Performing Arts

With the U.S. economy booming under President Bill Clinton and the cold war finally over, many Americans experienced peace and prosperity in the nineties. Digital technologies gained popularity, with nearly one billion people online by the end of the decade. The film industry wondered...

Though he never reached the lead actor status he labored so relentlessly to achieve, Warren Oates (1928--1982) is one of the most memorable and skilled character actors of the 1970s. With his rugged looks and measured demeanor, Oates crafted complex characters who were at...

Even people with the barest interest in Broadway can recognize the unique, angular, sensual style of Bob Fosse. With its small gestures and isolated movements, it is frequently copied--and often misinterpreted. For there is far more to it than bowler hats and white gloves,...

In The Handmaid's Tale and Philosophy, philosophers give their insights into the blockbuster best-selling novel and record-breaking TV series, The Handmaid's Tale. The story involves a future breakaway state in New England, beset by environmental disaster and a plummeting birth rate, in which the...

Ooh l la Take a trip back in time to the early days of French cinema with the scenes reproduced in this funny and charming flip book. A collaboration between The Museum of Modern Art and the film company Gaumont Cinmathque, here is a...

The latest in the breakout series Manga Shakespeare, introducing teens to a new kind of Bard. In one of Shakespeare's funniest, most enduring stories, meddling fairies create unexpected love triangles among a group of teenagers. Hermia is in love with Lysander. Demetrius is in...

Long before Sam Peckinpah finished shooting his 1973 Western, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, there was open warfare between him and the studio. In this scrupulously researched new book Paul Seydor reconstructs the riveting history of a brilliant director fighting to preserve an...

One of the most important Native films of all time, Atanarjuat, the Fast Runner tells a powerful and moving story about honor, betrayal, vengeance, and redemption. Set in the vast, visually stunning Arctic landscape, it was the first feature film written, directed, and acted...

The celebrated Spanish playwright Fernando Arrabal, who lived in Madrid under the oppression of the Franco regime, writes passionately of human atrocity and of hope. This collection of plays embodies Arrabal's "theatre of panic," named after the god Pan. The homme panique is a...

From the author of Hiding the Elephant and The Glorious Deception comes a collection of five essays that shows how the great stage illusions were integrally products of their time, based on the traditions and fashions of the people, and the offspring of the...

The series ran nine years on radio and twenty on television--the all-time longest running prime-time program with continuing characters. It introduced to the American people a cast of characters that quickly took on mythic proportions. There are 74 -in-depth interviews and reminiscences by principal...

Superhero films are one of the most enduring genres of cinema, and their popularity is only increasing in the 21st century. These ten critical essays explore the phenomenon through the lenses of numerous academic disciplines, and cover topics such as the role of globalization...

The music and dance traditions of Ghana's four main ethnic groups are covered comprehensively in this book. It discusses concepts of music, dance and performance in general, and also goes into cultural perspectives, performance practices and the form and structure of 22 musical types...

Zombie stories are peculiarly American, as the creature was born in the New World and functions as a reminder of the atrocities of colonialism and slavery. The voodoo-based zombie films of the 1930s and '40s reveal deep-seated racist attitudes and imperialist paranoia, but the...

Extremely popular and prolific in the 1930s and 1940s, Cornell Woolrich still has diehard fans who thrive on his densely packed descriptions and his spellbinding premises. A contemporary of Hammett and Chandler, he competed with them for notoriety in the pulps and became the...

Director and screenwriter Michael Mann is the creative force behind such movies as Last of the Mohicans and Ali. Markedly reticent, Mann prefers that his personal background remain an enigma, but his disparate films contain clear and consistent messages. One of Mann's focuses is...

Since the 1980s, multimedia and new technologies have had a great impact on theatre, allowing performance to establish its own language of communication with the audience independent of the written text. The author offers a comprehensive analysis of Lepage's creative process.Author: Aleksandar Sasa DundjerovicPublisher:...

Abracadabra Kalamazoo Rocky and Judy astound and amaze in the Greatest Backyard Magic Show on Earth Rocky is perfecting the tricks for his magic show when Judy Moody offers to be his assistant. Rocky agrees, but it turns out that Judy -- or Stella...

As the brave men and women of Starfleet carry out their duties -- mapping countless solar systems, greeting new species and establishing ties with civilizations large and small -- they live, work, and face the possibility that they could die in space. How do...

The much-anticipated book from one of the most sought-after art directors in the world, showcasing 30+ years of his talentPart design manual, part manifesto, the first career retrospective of Fabien Baron, whom Vanity Fair called 'the most sought-after creative director in the world, '...