Theater is happening 365 days a year: little children saying their first lines in productions best enjoyed by friends and family, community theater, touring shows, Broadway debuts, live events airing on TV or in movie theaters — it’s all happening, all the time. But fall is the most exciting time. The leaves on the trees become more colorful. The big new shows you’ve been anticipating for months (or years!) finally arrive. And fresh-faced hopefuls in high schools and colleges and acting programs everywhere are ready to conquer the world … or at least their respective classes.
With all that anticipation comes a lot of waiting. Even on days when you’re attending the theater, you’ve still got to do something until you’re in your seat and waiting for the curtain to rise. Don’t worry. We’ve got you covered with these great new books linked to the world of theater. Dive in and don’t forget to use your show program as a handy bookmark!
It’s simple: August Wilson is the greatest American playwright in history. Period. Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Edward Albee? They each have three or four masterpieces, towering works that define American playwriting. August Wilson? He has maybe seven or eight, but inarguably six stone-cold classics, works of Shakespearean complexity, moral scope, and a richness of language that make them a joy to perform and watch again and again. So his life is of the greatest interest to theater fans, and thus, Patti Hartigan’s biography is the most welcome book of the fall.
Sometimes, the behind-the-scenes story of a show is even better than the show itself. (Actually, if you’ve ever performed in community theater or a cutthroat high school drama department, it’s usually better than the show itself.) Now, fans of Carrie: The Musical will strongly argue that’s not the case here. But Chris Adams offers such a delicious trove of stories about the show from more than 80 cast and crew members and those rabid fans, that it’s safe to say even the most passionate booster will agree Out for Blood is just as good as the musical. Carrie has gone from the flop to end all flops to a genuine cult classic, a term tossed about too loosely but perfect for a show like this.
Grammy- and Oscar-winning rocker, songwriter, and trailblazing artist Melissa Etheridge takes to the stage this September with her new one-woman Broadway show about her journey, à la Bruce Springsteen’s acclaimed run. You’ll want to dive into her greatest hits beforehand, as well as this new memoir about Etheridge’s life since her first best-selling book came out more than 20 years ago. She’s had marvelous highs and devastating lows since then, and Etheridge shares it all in Talking to My Angels. If you can’t get to the show, you’ll want this book. And if you do get to the show, you’ll want this book even more. She’s that kind of performer.
Writer Steven Levenson shot to fame as the Tony-winning book writer for the smash hit musical Dear Evan Hansen. He was also the show runner on the must-see Emmy-nominated miniseries Fosse/Verdon. And Levenson is attached to a new movie adaptation of Fiddler on the Roof. But first, get to know Levenson’s acclaimed work as a playwright. His debut collection includes The Unavoidable Disappearance of Tom Durnin, The Language of Trees, and his pre-9/11–set family drama If I Forget, which The New York Times calls “passionate and provoking.”
The little show that could, Kimberly Akimbo won five Tony Awards, including Best Musical. The story of a young woman dealing with an illness that ages her prematurely, it’s a must-see on Broadway and when the show tours in fall 2024. Can’t wait? Neither can we. So check out the cast album to savor the performances of the Tony-winning cast and music of Tony winner Jeanine Tesori. Then grab this title so you can read the marvelous book and lyrics by Tony winner David Lindsay-Abaire. It’s a charming story no matter what form you enjoy it in.
From 2013 to 2018, playwright William Electric Black presented five dramas at the Theater for the New City in NYC about the plague of gun violence. One might have hoped they became works of history documenting an era before simple and widely supported steps were taken to tackle this problem. Instead, they are as timeless as ever. The stories range from a family grappling with the aftermath of gun violence to a school in lockdown to a teen girl looking to buy a gun as protection from her violent mother. Reading the collection now is reading what we hope will be history, as it happens.
In The Hundred Loves of Juliet, author Evelyn Skye puts a reincarnation twist on the timeless tale of two star-crossed lovers. In contemporary Alaska, Helene and Sebastien meet for the first time, but their inevitably tragic romance will play out just as it has for dozens of lovers before them. Meet … passionate romance … despair. Again and again and again. Unless, for once, the latest in a long line of Romeos and Juliets can change their fate.
Ahh, the circus. It’s as pure a setting for theatrical magic as any other. And in Amiee Gibbs’s acclaimed debut, magical is exactly the word for the Carnivale of Curiosities, a circus in Victorian London where — for a price — any wish can come true. Two performers fall perilously in love, a brutal man of power makes an offer the circus can’t refuse, and proprietor Aurelius Ashe needs to pull off one final trick to keep his ersatz family together.
In The Sea Elephants, queer son Shagun can never be the man his violent father demands in the conservative world of 1990s India. Shagun thinks an all-boys boarding school might be the answer. But his real home becomes a traveling troupe of street performers who reenact Hindu myths as they travel the country. Shagun stays one step ahead of his father’s threats to send the boy to a forced conversion center as he discovers the joy of acting. And that journey leads him right into the arms of the charming and sweet photographer Marc, the one person who can show Shagun the worthy — and worthy of love — person he is … and not just with his photographs.
Finally, three works for the serious student of theater, whether you’re an actor looking to improve your vocal skills, a writer ready to learn more about how to write for stage and screen, or an actor, a writer, or anyone involved in drama who wants to dive into the words of Shakespeare.
The Need for Words: Voice and the Text is a classic textbook by Patsy Rodenburg, one of the best voice coaches in the world. The foreword is by the late, great actor Antony Sher. Part One introduces you to the many ways — not one “correct” way — to speak everything from modern prose to the Bard. And Part Two features practical exercises. Rodenburg’s influence extends to the world of business and politics, so you don’t need to tread the boards to benefit from her ideas.
How do playwriting and screenwriting actually work? How do audiences experience them? Author Sherry Kramer takes you step-by-step through the specific ways an audience experiences a piece, drawing on examples ranging from the play A Streetcar Named Desire to the TV series Fleabag and even films like Pirates of the Caribbean. If you want to write for stage or screen, it’s invaluable. If you’re a fan and want to appreciate what you’re watching even more, it’s revealing.
And if you really want to indulge the lexicographical fanatic in your life, nothing — and we mean nothing — can top the hefty, two-volume ArdenEncyclopedia of Shakespeare’s Language. It’s like the ultimate collection of those modest footnotes in your copy of Hamlet explaining a pun or the meaning of a word to the audience in Shakespeare’s day. What exactly would people think when one character calls another a harlot? Shock? Surprise? Indifference? And what’s the significance of someone eating fish instead of beef? This dictionary explains it all for you, from A to Z, naturally.
Michael Giltz is the cohost of the weekly entertainment podcast Showbiz Sandbox. He covers all areas of entertainment as a journalist, critic, feature writer, and analyst. Giltz has written for numerous outlets, including the New York Daily News, New York Post, New York Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, Huffington Post, Entertainment Weekly, and The Advocate. When Michael’s not attending the theater, he’s reading about it.
Privacy Policy
Last updated and effective as of January 14, 2019
Introduction and Your Acceptance of These Terms
Broadway Direct ("Us", "We", "Our") knows that your personal information is very important to you, and We respect your privacy. This Privacy Policy explains how your personal information is collected, used, and protected and the choices available to you with respect to Our handling of your data. This Policy applies to all visitors to Broadway Direct.com, Our mobile services, services available via telephone, and those transactions that take place in person, by postal or electronic mail. (Collectively, the "Site"), including ticket sales, comments on articles, and any information provided to Us.. By visiting this website, you consent and agree to the terms of this Privacy Policy and to the collection, use and storage of your information by Us. From time to time, We may change this Privacy Policy. When We do, the “Last Updated” line above will be revised. You are responsible for regularly reviewing this Privacy Policy. Your continued use of this Site following the posting of a changed Privacy Policy indicates your acceptance of the changes. Unless We provide you with specific notice, no changes to Our Privacy Policy will apply retroactively. Please also refer to our Terms of Use and Lottery Terms & Conditions. If you require any more information or have any questions about Our privacy policy, please feel free to contact Us by email at [email protected].
Information We Collect
Information we collect directly from you: Your provision of your personal information to Us is completely voluntary; it is not a statutory or contractual requirement. Personally Identifiable Information (“PII”) is information that is uniquely identifiable to you, such as your name, address, email address, phone number, credit card number and other personal information that is not otherwise publicly available. Certain features of Our website may require that you provide Us with your personal information, including:
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The personal information We collect allows Us to keep you posted on updates to Broadway Direct. It also helps Us to improve Our services, content, and advertising. If you don’t want to be on Our email list, you can opt out anytime by clicking the “unsubscribe” button or sending an unsubscribe email to [email protected]. From time to time, We may use your personal information to send transactional emails, such as communications about purchases and changes to Our terms, conditions, and policies. Because this information is important to your interaction with Broadway Direct, you may not opt out of receiving these communications. We may also use personal information for internal purposes such as auditing, data analysis, and research to improve Broadway Direct’s services, and customer communications. If you enter into a sweepstakes, contest, or similar promotion We may use the information you provide to administer those programs.
Information Collected By/Shared With Third Parties
Other than as provided in this Privacy Policy, we do not share your personal information with third parties.
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When necessary. We may also release personal information when we believe, in good faith, that such release is reasonably necessary to protect the rights, property or safety of Ourselves, Our clients, Our users, or others. We may disclose personal information about you to law enforcement, other government officials, or other third parties, as We, in our sole discretion, believe necessary or appropriate, in connection with an investigation of fraud, intellectual property infringement, or other activity that is illegal or may expose Us to legal liability.
Public Forums
Please be aware that when you disclose PII through the comment feature or message board on the Site, the information may become public and accessible to all or a part of the Site community, so it is important for you to exercise discretion and appropriate caution when deciding to reveal PII in these areas. In addition, when you choose to make a posting, certain PII may be available for other users to view. We urge you to exercise discretion and caution when deciding to disclose your PII, or any other information, on the Site. WE ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE USE OF ANY PII YOU VOLUNTARILY DISCLOSE THROUGH THE SITE VIA THESE FORUMS AND OTHER INTERACTIVE FEATURES. Please note that We reserve the right, but have no obligation, to republish content posted (including any PII contained therein) as further set forth in Our Terms of Use.
Co-Branded Pages
We may enter into relationships with “powered by” partners, business partners, sponsors, and co-branded sites (referred to here as “co-branded pages”). These might include, for example, pages that share our name and that of another entity. There may be a specific privacy policy on any such co-branded page. Any personal information that you provide when signing up at any co-branded page may be collected by, or shared with, our third party partner. We have no control over, and are not responsible for, our third party partners’ use of your personal information. If you want to learn more about other entities’ privacy practices, please review the websites of those third parties.
Transactions With Third Party E-commerce Partners, Vendors and Advertisers
When you provide personal information to one of Our Site’s third party e-commerce partners, vendors or advertisers (i.e. Ticketmaster.com, Telecharge.com), this transaction will occur in connection with the site of the e-commerce partner, vendor or advertiser, not on the Site, and, as such, the personal information you provide is collected pursuant to and controlled by the privacy policy of such e-commerce partner, vendor or advertiser. Broadway Direct is not responsible for such parties’ privacy policies and We encourage you to familiarize yourself with the applicable privacy policy of the e-commerce site with which you transact business or to contact the operator of such site for more information.
Delivery of Advertising and Other Content
In addition to ads and content that We may serve you directly, We use third-party advertising companies and marketing services companies to serve ads and other content when you visit Broadway Direct and elsewhere on the internet and in other media. Both We and these companies may use information about your visits to Broadway Direct and elsewhere to serve ads and other content to you. In the course of doing so, a unique third-party cookie may be placed or recognized on your browser by such companies. In addition, We and these companies may use Web beacons to help manage Our online advertising and content. These Web beacons enable Us and the third-party companies to recognize a browser’s cookie when a browser visits this Site and to learn which banner ads bring users to our website and to serve you ads that you may find of interest elsewhere on the internet and in other media. Both Broadway Direct and these companies may use information obtained from your visits to Broadway Direct or other websites, and information received from you offline in order to provide advertisements about goods and services and other content of interest to you across the internet and in other media. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used in this manner by Our third party advertising companies, please visit http://www.networkadvertising.org/optout_nonppii.asp and/or www.aboutads.info/choices. European users may opt out of receiving targeted advertising by visiting http://www.youronlinechoices.eu/. In addition, we may provide PII and Anonymous Information to marketing services companies. This may include information we received from you offline or online. These companies may combine information we provide (including PII and Anonymous Information) with personal and anonymous information they may have about you, using cookies they place or that We place on their behalf, as described in the section regarding “Cookies and Tracking Tags”. We require these companies to delete the PII we provide them. These companies may use the resulting non-personal information and such cookies for their own marketing purposes, and they may provide the same to their customers for their customer’s marketing purposes. Some of Our emails may contain tags that allow Us and Our advertisers and other partners to determine the types of content that may be of interest to you. Those tags may contain PII and may be shared with others to the same extent indicated in the section regarding “Cookies and Tracking Tags”. Those tags may not be deleted but you can opt out of receiving the emails.
Use of This Site by Children
The Site is not directed to individuals under the age of thirteen (13), and We request that such individuals do not provide personal information through the Site. If a parent or guardian becomes aware that his or her child has provided Us with PII without the parent or guardian’s consent by, for example, misrepresenting his or her age, that parent or guardian should contact us at [email protected]. If Broadway Direct determines that it has collected personal information of children under the age of 13, Broadway Direct will immediately delete such information and any accounts believed to be held by children under 13. In addition, we may not collect or process information from a citizen of an EU member state under the age of sixteen (16) without such person’s parental consent. If you are a citizen of an EU member state under the age of 16, please tell your parents that you are using the Site and have your parents email Us at [email protected] so that We may delete any information We may have collected about you.
California Visitors
California Civil Code § 1798.83 permits California residents to request information about whether we have disclosed personal information to any third parties for the third parties’ direct marketing purposes. California residents have the right to request in writing: (a) a list of the categories of Personal Information, such as name, email address and mailing address and the type of services provided to the customer that a business has disclosed to third parties (including affiliates that are separate legal entities) during the immediately preceding calendar year for the third parties’ direct marketing purposes and (b) the names and addresses of all such third parties. To make a request, please contact Us at the following email address: [email protected].
EU Visitors
If you are located within the European Union, you should be aware that your personal information will be transferred to the United States, the laws of which may be deemed by the European Union to have inadequate data protection. If you are located in a country outside the United States and voluntarily submit personal information to Us, you thereby consent to the general use of such information as provided in this privacy policy and to the transfer of that information to, and/or storage of that information in, the United States. We transfer Personal Information from the European Economic Area and Switzerland to the USA and other countries, some of which have not been determined by the European Commission to have an adequate level of data protection. Personal Information of EU residents will be transferred in compliance with the requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”).
Rights of EU Data Subjects
If you are a resident of the European Union, under the GDPR, European Union residents, as data subjects, have the following rights:
Right to access – This right allows individuals to obtain confirmation as to whether or not personal information concerning him or her is being processed and provide access to such personal information. It also allows individuals to request details of the processing of his or her personal information, including, without limitation, categories of recipients to whom the personal information have been or will be disclosed and purposes of processing.
Right to rectify – This right allows individuals to rectify any inaccurate personal information about him or her.
Right to restrict processing – This right allows individuals to block or suppress processing of personal data under certain circumstances.
Right to be forgotten – This right is also known as the “right to erasure”. It is an individual’s right to have personal data erased or to prevent processing in specific circumstances.
Right of data portability – This right allows individuals to move, copy or transfer personal data from one place to another in a secure manner without interrupting the integrity and usability of the information.
Right to object to processing – This right allows individuals to object to certain types of processing, including direct marketing, profiling and providing for purposes of scientific or historical research and statistics.
An EU resident has the right to access his or her personal data that We hold and to ask that their personal data be corrected or erased and to port their data. An EU resident may also have the right to object to, or request that We restrict certain processing or to withdraw consent previously provided. If you would like to exercise your rights under the GDPR, please contact us at [email protected]. If you are an EU resident and have a concern about our processing of your personal data that we are not able to resolve, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Data Protection Authority where you reside. For contact details of your relevant local Data Protection Authority, please see http://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/article29/item-detail.cfm?item_id=612080
Security of Your Personal Information
Broadway Direct employs reasonable security measures consistent with standard industry practice, for personal information collected through this Site, including physical, electronic and operational measures to maintain security and prevent unauthorized access. While Broadway Direct takes all appropriate steps to safeguard personal information under Our control, unfortunately, no data transmission over the Internet or method of storing data can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. As such, We cannot guarantee that personal information supplied by users will not be accessed on Our servers, or intercepted while being transmitted to Us over the Internet. We assume no liability for any damages you may suffer as a result of interception, alteration or misuse of information during such transfers.
Retention
We will retain your information for as long as your account or inquiry is active and for a reasonable time thereafter in accordance with Our standard procedures or as necessary to comply with Our legal obligations, to resolve disputes, and to enforce Our agreements. Even if We delete some or all of your Personal Information, We may continue to retain and use aggregate or anonymous data previously collected and/or anonymize or aggregate your Personal Information. Please note that We will not be liable for disclosures of your data due to errors or unauthorized acts of third parties.
Choice/Opt Out
This Site provides users the opportunity to opt-out of receiving communications from Us, at any time, by email at [email protected], or by clicking the unsubscribe link in any email communication. The Site gives users the following options for removing their information from our database, to not receive future communications or to no longer receive our service, at any time.
Users can send mail to the following postal address: Broadway Direct 1501 Broadway 14th floor New York, NY 10036
Users can call the following telephone number: (800) 223-6715.
Users can opt-out of receiving future newsletter emails from Us by selecting the “unsubscribe” link at the bottom of our email. However, We are not responsible for removing your information from the lists of any third party who has previously been provided with your information or is collecting your information through their cookies. You have the right to withdraw your consent for Our processing for your personal information by contacting us at [email protected].
Correct/Update
This website gives users the following options for changing and modifying information previously provided, at any time.
Users can send mail to the following postal address: Broadway Direct 1501 Broadway 14th floor New York, NY 10036
Users can call the following telephone number: (800) 223-6715
Successors
In the event that We are, or any component of our operations is, merged with, or is acquired by, another entity, then any such successor or acquiring entity may become the successor to Our obligations with respect to the personal information that you have provided to Us, which would be necessary for the entity to effectively continue our business. By using this website, you consent to any transfer and use of such personal information by an entity assuming control of Our operations as a result of a merger, purchase of assets, or liquidation in bankruptcy or insolvency.
Contact Us
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, the practices of this website, or your dealings with this website, you can send an email to [email protected]. Our data protection officer can also be contacted at [email protected].
