The Ballad of Soapy Smith

The Ballad of Soapy Smith PDF Author: Michael Weller
Publisher: Samuel French, Inc.
ISBN: 9780573619700
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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Book Description

The Ballad of Soapy Smith

The Ballad of Soapy Smith PDF Author: Michael Weller
Publisher: Samuel French, Inc.
ISBN: 9780573619700
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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Book Description


"That Fiend in Hell"

Author: Catherine Holder Spude
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806188189
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
As the Klondike gold rush peaked in spring 1898, adventurers and gamblers rubbed shoulders with town-builders and gold-panners in Skagway, Alaska. The flow of riches lured confidence men, too—among them Jefferson Randolph “Soapy” Smith (1860–98), who with an entourage of “bunco-men” conned and robbed the stampeders. Soapy, though, a common enough criminal, would go down in legend as the Robin Hood of Alaska, the “uncrowned king of Skagway,” remembered for his charm and generosity, even for calming a lynch mob. When the Fourth of July was celebrated in ’98, he supposedly led the parade. Then, a few days later, he was dead, killed in a shootout over a card game. With Smith’s death, Skagway rid itself of crime forever. Or at least, so the story goes. Journalists immediately cast him as a martyr whose death redeemed a violent town. In fact, he was just a petty criminal and card shark, as Catherine Holder Spude proves definitively in “That Fiend in Hell”: Soapy Smith in Legend, a tour de force of historical debunking that documents Smith’s elevation to western hero. In sorting out the facts about this man and his death from fiction, Spude concludes that the actual Soapy was not the legendary “boss of Skagway,” nor was he killed by Frank Reid, as early historians supposed. She shows that even eyewitnesses who knew the truth later changed their stories to fit the myth. But why? Tracking down some hundred retellings of the Soapy Smith story, Spude traces the efforts of Skagway’s boosters to reinforce a morality tale at the expense of a complex story of town-building and government formation. The idea that Smith’s death had made a lawless town safe served Skagway’s economic interests. Spude’s engaging deconstruction of Soapy’s story models deep research and skepticism crucial to understanding the history of the American frontier.

Historical Dictionary of Contemporary American Theater

Historical Dictionary of Contemporary American Theater PDF Author: James Fisher
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538123029
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 1233

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Book Description
Historical Dictionary of Contemporary American Theater. Second Edition covers theatrical practice and practitioners as well as the dramatic literature of the United States of America from 1930 to the present. The 90 years covered by this volume features the triumph of Broadway as the center of American drama from 1930 to the early 1960s through a Golden Age exemplified by the plays of Eugene O’Neill, Elmer Rice, Thornton Wilder, Lillian Hellman, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, William Inge, Lorraine Hansberry, and Edward Albee, among others. The impact of the previous modernist era contributed greatly to this period of prodigious creativity on American stages. This volume will continue through an exploration of the decline of Broadway as the center of U.S. theater in the 1960s and the evolution of regional theaters, as well as fringe and university theaters that spawned a second Golden Age at the millennium that produced another – and significantly more diverse – generation of significant dramatists including such figures as Sam Shepard, David Mamet, Maria Irené Fornes, Beth Henley, Terrence McNally, Tony Kushner, Paula Vogel, Lynn Nottage, Suzan-Lori Parks, Sarah Ruhl, and numerous others. The impact of the Great Depression and World War II profoundly influenced the development of the American stage, as did the conformist 1950s and the revolutionary 1960s on in to the complex times in which we currently live. Historical Dictionary of the Contemporary American Theater, Second Edition contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has more than 1.000 cross-referenced entries on plays, playwrights, directors, designers, actors, critics, producers, theaters, and terminology. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about American theater.

Actors and Audiences

Actors and Audiences PDF Author: Caroline Heim
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315456079
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 307

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Book Description
Actors and Audiences explores the exchanges between those on and off the stage that fill the atmosphere with energy and vitality. Caroline Heim utilises the concept of "electric air" to describe this phenomenon and discuss the charge of emotional electricity that heightens the audience’s senses in the theatre. In order to understand this electric air, Heim draws from in-depth interviews with 79 professional audience members and 22 international stage and screen actors in the United Kingdom, United States, France and Germany. Tapping into the growing interest in empirical studies of the audience, this book documents experiences from three productions – The Encounter, Heisenberg and Hunger. Peer Gynt – to describe the nature of these conversations. The interviews disclose essential elements: transference, identification, projection, double consciousness, presence, stage fright and the suspension of disbelief. Ultimately Heim reveals that the heart of theatre is the relationship between those on- and off-stage, the way in which emotions and words create psychological conversations that pass through the fourth wall into an "in-between space," and the resulting electric air. A fascinating introduction to a unique subject, this book provides a close examination of actor and audience perspectives, which is essential reading for students and academics of Theatre, Performance and Audience Studies.

Goose and Tomtom

Goose and Tomtom PDF Author: David Rabe
Publisher: Samuel French, Inc.
ISBN: 9780573662317
Category : American drama
Languages : en
Pages : 132

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Angels in the American Theater

Angels in the American Theater PDF Author: Robert A Schanke
Publisher: SIU Press
ISBN: 0809387433
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 333

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Book Description
Angels in the American Theater: Patrons, Patronage, and Philanthropy examines the significant roles that theater patrons have played in shaping and developing theater in the United States. Because box office income rarely covers the cost of production, other sources are vital. Angels—financial investors and backers—have a tremendous impact on what happens on stage, often determining with the power and influence of their money what is conceived, produced, and performed. But in spite of their influence, very little has been written about these philanthropists. Composed of sixteen essays and fifteen illustrations, Angels in the American Theater explores not only how donors became angels but also their backgrounds, motivations, policies, limitations, support, and successes and failures. Subjects range from millionaires Otto Kahn and the Lewisohn sisters to foundation giants Ford, Rockefeller, Disney, and Clear Channel. The first book to focus on theater philanthropy, Angels in the American Theater employs both a historical and a chronological format and focuses on individual patrons, foundations, and corporations.

Fathers and Sons

Fathers and Sons PDF Author: Brian Friel
Publisher: Samuel French, Inc.
ISBN: 9780573691072
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 156

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Book Description
Drama / 9 m., 6 f. / Var. sets. In rural Russia in the mid nineteenth century, a brilliant, anarchic young medical student arrives at the provincial family villa of his best friend, Arkady, for the summer vacation. He wants to despise the family for their imperturbable complacency and bourgeois effeteness, but he is tormented by conflicting emotions. His desperate action has tragic consequences. "The evening leaves you pondering not just the play's political implications but the ageless tragedy

Theater World 2001-2002

Theater World 2001-2002 PDF Author: John Willis
Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation
ISBN: 9781557836250
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
(Theatre World). Highlights of this new Theatre World , now in its 58th year, include Mamma Mia! with Louise Pitre; Thoroughly Modern Millie starring Tony Award-winner Sutton Foster; the downtown-moves-uptown triumph Urinetown starring Sutton's sibling Hunter Foster and John Cullum; the one-woman show Elaine Stritch at Liberty ; the Tony Award-winner for Best Play, Edward Albee's The Goat ; Topdog/Underdog , the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Suzan-Lori Parks, the first African American woman to win a Pulitzer for drama; the revival of Noel Coward's Private Lives ; and Sweet Smell of Success starring John Lithgow. Some notable Off-Broadway productions of the season include Neil LaBute's The Shape of Things with Gretchen Mol, Paul Rudd and Rachel Weisz; Richard Greenberg's (Take Me Out) The Dazzle ; Jason Robert Brown's notable musical The Last Five Years ; tick, tick ... BOOM! , a musical by the late Jonathan Larson ( Rent ); Tony Kushner's Homebody/Kabul ; and Sam Shepard's The Late Henry Moss with Ethan Hawke. Theatre World, the statistical and pictorial record of the Broadway, Off-Broadway, and Off-Off-Broadway seasons, touring companies, and professional regional companies throughout the United States, is a classic in its field. The book is complete with cast listings, replacements, producers, directors, authors, composers, opening and closing dates, and song titles. There are special sections with autobiographical data, obituary information, a longest runs listing, an expanded awards listing, and much, much more. "Nothing brings back a theatrical season better, or holds on to it more lovingly, than John Willis's Theatre World ." Harry Haun, Playbill " Theatre World commemorates the history and excitement of the theatre like no other publication. John Willis and his book are indispensable." Alec Baldwin

Indians

Indians PDF Author: Arthur L. Kopit
Publisher: Samuel French, Inc.
ISBN: 9780573692376
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 82

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Book Description
Cast in the style of a vaudeville Wild West Show, this highly theatrical play explores the theme of Americas mistreatment of the indigenious tribes was a celebrated hit on Broadway starring Stacy Keach. The hero is Buffalo Bill, whose life is defined and destroyed by an unfulfilled vision. Like all tragic heroes he has a fatal character flaw: he knows and loves the Native Americans, but craves money and fame. He helps destroy the buffalo herds, reducing the Native Americans to starvation. Ultimately, ambition leads him to even greater cruelty, destroying both the tribes and himself.

In Their Own Words

In Their Own Words PDF Author: David Savran
Publisher: Theatre Communications Group
ISBN: 1559367105
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
Includes: Lee Breuer, Christopher Durang, Richard Foreman, Maria Irene Fornes, Charles Fuller, John Guare, Joan Holden, David Henry Hwang, David Mamet, Emily Mann, Richard Nelson, Marsha Norman, David Rabe, Wallace Shawn, Stephen Sondheim, Megan Terry, Luis Valdez, Michael Weller, August Wilson and Lanford Wilson.