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Where Madness Lies: The Double Life of Vivien Leigh
by Lyndsy SpenceVivien Leigh was one of the greatest film and theatrical stars of the twentieth century. Her Oscar-winning performances in Gone with the Wind and A Streetcar Named Desire have cemented her status as an icon of classic Hollywood.Her meteoric rise to fame launched her into the gaze of fellow rising star Laurence Olivier. A tempestuous relationship ensued that would last for twenty years and captured the imagination of people around the world.Behind the scenes, however, Leigh’s personal life was marred by bipolar disorder, which remained undiagnosed until 1953. Largely misunderstood and subjected to barbaric mistreatment at the hands of her doctors, she also suffered the heartbreak of Olivier’s infidelity. Contributing to her image as a tragic heroine, she died at the age of 53.Where Madness Lies begins in 1953, when Leigh suffered a nervous breakdown and was institutionalised. The woeful story unfolds as she tries to rebuild her life, salvage her career and save her marriage.Featuring a wealth of unpublished material, including private correspondence, bestselling author Lyndsy Spence reveals the woman behind the legendary image: a woman who remained strong in the face of adversity
Where the Blood Mixes
by Kevin LoringWhere the Blood Mixes is meant to expose the shadows below the surface of the author's First Nations heritage, and to celebrate its survivors. Though torn down years ago, the memories of their Residential School still live deep inside the hearts of those who spent their childhoods there. For some, like Floyd, the legacy of that trauma has been passed down through families for generations. But what is the greater story, what lies untold beneath Floyd's alcoholism, under the pain and isolation of the play's main character?Loring's title was inspired by the mistranslation of the N'lakap'mux (Thompson) place name Kumsheen. For years, it was believed to mean "the place where the rivers meet"-the confluence of the muddy Fraser and the brilliant blue Thompson Rivers. A more accurate translation is: "the place inside the heart where the blood mixes." But Kumsheen also refers to a story: Coyote was disemboweled there, along a great cliff in an epic battle with a giant shape-shifting being that could transform the world with its powers-to this day his intestines can still be seen strewn along the granite walls. In his rage the transformer tore Coyote apart and scattered his body across the nation, his heart landing in the place where the rivers meet.Floyd is a man who has lost everyone he holds most dear. Now after more than two decades, his daughter Christine returns home to confront her father. Set during the salmon run, Where the Blood Mixes takes us to the bottom of the river, to the heart of a People.In 2009 Where the Blood Mixes won the Jessie Richardson Award for Outstanding Original Script; the Sydney J. Risk Prize for Outstanding Original Script by an Emerging Playwright; and most recently the Governor General's Literary Award for Drama.
Where There's a Will There's a Relative
by Roger KarshnerComedy / 3m, 3f / Interior Sam Price, a wealthy entrepreneur, has just recently passed away and, at his request, has been laid out in his townhouse. With the corpse in the bedroom, his immediate family-sister, brother, nephew and niece-have gathered to discuss their inheritance, a meeting that descends into acrimony over the division of property. Much to their chagrin, they learn that Sam has left his entire estate to the church, a discovery that results in them reluctantly seeking the advice of a person they deem to be of unsavory moral character. His advice seemingly solves their dilemma until they realize that the solution involves compromise. Many reversals drive a story that comically reveals avarice, mistrust and chicanery.
While the Lights Were Out
by Jack SharkeyFarce / 5m, 9f / A Thunderstorm! The lights go out! An agonized voice! A pistol shot! The lights come up! A blonde in black lace stands over the dead man holding a bloody dagger! The detective examines the body and announces "He's been strangled! This is but the opening of one of the most astounding and hilarious murder mysteries ever staged. Every clue is a lulu and the plot twists furiously. The final solution involves the most bizarre motive ever conceived! The delightful evening of mayhem gallops madly about the stage and will leave your audience breathless with surprise and laughter. The mystery is topnotch, the character marvelous and the comedy explosive!
While We're Young
by Don HannahA young soldier goes to Afghanistan, another to Passchendaele. A family splits in two when a Protestant falls in love with a Catholic; one hundred and twenty years later, it could happen all over again for a whole new set of reasons. From the University of Alberta's inaugural Lee Playwright-in-Residence.
Whimsy State: or The Principality of Outer Baldonia
by A.J. DemersWith a few drinks and some “Ayes!” three fishermen on a small island off the coast of Nova Scotia declare independence from Canada: henceforth, they shall be known as the Princes of the Principality of Outer Baldonia! It’s 1948 when Russ, Elson, and Ron discover that the Canadian government plans to open their Atlantic commercial fishing rights to the Spanish, posing an overcrowding threat to business and wildlife. Russ, a vacationing American lawyer, has just purchased Outer Bald Tusket Island for $750. With a newly erected stone lodge, plenty of fish, two new friends, and just enough frustration about rules and regulations, Russ can do what he pleases, including requesting official recognition from the United Nations for his fledgling state and declaring war on the USSR. Based on an absolutely true story, this hilarious play about friendship shows that when ordinary people set out to do extraordinary things, the possibilities are endless.
The Whipping Man
by Matthew LopezDrama / Characters: 3 male It is April, 1865. The Civil War is over and throughout the south, slaves are being freed, soldiers are returning home and in Jewish homes, the annual celebration of Passover is being celebrated. Into the chaos of war-torn Richmond comes Caleb DeLeon, a young Confederate officer who has been severely wounded. He finds his family's home in ruins and abandoned, save for two former slaves, Simon and John, who wait in the empty house for the family's return. As the three men wait for signs of life to return to the city, they wrestle with their shared past, the bitter irony of Jewish slave-owning and the reality of the new world in which they find themselves. The sun sets on the last night of Passover and Simon - having adopted the religion of his masters - prepares a humble Seder to observe the ancient celebration of the freeing of the Hebrew slaves from Egypt, noting with particular satisfaction the parallels to their current situation. But the pain of their enslavement will not be soothed by this tradition, and deep-buried secrets from the past refuse to be hidden forever as the play comes to its shocking climax. The Whipping Man is a play about redemption and forgiveness, about the lasting scars of slavery, and the responsibility that comes with freedom. "A mesmerizing drama." - Peter Filichia, Newark Star-Ledger "A cause for celebration. Mathew Lopez has come as close as any author could to producing a microcosm of the genesis of a wide range of today's Black American males." - Bob Rendell, Talkin' Broadway "I can see why director Lou Bellamy chose this play for Penumbra, whose most famous alumnus is playwright August Wilson. In its complex welter of issues, in its interior explorations...The Whipping Man is Wilsonian." - Rohan Preston, Minneapolis Star-Ledger "Succeeds with an uncanny maturity in using sharply drawn characters and rich metaphor to wrestle Wilson-like with epic American issues of race, religion, and responsibility. Someone must succeed Wilson; it might as well be Lopez" - Tim Gihring, Minnesota Monthly
White Bird in a Blizzard: A Novel
by Laura KasischkeI am sixteen when my mother steps out of her skin one frozen January afternoon—pure self, atoms twinkling like microscopic diamond chips around her perhaps the chiming of a clock, or a few bright flute notes in the distance—and disappears. No one sees her leave, but she is gone. Laura Kasischke's first novel. Suspicious River. was hailed by the critics as "extremely powerful" (The Los Angeles Times), "amazing" (The Boston Globe), and "a novel of depth, beauty, and insight" (The Seattle Times). Now Kasischke follows up her auspicious debut with a spellbinding and erotic tale of marriage, secrets, and self-deception. When Katrina Connors' mother walks out on her family one frigid January day, Kat is surprised but not shocked; the whole year she has been "becoming sixteen"—falling in love with the boy next door, shedding her baby fat, discovering sex—her mother has slowly been withdrawing. As Kat and her father pick up the pieces of their daily life, she finds herself curiously unaffected by her mother's absence. But in dreams that become too real to ignore, she's haunted by her mother's cries for help. . . .
White Biting Dog and Other Plays
by Judith ThompsonThis book collects some of Judith Thompson’s earlier, hard-to-find plays, including White Biting Dog, a poetic black comedy about a divorced lawyer who prepares to kill himself by jumping off the Bloor Street Viaduct—until he encounters a small dog who sets him on a different path; I Am Yours, a harrowing story about a group of characters on the brink of despair as each tries to escape what haunts them the most; and Pink, a moving monologue set in 1970s South Africa that centres on a young girl’s surprising reaction after her nanny is murdered during a protest.
The White Card: A Play
by Claudia RankineA play about the imagined fault line between black and white lives by Claudia Rankine, the author of CitizenThe White Card stages a conversation that is both informed and derailed by the black/white American drama. The scenes in this one-act play, for all the characters’ disagreements, stalemates, and seeming impasses, explore what happens if one is willing to stay in the room when it is painful to bear the pressure to listen and the obligation to respond.—from the introduction by Claudia RankineClaudia Rankine’s first published play, The White Card, poses the essential question: Can American society progress if whiteness remains invisible?Composed of two scenes, the play opens with a dinner party thrown by Virginia and Charles, an influential Manhattan couple, for the up-and-coming artist Charlotte. Their conversation about art and representations of race spirals toward the devastation of Virginia and Charles’s intentions. One year later, the second scene brings Charlotte and Charles into the artist’s studio, and their confrontation raises both the stakes and the questions of what—and who—is actually on display.Rankine’s The White Card is a moving and revelatory distillation of racial divisions as experienced in the white spaces of the living room, the art gallery, the theater, and the imagination itself.
The White Dress
by Nathalie LégerThe third in Nathalie Léger&’s acclaimed genre-defying triptych of books about the struggles and obsessions of women artists. The White Dress is the third in Nathalie Léger's award-winning triptych of books about women who &“through their oeuvre, transform their lives into a mystery&” (ELLE). In Exposition, Léger wrote about the Countess of Castiglione, the most photographed woman of the nineteenth century; in Suite for Barbara Loden she took up the actress and filmmaker Barbara Loden; here, Léger grapples with the tragic 2008 death of Italian performance artist Pippa Bacca, who was raped and murdered while hiking from Italy to the Middle East in a wedding dress to promote world peace. A harrowing meditation on the risks women encounter, in life and in art, The White Dress also brings to a haunting conclusion Léger's personal interrogation—sustained across all three books—of her relationship with her mother and the desire for justice in our lives.
White Room of My Remembering
by Jean Lenox ToddieDrama / 2m, 4f / Interior / This poignant play by the author of Tell Me Another Story, Sing Me a Song; A Little Something for the Ducks; A Scent of Honeysuckle and A Bag of Green Apples is the story of two women, Margaret and Jessie, who have come to Jessie's childhood home to put it up for sale. While Margaret goes to find a real estate agent, Jessie has conversations with herself as a girl and with her dead father and her mother.
The White Rose
by Lillian Garrett-GroagThe White Rose was written by Lillian Garrett-Groag and premiered in 1991 at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego, Calif. The play chronicles the arrest, interrogation and eventual execution of a group of University of Munich students who protested the Nazi regime at the height of World War II.
White Suits in Summer
by Rosary Hartel O'NeillFull Length, ComedyCharacters: 2 male, 2 female. Unit Set. This contemporary Southern romance set in the topsy-turvy world of art. Celebrity artist Susann is determined to reclaim her lost love, Blaise, now married to a sedate New Orleans socialite. Convinced that she cannot live without him, Susann arranges an exhibition of her works to be held in his new house. Susann's readiness to sacrifice her career, his new wife, and her Mama's boy manager leave Blaise both angry and aroused. Theatrical excitement abounds in this comedy of love vs. duty. . Also available in A Louisiana Gentleman and other New Orleans Comedies.
Whiting Up
by Marvin McallisterIn the early 1890s, black performer Bob Cole turned blackface minstrelsy on its head with his nationally recognized whiteface creation, a character he called Willie Wayside. Just over a century later, hiphop star Busta Rhymes performed a whiteface supercop in his hit music video "Dangerous." In this sweeping work, Marvin McAllister explores the enduring tradition of "whiting up," in which African American actors, comics, musicians, and even everyday people have studied and assumed white racial identities. Not to be confused with racial "passing" or derogatory notions of "acting white," whiting up is a deliberate performance strategy designed to challenge America's racial and political hierarchies by transferring supposed markers of whiteness to black bodies--creating unexpected intercultural alliances even as it sharply critiques racial stereotypes. Along with conventional theater, McAllister considers a variety of other live performance modes, including weekly promenading rituals, antebellum cakewalks, solo performance, and standup comedy. For over three centuries, whiting up as allowed African American artists to appropriate white cultural production, fashion new black identities through these "white" forms, and advance our collective ability to locate ourselves in others.
Who Is In the Room?: Queer Strategies for Redefining the Role of the Theater Director (ISSN)
by Brooke O'HarraWith this book, Brooke O’Harra takes up directing as an artistic practice in and of itself. Speaking beyond and against craft, O’Harra drives the art of directing forward.O’Harra investigates a series of important questions: How do we wrest our work from institutional imperatives of public building and culture building? How can an artist-driven discourse lead us toward the urgencies of artists and their publics in this moment? How do we “make” plays? How do we activate the relationships of making, whether between artists in the rehearsal room or between the production and the audience? Brooke addresses all aspects of the directorial process: reckoning with the script through dramaturgy, working within the rehearsal room, collaborating with other artists, as well as staging and production.This exploration will be of great interest to students and scholars in performance studies with a particular interest in directing.
Who Is Lin-Manuel Miranda? (Who Was?)
by Who HQ Elijah Rey-David MatosStep into the spotlight with Lin-Manuel Miranda in this addition to the New York Times #1 Best-Selling series that explains how the Broadway legend got his start before Hamilton and Encanto!Born in New York to Puerto Rican parents, Lin-Manuel Miranda had a passion for the arts and creativity from a young age. He participated in theater as a child and wrote his first Broadway musical, In the Heights, while he was still in college. That show won him his first Tony Award for Best Musical! He went on to create and star in the beloved musical Hamilton about the life of Alexander Hamilton. A nonstop writer, Lin-Manuel contributed music for other major projects such as Moana, Encanto, Star Wars, and The Little Mermaid. He has won a Pulitzer prize, five Grammy awards, three Tony Awards, and two Emmy awards so far in his successful career as a composer, lyricist, actor, and director.
Who Keeps the Score on the London Stages?
by Kalina StefanovaHow does one become a theater critic in London? What do the theater critics think of their profession? How are they judged by those they critique? What do both critics and theatre-makers think of their mutual object of desire - the British Theatre?Who Keeps the Score on the London Stages? sets out to find the answers to these questions and many more in this long overdue publication on Britain's current theatre scene. Included are comprehensive interviews with more than fifty major London theatre critics and theater-makers, including Sir Alan Ayckbourn, Stephen Berkoff, Michael Billington, Martin Coveney, Nicholas de Jongh, Sir Richard Eyre, Sir Peter Hall, Sir Cameron Mackintosh, Adrian Noble, Sir Trevor Nunn and Irving Wardle. The author has gathered together a lively discussion about the contrmporary state of the British theatre, drawing a picture of its strengths, weaknesses and the problems it faces today. This volume serves as a long overdue guide to the Theatre critics' profession in Britain.
Who Killed Shakespeare: What's Happened to English Since the Radical Sixties
by Patrick BrantlingerFirst published in 2001. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Who Killed Spalding Gray?
by Daniel MacIvorSit down, Daniel’s going to tell you a story. On the weekend of January 10, 2004, American monologist Spalding Gray killed himself by jumping off the Staten Island Ferry in New York City. That same weekend, Daniel MacIvor was in California, visiting a psychic surgeon who offered to save his life by removing a spiritual entity that had attached to him. But what if Spalding’s death had something to do with Daniel’s entity? Linking these two true parallel stories is fiction derived from Gray’s obsessions and MacIvor’s inventions about a man named Howard who had forgotten how to live.
who knew grannie: a dub aria
by Ahdri Zhina MandielaIn this lyrical masterpiece, four cousins reunite in Jamaica to mourn the passing of their grandmother and to celebrate the times they shared together. There's vilma, an up-and-coming politician; kris, a celebrity chef; tyetye, who's incarcerated; and likklebit, who's immigrated to Canada. As the cousins reminisce about the woman who had such a strong role in rearing them, they uncover their troubles and begin to fulfill grannie's last task: to bring them back in tune with themselves.
Who Walks in the Dark: A Victorian Mystery-horror Play In Two Acts
by Tim KellyThriller / 5m, 6f, 1 optional m or f extra / This thrilling jewel is based on Stoker's classic suspense novel written after Dracula. By breaking into the tomb of an evil sorceress, archaeologist Sir Abel Trelawny has upset The Nameless One's plans for a return to the living. She comes to London's Karnak house (in which the play is set) and creates murderous havoc for Sir Abel, his two daughters and his bewildered staff. Comic relief is supplied by a bumbling sergeant who admires Sherlock Holmes. The occult mystery builds to a rousing climax, complete with dramatic twists that hold the audiences spellbound.
Who Was William Shakespeare
by Dympna CallaghanA new study of Shakespeare's life and times, which illuminates our understanding and appreciation of his works.Combines an accessible fully historicised treatment of both the life and the plays, suited to both undergraduate and popular audiencesLooks at 24 of the most significant plays and the sonnets through the lens of various aspects of Shakespeare's life and historical environmentAddresses four of the most significant issues that shaped Shakespeare's career: education, religion, social status, and theatreExamines theatre as an institution and the literary environment of early modern LondonExplains and dispatches conspiracy theories about authorship
Who Wrote Shakespeare?
by James ShapiroThis ebook is an excerpt from Contested Will by James Shapiro, and originally appeared as the last section titled "Shakespeare." In this chapter, Shapiro succintly and eloquently makes the case for why no one else but Shakespeare could have written Shakespeare's plays.
Who Wrote That?: Authorship Controversies from Moses to Sholokhov
by Donald OstrowskiWho Wrote That? examines nine authorship controversies, providing an introduction to particular disputes and teaching students how to assess historical documents, archival materials, and apocryphal stories, as well as internet sources and news. Donald Ostrowski does not argue in favor of one side over another but focuses on the principles of attribution used to make each case.While furthering the field of authorship studies, Who Wrote That? provides an essential resource for instructors at all levels in various subjects. It is ultimately about historical detective work. Using Moses, Analects, the Secret Gospel of Mark, Abelard and Heloise, the Compendium of Chronicles, Rashid al-Din, Shakespeare, Prince Andrei Kurbskii, James MacPherson, and Mikhail Sholokov, Ostrowski builds concrete examples that instructors can use to help students uncover the legitimacy of authorship and to spark the desire to turn over the hidden layers of history so necessary to the craft.