This anthology examines Love's Labours Lost from a variety of perspectives and through a wide range of materials. Selections discuss the play in terms of historical context, dating, and sources; character analysis; comic elements and verbal conceits; evidence of authorship; performance analysis; and feminist interpretations. Alongside theatre reviews, production photographs, and critical commentary, the volume also includes essays written by practicing theatre artists who have worked on the play.

This collection of essays and reviews represents the most significant and comprehensive writing on Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors. Miola's edited work also features a comprehensive critical history, coupled with a full bibliography and photographs of major productions of the play from around the world.

This book covers the history of theater as well as the literature of America from 1880-1930. The years covered by this volume features the rise of the popular stage in America from the years following the end of the Civil War to the Golden Age of Broadway, with an emphasis on its practitioners, including such diverse figures as William Gillette, Mrs. Fiske, George M. Cohan, Maude Adams, David Belasco, George Abbott, Clyde Fitch, Eugene O'Neill, Texas Guinan, Robert Edmond Jones, Jeanne Eagels, Susan Glaspell, The Adlers and the Barrymores, Tallulah Bankhead, Philip Barry, Maxwell Anderson, Mae West, Elmer Rice, Laurette Taylor, Eva Le Gallienne, and a score of others. Entries abound on plays of all kinds, from melodrama to the newly-embraced realistic style, ethnic works (Irish, Yiddish, etc.), and such diverse forms as vaudeville, circus, minstrel shows, temperance plays, etc. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of American Theater: Modernism covers the history of modernist American Theatre through a chronology, an introductory essay, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 2,000 cross-referenced entries on actors and actresses, directors, playwrights, producers, genres, notable plays and theatres. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the American Theater in its greatest era.

This book is open access and available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. It is funded by Knowledge Unlatched. Perfect for students of English Literature, Theatre Studies and American Studies at college and university, The Theatre of Tennessee Williams provides a lucid and stimulating analysis of Willams' dramatic work by one of America's leading scholars. With the centennial of his birth celebrated amid a flurry of conferences devoted to his work in 2011, and his plays a central part of any literature and drama curriculum and uibiquitous in theatre repertoires, he remains a giant of twentieth century literature and drama. In Brenda Murphy's major study of his work she examines his life and career and provides an analysis of more than a score of his key plays, including in-depth studies of major works such as A Streetcar Named Desire, The Glass Menagerie, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and others. She traces the artist figure who features in many of Williams' plays to broaden the discussion beyond the normal reference points. As with other volumes in Methuen Drama's Critical Companions series, this book features too essays by Bruce McConachie, John S. Bak, Felicia Hardison Londre and Annette Saddik, offering perspectives on different aspects of Williams' work that will assist students in their own critical thinking.

This book is open access and available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. It is funded by Knowledge Unlatched. Perfect for students of English Literature, Theatre Studies and American Studies at college and university, The Theatre of Tennessee Williams provides a lucid and stimulating analysis of Willams' dramatic work by one of America's leading scholars. With the centennial of his birth celebrated amid a flurry of conferences devoted to his work in 2011, and his plays a central part of any literature and drama curriculum and uibiquitous in theatre repertoires, he remains a giant of twentieth century literature and drama. In Brenda Murphy's major study of his work she examines his life and career and provides an analysis of more than a score of his key plays, including in-depth studies of major works such as A Streetcar Named Desire, The Glass Menagerie, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and others. She traces the artist figure who features in many of Williams' plays to broaden the discussion beyond the normal reference points. As with other volumes in Methuen Drama's Critical Companions series, this book features too essays by Bruce McConachie, John S. Bak, Felicia Hardison Londre and Annette Saddik, offering perspectives on different aspects of Williams' work that will assist students in their own critical thinking.

The 50-year period from 1880 to 1929 is the richest era for theater in American history, certainly in the great number of plays produced and artists who contributed significantly, but also in the centrality of theater in the lives of Americans. As the impact of European modernism began to gradually seep into American theater during the 1880s and quite importantly in the 1890s, more traditional forms of theater gave way to futurism, symbolism, surrealism, and expressionism. American playwrights like Eugene O'Neill, George Kelly, Elmer Rice, Philip Barry, and George S. Kaufman ushered in the Golden Age of American drama. The A to Z of American Theater: Modernism focuses on legitimate drama, both as influenced by European modernism and as impacted by the popular entertainment that also enlivened the era. This is accomplished through a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, and hundreds of cross-referenced entries on plays; music; playwrights; great performers like Maude Adams, Otis Skinner, Julia Marlowe, and E.H. Sothern; producers like David Belasco, Daniel Frohman, and Florenz Ziegfeld; critics; architects; designers; and costumes.

Though first performed some 400 years ago, the plays of William Shakespeare still continue to capture the popular imagination and are produced by numerous companies around the world. This reference describes over 140 Shakespeare companies and festivals worldwide. Each company or festival is profiled in a separate entry. Entries are grouped in chapters devoted to particular states or countries, and provide historical, organizational, demographic, and production information. Each profile describes the history of the festival or company; its organization, including staffing and budgeting; its physical facilities and performance site; the demographics of its audience and the community where it is located; and the company's or festival's approach to producing Shakespeare's plays. Each entry begins with a headnote providing essential information, such as the name, address, box office phone number, length of season, principal staff members, facilities, annual attendance, and budget. Each closes with a chronological listing of all Shakespeare's plays produced by the organization, and resources for further information.

The Decades of Modern American Drama series provides a comprehensive survey and study of the theatre produced in each decade from the 1930s to 2009 in eight volumes. Each volume equips readers with a detailed understanding of the context from which work emerged: an introduction considers life in the decade with a focus on domestic life and conditions, social changes, culture, media, technology, industry and political events; while a chapter on the theatre of the decade offers a wide-ranging and thorough survey of theatres, companies, dramatists, new movements and developments in response to the economic and political conditions of the day. The work of the four most prominent playwrights from the decade receives in-depth analysis and re-evaluation by a team of experts, together with commentary on their subsequent work and legacy. A final section brings together original documents such as interviews with the playwrights and with directors, drafts of play scenes, and other previously unpublished material. The major playwrights and their works to receive in-depth coverage in this volume include: * Eugene O'Neill: The Iceman Cometh (1946), A Moon for the Misbegotten (1947), Long Day's Journey Into Night (written 1941, produced 1956), and A Touch of the Poet (written 1942, produced 1958); * Tennessee Williams: The Glass Menagerie (1944), A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), Summer and Smoke (1948); * Arthur Miller: All My Sons (1947), Death of a Salesman (1949), and The Crucible (1953); * Thornton Wilder: Our Town (1938), The Skin of Our Teeth (1942), Shadow of a Doubt (1943), and The Alcestiad (written 1940s).

Sarah Bernhardt, Sir Henry Irving, Edwin Booth...there was a time when they all played Kansas City. From star-studded engagements at ornate opera houses to risque shows in Fourth Street honky-tonks, Kansas City was a cow town that wanted to civilize itself through the performing arts. And because it was a railway hub in the heyday of trouping, it opened its doors to America's traveling performers. This book chronicles the ""first golden age"" of Kansas City theater, from the opening of the Coates Opera House in 1870 through the gradual decline of touring productions after World War I. Drawing on the recollections of renowned theater critic David Austin Latchaw and on newspaper archives of the era, Felicia Londre has gleaned long-lost nuggets of theater life - both the legitimate stage and popular fare - to create a fascinating account of a city and its theater culture. ""The Enchanted Years of the Stage"" is brimming with forgotten stories and historical illustrations that offer a new perspective on both the history of American theater and the humor and pathos of performers' lives. It tells how James O'Neill once chased a messenger boy for ruining a big scene, while Louis James played practical jokes on fellow actors in the middle of Shakespeare performances; how police kept watch over the burlesque girls at the Folly to make sure their act wouldn't reach the level of indecency allowed in St. Louis; how Orth Stein shot the manager of the Theatre Comique; and how Eddie Foy played his death scene in Kansas City - by dying there. Throughout the book, sidebars of Larchaw's writing reflect the style and spirit of this bygone era. Offering a richer view of American theater than have accounts centered on New York, Londre's book also yields a wealth of new insights into the social and political fabric of an emerging metropolis and testifies to the importance of the arts in the growth and reputation of a great city. By conveying the richness and complexity of road shows in Kansas City - a microcosm of the burgeoning national stage - she gives us a key piece in the mosaic that was American theater in a neglected but unforgettable era.