From the TCG Bookshelf 4/21/13 10:11 PM
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TCG Bestsellers (Jan - Feb 2013) 1. Lincoln: The Screenplay by Tony Kushner 2.Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes by Tony Kushner 3.The Anarchist by David Mamet 4.Angels in America, Part The celebrated new musical based on the Academy Award- One: Millenium Approaches winning film premiered at the New York Theatre Workshop in by Tony Kushner 2011 before moving to Broadway the following spring, where it still enjoys an open-ended run. Retaining the film's heartfelt 5. Water by the Spoonful music and lyrics by The Swell Season, Once tells the story of an by Quiara Alegría Hudes Irish musician and a Czech immigrant drawn together by a shared love of music. Once received eleven Tony Award nominations and 6.Spring Awakening eight wins, including Best Musical and Best Book of a Musical (by by Steven Sater and Enda Walsh), and will begin performances in London's West End Duncan Sheik on March 16. 7. A Tempest David Mamet's The Anarchist completed its world premiere on by Aimé Césaire Broadway in December under the direction of the playwright and starring Patti LuPone and Debra Winger. Set in a female 8.Jerusalem penitentiary, the two-woman drama is about Cathy, a longtime by Jez Butterworth inmate with ties to a violent political organization who pleads for 9.Chinglish parole from the warden, Ann. The world premiere occurred in by David Henry Hwang conjunction with a star-studded revival of Mamet's Pulitzer Prize- winning Glengarry Glen Ross starring Al Pacino and Bobby 10. Topdog/Underdog Cannavale. by Suzan-Lori Parks In The Lyons, Rita Lyons is the matriarch of a family facing a major crossroads. Her husband, Ben, is dying and her grown children are struggling. As the family gathers in Ben's hospital room, they discover that they're as terrified of being together as they are of being alone. Nicky Silver's critically acclaimed black comedy premiered Off-Broadway at the Vineyard Theatre in fall Page 1 of 6 2011 before moving to Broadway the following spring, earning a TCG Titles Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Play. As Nicky Currently in told TCG, "I made one substantial change to the play between the Production Vineyard and Broadway. (I cut a short scene of direct address at the top of ACT II.) This allowed the audience to experience ACT II February - March quite differently: They were in the same kind of play they'd been in before the intermission. So they laughed harder and longer - until Good People things took a very dark turn." by David Lindsday-Abaire, Arena Stage (DC) Race by David Mamet, Theater J (DC) The Piano Lesson by August Wilson, American Stage (FL) Two Trains Running by August Wilson, True Colors Theatre Company (GA) Middletown by Will Eno, Actors' Shakespeare Project (MA) Starting with the first performance of Aeschylus' The Oresteia in 458 BC and ending with the premiere of Jez Butterworth's Spring Awakening Jerusalem in London of 2009 AD, former New York Times critic by Steven Sater and Duncan and chief theatre critic of the Times (London) for over 20 years, Sheik, Olney Theatre Center Benedict Nightingale describes Great Moments in the for the Arts (MD) Theatre (Oberon Books). Each informative and engaging entry is between 650 and 850 words in length and covers a remarkable Next to Normal by Brian diversity of theatrical openings and events including Dustin Yorkey and Tom Kitt, Hoffman's star-turn in Death of a Salesman, Macready's Macbeth Meadow Brook Theatre (MI) (1849) which induced over 20,000 people to riot in New York, the boundary-breaking A Raisin in the Sun (1959) and Synge's Good People Playboy of the Western World (1907), which provoked serious by David Lindsay-Abaire, riots in Dublin. Performance Network Theatre (MI) In Two Minds (Oberon Books) is the first comprehensive Good People biography of Jonathan Miller, the controversial humorist, public by David Lindsay-Abaire, intellectual and TV personality who first shot to fame co-starring Unicorn Theatre (MO) with Peter Cook, Dudley Moore and Alan Bennett in Beyond the Fringe, the groundbreaking satirical revue which became a Tony Passion by James Lapine Award-winning Broadway hit. Miller is a world-renowned director and Stephen Sondheim, of such productions as Long Day's Journey into Night Classic Stage Company on Broadway with Jack Lemmon and Kevin Spacey, a staging of (NY) Bach's St. Matthew Passion at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and a two-decade collaboration with Glimmerglass Opera. The Dance and the Railroad Including sixteen pages of photos covering Miller's life and career, by David Henry Hwang, and drawing on in-depth interviews by theatre critic and arts Signature Theatre Company journalist Kate Bassett, In Two Minds is an illuminating portrait (NY) of one of the most multi-talented Britons of his generation. Two Trains Running With In-Depth Acting (Oberon Books), leading acting coach Dee by August Wilson, Oregon Cannon offers a methodical and systematic approach to tackling Shakespeare Festival (OR) the Stanislavski technique. This essential handbook provides actors with a comprehensive understanding of character, preparation, text, subtext and objectives, and includes how to prep for auditions, rehearsal guidelines, a helpful appendix of transitive/active verbs and more. March - April Assassins by Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman, Cygnet Theatre Company (CA) Doubt Spring Awakening by by John Patrick Shanley Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik, La Mirada Theatre for the This Pulitzer Prize-winning play about a Performing Arts (CA) Catholic school principal who suspects one of her teaching fathers of abuse was Eurydice by Sarah Ruhl, A made into major motion picture in Noise Within (CA) 2009 directed by the playwright and starring Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Time Stands Still Hoffman and Amy Adams. Academy by Donald Margulies, Award nominee for Best Adapted North Coast Repertory Screenplay. Theatre (CA) Good People by David Lindsay-Abaire, Driving Miss Daisy Curious Theatre Company by Alfred Uhry (CO) This Pulitzer Prize-winning play Time Stands Still celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2010 by Donald Margulies, Red Barn Theatre (FL) with a Broadway premiere starring James Earl Jones and Vanessa Circle Mirror Redgrave. It's perhaps best-known for Transformation by Annie its 1989 film starring Morgan Freeman Baker, Stageworks Theatre and Jessica Tandy which won four (FL) Academy Awards including Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Picture. Time Stands Still by Donald Margulies, The Public Theatre (ME) Scorched The Light in the Piazza by Wajdi Mouawad by Craig Lucas and Adam Guettel, Theater Latte Da Lebanese-born, Montreal-raised (MN) Mouawad's play (Playwrights Canada Press) about twins that journey to the Middle East to discover their family history and fulfill their mother's last wishes was the basis for the Academy Award-nominated film Incendies. Jason Loewith Named Artistic Director of Olney Theatre Center DC Metro Theater Arts Through a Glass Darkly adapted by Jenny The editor of The Director's Voice, Vol. 2, Jason Worton Loewith, on his new The only adaptation of Ingmar position: "It is an Bergman's film (Nick Hern Books) organization with deep personally approved by the filmmaker challenges and deeper made its NYC debut at Atlantic Theater potential. With the help of Company in 2010 starring Oscar- the DC theatre community nominated actress Carey Mulligan. I've come to love, with the Bergman's 1961 Swedish psychodrama passion and talent of the Olney Theatre Center staff, won the Academy Award for Best and with the wisdom and Foreign Language Film and was also commitment; Managing nominated for Best Original Director Amy Marshall, all Screenplay. we can do is succeed." For David Henry Hwang's Chinglish, a case of bad timing in China by David Ng Los Angeles Times "They felt it would not be a good moment to do the play Tony Kushner over there and it wouldn't get approved" by Chinese It's been an extraordinary authorities, David Henry Hwang said. The couple of years for playwright playwright wanted to see and Lincoln screenwriter Tony Chinglish produced in Kushner. mainland China, but says the Bo Xilai and Gu Kailai 2009 saw the writer's first new play in scandal derailed it. over a decade: The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism Just Saying: and Socialism with a Key to the The anti-theatrical Scriptures premiered at the Guthrie theatre of Annie Baker Theater in Minneapolis before being by Nathan Heller co-produced by NYC's Public Theater New Yorker and Signature Theatre Company in 2011. Also in 2011 was the first New "She thrives on confrontation," says Annie York revival at Signature Theatre Company - and the 20th Baker's older brother, also anniversary - of Kushner's Pulitzer Prize-winning Angels in a writer. "I think our family America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes since its Tony was hard for her sometimes, Award-winning Broadway premiere in 1993. Next month, TCG because it wasn't all that will publish Angels in America: Revised and Complete confrontational... I think Edition (in hardcover and paperback) that includes a new her impulse was to try to introduction by the author and his recent changes from the NYC hammer at our shells, to get revival. us to be depressed more openly. I still see that shell- A testament to his talent, since the 2010-2011 season alone, there hammerer in Annie's work." has been dozens of productions of Kushner's work - Angels in America; Caroline, or Change; The Dybbuk; Homebody/Kabul; The Illusion - across the U.S., including productions at Wilma Stay Connected Theater (PA), EgoPo Classic Theater (PA), The Human Race Theatre Company (OH), A Noise Within (CA), North Carolina Stage Company, PCPA Theaterfest (CA), Portland Playhouse (OR), Syracuse Stage (NY), Triad Stage (NC), Curious Theatre Company (CO), PlayMakers Repertory Company (NC) and The Salt Lake Acting Company (UT).