The one where a theater group attempts ATTEMPTS to present all those novels you read in high school before school lets out for the summer. Pray for them. They're gonna need it and so are you. (If you like Shakespeare Abridged… consider Every Novel You Read in High School.)
A dark and stylish novel of psychological suspense about a young theater critic drawn into a dangerous game that blurs the lines between reality and performance A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2023: Entertainment Weekly, Zibby Mag, CrimeReads and more! Vivian Parry likes the dark. A former actress, she now works as the junior theater critic at a major Manhattan magazine. Her nights are spent beyond the lights, in a reserved seat, giving herself over to the shows she loves. By day, she savages them, with words sharper than a knife. Angling for a promotion, she reluctantly agrees to an interview, a conversation that reveals secrets she thought she had long since buried. Then her interviewer disappears and she learns―from his devastated fianc√©e―that she was the last person to have seen him alive. When the police refuse to investigate, Vivian does what she promised herself she would never do again: she plays a part. Assuming the role of amateur detective, she turns her critical gaze toward an unsanitary private eye, a sketchy internet startup, a threatening financier, fake blood, and one very real corpse. As she nears the final act, she finds that the boundaries between theater and the real world are more tenuous and more dangerous than even she could have believed. . . Gripping, propulsive, and shot through with menace and dark glamor, Alexis Soloski's Here in the Dark takes us behind the scenes of New York theater, lifting the curtain on the lies we tell ourselves and each other. Product DetailsISBN-13: 9781250882943 Media Type: Hardcover Publisher: Flatiron Books Publication Date: 12-05-2023 Pages: 256 Product Dimensions: 9.30h x 6.40w x 1.20dAbout the Author Alexis Soloski is a prize-winning New York Times theater critic and a former lead theater critic at Village Voice. She has taught at Barnard College and at Columbia University, where she earned her PhD in Theater. She lives in Brooklyn with her family.
ACTION! Today I'm sharing 9 Books for World Theater Day - middle grade and young adult titles for those who love the spotlight!
And Then There Were None Tickets at Churchill Theatre Bromley - cheap tickets and discount London theatre tickets for West End shows
Chris Hewitt | Star Tribune (TNS)
The bright lights of the theater district, the glamour and danger of 1950s New York, and the wild scene at the iconic Chelsea Hotel come together in a dazzling new novel about a twenty-year friendship that will irrevocably change two women's lives—from the New York Times bestselling author of The Lions of Fifth Avenue. From the dramatic redbrick facade to the sweeping staircase dripping with art, the Chelsea Hotel has long been New York City's creative oasis for the many artists, writers, musicians, actors, filmmakers, and poets who have called it home—a scene playwright Hazel Riley and actress Maxine Mead are determined to use to their advantage. Yet they soon discover that the greatest obstacle to putting up a show on Broadway has nothing to do with their art, and everything to do with politics. A Red Scare is sweeping across America, and Senator Joseph McCarthy has started a witch hunt for communists, with those in the entertainment industry in the crosshairs. As the pressure builds to name names, it is more than Hazel and Maxine's Broadway dreams that may suffer as they grapple with the terrible consequences, but also their livelihood, their friendship, and even their freedom. Spanning from the 1940s to the 1960s, The Chelsea Girls deftly pulls back the curtain on the desperate political pressures of McCarthyism, the complicated bonds of female friendship, and the siren call of the uninhibited Chelsea Hotel. Product DetailsISBN-13: 9781524744601 Media Type: Paperback Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group Publication Date: 12-08-2020 Pages: 400 Product Dimensions: 5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.10(d)About the Author Fiona Davis is the New York Times bestselling author of several novels, including The Dollhouse, The Address, The Masterpiece, The Chelsea Girls, The Lions of Fifth Avenue, and The Magnolia Palace. She lives in New York City and is a graduate of the College of William & Mary in Virginia and the Columbia Journalism School.Read an Excerpt Read an Excerpt chapter one Hazel Naples, Italy, April 1945 She hated Maxine Mead, and Italy, on first sight. When Hazel had first auditioned for the USO tour, back in New York, she'd imagined arriving abroad and gingerly stepping off a plane to a cheering group of GIs. The stage would be a grand opera house or something similarly picturesque, like what she'd seen in the newsreels of Marlene Dietrich and Bob Hope entertaining the troops. Hazel would be sure to call them men, not boys, as the USO Actors' Handbook advised. After all, many of them had been fighting for four years now. They deserved respect as well as some wholesome entertainment, a respite from the fighting. Upon boarding the Air Corps plane at LaGuardia Airport, Hazel was informed that she'd be replacing a member of an all-female acting troupe who'd come down with jaundice. Not until the noisy tin can of a cargo plane was aloft was she told her destination: Naples, Italy. After a bumpy landing, Hazel lugged her two suitcases off the plane and stood on the tarmac, exhausted and confused, waiting for someone to tell her where to go, what to do next. The stifling heat was made worse by the fact that she'd been given the winter uniform, including wool stockings and thick winter panties. Every inch of her from the waist down itched as though she had ants crawling up her sweaty legs. Her uniform-a greenish-gray skirt, white blouse, long black tie, and garrison cap that she'd admired in the mirror back in New York-was now a stinking, wrinkled mess. Finally, a soldier pulled up in a Jeep and called out her name. He tossed her suitcases in the back before helping her into the passenger seat. They lurched off over a road battered by potholes, passing demolished apartment buildings and churches. Several women picked through a pile of garbage by the side of the road, stopping to stare at Hazel with dead eyes before turning back to their work. A group of ragged, emaciated children, one of whom sucked on his dirty fingers, watched the scavengers. Yet across the street, a tidy line of schoolboys walked past the desolation as if nothing were wrong. The air smelled of rotting vegetables; dust kicked into Hazel's nose and made her sneeze. Early in the war, the newspapers had published aerial photos of the city showing almost all of it up in smoke, annihilated by relentless bombing. While many of the inhabitants sought safety deep underground in the ancient Roman aqueducts and tunnels, at least twenty thousand people had been killed. She tried to envision what it would be like if New York had been similarly decimated, she and her mother out with their shopping bags, stepping over chunks of concrete, going about their day. She couldn't imagine it. "This is terrible. There's hardly anything left," she said. The driver shrugged. "Naples was the most bombed site in Italy." "The residents rose up and resisted the Germans, right?" She tried to remember what she'd read in the papers. "Looks like they paid dearly for it." "Sure did." He made a sharp left, off the main road. "They told me to take you directly to the stage." She would have thought they'd give her a moment or two to freshen up after her interminable trip. "Is the acting company rehearsing?" "Nope. It's a show." He nodded at the men trudging along the side of the road in the same direction, smoking cigarettes. "This is your audience." At the sound of a low rumble above them, every helmeted head snapped up, scouring the skies. But it was only thunder, from a slate-colored cloud to the west, far out over the sea. The helmets snapped back down. A show. Good. She'd have a chance to watch the other actors. In New York, she'd been given the script for Blithe Spirit, which had been a big hit on Broadway four years earlier, along with instructions to learn the maid's role, and she had managed to memorize some of the lines during the flight. The lines were the easy part for Hazel, as she'd been a serial understudy for the past few years. Hazel's hope, when she first auditioned for the USO, was to be able to break out of her understudy rut and finally act onstage in a real performance. This was her chance to try something new, so that when she returned to New York, she'd be taken seriously as a major actress, not just a backup to be called upon when the leading lady got the flu. Which, with Hazel's bad luck, had never happened. She'd even established a reputation among producers: Hiring Hazel Ripley as an understudy guaranteed that your leading lady would never miss a show. Twenty plays now under her belt, without going on even once. Every night, she'd feel a guilty flicker of relief as the star flounced through the stage door, healthy and raring to go, but Hazel attributed her own reticence to her lack of experience. Surely, once she'd gotten a taste of performing in front of an audience, she'd become just as competitive and eager to take center stage as her brother and father had been. She was a Ripley, after all. Her mother, Ruth, thought that joining the USO tour was a terrible idea, listing off the names of entertainers who had been injured or killed while abroad, usually in plane crashes. "And let's not forget that pretty Jane Froman, who almost lost both legs when her plane crashed into a river in Portugal," Ruth had said. "Accidents happen all the time. You know that's true." Hazel had changed the subject fast, recognizing the dangerous quiver in Ruth's voice. But she remained undeterred. The opportunity to get onstage while supporting her country was too good to pass up, and she viewed it as a way to honor her brother's memory while, at the same time, stepping out of his shadow. Not to mention the pay was ten dollars a day plus meals. She'd filled out a long questionnaire, had her fingerprints taken, and gotten inoculated for diseases she'd never even heard of. And now, finally, she'd arrived. The Jeep pulled into an enormous field, where Mount Vesuvius smoked away in the distance. Soldiers had taken seats on long benches facing a truck. One side of the truck bed was folded down to expose a platform furnished with a small table and four chairs; a drab-olive canopy was strung overhead. A flag hung from one side, with the words uso camp shows written in blue on a white background. This was the stage, although it couldn't be more than fifteen feet wide. A few hundred soldiers milled about, chatting and smoking cigarettes, with hundreds more still making their way across the field. "Over there." The driver pointed behind the truck, where a large tent had been erected. "That's where the performers are." He helped her out and handed her the two suitcases. One held the remaining dastardly uniform and other sundries, while the other was full of her best dresses. The Actors' Handbook had listed a series of dos and don'ts: For the stage, bring dresses that you'd wear on an important Saturday night date. Travel as a unit at all times. If you behave properly, you'll increase your chance of making the better tours and improve your living and feeding conditions. Made them sound like livestock, that last one. "I'd walk you in, but we're not allowed inside." The driver's neck turned red at the very idea. "Good luck." "No! Don't say that." The soldier's eyebrows knitted together with concern. "What?" "You're supposed to say, 'Break a leg.'" He broke out in a wide smile. "Right. Break a leg." Hazel nodded goodbye and slid through the opening in the tent flap backward, awkwardly maneuvering her suitcases inside. "Well, it's about time." Hazel blinked, her eyes adjusting to the dark interior. A woman around her age, with hair the color of fire, did a slow turn, the better to show off a curvy figure that oozed out of a green silk dress. Behind her, three women perched on low stools in front of a splintered mirror, applying the final touches of stage makeup. The redhead's lip curled. "Hazel Ripley, where the hell have you been?"
Duchess of Malfi is playing at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, part of Shakespeare's Globe, from February 17 to April 14, 2024
"Highly recommended." — Library Journal. One of the most comprehensive handbooks available on Kabuki theatre provides readers with all the information they need to understand and appreciate this exciting amalgam of dramatic and musical arts. A clear and thoughtfully written text describes the theater's development in the context of Japanese history, with detailed analyses of actors' techniques, music and dance, plays and playwrights, the playhouse's design evolution, and six representative Kabuki plays. Includes glossary of Japanese terms. Invaluable to students, scholars and anyone intrigued by classical Japanese theater. japanese culture; japanese theater; theatrical history; japanese history; kabuki history; theater appreciation; musical arts; theatrical development; kabuki evolution; japanese performing arts; actor techniques; music and dance; plays; playwrights; japanese terminology; classic japanese theater; tragic; dramatic; downfall; lost fortune; bad luck; sad endings; performing arts; Kabukii; theatre
When I ask people about their favorite classic novels, I usually get a similar response from everybody: Jane Austen, A couple Brontës’, A few Dickens’, an odds-and-ends collection of co…
Missing the theater? Add a little razzle-dazzle to your shelves with these Broadway-inspired books.
5 Women in Show Business Books - If you miss City of Girls, here are some great reads with similar vibes to help with your pink feathery withdrawals!
Through 75 artistic antique color covers of The Theatre magazine, take a peek back in time from the first decades of the twentieth century to see these classic actors & actresses who performed onstage more than 100 years ago
Check out these inspiring new illustrations, aimed at reintroducing classic literature to a new generation, as we reveal the thinking behind them.
Excellent middle grade reads for kids who love theater!
New season guide for Theater Ansbach designed by Studio Collect. The text is set in Lausanne (designed by Nizar Kazan). See also the previous post about the theater’s visual identity.
I produced this illustration for the ECU School of Theatre and Dance last year. Somehow, someone from the School of Performing Arts in Orono, Maine found it online, loves it, and wants permission to use it for their fall production of the same play. Wonderful! Of course, I have no problem with this, as long as credit is given where credit is due. HOWEVER, because I am an in-house artist, the work doesn't really belong to me, and it is therefore not my call...nor is it my credit. So yes, we will be giving them permission to use it...with appropriate credit given to ECU for "providing the artwork." Well, crap.
What it's about: A medical miracle may have bought Hazel a few years, but she's still a terminal time bomb, suffering from stage IV cancer. At a support group for her illness, she meets fellow cancer survivor Augustus Waters, a boy who pretends to smoke cigarettes and has a prosthetic leg. With a shared obsession for the novel An Imperial Affliction and a similar sense of sarcasm, the two fall in love, despite their inevitable fate. John Green's story is honest and hilarious, exposing the fear, anger, and sadness that accompanies a terminal illness. It's an emotional read, and it's bound to be a heartrending two hours at the movie theater. Amazon review: 4.7/5 stars Release date: June 6, 2014 (Click here to watch the trailer)Starring: Shailene Woodley, Ansel Elgort
Erik and Christine 😊 I went for a bit more novel inspired designs A step by step of these will be available at my Patreon on Nov 1st!
“To have a great show you’ll obviously need great actors, but so many other components go into a quality level production. Regardless of your budget, talent, script, or venue, paying attention to these details will put a crisp and classy touch to your show.”
In honor of Daphne du Maurier’s birthday, here are tales of dark secrets, unsettling romances, and atmospheric houses…
I love stories. While a student at Hillsdale College, I was a theater minor. Between the long hours I logged as Stage Manager and then House Manager, and my appreciation for the art of great storyt…
A literary mystery and a family curse add up to create a pageturning summer novel. From Entertainment Weekly: "Swyler's wonderful descriptions keep the pages swimming along." One of BuzzFeed's 24 best fiction books of 2015.
Read these while you wait for the next season!
Rage Jaan Se Age by Shahida Azam Urdu Novel Complete in PDF Rage Jaan se Age is a trending Urdu Novel written by Shahida Azam. She is famo...
Are you a theater kid or a theater kid at heart who is ADDICTED to YA SFF? Here’s a list of 6 YA SFF books you have to add to your TBR pile!
The best historical fiction recommended by the experts: from the timeless classics right through to the best new historical novels being published now.
