On 29 September 1981, Peter Turner received a phone call that would change his life. His former lover, Hollywood actress Gloria Grahame, had collapsed in a Lancaster hotel and was refusing medical attention. He had no choice but to take her into his chaotic and often eccentric family's home in Liverpool. Liverpool born and bred, Turner had first set eyes on Grahame when he was a young actor, living in London. Best known for her portrayal of irresistible femme fatales in films such as The Big Heat, Oklahoma and The Bad and the Beautiful, for which she won an Oscar, Grahame electrified audiences with her steely expressions and heavy lidded eyes and the heroines she bought to life were often dark and dangerous. Turner and Grahame became firm friends and remained so ever after their love affair had ended. And it was to him she turned in her final hour of need. Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool is an affectionate, moving and wryly humorous memoir of friendship, love and stardom.

LOPE DE VEGA (1562-1635), poet/playwright of unrivaled popularity during Spain's Golden Age of literature (including Miguel de Cervantes and Calder n de la Barca), rescued theater from ineffective conventions and claimed authorship of some 1800 titles. Many of the almost 500 existing plays are stagings of pivotal events and protagonists from national history. Lope entertains his eager public with colorful stories of the passions, heroism and villainy of the high and mighty blending these with the virtues and vices of ordinary folk and stock characters. In the twilight of the once great empire, now powerless and bankrupt, Lope draws his audience into a reimagined past that is confirmed and redeemed by a prophecy of future greatness. With the history play Lope gives new meaning to the moniker often ascribed to him, Phoenix of Spain.

In "Audiences of Empire," author Elaine Bunn proposes a new subgenre, the populist "national history play" that is communal and deliberately expansive. She shows Lope, the frustrated historian, connecting king to commoner and putting myths, legends and miracles to fresh use.

Finally, "Audiences of Empire" includes a personal reminiscence by the author about the challenges of the writing process and her experience as a feminist academic in a slowly transforming patriarchal university system. Her protracted research on Lope's early theater makes her aware finally of the significance of her own historical moment with surprising insights.

The Uncapturable is a wide-ranging reflection on the art of the mise en scene from the perspective of leading Argentinian theatre director Ruben Szuchmacher. It offers a timely and concise, though comprehensive, survey of the role and responsibility of the theatre director from the earliest times to the twenty-first century. Szuchmacher defines theatre as the confluence of four art forms - architecture, visual art, sound and literature - whose works only truly exist in the moment of encounter with an audience. He argues that, by taking full account of these four art forms, analysing them in detail and engaging thoughtfully with the many specialists who come together to bring a mise en scene into being, the director of today can still create work that innovates and inspires. The Uncapturable is as valuable to the apprentice director emerging from their training as it is to the veteran in need of fresh reflection. Szuchmacher draws on the unique learnings gleaned from working in Argentina, be it the impact on theatre of politics, the need for inventiveness in times of hardship, the phenomenon of Argentine 'circus theatre' or the adaptation of literary giants such as Borges, affording the Anglophone reader an alternative perspective on the ideas of theatre we often take for granted. Szuchmacher offers a unique blend of global knowledge, historical awareness and a pragmatic, resourceful and creative approach from a theatre artist working in Latin American through decades of change. The book is translated from the Spanish by William Gregory.

Stage rights! explores the work and legacy of the first feminist political theatre group of the twentieth century, the Actresses' Franchise League. Formed in 1908 to support the suffrage movement through theatre, the League and its membership opened up new roles for women on stage and off, challenged stereotypes of suffragists and actresses, created new work inspired by the movement and was an integral part of the performative propaganda of the campaign. Introducing new archival material to both suffrage and theatre histories, this book is the first to focus in detail on the Actresses' Franchise League, its membership and its work. The volume is formulated as a historiographically innovative critical biography of the organisation over the fifty years of its activities, and invites a total reassessment of the League within the accepted narratives of the development of political theatre in the UK. -- .

**THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLER** _______________ 'I want to be Sheila Hancock when I grow up' Lorraine Kelly 'Wise, witty, kind and true' - Sunday Times 'A sparkling memoir as funny and insightful as it's moving' - Daily Mail 'A captivating memoir' - Mail on Sunday _______________ A gloriously irreverent memoir from the frontline of old age - by the Sunday Times-bestselling author and legendary actor In Old Rage, one of Britain's best loved actors opens up about her ninth decade. Funny, feisty, honest, Sheila Hancock makes for brilliant company as she talks about her life as a daughter, a sister, a mother, a widow, an actor, a friend and looks at a world so different from the wartime world of her childhood. And yet - despite age, despite rage - she finds there are always reasons for joy. _______________ 'The much-loved actor candidly shares the fear, joy and frustration she has found in her ninth decade' - Guardian, Books of the Year 2022 'Sheila Hancock reflects upon her life and career with all the winning candour and warm-heartedness we have come to expect from the legendary actress' - Waterstones

The fully revised new edition of the uncensored 'Acto-biography' of the most controversial thespian of his generation. The memoirs of Nicholas Craig - theatrical eminence best known for his Trueplate in The Cuckolde of Leicester and more popularly as Gob in Oh No It's the Neighbours - are re-released for a grateful audience, updated with a wealth of new and controversial material. Startlingly truthful, unflinchingly illustrated, I, An Actor' is a piton up the slope of creativity for theatre fans and aspiring actors alike, revealing everything that most theatrical autobiographies cravenly avoid.

Exploring the Black Venus Figure in Aesthetic Practices critically examines a longstanding colonial fascination with the black female body as an object of sexual desire, envy, and anxiety. Since the 2002 repatriation of the remains of Sara Baartman to post-apartheid South Africa, the interest in the figure of Black Venus has skyrocketed, making her a key symbol for the restoration of the racialized female body in feminist, anti-racist and postcolonial terms. Edited by Jorunn Gjerden, Kari Jegerstedt, and Zeljka Svrljuga, this volume considers Black Venus as a product of art established and potentially refigured through aesthetic practices, following her travels through different periods, geographies and art forms from Baudelaire to Kara Walker, and from the Caribbean to Scandinavia. Contributors: Kjersti Aarstein, Carmen Birkle, Jorunn Svensen Gjerden, Kari Jegerstedt, Ulla Angkjaer Jorgensen, Ljubica Matek, Margery Vibe Skagen, Camilla Erichsen Skalle, Zeljka Svrljuga.

Focusing on contemporary English theatre, this book asks a series of questions: How has theatre contributed to understandings of the North-South divide? What have theatrical treatments of riots offered to wider debates about their causes and consequences? Has theatre been able to intervene in the social unease around Gypsy and Traveller communities? How has theatre challenged white privilege and the persistent denigration of black citizens? In approaching these questions, this book argues that the nation is blighted by a number of internal rifts that pit people against each other in ways that cast particular groups as threats to the nation, as unruly or demeaned citizens - as 'social abjects'. It interrogates how those divisions are generated and circulated in public discourse and how theatre offers up counter-hegemonic and resistant practices that question and challenge negative stigmatization, but also how theatre can contribute to the recirculation of problematic cultural imaginaries.

On 29 September 1981, Peter Turner received a phone call that would change his life. His former lover, Hollywood actress Gloria Grahame, had collapsed in a Lancaster hotel and was refusing medical attention. He had no choice but to take her into his chaotic and often eccentric family's home in Liverpool. Liverpool born and bred, Turner had first set eyes on Grahame when he was a young actor, living in London. Best known for her portrayal of irresistible femme fatales in films such as The Big Heat, Oklahoma and The Bad and the Beautiful, for which she won an Oscar, Grahame electrified audiences with her steely expressions and heavy lidded eyes and the heroines she bought to life were often dark and dangerous. Turner and Grahame became firm friends and remained so ever after their love affair had ended. And it was to him she turned in her final hour of need. Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool is an affectionate, moving and wryly humorous memoir of friendship, love and stardom.

This intimate, revealing portrait of Frank Sinatra-from the man closest to the famous singer during the last decade of his life-features never-before-seen photos and new revelations about some of the most famous people of the past fifty years, including Jackie Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, Sam Giancana, Madonna, and Bono. "If you are a Frank fan, buy this book" (Jimmy Kimmel). More than a hundred books have been written about legendary crooner and actor Frank Sinatra. Every detail of his life seems to captivate: his career, his romantic relationships, his personality, his businesses, his style. But a hard-to-pin-down quality has always clung to him-a certain elusiveness that emerges again and again in retrospective depictions. Until now. From Sinatra's closest confidant and an eventual member of his management team, Tony Oppedisano, comes an extraordinarily intimate look at the singing idol that offers "new information on almost every page" (The Wall Street Journal). Deep into the night, for more than two thousand nights, Frank and Tony would converse-about music, family, friends, great loves, achievements and successes, failures and disappointments, the lives they'd led, the lives they wished they'd led. In these full-disclosure conversations, Sinatra spoke of his close yet complex relationship with his father, his conflicts with record companies, his carousing in Vegas, his love affairs with some of the most beautiful women of his era, his triumphs on some of the world's biggest stages, his complicated relationships with his talented children, and, most important, his dedication to his craft. Toward the end, no one was closer to the singer than Oppedisano, who kept his own rooms at the Sinatra residences for many years, often brokered difficult conversations between family members, and held the superstar entertainer's hand when he drew his last breath. "Frank Sinatra fans, pull up a chair and let longtime confidante and road manager Tony Oppedisano regale you with tales from the entertainer's inner circle" (Parade magazine)-Sinatra and Me pulls back the curtain on a man whom history has, in many ways, gotten wrong.

In 1964, novelist/screenwriter Terry Southern met actress Gail Gerber on the set of ""The Loved One"". Though they were both married, there was an instant connection and they remained a couple until his death 30 years later. In her memoir, Gail recalls what life was like with 'the hippest guy on the planet' as they traveled from Los Angeles to New York to Europe and back again. She reveals what went on behind the scenes of Southern's movies including ""The Cincinnati Kid"", ""Barbarella"", and ""Easy Rider"". And she relives the 'highs' hanging out with The Rolling Stones and Peter Sellers in swinging '60s London to the lows, barely scraping by on a Berkshires farm during the '70s & '80s.

The definitive guide to a Hollywood legend. Few stars are as loved as Audrey Hepburn, today as much as ever. Beautiful, delicate, graceful - but always warm and natural - she stole our hearts. She was also brave, working tirelessly for UNICEF in the face of her own failing health. in this moving and heartwarming biography Alexander Walker traces the extraordinary combination of luck and talent that allowed a fragile little girl,who nearly died in Hitler's occupied Europe, to conquer, in just one year, the New York stage and the Hollywood screen. Walker analyses her ascent to power and world fame and reveals the sadness of her life: two failed marriages, a broken engagement, and the crushing disappointment that occupied her triumph in My Fair Lady. Most importantly of all, this biography reveals what no one has known until now: the truly terrifying family secret that tore Audrey's childhood apart and kept her forever silent about her parents.