English Theater

Ed Lowry joined the vaudeville circuit in 1910 at the age of 14. He never achieved stardom equal to the likes of Fred Allen, Jack Benny, George Burns, Buster Keaton, or Eddie Cantor, and he never considered himself an "artiste". Instead, he saw himself as a hoofer and comic simply trying to make a living on the vaude scene. My Life in Vaudeville recounts Lowry's long career in entertainment from the viewpoint of a foot soldier with a big dream.

A short life of Dickens which celebrates the impact of the theatre on his life and work. Two hundred years after his death, Dickens’s work is more popular than ever, in a variety of media, most of them undreamed of during his lifetime. Over the last few decades of intensive research, Dickens the man has become much better known to us and the sheer originality of his personality blazes forth as never before.

Carey Perloff, Artistic Director of San Francisco's legendary American Conservatory Theater, pens a lively and revealing memoir of her 20-plus years at the helm and delivers a provocative and impassioned manifesto for the role of live theater in today's technology-infused world. Perloff's personal and professional journey - her life as a woman in a male-dominated profession, as a wife and mother, a playwright, director, producer, arts advocate, and citizen in a city erupting with enormous change.

Father Peyton of the Holy Cross Fathers wanted to inspire his country with a radio program. Footing the expense of the show himself, he arranged for some of the biggest names in radio and film to donate their services, and for a network to provide the broadcast time. The series that resulted featured heartwarming stories for audiences nationwide. The commercial breaks were filled only with an earnest, non-sectarian appeal for family prayer, reminding listeners that "The family that prays together stays together."

Cut on the Bias A Thread & Tangle Mystery – Book Two By M.C. Needleton In Ivy Ridge, cutting corners can be dangerous… but cutting on the bias just might be deadly. Quilt shop owner Everly Faye Galloway is back — needle in hand and intuition fully threaded — just in time for Ivy Ridge’s biggest (and most chaotic) event of the year: the high school’s spring musical. When the beloved drama teacher, Zayla Tene, commissions Everly to design custom quilted props for the production of Little Women, Everly expects nothing more than long nights of stitching, backstage gossip, and the ...

Norman Mathews was born in the wrong town, the wrong era, and with the wrong name. What’s a boy to do? He conjured up a more enticing, imaginary world to better navigate the perils of childhood. Dreams of a life in the theater and of passionate romance were stymied by lack of self-assurance.

Charles Paris has landed a dual role in a lavish West End musical: onstage as a bit player, offstage as an undercover sleuth. The production's nervous backers fear that someone is trying to kill the play. The ultimate showstopper would be to eliminate the star.

There has never been a show business book quite like The Show Won't Go On, the first comprehensive study of a bizarre phenomenon: performers who died onstage. From the comedy magician who dropped dead on live television to the amateur thespian who expired during a play called The Art of Murder, the book is a celebration of lives both famous and obscure, as well as a dramatic and accurate recounting of events leading to the moments they died "doing what they loved."

Anna Chesterfield earned a six-month trip to audition for the Manhattan theater through such odd circumstances, she’s certain God had a hand in it. And the kind attention from her benefactor’s smart, attractive, newly dateable son only convinces her further. But when she encounters several moral dilemmas, she struggles to know exactly why God led her to New York. Is it time to grow up or time to grow away from the future she’s craved all her life?

Bob Fosse is recognized as one of the most significant figures in post-World War II American musical theater. With his first Broadway musical, The Pajama Game, in 1954, the "Fosse style" was already fully developed, with its trademark hunched shoulders, turned-in stance, and stuttering, staccato jazz movements. Fosse moved decisively into the role of director with Redhead in 1959 and was a key figure in the rise of the director-choreographer in the Broadway musical.

Why Shakespeare? What explains our continued fascination with his poems and plays? In Living with Shakespeare, Susannah Carson invites 40 actors, directors, scholars, and writers to reflect on why his work is still such a vital part of our culture.

This full-cast audio movie invites you to travel with Professor Challenger to a secluded South American plateau...deep in the Amazon jungle...where no civilized man dares to go...and where dinosaurs still roam! This is the original terrifying adventure tale, as spawned by the mind of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - the man who gave the world Sherlock Holmes.

There are 83 copies of the First Folio in a vault beneath Capitol Hill - the world's largest collection. Well over 150 Indian movies are based on Shakespeare's plays - more than in any other nation. If current trends continue, there will soon be more high school students reading The Merchant of Venice in Mandarin Chinese than in early modern English. Why did this happen, and how? Ranging ambitiously across four continents and 400 years, Worlds Elsewhere is an eye-opening account of how Shakespeare went global.

He could have been way worse off. Sure, Daniel was stuck in-game as the local bard of a quaint village, but people were nice, the quests juicy, and the lore intriguing. Even so, with the mob on the look-out, Daniel would soon find himself sorely tested to avoid detection.

Comedy is how we cope with the absurdity of life. The person who cannot step back and see how ludicrous are most of the things we encounter in life is the person who gets mired and engulfed in them. Comedy lets us step back and see the whole picture. It reminds us of what is really important which certainly includes laughing and laughing often. These four comedies each take on several situations but exaggerate them until they become enlarged and laughable. To each are added an unusual use of standard theatrical tradition. A writer of one play becomes involved with his own characters. ...

August Wilson (1945-2005) was a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright who had a particular talent for capturing the authentic everyday voice of black Americans. As a child, he read off soup cans and cereal boxes, and when his mother brought him to the library, his whole world opened up. After facing intense prejudice at school from both students and some teachers, August dropped out. However, he continued reading and educating himself independently.

The Complete Guide to Distributing an Indie Film provides a step-by-step guide for setting up distribution for your film. It is designed primarily for independent filmmakers who are distributing their first few films with budgets ranging from under $200,000 to a few million. The audiobook is drawn from the author’s experiences in distributing and promoting her own feature film, attending festivals and conferences, going to the AFM, helping clients who have set up theatrical screenings, and doing research on recent developments and trends in distribution.

This audiobook is ideal for anyone keen to understand how contemporary plays and playwrights work, particularly those wanting to listen to the stage themselves. Drawing heavily on contemporary practice, it considers moments from a range of plays, with a focus on those from the National Theatre's repertoire. The audiobook embraces a range of different dramaturgical structures and styles popular today; plays by a diverse selection of writers; and the current openness of dramatic form.

The fifteenth book in Melanie Jackson's bestselling Chloe Boston Cozy Mystery Series. "Melanie Jackson is a talent to watch." —WritersWrite.com You are cordially invited to attend the wedding of Mrs. Agatha Graves and Mr. Lawrence Jackman. Chloe Boston reveals the killer, but it's only a game. She attends a game and encounters a killer. Only this murder is by the book. And you'll never guess who wrote it. Amidst the tumult of the wedding between Agatha and Lawrence, Chloe must outsmart a serial killer and stop him before he strikes again. If you think you know who the killer is, think ...

When you think of Jason Robards, you also think of Eugene O’Neill and the tragic, hard-drinking characters he created in The Iceman Cometh, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Hughie and The Moon for the Misbegotten. Robards, the son of a failed actor, Jason Robards Sr., discovered O’Neill’s plays when he was in the Navy during WW2. After the war, without his father’s encouragement, he pursued his own acting career, but it was 11 years and two failed marriages before he finally achieved success.