Talking Theatre: Interviews with Theatre People
By Ellen Schiff
In 1997, Richard Eyre, then director of England’s National Theatre, was asked to participate in an ambitious BBC and PBS television project chronicling the history of British theatre in the twentieth century. Eyre conducted some sixty interviews with playwrights, directors, actors, and designers. He brings forty-two of those conversations together in this splendid collection. Although Eyre’s subjects are primarily English, there is a fair representation of Irish, American and Canadian theatre ma |
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Jews and the Making of Modern German Theatre
By Ellen Schiff
This fine collection of essays, co edited by Jeanette R. Malkin and Freddie Rokem, has a double goal. It demonstrates the impressive range and significance of the roles played by Jews in every aspect of the co-creation of modern and avant-garde German theatre. It also examines the influences that theatrical involvement had on Jewish identity and self-image. These richly varied inquiries into the convergence in the theatre of the distinctively Jewish and the canonically German display the simulta |
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Clifford Odets' Awake and Sing and the Dawn of American Jewish Theater
By Ellen Schiff
This quintessentially American Jewish play presents an accurate, sometimes harrowing portrait of Depression-era life. The play was the centerpiece of the legendary 1935 season of The Group Theatre, a major player in national theater history. Examination of this play evidences the influence of 1930s theater on subsequent drama in America; the play is also an index of how Jews perceived America and how America perceived Jews. |
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Reading The Plays of Wendy Wasserstein
By Ellen Schiff
Jan Balakian’s painstaking examination of the Wasserstein canon probes well beyond the delights of a good evening in theatre. Aptly titled, it demonstrates how much of the substance of the plays even the most discerning theatergoer can miss in performance. Perhaps the most significant achievement of this book is its close attention to the development of Wasserstein’s oeuvre in concert with the political and cultural revolutions of the twentieth century. The study also situates the plays in the c |
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The Alchemist’s Laboratory: Essays On Theatre and the Art of Collaboration
By Ellen Schiff
The sixteenth century Flemish painting, “The Alchemist’s Laboratory,” on the dust jacket of this beautifully designed book depicts the many people and processes involved in transmuting single elements into gold. Such magical chemistry is the forerunner of the contemporary alchemy Robert Viagas examines in “Essays On Theatre and the Art of Collaboration.” However, if theatre is, as a second subtitle would have it, “The Divine Science,” it is not the work of divinities, but of imaginative, dedicat |
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Philosophers and Thespians:The search, on stage and off, for the means to establish existential truth
By Ellen Schiff
Freddie Rokem’s clearly-written and highly original book examines the creative possibilities in the interaction of two practices often regarded as competitive: thinking and acting. As the conjunction in the title, Philosophers and Thespians promises, a number of philosophers have employed performative strategies to express their ideas, while theatre makers have literally enacted their philosophical positions. |
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Book Review: Streisand is not one of its thirty-nine stars
By Ellen Schiff
The title of this big handsome book echoes Barbra Streisand’s voice, but Streisand is not one of its thirty-nine stars. Robert Viagas’ goal is to demonstrate the “continuum of stardom stretching back more than a century.” He explains that while some of his selection criteria were admittedly subjective, one index was mathematical: the performer had to have played starring roles in at least three Broadway musicals. So Fanny Brice is in; Streisand will have to keep working on the Great White Way. |
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Christopher Bigsby’s long dedication to Arthur Miller
By Ellen Schiff
This biography attests the standing of British professor Christopher Bigsby as the pre-eminent authority on America’s pre-eminent twentieth century dramatist. A teacher of American Studies at the University of East Anglia and director of its Arthur Miller Centre, Bigsby enjoyed a twenty-five year friendship with Miller and his third wife, Inge Morath. He brings to the writing of this book his extensive scholarship, exclusive access to unpublished materials, and the full co-operation of family me |
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