English Theater

Grace is an usher at the stately (and possibly haunted) Royal Ruby Theater. She’s also an aspiring actress ready for her big break. Vanessa is the glamorous yet spiteful star who’s made more enemies than friends on her rise to the top. When Vanessa winds up dead in act one, Grace is determined to find the killer. But is she seeking justice, or something darker?

At the height of the McCarthy era, an experimental theater troupe set up shop in a bar near the University of Chicago. Via word-of-mouth, astonished crowds packed the ad-hoc venue to see its unscripted, interactive, consciousness-raising style. From this unlikely seed grew the Second City, the massively influential comedy theater troupe, and its offshoots - the Groundlings, Upright Citizens Brigade, SNL, and a slew of others. Sam Wasson charts the meteoric rise of improv in this richly reported, scene-driven narrative.

In these essays, TV’s Frank Conniff focuses on twenty-five of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 films he found and riffed with his fellow MST3K writers and cast mates. It tells the story of how a comedian who was lucky enough to work on beloved Peabody Award winning TV show was transformed into a comedian who was lucky enough to work on a beloved Peabody Award winning TV show. It’s a story that will stay with you for the rest of your life, if you happen to die just as you finish listening to the book.

London, 1815. Amateur sleuth Atlas Catesby is about to discover the dark side of the bright lights. His long-awaited night at the opera with Lady Lilliana ends abruptly when a notorious courtesan is shot to death in Covent Garden. The infamous victim was the mistress of the powerful Marquess of Vessey. Atlas believes that the marquess - his former brother in law - is responsible for the long-ago death of Atlas' sister, Phoebe. Atlas seizes the opportunity to potentially avenge his sister's death.

In the late Fifties and Sixties, iconoclastic young rebels in Chicago opened two tiny theaters—The Compass and The Second City—where they satirized politics, religion, and sex. Developing scenes by improvising based on audience suggestions turned out to be a fine way to develop great actors, directors, and writers. Alumni went on to create such groundbreaking works as The Graduate, Groundhog Day, and Don't Look Up. Many of them also became stars on Saturday Night Live. Something Wonderful Right Away features the pioneers who founded the empire that transformed American comedy.

A reckoning with one of our most beloved art forms, whose past and present are shaped by gender, racial, and class inequities—and a look inside the fight for its future Every day, in dance studios all across America, legions of little children line up at the barre to take ballet class. This...

Growing up on Long Island, lonely and quiet and queer, she was enchanted by Hollywood starlets like Kim Novak. She found her turn in New York’s early Off-Off-Broadway theater scene, in Warhol’s films Flesh and Women in Revolt, and at the famed nightclub Max's Kansas City. She inspired songs by Lou Reed and the Rolling Stones. She became friends with Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, borrowed a dress from Lauren Hutton, posed for Richard Avedon, and performed alongside Tennessee Williams in his own play.

This intimate true account of Americans at war follows theepic drama of an unlikely group of men forced to work together in the face of an increasingly desperate enemy during the final year of World War II. Sprawling across the Pacific, this untold story follows the crew of the newly-built...

Meet Alex, a photographer on a holiday with his family in the south of France. Meet Abe, a music producer with a baby on the way. Two men - both fathers, husbands, and sons - take us on a journey you will never forget. The finest actors of their generation, Academy Award® nominee Jake Gyllenhaal (Sunday in the Park with George) and Tony Award nominee Tom Sturridge (1984), had audiences roaring to their feet during the sold-out Broadway engagement. Now Sea Wall / A Life, a dramatic exploration of transformative love and devastating loss, comes to Audible.

As Qube and her companions reach the end of the now thoroughly broken game, they must come to grips with the nature of their reality, and the world beyond. Interested parties from the real world clash with our heroes as they scramble to defeat the Evil Emperor in time and reveal the secrets they’ve been keeping from one another. In an increasingly relevant dilemma, these video game characters, born of AI, must decide what it means to be free.

The Big Secret Book is an invaluable guide on the subject of creativity, no matter the preferred artistic discipline. Written by Denise Clarke, director of One Yellow Rabbit Summer Lab Intensive, the book outlines methods and methodologies of the Lab that have inspired writers, dancers, musicians, as well as performance theatre artists.

Upon arrival in Edmonton, Jessica is quickly outed as mystery writer J. B. Fletcher, and despite numerous protests, a hotel staffer arranges a book signing for her. This and touristy adventures arranged for the group make for a much busier trip than Jessica was expecting. When a hotel bartender, who also happens to be a stagehand for Emma’s play, turns up dead backstage at the theater, Jessica’s fun and relaxing vacation quickly becomes anything but.

Lio Aetos is the Young Aristocrat and heir apparent to a legendary Greek sect, a prodigious talent born and bred for glory. Solus is a slave, a disgraced patrician from the fallen city of Rome with nothing to his name. They're as different as the East is from the West. Yet both of them hunger—to cast off the threads of Fate they’ve been given. To reach for a higher purpose. In this world of ruined empires and long-forgotten gods, the Young Aristocrat and the Son of Rome share an unyielding conviction.

Runyon's short stories are almost always told in the first person by a narrator who is never named and whose role is unclear; he knows many gangsters and has no job that can be gleaned from his musings, nor does he admit to any criminal involvement; he’s a bystander, an observer, an average street-corner Joe. Runyon described himself as 'being known to one and all as a guy who is just around'. That line seems to say a lot about Runyon and his life.

Jack, Kate, their parents, and pet cat Bruce Lee the Scar-Faced Ninja Attack Kitty from Japan (Who Smells Like Poop) went to bed one night like normal. But when they woke up, everything was not normal. They had been pulled into the kid's favorite video game: Minecraft! Join them in their hilarious adventures!

The pivotal true story of the first fifty-three days of the standoff between Imperial Japanese and a handful of Marine aviators defending the Americans dug in at Guadalcanal, from the New York Times bestselling author of Indestructible and Race of Aces. On August 20, 1942, twelve Marine...

After all the backstage ghost drama during Phantasm, things are quiet for the Backstagers of the St. Genesius School Drama Club - too quiet. But when that quiet is filled by a mysterious voice that haunts the Backstagers day and night, they set off on a globetrotting adventure to discover the ancient secrets of the legendary artifacts of the theater.

Get as close as you’ll get to a World War II–era P-51 Mustang without flying one yourself with this spellbinding collection of tales from the men who actually flew the planes into war. The North American Aviation P-51 Mustang first started appearing in real numbers in 1943, at the climax of...

After the death of his best friend, Ryuk logs into the online fantasy world of Tritania in hopes of seeing her again. Joined by a cantankerous goblin, a famous Swedish gamer, and a dragon, his guild sets out on an epic quest to find Tamana. Despite pressures from the real world and a mysterious faction known as the Shinigami, Ryuk uncovers a mind-blowing secret....

Out-of-work Latin teacher and borderline alcoholic Austin DeSantis is determined to spend his final days in the arms of a prostitute—that is if the aliens don’t exterminate humanity first. But when the aliens land at the Vatican, begin speaking Latin, and reveal themselves to be Catholic, the world turns upside down. Pressed into service as a translator and thrust into the center of humanity's first contact with a cryptic alien race, Austin must uncover their true intentions before religious turmoil rips the planet apart.