Author: Thomas S. Hischak
Publisher: OUP USA
Published: 2001-02-22
Total Pages: 514
ISBN-13: 9780195123470
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Volume Four of the distinguished American Theatre: A Chronicle of Comedy and Drama series offers a thorough, candid, and fascinating look at the theater in New York during the last decades of the twentieth century.
Author: Ronald Harold Wainscott
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 1997-01-01
Total Pages: 298
ISBN-13: 9780300067767
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Exploring the emergence of the modern American theatre in New York during a period of immense creative output and experimentation and against a backdrop of conflicting cultural, economic and political events, this text draws upon material from plays and productions in between 1914-1929.
Author: Gerald Bordman
Publisher: OUP USA
Published: 1994-03-10
Total Pages: 802
ISBN-13: 9780195037647
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This three-volume work will accomplish for the American non-musical theatre what Bordman's American Musical Theatre did for our song-and-dance entertainments: it chronicles, in order by opening, every Broadway comedy and drama, show by show, season by season, offering a plot synopsis, principal players, and important statistics. Scenery and costumes are described where they might be of interest, and comments of the plays' contemporary critics are quoted. In many instances, extended excerpts from the play are included to give the reader a fuller understanding of its nuances and its period dialogue. Also included, and worked chronologically into the text, are details about cheap-priced, cliff-hanging melodramas, such as Bertha, the Sewing Machine Girl and His Sister's Shame, which were among America's most popular diversions in theatres catering to blue-collar playgoers until silent films drew away their audiences. Examples of shows produced and designed for other than New York are included. This volume deals with the great expansion of American theatre after the Civil War, the careers of such prominent actors and actresses as Edwin Booth, Mrs. Fiske, the Drew and Barrymore families, the first important American playwrights like Clyde Fitch, producers like David Belasco, and the influence of foreign plays and players. This stage history, besides giving a sense of each production, touches on the literary worth of the plays, provides brief biographies of major figures, and sets all of this against the economic and social backgrounds of the time. Readers will close the book feeling they, like their parents and grandparents, have sat through performances of these shows of another era.
Author: Andrew Davis
Publisher: Penn State Press
Published: 2010
Total Pages: 428
ISBN-13: 0271035781
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →"Traces the history of the Walnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia from its founding in 1809. Documents the productions and players at the theater, and the difficulties it has faced from economic crises, changing tastes, and competition from new media"--Provided by publisher.
Author: Gerald Bordman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 1995
Total Pages: 460
ISBN-13: 9780195090789
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The American Theatre series discusses every Broadway production chronologically--show by show and season by season. It offers plot summaries, production details, names of leading actors and actresses--the roles they played, as well as any special or unusual aspects of individual shows. This second volume in the series, covers what is probably the richest period in American theater, the years 1914 through 1930. Bordman includes most of Eugene O'Neill's work, along with playwrights as diverse as Elmer Rice and George Kaufman. Among the era's stars one finds John and Ethel Barrymore, Helen Hayes, Katherine Cornell, and Lynn Fontaine and Alfred Lunt. Considering the sheer number of productions, American theater climbed to its all-time high in the 1920s; by mid-decade, nearly 300 new plays appeared on Broadway each year. America saw more theatrical activity--in every sense of the word-- than any time before or since.
Author: Gerald Bordman
Publisher: OUP USA
Published: 1994-03-10
Total Pages: 802
ISBN-13: 9780195037647
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This three-volume work will accomplish for the American non-musical theatre what Bordman's American Musical Theatre did for our song-and-dance entertainments: it chronicles, in order by opening, every Broadway comedy and drama, show by show, season by season, offering a plot synopsis, principal players, and important statistics. Scenery and costumes are described where they might be of interest, and comments of the plays' contemporary critics are quoted. In many instances, extended excerpts from the play are included to give the reader a fuller understanding of its nuances and its period dialogue. Also included, and worked chronologically into the text, are details about cheap-priced, cliff-hanging melodramas, such as Bertha, the Sewing Machine Girl and His Sister's Shame, which were among America's most popular diversions in theatres catering to blue-collar playgoers until silent films drew away their audiences. Examples of shows produced and designed for other than New York are included. This volume deals with the great expansion of American theatre after the Civil War, the careers of such prominent actors and actresses as Edwin Booth, Mrs. Fiske, the Drew and Barrymore families, the first important American playwrights like Clyde Fitch, producers like David Belasco, and the influence of foreign plays and players. This stage history, besides giving a sense of each production, touches on the literary worth of the plays, provides brief biographies of major figures, and sets all of this against the economic and social backgrounds of the time. Readers will close the book feeling they, like their parents and grandparents, have sat through performances of these shows of another era.