Showing titles in Theatre

Clara Blow is a one-woman play in two acts about the life and times of Clara Bow. The "It" Girl was the movies' first American sex goddess. The star of Wings, the first film to win the Best Picture Oscar, Clara Bow's unhappy life, in many ways, paralleled that of her successor, Marilyn Monroe. A longtime victim of insomnia, Ms. Bow lies awake on the morning of her estranged husband's funeral and painfully remembers the mentally ill mother who once tried to kill her; her career as the ultimate "flapper" her many nervous breakdowns; and affairs with the likes of Gary Cooper, Gilbert Roland, director Victor Fleming, and, as is said, the USC football team.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia believed that the United States Constitution is the most reliable source for a fair interpretation of the law as it is applied today. He was, in other words, an "originalist". But aren't the laws written over 200 years ago subject to interpretation - or even guesswork? Edward Gero stars as the late Justice Scalia in John Strand's insightful look at Scalia's life and legal philosophy.

Prince Hal leaves the company of the knave Falstaff and his revelers in order to command his father's troops and fight the rebels at the Battle of Shrewsbury.

The theater is in the midst of a digital revolution! This audiobook provides listeners with an easy-to-understand overview of the digital technology currently available for the stage. In clear language, Digital Technical Theater Simplified explains digital technology in the fields of lighting, audio, video, and show control. All chapters contain do-it-yourself examples of how anyone can use these advanced technologies, as well as case studies of "how the pros do it".

To Each Their Own is a modern-writ comedy in the style of the Theatre of Elizabeth the First, written with a scholar's research and a modern Shakespearean actor's wit. It includes many of the elements we are used to seeing in Shakespeare (sassy servants, pompous Noblemen, love-at-first-sight, shipwrecks, magic, fights, sacrifice, and slapstick) and language that conveys much more than single emotions.

We Bombed in New London tells the true story of one man's tenacious plight to get his musical mounted. From its romantic inception to its eventual demise and then the score's resurrection in cabarets and recordings, this book takes you on a journey through the ups and downs of the theatrical world with all its excitement, disappointment, laughter and hope.

Daniel Day-Lewis is an actor regarded by many as the finest of his generation. His portrayal of cerebral-palsy sufferer Christy Brown in My Left Foot won him his first Oscar in 1990, and in 2008 another Oscar followed for his role in There Will Be Blood. His roles in The Age of Innocence, The Last of the Mohicans and In the Name of the Father further cemented his reputation as well as grossing millions at the box office, making Day-Lewis one of Hollywood's most bankable stars.

On a spring day in 1947, Mr. Rickey, the powerful General Manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, summons heavyweight champion Joe Louis, tap star Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, and actor Paul Robeson to his hotel room in Manhattan. Rickey wants their support when he taps Jackie Robinson to be the Major League's first black ballplayer. But a power struggle ensues when the eloquent Robeson raises questions about Rickey's motivations to integrate white baseball.

Smith's edgy and funny The Watts Towers Project focuses on Simon Rodia, the Italian immigrant who spent 33 years building his towers: only to walk away from them, never to return. Smith blends his own childhood, the life of Rodia, and the last quarter-century of L.A. history to create (in the words of Back Stage West) a "wonderfully eclectic piece".

Written by José Rivera, recent Academy Award Nominee for The Motorcycle Diaries, Each Day Dies with Sleep is the story of a young woman's struggle to find an identity apart from the two men in her life: her father and her husband. Written in Rivera's typical satiric and super realistic style, this fantastical tragi-comedy leaps from coast to coast, and from one outrageous moment to the next.

Paralyzed by grief and unable to put his thoughts into words, Nick, a fire captain, seeks the help of a writer to compose eulogies for the colleagues and friends he lost in the catastrophic events of September 11, 2001. As Joan, an editor, draws Nick out about "the guys," the substance and meaning that lie beneath the surface of seemingly unremarkable people is revealed. And Nick and Joan learn about themselves, about life, and about the healing power of human connection through talking about the guys.

Three prominent Americans debate the merits of unchecked immigration, national security, and civil rights. While it sounds like a contemporary, made-for-TV event, this confrontation takes place in 1799, with three of America's Founding Fathers as participants: Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, and Aaron Burr. Legendary radio dramatist Norman Corwin created this imagined discussion from the participants' actual writings - proving that when it comes to politics, some things never change.

After World War II, an African American war vet brings home his Japanese bride. The family must learn to be tolerant of their new family member, while dealing with prejudice in the outside world. An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring Mary Bond Davis, Yvonne Farrow, Bonnie Oda Homsey, Peter A. Jacobs, Carl Lumbly, Vonetta McGee, Don Reed, Charlie Robinson, and Patricia Thompson. Directed by Peggy Shannon. Recorded before a live audience in Santa Monica, CA, in January, 1991.

Four clergymen seek to make sense of their mission while being torn in all directions by the Church of England. After a critically-lauded debut in 1990 at London’s National Theatre, Racing Demon went on to earn universal acclaim. More than 20 years later, David Hare’s bold and moving revelations on gay ordination and the doctrine of the priesthood ring more resoundingly than ever.

Leo Beagle has spent two years writing a 638-page manifesto on human harmony that just might change the world. The problem is only that no one wants to read it, especially not Leo’s unharmonious family.

A comedy-drama about the good-hearted workers at North Shore Fish, a seafood processing plant in Gloucester, Massachusetts. When a government inspector lays down the law, their jobs and lives face irrevocable changes. An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring Kristin Ace, Karen Caplan, Laura Sigrid Crook, Heidi J. Dallin, John Fiore, Melissa Fitzgerald, Mary Klug, Marina Re and M.H. Rogers. Directed by Grey Johnson. Recorded before a live audience in March 1993.

Award-winning playwright, screenwriter and director Jane Anderson presents four one-act plays: A Seminar For Responsible Living; The Last Time I Saw Her; Earthquake Preparedness; Lynette Has PMS. With unforgettable characters and scathing humor, the stories explore the challenges of life in Los Angeles, from gun violence to earthquakes. These short pieces ask us to consider what we need to take with us into the next hundred years, and what is best left behind.

You start with a vision, and you deliver a compromise. You want a play to be challenging, ambitious, nuanced and complicated. You also want it to sell tickets. You want to make art, and you know you're in show business. These are some of the balancing acts that the National Theatre and this book are about. This is the inside story of 12 years at the helm of Britain's greatest theatre. It is a story of lunatic failures and spectacular successes.

April 14, 1865. A famous actor pulls a trigger in the presidential balcony, leaps to the stage, and escapes, as the president lies fatally wounded. In the panic that follows, forty-six terrified people scatter in and around Ford's Theater as soldiers take up stations by the doors and the audience surges into the streets chanting, "Burn the place down!" This is the untold story of Lincoln's assassination: The forty-six stage hands, actors, and theater workers on hand for the bewildering events in the theater that night.

In a thought-provoking new play, 13-year-old Lucy, who suffers from autism, moves in with her estranged, misanthropic mother. Having lived her entire life with her father, Lucy, as well as her mom, struggle with all the difficulties of such an arrangement.