Drama Theatre

Award-winning British playwright, composer and screenwriter Leo Butler looks back over 25 of writing for the stage and his extensive experience teaching and mentoring emerging playwrights. With honesty and humour, Leo Butler shares his experiences from his working-class upbringing in Sheffield, including his disastrous state education, his years on the dole, to his breakthrough into the professional theatre industry.

Had I become disenchanted with the form I had once fallen so madly in love with as a pubescent, pimple-faced suburban homo with braces? Maybe theatre was like an all-consuming high school infatuation that now, ten years later, I saw as the closeted balding guy with a beer gut he’d become. There were of course those rare moments of transcendence that kept me coming back. But why did they come so few and far between?

The extraordinary true story of Abe, a man the playwright met at his synagogue. Abe was a fellow of great humor and heart who not only survived three years at Auschwitz - certainly the worst place on earth - but fell in love there. Abe’s life speaks to the resilience of the human spirit, renewal, and hope, even when there seems to be none.

Performing children have a very special existence which sometimes sets them apart from their peers. Parents are often excluded from this world but are expected to support them all the way. There is very little authoritative advice on how to cope and what to expect. This book will help children and their parents navigate their way through all of this: to advise, guide, inform and demystify the wonderful world of live theatre.

Noël Coward on theatre was as dazzling and entertaining as his masterful plays and lyrics. Here his ideas and opinions on the subject are brilliantly brought together in an extraordinary collection of commentary, lyrics, essays, and asides on everything having to do with the theatre and...

Lucian Msamati draws on his rich experience, particularly in the context of productions at the National Theatre to delve into sets of challenges and possibilities that actors might face. He offers up his tips on getting started in the industry; navigating the various professional relationships and roles inside a rehearsal room; and offers insights into running your own company and generating your own work.

In this fascinating and deeply researched book, Sharon Marcus challenges everything you thought you knew about our obsession with fame. Icons are not merely famous for being famous; the media alone cannot make or break stars; fans are not simply passive dupes. Instead, journalists, the public, and celebrities themselves all compete, passionately and expertly, to shape the stories we tell about celebrities and fans. The result: a high-stakes drama as endless as it is unpredictable.

Joanne Taylor - former TV Diva - is on the verge of her 50-something birthday, seriously single, 'hot-flushing' and about to make some drastic changes in her life. Pulling Faces is an acerbic, topical comedy about society’s obsession with youth, beauty and transformation.

The Risk Theatre Model of Tragedy presents a profoundly original theory of drama that speaks to modern audiences living in an increasingly volatile world driven by artificial intelligence, gene editing, globalization, and mutual-assured destruction ideologies. Tragedy, according to risk theatre, puts us face to face with the unexpected implications of our actions by simulating the profound impact of highly improbable events.

Is theater really dead? Does the theater, as its champions insist, really provide a more intimate experience than film? If so, how have changes in cinematic techniques and technologies altered the relationship between stage and film? What are the inherent limitations of representing three-dimensional spaces in a two-dimensional one, and vice versa? American Drama in the Age of Film examines the strengths and weaknesses of both the dramatic and cinematic arts to confront the standard arguments in the film-versus-theater debate.

Theatre Royal. The very name summons up something of grandeur and eloquence. And it was. Hosted by Laurence Olivier, these big-name productions also included the creme de la creme of acting talents from John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson, and Orson Welles to Trevor Howard, Michael Redgrave and Olivier himself. They were based on works by the world's leading authors, among them Charles Dickens, Henry James, Oscar Wilde and Anton Chekhov. These are but a few of whose company we shall be keeping as we raise the curtain on our first instalment of theatrical history.

In London England, an exact replica of the 17th century William Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre opened in 1995. Audio journalist, Lee Daley is exploring the Globe Theatre with actress and docent, Kitty Grimes. Ms Grimes tells us how the new Globe Theatre began while we walk through the scrim and into a Shakespeare past.