WILL YOU RECOMMEND THEATRE BOOKS FOR SUMMER READING?

Summer is a great time to be reading theatre books, at the park, at the beach, or in your air conditioned apartment. I just completed reading two biographies which I thoroughly enjoyed: RAGE AND GLORY--THE VOLATILE LIFE AND CAREER OF GEORGE C. SCOTT by David Sheward, c.2008. I was lucky to have seen Scott in two of his most impressive roles on Broadway--as Willy Loman in DEATH OF A SALESMAN and as the Clarence Darrow character in INHERIT THE WIND(his last Broadway show).

The other book I just finished is A HELL OF A LIFE, an autobiography by Maureen Stapleton who I got to see only once on stage in A GLASS MENAGERIE. The book is often a howl.

What connects these two books is the excessive amount of drinking and swearing that these two stars engaged in.

I know that this kind of thread is on the Board from time to time, but I felt it was a good time to update a list of theatre books.

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Free For all: Joe Papp, The Public Theater and the Greatest Theater story ever told.

Finishing the Hat -- Sondheim

I Got the Show Right Here -- Cy Feuer

Second Act Trouble -- Steven Suskind

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I just ordered Not Since Carrie from Amazon. Can't wait for it to come this week so I can't start reading it!

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Listening Out Loud by Elizabeth Swados is a pretty nifty look into the mind of a theater composer, though it focuses more on music than theater.

I second the Helene Hanff book - what a fun read.

I got the Hanff book by checking in every second book store and library sale for about six months - got it for about $2.

My favorite theater books:

Everything Was Possible by Ted Chapin

Open and New Window by Ethan Mordden (All of his volumes are worthy, but this one is particularly vivid and wonderful)

Ghost Light by Frank Rich

Happy reading!

Just received "Everything Was Possible" in the mail today and ordered "Colored Lights." AFter those I'm looking forward to working through more on everyone's list.

Dramamama611: you can purchase a good used copy of Helene Hanff's UNDERFOOT IN SHOW BUSINESS for under $3.00 on Amazon.com. I have purchased used theatre books often and have never been disappointed in their condition.

I have ordered many of the suggested books on this thread already and hope to start with EVERYTHING WAS POSSIBLE since I will be seeing FOLLIES in December. The only other production of FOLLIES that I have seen was in London in 1987. I loved that production even though it has been trashed by some members of this Board.

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REWRITES -- Neil Simon's early comedies.

5 O'CLOCK ANGEL -- Tennessee Williams struggles with alcoholism.

"Stage Money" -- insights into the financing of commercial theatre, and the murky world of nonprofits.

Loved "Free For All".

Just finishing "On Broadway: Art and commerce on the Great White Way" by Steven Adler. Very interesting read and even more interesting to see how some things have changed since it was published in 2004. I like how it explains thing so you can easily understand them.

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Check out A Dead Man's Memoir: A Theatrical Novel by Mikhail Bulgakov. It's a semi-autobiographical novel that follows a writer who is on the verge of committing suicide when one of his plays is picked up by a theatre company that is a thinly veiled portrait of Stanislavski and the Moscow Art Theatre. It has since been adapted for the stage by a few different playwrights (I did a production of it in grad school, called Black Snow and adapted by Keith Reddin).

And for any future theatre majors you might as well pick up a copy of The Empty Space by Peter Brook, as well as some of the major acting texts such as Uta Hagen's Respect for Acting, On Acting by Sanford Meisner, and Stella Adler's The Art of Acting, to name a few.