Performing Arts Books

Hamlet (The New Folger Library Shakespeare)

William Shakespeare

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 34 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Utter Tripe 1 out of 5 stars.
5 of 18 people found this review helpful.

What kind of idiot writes this tripe? This is allegedly a "Play" by some long-dead "Master".

Well, let me tell, you: it's boring and derivative. It's about this Prince who doesn't get his father's throne, and feels all depressed about it for a while, and fights back against his uncle (who took the throne and married the prince's mother), to show everyone that it was actually the uncle who killed his father the king.

Excuse me? Haven't we heard this before?

Yep: Disney's "The Lion King".

This is "The Lion King" dressed up in period clothes. Instead of "Simba", we've got "Hamlet". Instead of "Scar", we've got "Claudius". Instead of "Nala", we've got "Ophelia".

And it's in "Denmark", instead of the African Plains. Denmark? Is that even a real country anymore? Anyways, it's called Europe, now; That's a part of London.

And don't get me started on the language this writer used! It's all like it's from the Bible and stuff. Get rid of that, and use real words: Take a lesson from someone like Stephen King.

Don't waste your time with this; watch "The Lion King", and you'll get it. And while you're at it, there's a bridge in Brooklyn I'm selling.

Editorial Review:

Each edition includes:

• Freshly edited text based on the best early printed version of the play

• Full explanatory notes conveniently placed on pages facing the text of the play

• Scene-by-scene plot summaries

• A key to famous lines and phrases

• An introduction to reading Shakespeare's language

• An essay by an outstanding scholar providing a modern perspective on the play

• Illustrations from the Folger Shakespeare Library's vast holdings of rare books

Essay by Michael Neill

The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., is home to the world's largest collection of Shakespeare's printed works, and a magnet for Shakespeare scholars from around the globe. In addition to exhibitions open to the public throughout the year, the Folger offers a full calendar of performances and programs. For more information, visit www.folger.edu.

The Crucible (Penguin Classics)

Arthur Miller

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 47 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

The Devil is Precise 5 out of 5 stars.
16 of 24 people found this review helpful.

On my walk through the LoA edition of Arthur Miller plays I bypass The Enemy of the People, the Ibsen adaptation, which I think is a waste of everyone's time, and go straight to the Crucible, which I had never read, nor watched on stage or screen. Very odd. It is a truly gripping piece of modern classic stage writing.
Of course AM needed to educate us always, so this story is not just a story about the witch trials of Salem, when perfectly harmless people, including some citizens of standing in the community, got identified as witches and hanged for it. (Which somehow looks like progress over the burnings in Europe.)
No, this is generally about fundamentalism and totalitarianism and theocracy, and more specifically about McCarthy and I wouldn't be surprised if it was also about the Ayatollah Khomeini, whatever you may say regarding anachronisms, and the Taliban. Let's not forget the Cultural Revolution of China.
If I seem to mock the play just a little bit, I haven't made up my mind yet, not quite. There is something strangely wrong in the tone of the dialogues. Can't quite nail it. Anachronistic for sure; is that all? Have to think about it.
The message that AM put into his morality tale is that power and property interests are behind the maddest manifestations of disinterestedness and righteousness. That was sure true in the other historical witch hunts that we know about. Whether it is an accurate reflection of the Salem case, I do not know. (I will definitely look for the DVD and give DDL a chance for redemption in my eyes.)

Editorial Review:

Based on historical people and real events, Arthur Miller's play uses the destructive power of socially sanctioned violence unleashed by the rumors of witchcraft as a powerful parable about McCarthyism.

Introduction by Christopher Bigsby

Macbeth (Folger Shakespeare Library)

William Shakespeare

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 15 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Yale's may be the best edition of Macbeth 5 out of 5 stars.
8 of 14 people found this review helpful.

Virtually all editions of Macbeth will have at least some annotations. Rummaging through five different editions, I preferred the Yale University Press version, edited by Burton Raffel, as having the most comprehensive and comprehensible notes, as well as an excellent introduction to Shakespeare's play. Raffel not only explains the meanings of obscure words, but also gives brief notes pertaining to relevant history, geography, stage directions, etc, that are rarely addressed as fully by other editors. In addition, Raffel frequently gives the proper way to stress the syllables in a line when reading it aloud, which can be extremely helpful. (However, in most places these stresses need to be very subtle, so that you don't sound like "taDUM taDUM taDUM".) And Yale's page layout is among the clearest that I've seen.

(To find this edition: at Avanced Search, enter ISBN 0300106548; or, enter Macbeth as title, and either Raffel as author or Yale as publisher.)

As a bonus, this edition includes at the back a long essay on the play by Harold Bloom. This is not an uninteresting commentary, but Bloom desperately needs a good editor. His essay is not only at least three times longer than it should be, but is startlingly repetitious. Yale would have been wise to have asked Bloom for a rewrite.

Editorial Review:

Each edition includes:

• Freshly edited text based on the best early printed version of the play

• Full explanatory notes conveniently placed on pages facing the text of the play

• Scene-by-scene plot summaries

• A key to famous lines and phrases

• An introduction to reading Shakespeare's language

• An essay by an outstanding scholar providing a modern perspective on the play

• Illustrations from the Folger Shakespeare Library's vast holdings of rare books

Essay by Susan Snyder

The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., is home to the world's largest collection of Shakespeare's printed works, and a magnet for Shakespeare scholars from around the globe. In addition to exhibitions open to the public throughout the year, the Folger offers a full calendar of performances and programs. For more information, visit www.folger.edu.

Romeo and Juliet (Folger Shakespeare Library)

William Shakespeare

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 28 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Can Love Conquer All? 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Innocent love is the most pure... and the sight of those who are in that beautiful whirlwind of its hypnotic clutches is a sight to behold.

Is it true? "Is youth wasted on the young."

Sometimes, sometimes not.

Romeo and Juliet is the most known western love story of all time.

Why?

This is not an easy question to answer, however, personally, I would never go back to those extremes of pure love; that game playing, jealousy, love-making so innocent,(wonderful) and the relationship inevitably ending in tragedy.

What makes this 500 year old love story one of a kind is its "truth", that we are essentially envious beings, and pure love is something we all either unconsciously or consciously yearn for...and attempt to destroy.

Shakespeare was a clever fellow: with the sacrifice of these two lover's, at last, the feuding families ended their years of fighting... the Montague's & Capulet's. Peace fell upon Verona.

Does true love always end in tragedy?

A good question.

Shakespeares' classic is considered a "love story"; but the Bard revealed pure love's true irony...young love so pure, so intense, so true, the god's become envious and tragedy is pure love's ultimate end.

Very sad, but very true.

As the cliche' goes:

"Nothing ventured nothing gained."

Re-read this beautiful story and reflect that true love just might conquer all.

Editorial Review:

Each edition includes:

• Freshly edited text based on the best early printed version of the play
• Full explanatory notes conveniently placed on pages facing the text of the play
• Scene-by-scene plot summaries
• A key to famous lines and phrases
• An introduction to reading Shakespeare's language
• An essay by an outstanding scholar providing a modern perspective on the play
• Illustrations from the Folger Shakespeare Library's vast holdings of rare books

The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., is home to the world's largest collection of Shakespeare's printed works, and a magnet for Shakespeare scholars from around the globe. In addition to exhibitions open to the public throughout the year, the Folger offers a full calendar of performances and programs. For more information, visit www.folger.edu.

Othello (Folger Shakespeare Library)

William Shakespeare

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 11 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Villainy as art 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

The most beautiful aspect of the play is Iago's ingenious deception of Othello. In every phrase, Iago knows just what to say to swing his Moor closer to the belief in Desdemona's infidelity. The subtle strategist to his general (and the puppeteer to Roderigo and Cassio), Iago is in full glory practicing his art of insinuation.

Iago is the master of duplicity: "Divinity of hell! When devils will the blackest sins put on, they do suggest at first with heavenly shows". Here he echoes Banquo in Macbeth: "To win us to our harm, the instruments of darkness tell us truths, win us with honest trifles, to betray's in deepest consequence". However, while in Macbeth the devious instruments of darkness were netherworldly creatures, here Iago himself takes on devil's work. Treachery plays here the most insidious part: it lays the ground for murder.

Treachery itself takes its roots in hatred. While Richard III and Macbeth are murderers for their own advancement, Iago's guiding star in his hunt is hatred. His "I hate the Moor" at the end of the 1st act, breaking the flow of the soliloquy in which he derides Roderigo (and not unlike Richard III's "Ha!") is the essence of Iago in a line.

The reasons for his hatred are not as clear cut. Iago knows that his being cuckolded by Othello is a mere suspicion (but willfully decides that he does not want to know for sure and will act as if it were true). This is his private (false) excuse for hating Othello. His public one, or at least the one he presents to Roderigo, is having been passed over in the pecking order of military ranking. But he only gives this argument to Roderigo and never repeats it in any soliloquies. And we know how much Iago can be trusted when he speaks to someone else...

His take on Cassio is not much more lucid. Cassio is surely not married, and yet according to Iago, he is "a fellow almost damned in a fair wife" (whether this is one of Shakespearean slips where he forgot to give Cassio a wife or a mutation of "life" into "wife", the phrase is just too beautiful to disregard, even if it does not fit with the text). "He hath a daily beauty in his life that makes me ugly" complains Iago of Cassio. He also worries of having been cuckolded by the lieutenant. The former may signify Iago's fear of looking bad in the face of Cassio's promotion (although "daily" and especially "beauty" do not really fit, so the phrase could signify other things and overall seems obscure). The latter suspicion is just preposterous.
So it appears that Iago, whom in this play Shakespeare gave most artful language, is sometimes inconsequential and opaque. While it may not have been Shakespeare's intent, one could conclude from this that hatred may exist for Iago without any real reasons at all. Some people fall in love for no reason, Iago may have fallen in hatred for no reason. Maybe Iago's excuses for his actions are just his awkward attempts at justifying his inexplicable hatred?

In any case, with all his hatred and scheming, Iago is another spectacular Shakespearean villain endowed with inspired language. His art of intrigue ensures him a place among Shakespeare's leading characters (villains for the most part) and will entertain our enduring fascination with human nature's dark side...

Editorial Review:

Folger Shakespeare Library

The world's leading center for Shakespeare studies

Each edition includes:

• Freshly edited text based on the best early

printed version of the play

• Full explanatory notes conveniently placed on pages facing the text of the play

• Scene-by-scene plot summaries

• A key to famous lines and phrases

• An introduction to reading Shakespeare's language

• An essay by an outstanding scholar providing a modern perspective on the play

• Illustrations from the Folger Shakespeare Library's vast holdings of rare books

Essay by Susan Snyder

The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., is home to the world's largest collection of Shakespeare's printed works, and a magnet for Shakespeare scholars from around the globe. In addition to exhibitions open to the public throughout the year, the Folger offers a full calendar of performances and programs.

August: Osage County

Tracy Letts

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 25 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Drama

"A tremendous achievement in American playwriting: a tragicomic populist portrait of a tough land and a tougher people."-Time Out New York

"Tracy Letts' August: Osage County is what O'Neill would be writing in 2007. Letts has recaptured the nobility of American drama's mid-century heyday while still creating something entirely original."-New York magazine

One of the most bracing and critically acclaimed plays in recent Broadway history, August: Osage County is a portrait of the dysfunctional American family at its finest-and absolute worst. When the patriarch of the Weston clan disappears one hot summer night, the family reunites at the Oklahoma homestead, where long-held secrets are unflinchingly and uproariously revealed. The three-act, three-and-a-half-hour mammoth of a play combines epic tragedy with black comedy, dramatizing three generations of unfulfilled dreams and leaving not one of its thirteen characters unscathed. After its sold-out Chicago premiere, the play has electrified audiences in New York since its opening in November 2007.

Tracy Letts is the author of Killer Joe, Bug, and Man from Nebraska, which was a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. His plays have been performed throughout the country and internationally. A performer as well as a playwright, Letts is a member of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, where August: Osage County premiered.

The Tempest (Folger Shakespeare Library)

William Shakespeare

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 12 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

"Come unto these yellow sands..." 4 out of 5 stars.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful.

One of Shakespeare's most beloved works, The Tempest is a classic tale of adventure that combines revenge drama, romance, and comedy, all of it driven by magic and the supernatural. The play also uses manifold references to ancient myth to develop its sense of seabound peril, while drawing brilliant parallels to the colonial impulse that was then rapidly on the rise in Europe. Indeed, one of The Tempest's most singular triumphs is how it metaphorically addresses the complexities of colonialism in ways that somehow manage to speak to 20th and 21st century concerns. Of course, Shakespeare being the genius that he is, there's more to it than that- this is also a story of love, revenge, redemption, and political intrigue, full of well-drawn characters and unexpected plot turns. It doesn't rank with Shakespeare's best (in my opinion, anyway)- it doesn't have the stunning emotional impact of Hamlet or the labyrinthine psychological exploration of Macbeth. It's a gem, but a slightly minor one compared to his greatest masterpieces. But then again, what isn't?

Editorial Review:

Each edition includes:

• Freshly edited text based on the best early printed version of the play

• Full explanatory notes conveniently placed on pages facing the text of the play

• Scene-by-scene plot summaries

• A key to famous lines and phrases

• An introduction to reading Shakespeare's language

• An essay by an outstanding scholar providing a modern perspective on the play

• Illustrations from the Folger Shakespeare Library's vast holdings of rare books

Essay by Barbara A. Mowat

The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., is home to the world's largest collection of Shakespeare's printed works, and a magnet for Shakespeare scholars from around the globe. In addition to exhibitions open to the public throughout the year, the Folger offers a full calendar of performances and programs. For more information, visit www.folger.edu.

The Theater Experience Tenth Edition

Edwin Wilson

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

not boring 4 out of 5 stars.
4 of 5 people found this review helpful.

I had to get this book for my theatre appreciation class. it taught me alot that i didnt really think about when i went to see a play....thought provoking.

Theater majors might be bored... 3 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I read this text for my theater appreciation class. As a theater major that already knows most of the basics, it was boring at times for me personally, but it is a good source to get information on theater.

Editorial Review:

The ideal theater appreciation text for courses focusing on theater elements, The Theater Experience encourages students to be active theater-goers as they learn about the fundamentals of a production. By addressing the importance of the audience, Wilson brings the art of performance to life for students who may have little experience with the medium.

Julius Caesar (The New Folger Library Shakespeare)

William Shakespeare

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 15 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

The Power Of Language 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 5 people found this review helpful.

Julius Caesar is murdered very shortly into this play so while he bears the title the play is about the conspirators and the supporters of caesar and the struggle for power that comes after his asassination. The power of language to persude the masses and the fickle nature of crowds are only a few of the themes that Shakespeare explores.

Shakespeare explores the nature of tyranny, politics and absolute power in ways that must have been remarkably risky and controversial in his day.

Someone below noted that we have come to believe that the events as Shakespeare crafted them in his play are how this really happened. "Et Tu Brutus", etc. This is one of the better known and more widely read of Shakespeare's works and is the way many middle school kids are introduced to Shakespeare (maybe rivaled by Romeo and Juliet).

That said it is a fine drama and after multiple readings will still yield something new to think about or some new phrase that will stick in the readers mind.

When Brutus and Antony each deliver their respective addresses to the crowd following Caesar's death Shakespeare demonstrates a universal truth that people can be persuaded by words and the body politic is susceptable to a good propogandist. As true today as it was then.

Editorial Review:

Folger Shakespeare Library

The world's leading center for Shakespeare studies

Each edition includes:

• Freshly edited text based on the best earlyprinted version of the play

• Full explanatory notes conveniently placed on pages facing the text of the play

• Scene-by-scene plot summaries

• A key to famous lines and phrases

• An introduction to reading Shakespeare's language

• An essay by an outstanding scholar providing a modern perspective on the play

• Illustrations from the Folger Shakespeare Library's vast holdings of rare books

Essay by Coppélia Kahn

The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., is home to the world's largest collection of Shakespeare's printed works, and a magnet for Shakespeare scholars from around the globe. In addition to exhibitions open to the public throughout the year, the Folger offers a full calendar of performances and programs.

Understanding Movies, 11th Edition

Louis Giannetti

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Subjects -> Entertainment -> Movies -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 17 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Helps readers understand how the many languages of film work together to create meaning. Louis Giannetti organizes Understanding Movies around the key elements of filmmaking, including cintematography, Mise en Scène, movement, editing, sound, acting, drama, casting, story, screenwriting, ideology, and theory. He synthesizes every element through a complete case study: Citizen Kane. This book's ideas are illuminated with hundreds of high-quality still photos, more than 70 in full color, taken from movies such as The Matrix, Almost Famous, jackass the movie, Chicago, Lord of the Rings, Mystic River, and Traffic. New in this edition: a full section on contemporary special effects and computer generated imagery (CGI); up-to-the-minute information on new developments in film technology; more coverage of recent films and filmmakers; more ethnic diversity (including new material on the Islamic cinema); and more lavish use of color and high-quality paper. An updated Companion Website contains animations, video clips from interviews with movie professionals, and Research Navigator access to New York Times film reviews. For everyone who wants to understand the artistry and meaning of the movies.