Theatre category: 6638 books

A remarkably candid autobiography, utterly involving and often startlingly revelatory, Beside Myself is an inspiration to young actors and a treat for seasoned theatregoers. 'I wish I'd read this book when I was starting out. Not only is Antony Sher one of the all-time greats of classical theatre,...

The gap between theory and practice in rehearsal is wide. many actors and directors apply theories without fully understanding them, and most accounts of rehearsal techniques fail to put the methods in context. Systems of Rehearsal is the first systematic appraisal of the three principal paradigms...

A collection of theatre plays on different themes. Stefan is the dramatisation of a notorious miscarriage of justice in which Stefan Kiszko served 16 years in prison after he was wrongly convicted of the assault and murder of an eleven-year old girl. The protagonist is his mother Charlotte, a working...

But you can't do this to us - my partner is about to have a baby and we need to eat and pay rent - and we need to eat - how is this legal! In the run-up to Christmas, three families are placed into cramped temporary accommodation. A middle-aged man and his elderly mum, a young family...

Paul Sills, the master of improvisation and founder of The Second City and creator of Story Theatre – and who has influenced some of theatre's most important directors, writers and actors – adapts for stage one of the classic works of literature, Charles Dickens' masterpiece, A Christmas Carol....

An anthology bringing together a selection of Claire Dowie's plays for young people, which are ideal for performance with a large cast. The anthology includes the following plays and an introduction by the author. Why Is John Lennon Wearing A Skirt? (Stage2 version, large cast) portrays...

Winner of the 2018 Tony Award for Best Musical After a mix-up at the border, Egypt’s Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra, bound for the cosmopolitan Israeli city Petah Tikvah, is stranded in a small desert town. With no transportation until the next day, the band is taken in by the locals....

A guide to the hidden workings of plays and the trade secrets that govern their writing - by the acclaimed playwright Steve Waters. Drawing on a wide range of drama, both historical and modern, Waters takes the reader through the key elements of dramatic writing - scenes, acts, space, time,...

What on earth is happening to our planet? And who knows what to do? Certainties are few: every living thing is related to every other living thing; our actions have consequences; change is continual and inevitable. The National Theatre asked four of the country's most exciting writers to investigate....

Reliance on devices like the photograph and slide will lead, I rather fear, to linguistic suicide. We must keep on challenging language to engage with all we suffer from in this new modern age. This epic sweep of a play takes us from a contemporary Westminster Abbey to the Arctic ship Fram...

In 1927, the first production of Pygmalion was staged in Brazil. At the time, over 65 per cent of the adult Brazilian population was illiterate, which makes it all the more surprising that directors and producers dared to stage such a controversial playwright – a writer who had often been rejected...

How do you prepare for your first day on the set? Why might a bad audition lead to a good job offer? How should you research? What's the effect of a long tour on your love-life? Can you have a glass of wine before a matinee? What's the difference between transitive and intransitive corpsing? What...

I'm really looking forward to robbing this bank! Mischief Theatre's smash-and-grab hit The Comedy About A Bank Robbery is a fast, fabulous comedy caper and the funniest show in the West End! Summer 1958. Minneapolis City Bank has been entrusted with a priceless diamond. An escaped convict is dead...

I can tell the difference between who I am and a side effect. The Effect is a clinical romance. Two young volunteers, Tristan and Connie, agree to take part in a clinical drug trial. Succumbing to the gravitational pull of attraction and love, however, Tristan and Connie manage to throw the...