Résultats de recherche de titre
Articles 9161 à 9180 sur 10870
Laughing Wild and Baby with the Bathwater: Two Plays (Books That Changed the World)
Par Christopher Durang. 1989
A pair of plays from the comic genius who gave us the Tony Award-winning Vanya and Sonia and Masha and…
Spike.Baby and the Bathwater follows its main character from infancy to adulthood, in a confusing search for identity after an unusual upbringing. In Laughing Wild, two comic monologues evolve into a man and a woman’s shared nightmare of modern life and the isolation it creates. From her turf battles at the supermarket to the desperate clichés of self-affirmation he learns at his “personality workshop,” they run the gamut of everyday life’s small brutalizations until they meet, with disastrous inevitability, at the Harmonic Convergence in Central Park.The fiercely ironic dark comedy of Christopher Durang can be perfectly described by the quotation—by Thomas Gray via Samuel Beckett—that inspired one of these play’s titles: “Laughing wild amid severest woe.”“One of the funniest dramatists alive, and one of the most sharply satiric.”—The New YorkerPretty/Funny: Women Comedians and Body Politics
Par Linda Mizejewski. 2014
Women in comedy have traditionally been pegged as either "pretty" or "funny. " Attractive actresses with good comic timing such…
as Katherine Hepburn, Lucille Ball, and Julia Roberts have always gotten plum roles as the heroines of romantic comedies and television sitcoms. But fewer women who write and perform their own comedy have become stars, and, most often, they've been successful because they were willing to be funny-looking, from Fanny Brice and Phyllis Diller to Lily Tomlin and Carol Burnett. In this pretty-versus-funny history, women writer-comedians--no matter what they look like--have ended up on the other side of "pretty," enabling them to make it the topic and butt of the joke, the ideal that is exposed as funny. Pretty/Funny focuses on Kathy Griffin, Tina Fey, Sarah Silverman, Margaret Cho, Wanda Sykes, and Ellen DeGeneres, the groundbreaking women comics who flout the pretty-versus-funny dynamic by targeting glamour, postfeminist girliness, the Hollywood A-list, and feminine whiteness with their wit and biting satire. Linda Mizejewski demonstrates that while these comics don't all identify as feminists or take politically correct positions, their work on gender, sexuality, and race has a political impact. The first major study of women and humor in twenty years, Pretty/Funny makes a convincing case that women's comedy has become a prime site for feminism to speak, talk back, and be contested in the twenty-first century.Setting the Stage: What We Do, How We Do It, and Why
Par David Hays. 2017
David Hays, elected to the Theater Hall of Fame in 2014, created an exciting and successful career designing scenery and…
lighting for plays and musicals on Broadway, in London, and in Japan. Told with passion and wit, this book takes readers behind the scenes of the theater world to show how a stage designer collaborates with directors and producers to create great works of theater and dance. A designer who collaborated with the great directors of his time—Arthur Penn, Garson Kanin, Tyrone Guthrie, Elia Kazan, Jose Quintero, and Joe Layton—shares anecdotes that integrate technical insight with life lessons. He designed sets for the Metropolitan Opera, for Lincoln Center, for Martha Graham, and thirty ballets for George Balanchine. This colorful account of theater life is for scholars, practioners, and theatregoers interested in how it all works.Publication of this book is funded by the Beatrice Fox Auerbach Foundation Fund at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving.John Wayne's World: Transnational Masculinity in the Fifties
Par Russell Meeuf. 2013
In a film career that spanned five decades, John Wayne became a U. S. icon of heroic individualism and rugged…
masculinity. His widespread popularity, however, was not limited to the United States: he was beloved among moviegoers in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe. In John Wayne’s World, Russell Meeuf considers the actor’s global popularity and makes the case that Wayne’s depictions of masculinity in his most popular films of the 1950s reflected the turbulent social disruptions of global capitalism and modernization taking place in that decade. John Wayne’s World places Wayne at the center of gender- and nation-based ideologies, opening a dialogue between film history, gender studies, political and economic history, and popular culture. Moving chronologically, Meeuf provides new readings of Fort Apache, Red River, Hondo, The Searchers, Rio Bravo, and The Alamo and connects Wayne’s characters with a modern, transnational masculinity being reimagined after World War II. Considering Wayne’s international productions, such as Legend of the Lost and The Barbarian and the Geisha, Meeuf shows how they resonated with U. S. ideological positions about Africa and Asia. Meeuf concludes that, in his later films, Wayne’s star text shifted to one of grandfatherly nostalgia for the past, as his earlier brand of heroic masculinity became incompatible with the changing world of the 1960s and 1970s. The first academic book-length study of John Wayne in more than twenty years, John Wayne’s World reveals a frequently overlooked history behind one of Hollywood’s most iconic stars.Hamlet: Globe to Globe: Two Years, 190,000 Miles, 197 Countries, One Play
Par Dominic Dromgoole, Michael Gallagher. 2017
All the Way: A Play
Par Robert Schenkkan. 2014
This Tony Award–winning, “jaw-dropping political drama” chronicles LBJ’s fight for the Civil Rights Act and includes an introduction by Bryan…
Cranston (Variety). Winner of the 2014 Tony Award for Best Play, as well as Best Play awards from the New York Drama Critics’ Circle, the Outer Critics Circle, the Drama League, and numerous other awards, All the Way is a masterful exploration of politics and power from the Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Robert Schenkkan. All the Way tells the story of the tumultuous first year of Lyndon Baines Johnson’s presidency. Thrust into power following the Kennedy assassination and facing an upcoming election, Johnson is nevertheless determined to end the legacy of racial injustice in America and rebuild it into the Great Society—by any means necessary. In order to pass the landmark 1964 Civil Rights bill, LBJ struggles to overpower an intransigent Congress while also attempting to forge a compromise with Martin Luther King, Jr., and navigate the increasingly fractious Civil Rights Movement. Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston played President Johnson in the play’s celebrated Broadway production, for which he was awarded the Tony Award for Best Actor. In this edition, Cranston provides an illuminating and personal introduction.There Was a Little Girl
Par Brooke Shields. 2014
Actress and author of the New York Times bestseller Down Came the Rain, Brooke Shields, explores her relationship with her…
unforgettable mother, Teri, in her new memoir. Brooke Shields never had what anyone would consider an ordinary life. She was raised by her Newark-tough single mom, Teri, a woman who loved the world of show business and was often a media sensation all by herself. Brooke's iconic modeling career began by chance when she was only eleven months old, and Teri's skills as both Brooke's mother and manager were formidable. But in private she was troubled and drinking heavily.As Brooke became an adult the pair made choices and sacrifices that would affect their relationship forever. And when Brooke's own daughters were born she found that her experience as a mother was shaped in every way by the woman who raised her. But despite the many ups and downs, Brooke was by Teri's side when she died in 2012, a loving daughter until the end.Only Brooke knows the truth of the remarkable, difficult, complicated woman who was her mother. And now, in an honest, open memoir about her life growing up, Brooke will reveal stories and feelings that are relatable to anyone who has been a mother or daughter.This book focuses on a rising generation of female storytellers, analysing their innovation in interdisciplinary collaboration, and their creation of new…
multimedia platforms for story-led performance. It draws on an unprecedented series of in-depth interviews with artists including Jo Blake, Xanthe Gresham-Knight, Mara Menzies, Clare Murphy, Debs Newbold, Rachel Rose Reid, Sarah Liisa Wilkinson, and Vanessa Woolf, while Sally Pomme Clayton’s reflections on her extraordinary four-decade career provide long-term context for these cutting-edge conversations. Blending ethnographic research and performance analysis, the book documents the working lives of professional storytelling artists. It sheds light on the practices, values, aspirations, and achievements of a generation actively re-defining storytelling as a contemporary performance practice, taking on topics from ecology and maternity to griefwork and neuroscience, while working collaboratively with diverse creative partners to generate new, inclusive presences for a traditionally-inspired artform. This book will be of great interest to students, scholars, and practitioners in drama, theatre, performance, creative writing, education, and media.How to Talk Dirty and Influence People: An Autobiography
Par Lenny Bruce, Lewis Black, Howard Reich. 2016
During the course of a career that began in the late 1940s, Lenny Bruce challenged the sanctity of organized religion…
and other societal and political conventions and widened the boundaries of free speech. Critic Ralph Gleason said, "So many taboos have been lifted and so many comics have rushed through the doors Lenny opened. He utterly changed the world of comedy.” He died in 1966 at the age of 40. His influence on the worlds of comedy, jazz, and satire is incalculable, and How to Talk Dirty and Influence People--now republished to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Lenny Bruce's death--remains a brilliant existential account of his life and the forces that made him the most important and controversial entertainer in history.Othello: Shakespeare Made Easy
Par William Shakespeare, Gayle Holste. 2002
Here are the books that help teach Shakespeare plays without the teacher constantly needing to explain and define Elizabethan terms,…
slang, and other ways of expression that are different from our own. Each play is presented with Shakespeare's original lines on each left-hand page, and a modern, easy-to-understand "translation" on the facing right-hand page. All dramas are complete, with every original Shakespearian line, and a full-length modern rendition of the text. These invaluable teaching-study guides also include: Helpful background information that puts each play in its historical perspective. Discussion questions that teachers can use to spark student class participation, and which students can use as springboards for their own themes and term papers. Fact quizzes, sample examinations, and other features that improve student comprehension of what each play is about.What Fresh Lunacy is This?: The Authorized Biography of Oliver Reed
Par Robert Sellers. 2013
Oliver Reed may not have been Britain's biggest film star - for a period in the early 70s he came…
within a hairsbreadth of replacing Sean Connery as James Bond - but he is an august member of that small band of people, like George Best and Eric Morecambe, who transcended their chosen medium, became too big for it even, and grew into cultural icons.For the first time Reed's close family has agreed to collaborate on a project about the man himself. The result is a fascinating new insight into a man seen by many as merely a brawling, boozing hellraiser. And yet he was so much more than this. For behind that image, which all too often he played up to in public, was a vastly complex individual, a man of deep passions and loyalty but also deep-rooted vulnerability and insecurities. Why was a proud, patriotic, intelligent, successful and erudite man so obsessed about proving himself to others, time and time again?Although the Reed myth is of Homeric proportions, he remains a national treasure and somewhat peculiar icon.Praise for other books by Robert Sellers:Hellraisers: The Life and Inebriated Times of Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Peter O'Toole, and Oliver Reed: 'So wonderfully captures the wanton belligerence of both binging and stardom you almost feel the guys themselves are telling the tales.' GQ.Vic Armstrong: The True Adventures of the World's Greatest Stuntman:'This is the best and most original behind-the-scenes book I have read in years, gripping and revealing.' Roger Lewis, Daily Mail.Don't Let the Bastards Grind You Down: '...a rollicking good read... Sellers has done well to capture a vivid snapshot of this exciting time.' Lynn Barber, Sunday Times.Lonely Boy: Tales from a Sex Pistol
Par Steve Jones, Ben Thompson, Chrissie Hynde. 2016
Without the Sex Pistols there would be no punk. And without Steve Jones there would be no Sex Pistols. It…
was Steve who, with his schoolmate Paul Cook, formed the band that eventually went on to become the Sex Pistols and who was its original leader. As the world celebrates the 40th anniversary of punk--the influence and cultural significance of which is felt in music, fashion, and the visual arts to this day--Steve tells his story for the very first time.Steve Jones's modern Dickensian tale began in the street of Hammersmith and Shepherd's Bush, West London, where as a lonely, neglected boy living off his wits and petty thievery he was given purpose by the glam art rock of David Bowie and Roxy Music. He became one of the first generation of ragamuffin punks taken under the wings of Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood.In Lonely Boy, Steve describes the sadness of never having known his real dad, the abuse he suffered at the hands of his stepfather, and how his interest in music and fashion saved him from a potential life of crime spent in remand centers and prisons. He takes readers on his journey from the Kings Road of the early '70s through the years of the Sex Pistols, punk rock, and the recording of "Anarchy in the UK" and Never Mind the Bollocks. He recounts his infamous confrontation on Bill Grundy's Today program--the interview that ushered in the "Filth and the Fury" headlines that catapulted punk into the national consciousness. And he delves into the details of his self-imposed exile in New York and Los Angeles, where he battled alcohol, heroin, and sex addiction but eventually emerged to gain fresh acclaim as an actor and radio host.Lonely Boy is the story of an unlikely guitar hero who, with the Sex Pistols, transformed twentieth-century culture and kick-started a social revolution.The Spoils: A Play (Books That Changed the World)
Par Jesse Eisenberg. 2016
A powerful play about wealth, narcissism, and entitlement: “Eisenberg writes funny, but he is also a real storyteller—moody and dangerous…
and even loving.”—NewsdayNobody likes Ben. Ben doesn’t even like Ben. He’s been kicked out of grad school, lives off his parents’ money, and bullies everyone in his life, including his roommate, an earnest Nepalese immigrant. When Ben discovers that his grade school crush is marrying a straitlaced banker, he sets out to destroy their relationship and win her back. The Spoils is a deeply personal and probing comedy written by Jesse Eisenberg—Academy Award-nominated actor, playwright, and contributor to the New Yorker. “While Ben would surely say The Spoils is all about Ben, Mr. Eisenberg has seen fit to surround his leading narcissist with characters who live and breathe and react independently…His clever, frantic dialogue assumes an irresistible authenticity.”—Ben Brantley, The New York Times (NYT Critics’ Pick)The Revisionist (Books That Changed the World)
Par Jesse Eisenberg. 2016
A play by the multitalented actor: “[Eisenberg] has a wry ear and a knack for unsentimental poignancy that keeps The Revisionist emotionally…
compelling.”—USA TodayThough he first became known for his acting in films ranging from The Squid and the Whale to The Social Network, Jesse Eisenberg has also emerged as an acclaimed literary talent—a regular contributor to the New Yorker and a highly praised playwright.In The Revisionist, his second play, young writer David arrives in Poland with a crippling case of writer’s block and a desire to be left alone. His seventy-five-year-old second cousin, Maria, welcomes him with a fervent need to connect with her distant American relative. As their relationship develops, she will reveal details about her postwar past that test their ideas of what it means to be a family.This “tightly structured, deeply human play about the truthful mess of human experience” (Exeunt Magazine) had its world premiere at the Cherry Lane Theatre in New York in spring 2013, starring Jesse Eisenberg and Vanessa Redgrave and directed by Kip Fagan.“A rewarding account of cultural collision that yields unexpected reflections on the centrality of family in our lives—whether we idealize them or take them for granted…As a playwright, Eisenberg’s intentions seem clear. He takes a critical swipe at himself, and by extension, his entitled generation.”—Hollywood ReporterThe Bennetts: An Acting Family
Par Brian Kellow. 2004
The Bennetts: An Acting Family is a chronicle of one of the royal families of stage and screen. The saga…
begins with Richard Bennett, a small-town Indiana roughneck who grew up to be one of the bright lights of the New York stage during the early twentieth century. In time, however, Richard's fame was eclipsed by that of his daughters, Constance and Joan, who went to Hollywood in the 1920s and found major success there. Constance became the highest-paid actress of the early 1930s, earning as much as $30,000 a week in melodramas. Later she reinvented herself as a comedienne in the classic comedy Topper, with Cary Grant.. After a slow start as a blonde ingenue, Joan dyed her hair black and became one of the screen's great temptresses in films such as Scarlet Street. She also starred in such lighter fare as Father of the Bride. In the 1960s, Joan gained a new generation of fans when she appeared in the gothic daytime television serial Dark Shadows. The Bennetts is also the story of another Bennett sister, Barbara, whose promising beginnings as a dancer gave way to a turbulent marriage to singer Morton Downey and a steady decline into alcoholism. Constance and Joan were among Hollywood's biggest stars, but their personal lives were anything but serene. In 1943, Constance became entangled in a highly publicized court battle with the family of her millionaire ex-husband, and in 1951, Joan's husband, producer Walter Wanger, shot her lover in broad daylight, sparking one of the biggest Hollywood scandals of the 1950s. Brian Kellow, features editor of Opera News magazine, is the coauthor of Can't Help Singing: The Life of Eileen Farrell. He lives in New York and Connecticut.Claude Rains: An Actor's Voice (Screen Classics)
Par David J. Skal, Jessica Rains. 2008
Late in Claude Rains's distinguished career, a reverent film journalist wrote that Rains "was as much a cinematic institution as…
the medium itself." In Claude Rains: An Actor's Voice, noted Hollywood historian David J. Skal draws on more than thirty hours of newly-released Rains interviews to create the first full-length biography of the actor nominated multiple times for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. This portrait of a universally respected Hollywood legend also benefits from the insights of his daughter, Jessica Rains, who provides firsthand accounts of the enigmatic man behind her father's refined screen presence and genteel public persona. With unprecedented access to episodes from Rains's private life, Skal tells the full story of the consummate character actor of his generation.Elizabeth: The Life of Elizabeth Taylor (Isis Large Print Ser.)
Par Alexander Walker. 1997
A serious and in-depth look at one of the great legends of Hollywood by the London film critic and author…
of Audrey: Her Real Story. Elizabeth Taylor was perhaps the most “public” of the great stars: an Oscar-winning actress who lived her entire life in the glare of the spotlights. Much has been written about her, but now—with the readability, sensitivity, and thoroughness that have made his previous biographies bestsellers—Alexander Walker explores the roots of Taylor’s extraordinary personality and extraordinary life. Here is a life to rival the very movies she played in, told with immense candor, wit, and sympathy: from her privileged London childhood, the enormous influence of her strong-willed mother, and her swift rise to stardom in such films as National Velvet, A Place in the Sun, and the catastrophe-ridden Cleopatra; to her six husbands, her desperate need to love and be loved, her obsession with jewelry, and the amazing resilience that helped her weather not only condemnation for “the most public adultery in history,” but also dramatic illnesses that brought her to the verge of death—and, according to her, beyond. Using scores of unpublished documents and interviews with those who knew Taylor best, as well as his own meetings with her over thirty years, Alexander Walker recreates the comedies and tragedies in the life of a woman whose rewards and scandals have become the stuff of legend.Iphigenia among the Taurians
Par Anne Carson, Euripides. 2013
I am Iphigenia, daughter of the daughter of Tyndareus My father killed me Few contemporary poets elicit such powerful responses…
from readers and critics as Anne Carson. The New York Times Book Review calls her work "personal, necessary, and important," while Publishers Weekly says she is "nothing less than brilliant." Her poetry--enigmatic yet approachable, deeply personal yet universal in scope, wildly mutable yet always recognizable as her distinct voice--invests contemporary concerns with the epic resonance and power of the Greek classics that she has studied, taught, and translated for decades. Iphigenia among the Taurians is the latest in Carson's series of translations of the plays of Euripides. Originally published as part of the third edition of Chicago's Complete Greek Tragedies, it is published here as a stand-alone volume for the first time. In Carson's stunning translation, Euripides's play--full of mistaken identities, dangerous misunderstandings, and unexpected interventions by gods and men--is as fierce and fresh as any contemporary drama. Carson has accomplished one of the rarest feats of translation: maintaining fidelity to a writer's words even as she inflects them with her own unique poetic voice. Destined to become the standard translation of the play, Iphigenia among the Taurians is a remarkable accomplishment, and an unforgettable work of poetic drama."The Triple Whammy" and Other Russian Stories: A Memoir
Par Luis Menashe. 2018
An American historian, film specialist, and documentary filmmaker shares candid stories of his life in Russia during and after the…
Cold War. A captivating lifetime of personal and professional experiences by an American historian, film specialist, and documentary filmmaker in the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia. The author&’s experiences as a radical in the turbulent 1960s, and his eventual disenchantment offer some precedents and perspectives to all those on the Left, Center, or Right interested in the fluctuations of American politics. The vivid log of hopes and disillusions is related in a candid, non-academic style, and set against a panorama of history and politics in the late twentieth century.&“A self-described scholar-activist, Menashe weaves together political, intellectual, and cultural currents of leftist life, and draws a vivid picture of people and places, life-changing adventures, the intellectual and political challenges of graduate school during the Cold War, encounters with key Russian literary and political figures, and much more. Then comes the crash, the Soviet Union&’s end. As in all failed love affairs, Menashe retains some sweet memories. The reader will taste them long after reading the memoir.&” —Carole Turbin, Professor Emerita, History and Sociology, SUNY/Empire State CollegeThe Only Woman in the Room: A Memoir of Japan, Human Rights, and the Arts
Par Beate Sirota Gordon. 1997
In 1946, at age twenty-two, Beate Sirota Gordon helped to draft the new postwar Japanese Constitution. "The Only Woman in…
the Room" chronicles how a daughter of Russian Jews became the youngest woman to aid in the rushed, secret drafting of a constitution; how she almost single-handedly ensured that it would establish the rights of Japanese women; and how, as a fluent speaker of Japanese and the only woman in the room, she assisted the American negotiators as they worked to persuade the Japanese to accept the new charter. Sirota was born in Vienna, but in 1929 her family moved to Japan so that her father, a noted pianist, could teach, and she grew up speaking German, English, and Japanese. Russian, French, Italian, Latin, and Hebrew followed, and at fifteen Sirota was sent to complete her education at Mills College in California. The formal declaration of World War II cut Gordon off from her parents, and she supported herself by working for a CBS listening post in San Francisco that would eventually become part of the FCC. Translating was one of Sirota's many talents, and when the war ended, she was sent to Japan as a language expert to help the American occupation forces. When General MacArthur suddenly created a team that included Sirota to draft the new Japanese Constitution, he gave them just eight days to accomplish the task. Colonel Roest said to Beate Sirota, "You're a woman, why don't you write the women's rights section?"; and she seized the opportunity to write into law guarantees of equality unparalleled in the US Constitution to this day. But this was only one episode in an extraordinary life, and when Gordon died in December 2012, words of grief and praise poured from artists, humanitarians, and thinkers the world over. Illustrated with forty-seven photographs, "The Only Woman in the Room "captures two cultures at a critical moment in history and recounts, after a fifty-year silence, a life lived with purpose and courage. This edition contains a new afterword by Nicole A. Gordon and an elegy by Geoffrey Paul Gordon.