The incredible journey of a musical from potential disaster to success, and the Broadway industry that managed to stay alive during the pandemic shutdown of 2020-22.

Despite historic, seemingly insurmountable setbacks of four openings, Bob Dylan and Conor McPherson's musical Girl from the North Country became a critical Broadway hit. Hailed as an experience as close as mortals come to heaven on earth, by The New York Times, the musical weaves two dozen songs from the legendary catalogue of Bob Dylan into a story of Duluth during the Great Depression, to create a future American classic.

Opening on Broadway in the middle of an unprecedented moment, Slow Train Coming is a book about pressing on in the face of extreme adversity. Todd Almond's behind-the-scenes oral history weaves his personal first-hand account of starring in the show with exclusive interviews and reflections from fellow cast members and the creative team.

Together they follow the show from its beginnings at New York's Public Theater where it emerged as an underdog-of-a-show, through a fraught jump to Broadway against a backdrop of the emerging Covid-19 pandemic and the longest shutdown in Broadway history, which resulted in the theatre industry's subsequent fight for survival.

Told through personal stories, anecdotes from the cast, production shots, behind-the-scenes photos, and insights from the creators, this book is both an inside look at a perilous moment of one of America's proudest institutions, Broadway, and a true story of American grit and determination lived by the company of this quirky musical-that-could.

'This is a remarkable, challenging and bravely original work.' The Guardian

Ripped from the world by her husband's paranoia, Desdemona turns in death towards the memory of Barbary, the North African maid who raised her: together, they explore the contours of death, race, war, love and motherhood, in a moving elegy.

Audacious with ambition, Desdemona is Toni Morrison's intimate reimagining of the fourth act of Shakespeare's Othello, mixing monologue with Rokia Traore's lyrical songs to re-examine the Bard's presentation of race and female suffering.

Part-play, part-concert, part-quest into the afterlife, Desdemona is published in Methuen Drama's Modern Classics series, featuring a new introduction by Joyce Green MacDonald.

Susie Salmon is just like any other young American girl. She wants to be beautiful, adores her charm bracelet and has a crush on a boy from school. There's one big difference though - Susie is dead.

Add: Now she can only observe while her family manage their grief in their different ways. Susie is desperate to help them and there might be a way of reaching them...

Alice Sebold's novel The Lovely Bones is a unique coming-of-age tale that captured the hearts of readers throughout the world. Award-winning playwright Bryony Lavery has adapted it for this unforgettable play about life after loss.

Iconic Broadway costume designer Patricia Zipprodt (1925-99) tells her own colorful story from a tumultuous childhood in Depression-era Chicago to Bohemian New York in the 1950s, becoming one of the 20th century's most celebrated designers.

Told with Zipprodt's acerbic humor and delicious wit, If the Song Doesn't Work, Change the Dress charts her journey to 1950s Greenwich Village, America's literary and artistic Bohemia. Tracking her career as it plunges into the developing Off-Broadway movement, and charting her personal and professional failures and successes collaborating with the biggest artists of the day - Jerome Robbins, Hal Prince, and Bob Fosse - making her one of the most recognizable, and award-winning, designers of 20th-century theatre.

Published in full color, this illustrated memoir includes pictures from Zipprodt's own archive including sketches, drawings, and photographs of her work from some of the most significant shows of the 20th century, including Cabaret, Fiddler on the Roof, Chicago, and Pippin, and her work with such American theatre giants as Jo Mielziner, Irene Sharaff, José Quintero, Boris Aronson, Tony Walton, and Joel Grey, who provides a personal foreword to the memoir. Zipprodt's posthumous collaborator, theatre design historian Arnold Wengrow provides a vivid epilogue about her final battle with cancer. Drawing from her archive at the New York Public Library and Museum of the Performing Arts, he amplifies her recollections with letters, oral histories, and interviews she gave over the years to offer a portrait of an artist consistently working against the grain.

If the Song Doesn't Work, Change the Dress will delight readers interested in Broadway, ballet, opera, and the history of costume design. Her lively anecdotes about New York theatre and working in Hollywood provide a rich insight into the life and work of a celebrated female creative giant of American theatre.

Actors and other professional voice users need to speak clearly and expressively in order to communicate the ideas and emotions of their characters - and themselves. Whatever the native accent of the speaker, this easy communication to the listener must always happen in every moment, onstage, in film or on television; in real life too.

This book, an introduction to Knight-Thompson Speechwork, gives speakers the ownership of a vast variety of speech skills and the ability to explore unlimited varieties of speech actions - without imposing a single, unvarying pattern of good speech. The skills gained through this book enable actors to find the unique way in which a dramatic character embodies the language of the play. They also help any speaker to communicate to a listener with total intelligibility without compromising the speaker's own accent; and to vary speech actions to meet different language needs.

Supporting audio provides 116 tracks illustrating the exercises described in the book.

The story of Desdemona from Shakespeare's Othello is re-imagined by Nobel Prize laureate Toni Morrison, Malian singer and songwriter Rokia Traoré, and acclaimed stage director Peter Sellars. Morrison's response to Othello is an intimate dialogue of words and music between Desdemona and her African nurse Barbary. Morrison gives voice and depth to the female characters, letting them speak and sing in the fullness of their hearts.

Desdemona is an extraordinary narrative of words, music and song about Shakespeares doomed heroine, who speaks from the grave about the traumas of race, class, gender, war and the transformative power of love. Toni Morrison transports one of the most iconic, central, and disturbing treatments of race in Western culture into the new realities and potential outcomes facing a rising generation of the 21st century.

My name is Christopher John Francis Boone. I know all the countries of the world and the capital cities. And every prime number up to 7507.

Christopher, fifteen years old, stands beside Mrs Shears's dead dog. It has been speared with a garden fork, it is seven minutes after midnight, and Christopher is under suspicion. He records each fact in the book he is writing to solve the mystery of who murdered Wellington. He has an extraordinary brain and is exceptional at maths, but he is ill-equipped to interpret everyday life. He has never ventured alone beyond the end of his road, he detests being touched and he distrusts strangers. But Christopher's detective work, forbidden by his father, takes him on a frightening journey that turns his world upside-down.

Simon Stephens's adaptation of Mark Haddon's bestselling, award-winning novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time offers a richly theatrical exploration of this touching and bleakly humorous tale.

This edition contains some strong language and may not be suitable for all school curricula. Other editions are available.

The intelligent, intuitive, indomitable, large, black, American male actor explores Shakespeare, race, and America ... not necessarily in that order.

Keith Hamilton Cobb embarks on a poetic exploration that examines the experience and perspective of black men in America through the metaphor of Shakespeare's character Othello, offering up a host of insights that are by turns introspective and indicting, difficult and deeply moving. American Moor is a play about race in America, but it is also a play about who gets to make art, who gets to play Shakespeare, about whose lives and perspectives matter, about actors and acting, and about the nature of unadulterated love.

American Moor has been seen across America, including a successful run off-Broadway in 2019.

This edition features an introduction by Professor Kim F. Hall, Barnard College.

Exactly one year ago, I stood in that crumbling pulpit in Riverside and shouted that this war would be our own violent undoing, freedom's suicide . . . Well, I'll tell you, there weren't too many Amens that Sunday. But who is a man who does not speak his mind? He is not a man, but I am a man.

The night before his assassination, King retires to room 306 in the now-famous Lorraine Motel after giving an acclaimed speech to a massive church congregation. When a mysterious young maid visits him to deliver a cup of coffee, King is forced to confront his past and the future of his people.

Portraying rhetoric, hope and ideals of social change, The Mountaintop also explores being human in the face of inevitable death. The play is a dramatic feat of daring originality, historical narration and triumphant compassion.

This Modern Classics edition of the play features a foreword by Michael Eric Dyson and an introduction by Faedra Chatard Carpenter, Assistant Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies in Theatre, University of Maryland.

Blood Wedding is set in a village community in Lorca's Andalusia, and tells the story of a couple drawn irresistibly together in the face of an arranged marriage. This tragic and poetic play is the work on which his international reputation was founded.
Like many of Lorca's passionate and intensely lyrical plays that focus on peasant life and the forces of nature, Blood Wedding combines innovatory dramatic technique with Spanish popular tradition.

Methuen Drama Student Editions are expertly annotated texts of a wide range of plays from the modern and classic repertoires. As well as the complete text of the play itself, the volume contains a chronology of the playwright's life and work; an introduction giving the background to the play; a discussion of the various interpretations; notes on individual words and phrases in the text; and questions for further study.

When her dead brother is decreed a traitor, his body left unburied beyond the city walls, Antigone refuses to accept this most severe of punishments. Defying her uncle who governs, she dares to say 'No'. Forging ahead with a funeral alone, she places personal allegiance before politics, a tenacious act that will trigger a cycle of destruction.

Renowned for the revelatory nature of his work, Ivo van Hove first enthralled London audiences with his ground-breaking Roman Tragediesseen at the Barbican in 2009. Drawing on his 'ability to break open texts calcified by tradition' (Guardian), the director now turns to a classic Greek masterpiece.

You're six years old. Mum's in hospital. Dad says she's 'done something stupid'. She finds it hard to be happy.

So you start to make a list of everything that's brilliant about the world. Everything that's worth living for.

1. Ice Cream

2. Kung Fu Movies

3. Burning Things

4. Laughing so hard you shoot milk out your nose

5. Construction cranes

6. Me

You leave it on her pillow. You know she's read it because she's corrected your spelling. Soon, the list will take on a life of its own.

A new play about depression and the lengths we will go to for those we love.

'There's more than one way to skin a theatrical cat; and McDonagh's chosen weapons are laughter and gore... Pushing theatre to its limits, McDonagh is making a serious point... a work as subversive as those Synge and O'Casey plays that sparked Dublin riots in the last century' Guardian

'A brave satire... Swiftianly savage and parodic... with explicit brutal actino and lines which sing with grace and wit' Observer

Who knocked Mad Padraic's cat over on a lonely road on the island of Inishmore and was it an accident? He'll want to know when he gets back from a stint of torture and chip-shop bombing in Northern Ireland: he loves his cat more than life itself.

The Lieutenant of Inishmore is a brilliant satire on terrorism, a powerful corrective to the beautification of violence in contemporary culture, and a hilarious farce. It premiered at the RSC's The Other Place, Stratford-upon-Avon, in May 2001.

Commentary and notes by Patrick Lonergan

This new Student Edition, featuring the classic John Willett translation of the play, includes an introduction by Katherine Hollander, which explores the following:

* Contexts (Thirty Years War, 1618-1648; World War II and exile; sources; influential figures such as Brecht, Margarete Steffin, Helene Weigel and Karin Michaelis)
* Themes (war; nature; capitalism)
* Dramatic devices (epic theatre)
* Production history and critical reception
* Academic debate (Marxist, feminist and postmodernist)
* Further study

Widely regarded as Brecht's best work, Mother Courage and her Children was written in 1938-9 and received its premiere in Zurich in 1941. Mother Courage - a canteen woman serving with the Swedish Army during the Thirty Years War (1618-48) - follows the armies, selling provisions and liquor to the troops. Both her sons die in the war and her dumb daughter, Kattrin, is mortally wounded as she beats a drum to warn the town of Halle of an impending attack. Yet, all the while, Mother Courage continues her travels with her wagon, indomitably businesslike, calculating how she can make material profit from the war and turn conflict into capital.

Filled with essential advice and highlighting pitfalls to avoid, Acting Professionally gives a clear understanding of how acting careers are built and sustained.

Now in its 9th edition, this book has become the leading book in the field since the first edition published in 1972.

Critically, this new edition reflects the vital changes in the industry as a result of the Black Lives Matter, Time's Up and MeToo movements, and the Covid-19 pandemic. This new edition acknowledges and seeks to address the challenges of the industry often faced by actors when it comes to race, ethnicity, gender, diversity, and sexuality. It includes an extensive new section on the industry to reflect the 21st century, including signposting new resources and insights for the young actor, and considers the shifting landscape and opportunities offered by TV streaming, films, voiceover, internet, audiobooks, and podcasts. This 9th edition speaks to the changed landscape of unions, representation, self-tape auditioning and other best and up to date practices in the industry, ensuring that it's a book that's useful, relevant and accessible to every actor starting out today.

In the early 1930s, during his first years of exile and 20 years before the publication of his seminal work To the Actor, Michael Chekhov made his first incursion into the challenging task of writing about an actor's experience and his vision of the craft.

This important, though largely forgotten, work (the so-called 'Paris Manuscript') was handwritten in German and in it we find Chekhov laying the groundwork for the canon of exercises and practices that, nearly a century later, has widely become known as the Michael Chekhov Technique. Although never completed, the manuscript affords a privileged fly-on-the-wall glimpse of the dawning of an artistic genius's creative vision.

This manuscript was the result of Chekhov's rich collaboration with Swiss theatre director, painter and illustrator Georgette Boner, and the text itself is supplemented with facsimile scans of manuscript pages, photographs, correspondence and other material from Boner's personal archive.

As the popularity of the Michael Chekhov Technique continues to spread globally, the 'Paris Manuscript' offers a timely invitation for actors to take a step back and (re)discover for themselves the structural foundations of Michael Chekhov's vision.

Chekhov's text has been translated, edited and abridged by Hugo Moss, co-founder and director of Michael Chekhov Brasil, who has written an introduction and a series of short essays, 'Reflections From the Studio', which build on a few key elements emerging from the manuscript and over a decade of exploring Chekhov's artistic legacy in the studio environment and in performance.

This anthology documents a decade of some of the UK's most exciting queer performance, through a combination of retrospective scripts, development material and visual documentation.

Queer performance is expected to live a brief, bright life without leaving any textual record. Indeed, it rarely begins with a complete script at all, being often developed instead by performance practices designed to fill noisy bars, clinking cabaret venues and fringe theatres, typically for short runs. This lack of textual documentation underplays the importance of writing to contemporary queer performance, while rendering it vulnerable to disappearance in the diaphanous archives of memory.

Writing Queer Performance: Contemporary Texts and Documents features eight seminal works, captured through performance texts and visual documentation, that ensures their accessibility long after the event of live performance. Supported by a contextualizing introduction, the anthology provides a panoramic view of contemporary preoccupations, processes and practices.

This book provides an insight into the life of a professional lighting designer, through interviews with lighting designers at different stages of their careers plus a group interview with the designer and lighting team of the hit musical Billy Elliot.
The designers featured are The interviewees are: Neil Austin, Natasha Chivers, Jon Clark, Paule Constable, Rick Fisher, Richard Howell, Howard Hudson, Jessica Hung Han Yun, Mark Jonathan, Amy Mae, Ben Ormerod, Bruno Poet, Jackie Shemesh and Johanna Town. Between them, they have worked all over the world on shows of every genre - collecting many awards for their work along the way.
They share inspiration and practical advice, useful to anyone embarking on a career in lighting, fascinating to anyone who enjoys going to the theatre, offering insights into:

> approaching a new design;
> dealing with the challenges each new show brings, from working with a new director to being part of a creative team in realising a piece;
> the use of light and dark, colour and texture;
> managing collaborations, with directors, designers and their own team of associate and assistant lighting designers, programmers and electricians.
> and beyond the art and craft of lighting, the practicalities of a lighting career - moving from just getting enough work to pay the bills, to lighting the world's biggest shows.