of theatre's transformative potential.
Why Torture Is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them: And Other Political Plays
by Christopher Durang&“[A] hilarious and disturbing new comedy about all-American violence&” and other whip-smart political satires by the Tony Award-winning playwright (Ben Branley, The New York Times). Christopher Durang, who The New York Observer called &“Jonathan Swift&’s nicer, younger brother,&” became one of America&’s most beloved and acclaimed playwrights by marrying gonzo farce with incisive social critique. Now collected in Why Torture Is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them and Other Political Plays are Durang&’s most revealing satirical plays. Why Torture Is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them is the story of a young woman in crisis: Is her new husband, whom she married when drunk, a terrorist? Or just crazy? Or both? Is her father&’s hobby of butterfly collecting really a cover for his involvement in a shadow government? Does her mother frequent the theater for mental escape, or is she just insane? Add in a minister who directs porno, and a ladylike operative whose underwear just won&’t stay up, and this black comedy will make us laugh all the way to the waterboarding room. Also included in this volume are: Excerpts from Sex and LongingCardinal O&’ConnorThe Book of Leviticus ShowEntertaining Mr. HelmsThe Doctor Will See You NowUnder Duress: Words on FireAn Alter Boy Talks to GodThe Hardy Boys and the Mystery of Where Babies Come From
Wicked: Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (Wicked Years #1)
by Gregory MaguireThe New York Times bestseller and basis for the Tony-winning hit musical, soon to be a major motion picture starring Cynthia Erivo and Ariana GrandeWith millions of copies in print around the world, Gregory Maguire’s Wicked is established not only as a commentary on our time but as a novel to revisit for years to come. Wicked relishes the inspired inventions of L. Frank Baum’s 1900 novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, while playing sleight of hand with our collective memories of the 1939 MGM film starring Margaret Hamilton (and Judy Garland). In this fast-paced, fantastically real, and supremely entertaining novel, Maguire has populated the largely unknown world of Oz with the power of his own imagination. Years before Dorothy and her dog crash-land, another little girl makes her presence known in Oz. This girl, Elphaba, is born with emerald-green skin—no easy burden in a land as mean and poor as Oz, where superstition and magic are not strong enough to explain or overcome the natural disasters of flood and famine. Still, Elphaba is smart, and by the time she enters Shiz University, she becomes a member of a charmed circle of Oz’s most promising young citizens.But Elphaba’s Oz is no utopia. The Wizard’s secret police are everywhere. Animals—those creatures with voices, souls, and minds—are threatened with exile. Young Elphaba, green and wild and misunderstood, is determined to protect the Animals—even if it means combating the mysterious Wizard, even if it means risking her single chance at romance. Ever wiser in guilt and sorrow, she can find herself grateful when the world declares her a witch. And she can even make herself glad for that young girl from Kansas. Recognized as an iconoclastic tour de force on its initial publication, the novel has inspired the blockbuster musical of the same name—one of the longest-running plays in Broadway history. Popular, indeed. But while the novel’s distant cousins hail from the traditions of magical realism, mythopoeic fantasy, and sprawling nineteenth-century sagas of moral urgency, Maguire’s Wicked is as unique as its green-skinned witch.
Widdershins
by Don NigroCharacters: 4 male, 6 female. Interior. Inspector Ruffing, the troubled hero of Nigro's Ravenscroft, Demonology, Creatures Lurking In The Churchyard, The Rooky Wood and Mephisto returns in this baffling mystery that was an audience favorite at the First International Mystery Festival in 2007. In a peaceful house near the Welsh border, an entire family has vanished suddenly without a trace one evening with supper on the table and no apparent violence. Ruffing's attempt to understand what's happened to a couple and their two daughters leads him deep into his own dark soul. The only clue is a piece of paper left on a desk with the word 'Widdershins' written on it. Beautiful women, dark secrets, the Impressionists and the Druids all figure in this unusual and thought provoking play.
The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd
by D. H. LawrenceThe Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd is one of D. H. Lawrence's most significant early works, first published in 1914.
The Wife of Willesden
by Zadie SmithZadie Smith's first time writing for the stage, a riotous twenty-first century translation of Geoffrey Chaucer's classic The Wife of Bath&“Married five times. Mother. Lover. Aunt. Friend. She plays many roles round here. And never Scared to tell the whole of her truth, whether Or not anyone wants to hear it. Wife Of Willesden: pissed enough to tell her life Story to whoever has ears and eyes . . .&” In her stage-writing debut, celebrated novelist and essayist Zadie Smith brings to life a comedic and cutting twenty-first century translation of Geoffrey Chaucer&’s classic The Wife of Bath. The Wife of Willesden follows Alvita, a Jamaican-born British woman in her mid-50s, as she tells her life story to a band of strangers in a small pub on the Kilburn High Road. Wearing fake gold chains, dressed in knock-off designer clothes, and speaking in a mixture of London slang and patois, Alvita recalls her five marriages in outrageous, bawdy detail, rewrites her mistakes as triumphs, and shares her beliefs on femininity, sexuality, and misogyny with anyone willing to listen. A thoughtful reimagining of an unforgettable narrative of female sexual power, written with singular verve and wit, The Wife of Willesden shows why Zadie Smith is one of the sharpest and most versatile writers working today.
The Wife of Willesden
by Zadie SmithZadie Smith's first time writing for the stage, a riotous twenty-first century translation of Geoffrey Chaucer's classic "The Wife of Bath"&“Married five times. Mother. Lover. Aunt. Friend. She plays many roles round here. And never Scared to tell the whole of her truth, whether Or not anyone wants to hear it. Wife Of Willesden: pissed enough to tell her life Story to whoever has ears and eyes...&” In her stage-writing debut, celebrated novelist and essayist Zadie Smith brings to life a comedic and cutting twenty-first century translation of Geoffrey Chaucer&’s classic The Wife of Bath. The Wife of Willesden follows Alvita, a Jamaican-born British woman in her mid-50s, as she tells her life story to a band of strangers in a small pub on the Kilburn High Road. Wearing fake gold chains, dressed in knock-off designer clothes, and speaking in a mixture of London slang and patois, Alvita recalls her five marriages in outrageous, bawdy detail, rewrites her mistakes as triumphs, and shares her beliefs on femininity, sexuality, and misogyny with anyone willing to listen. A thoughtful reimagining of an unforgettable narrative of female sexual power, written with singular verve and wit, The Wife of Willesden exemplifies why Zadie Smith is one of the sharpest and most versatile writers working today.
Wig Making and Styling: A Complete Guide for Theatre & Film
by Martha Ruskai Allison LoweryWig Making and Styling: A Complete Guide for Theatre and Film, Second Edition is the one-stop shop for the knowledge and skills you need to create and style wigs. Covering the basics, from styling tools to creating beards, it ramps up to advanced techniques for making, measuring, coloring, and cutting wigs from any time period. Whether you’re a student or a professional, you‘ll find yourself prepared for a career as a skilled wig designer with tips on altering existing wigs, multiple approaches to solving wig-making problems, and industry best practices.
The Wild Duck: A Play In Five Acts (classic Reprint) (Dover Thrift Editions: Plays)
by Henrik IbsenThe idealistic son of a corrupt merchant exposes his father's duplicity, but in the process destroys the very people he wishes to save. Gregers Werle forces his friends, the Ekdals, to confront the truth about their lives -- but the truth only serves to wound them further.
Wild Dust: The Musical
by Cindy Marcus Dennis Poore Flip KoblerMusical Comedy / 1 m., 8 f., plus 1 m. extra. / Interior / Based on the original play Wild Dust, this engaging Wild West story has been delighting audiences for years. And now, the original playwright, Flip Kobler, has joined forces with veteran composer Dennis Poore to turn Wild Dust the play into Wild Dust: The Musical. It's 1887 and a dust storm is about to hit the town of Willow Creek. The west was still wild, but the wind was wilder. Wild Dust the Musical, takes place at a time when the "west was wild, the women were soft and the men were brave." The worst dust storm in a decade was about to hit the town, and all the men had gone to drive the horses and cattle to safer shelter to ride out the storm. That left the women of town to fend for themselves in the only building strong enough to withstand the pounding sand - the town brothel. So four "fallen ladies" and three "ladies of the town" are thrown together for the next 72 hours, along with a mysterious cowboy and a dancing corpse! For three days they confront the elements, each other, and hardest of all - themselves. It's a comic romp with lots of slamming doors, mistaken identities, and one very dead body. No one is exactly what they seem, and everyone's got a secret hidden up their sleeve. Wild Dust: The Musical is a comic romp that's not to be missed.
Wild Mushroom
by Anne PieComedy / 2m,3f, / Interior / This present-day comedy set in the Bronx, revolves around life in the Benny Scrivente family as seen through the eyes of Benny's thirteen year-old son, Joey. Benny is no match for Joey. a gifted, wise-mouthed boy. A widowed postal worker, Benny struggles to raise Benny and his two beautiful daughters, Dodie and Regina, hoping to marry them the old-fashioned Italian way so he can pursue his dream of opening a trattoria. / Sweet, simple-minded Dodie, lacking in the IQ department, (which drives Joey to his wit's end) is already engaged to Mario, a man of questionable character. Sensual Regina prefers to play the field, much to Benny's consternation. Joey, feeling neglected by them all, manages to attract more than just his family's attention. He pens a literary masterpiece that borders on being an exposé. / Enter clairvoyant Aunt Rose, Benny's older sister. She is a true eccentric and Joey's champion. Her constant shower of predictions makes her a perpetual source of irritation to Benny. Proud of her father's cooking, Dodie unwittingly invites the Mafia over for Sunday dinner, which sends Benny into a tizzy. It's Aunt Rose's unorthodox hors d'oeuvres which pack the wallop that results in a happy ending.
Wild Nights! & Grandpa Clemens and Angelfish 1906
by Joyce Carol OatesDramatic Comedy / 2m, 2f / Wild Nights! is a matched duo of plays about Emily Dickinson and Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain—adapted from a prose work described by the New York Times as “morality tales about sexual power” that “ingeniously” imagine the last days of classic American writers whose true, private lives are unknown to the public.
Wildfire & The Shoe: Two Plays
by David PaquetWith spark and spunk, these two dark yet absurdly charming comedies offer a kaleidoscopic perspective of those who are destined to go down a lonely path and those who choose to share the weight of others’ journeys. In Wildfire, three odd triplets, two misfits, and one misunderstood woman are all burning with solitude and desire. Through an exploration of heredity and fate, these seemingly ordinary characters choose to struggle against their isolation in extraordinary yet relatable ways. In The Shoe, a weary mother, her perplexing son, their shy dentist, and his cocktail-sipping receptionist find themselves drawn together to face problems too daunting to deal with alone. From meltdowns to moments of tenderness, each of them are called on to find reserves of strength and empathy they never knew they had.
Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship: Goethe, Collected Works
by Johann Wolfgang Von Eric A. BlackallThe story centers on Wilhelm, a young man living in the mid-1700s who strives to break free from the restrictive world of economics and seeks fulfillment as an actor and playwright. Along with Eric Blackall's fresh translation of the work, this edition contains notes and an afterword by the translator that aims to put this novel into historical and artistic perspective for twentieth-century readers while showing how it defies categorization.