Search results for ""Author Jeffrey Sweet""
Skyhorse Publishing Something Wonderful Right Away: The Birth of Second City—America's Greatest Comedy Theater
Discover the behind-the-scenes story of how The Second City theatre created a generation of world class great actors, directors, and writers. In the late Fifties and Sixties, iconoclastic young rebels in Chicago opened two tiny theatres—The Compass and The Second City—where they satirised 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 ground-breaking 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. This new edition tells even more of the story. Included for the first time is an interview with Viola Spolin, the genius who invented theatre games that were the foundation of improvisational theatre. Also included are dozens of follow-up stories about Mike Nichols, Barbara Harris, Del Close, Joan Rivers, Alan Arkin, and Gilda Radner, plus “You Only Shoot the Ones You Love,” the story of how this book’s author, playwright Jeffrey Sweet, ended up being so involved in the community he covered that he was captured by it.
£17.09
Yale University Press What Playwrights Talk About When They Talk About Writing
The art and craft of playwriting as explored in candid conversations with some of the most important contemporary dramatists Edward Albee, Lanford Wilson, Lynn Nottage, A. R. Gurney, and a host of other major creative voices of the theater discuss the art of playwriting, from inspiration to production, in a volume that marks the tenth anniversary of the Yale Drama Series and the David Charles Horn Foundation Prize for emerging playwrights. Jeffrey Sweet, himself an award-winning dramatist, hosts a virtual roundtable of perspectives on how to tell stories onstage featuring extensive interviews with a gallery of gifted contemporary dramatists. In their own words, Arthur Kopit, Marsha Norman, Christopher Durang, David Hare, and many others offer insights into all aspects of the creative writing process as well as their personal views on the business, politics, and fraternity of professional theater. This essential work will give playwrights and playgoers alike a deeper and more profound appreciation of the art form they love.
£22.50
Yale University Press The O'Neill: The Transformation of Modern American Theater
A lavishly illustrated celebration of the fifty-year history of the most influential theatrical organization in America, the O’Neill Theater Center "At the O'Neill, we were all engaged with full-hearted passion in sometimes the silliest of exercises, and all in service of finding that wiggly, elusive creature, a new play."—Meryl Streep "I would not be who or where I am today without the O'Neill."—Michael Douglas As the old ways of the commercial theater were dying and American playwriting was in crisis, the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center arose as a midwife to new plays and musicals, introducing some of the most exciting talents of our time (including August Wilson, Wendy Wasserstein, and Christopher Durang) and developing works that went on to win Pulitzer Prizes and Tony Awards. Along the way, it collaborated with then-unknown performers (like Meryl Streep, Michael Douglas, Courtney Vance, and Angela Bassett) and inspired Robert Redford in his creation of the Sundance Institute. This is the story of a theatrical laboratory, a place that transformed American theater, film, and television.
£50.23
