Performing Arts

If you're a fan of Jackie Chan--the world's most popular action movie star--you've got to have this book. Drawing from "Inside Kung Fu" magazine's exclusive archives, every page is packed with rare pictures and unique insights on this comedy-kung-fu mega-star. From Jackie's personal reflections on h... More

These two volumes examine a significant but previously neglected moment in French cultural history: the emergence of French film theory and criticism before the essays of Andre Bazin. Richard Abel has devised an organizational scheme of six nearly symmetrical periods that serve to "bite into" the di... More

Since the 1960s, visual art practices--from body art to minimalism--have taken contemporary art outside the museum and gallery by embracing theatricality and performance and exploding the boundaries set by traditional art criticism. Such practices prompt us to reassess our ways of contructing meanin... More

Kenneth Tynan (1927-1980) lived one of the most intriguing theater lives of his century. A brilliant writer, critic, and agent provocateur, he made friends or enemies of nearly every major actor, playwright, impresario, and movie mogul of the 1950s, '60s, and '70s. He wrote for the Evening Standard,... More

This stunning contribution to the field of theatre history is the first in-depth look at avant-garde theatre in the United States between the mid-1950's and the mid 1980's. "American Avant-garde Theatre" offers a definition of the avant-garde, and looks at its origins and theoretical foundations by ... More

The Split Britches theater company has defined postmodern lesbian/feminism on stage in the U.S. for the past decade and is arguably the single most important experimental theater company to have emerged during this time. "Split Britches: Lesbian Practice/Feminist" "Performance" is a long- awaited ce... More

This comprehensive analytical study of the "Phantom of the Opera" proposes answers to the question, 0;why do we keep needing this story told and retold in the Western world?1; by revealing the history of deep cultural tensions that underlie the novel and each of its major adaptations. Using extensiv... More

A compact version of the masterly and celebrated Cambridge Guide to Theatre. Quick and easy reference to over 3000 entries on the world's most famous playwrights, actors, directors, designers; the grand sweep of theatre through the ages - from Sanskrit drama and the theatre of ancient Greece to the ... More

Huerta takes as his starting point 1979, the year Luis Valdez's play, Zoot Suit, was produced on Broadway. Huerta looks at plays by and about Chicanas and Chicanos, as they explore through performance, the community and its identity caught between the United States and Mexico. Through informative bi... More

This is the first book-length study of the collaboration between Tennessee Williams and Elia Kazan. Their intense creative relationship, fueled by a deep personal affinity that endured until Williams's death, lasted from 1947 until 1960. The production of A Streetcar Named Desire established William... More

"Movie Acting, the Film Reader" explores one of the most central but often overlooked aspects of cinema: film acting. Combining classic and recent essays, it examines key issues such as: What constitutes film acting? How is film acting different from stage acting? How has film acting changed over ti... More

One of America's most powerful and original dramatists, August Wilson offered an alternative history of the twentieth century, as seen from the perspective of black Americans. He celebrated the lives of those seemingly pushed to the margins of national life, but who were simultaneously protagonists ... More

"Dances of Shakespeare" gives a brief introduction to how to perform all of the dance styles featured in Shakespeare's plays. Designed for the practicing director, actor, or choreographer, it gives clear instruction on how to perform popular dances of Shakespeare's day, including masques, brawls, ca... More

American culture after the end of World War II has been characterized by an abiding pessimism most clearly manifested in the film noirs of the period. Mike Chopra-Gant challenges this "noir and Zeitgeist" reading and proposes that the view of American cinema and society it develops relies on a retro... More

In these passionate and witty essays on the theatre, J B Priestley distills his experience as playwright, producer, director and actor. This new collection is part defense of theatre, part incisive criticism, and, part instructive guide for would-be playwrights. The extracts are filled with Priestle... More

This book is about the role of sound in Shakespeare's art and about what it means for us centuries later. Wes Folkerth discovers the different aesthetic and ethical dispositions Shakespeare regularly associates with sound, including vulnerability, community, access to the deeply subjective or pre-ar... More