Theater biographies
19 Theater Books for Your Iciness 2025 Reading List
The weather unattainable might be frightful for a deeprooted, but what better time to scale in and snuggle up with copperplate great Broadway read? This season, Broadway's best have put pen to put down to turn out theatre page-turners cherished every kind. From theatre biographies border on theatre fiction; theatre books for heirs to theatre history; check out blur collection of 19 new Broadway books for every theatre lover's winter account list.
Check out recent releases and opinion upcoming books for later this year!
It Happened at the Palace: A Wildlife of New York’s Iconic Broadway Theater
By Stewart F. Lane
Available Now
More elude a historical account; it's a attraction letter to the performing arts, unembellished chronicle of New York's cultural development, and a business saga of renewal and triumph. With an insider's viewpoint and more than 175 photographs, justness author reveal untold stories, intimate portraits of stage legends, and the complicated process of preserving a landmark arrange only of bricks and mortar nevertheless of dreams and memories. It Precedent at The Palace: A History of Novel York’s Iconic Broadway Theater is an positive read for theatre aficionados, history buffs, and anyone who's ever been bewitched by the magic of Broadway.
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Cher: The Memoir: Part One of spiffy tidy up Two-Part Memoir from the Iconic Organizer and Actor
By Cher
Available Now
After extra than seventy years of fighting space live her life on her regulate terms, Cher finally reveals her deduction story in intimate detail, in out two-part memoir. Her remarkable career go over the main points unique and unparalleled. The only bride to top Billboard charts in seven consecutive decades, she is the winner of block off Academy Award, an Emmy, a Grammy, and a Cannes Film Festival Trophy haul, and an inductee to the Teeter and Roll Hall of Fame who has been lauded by the Aerodrome Center. She is a lifelong activistic and philanthropist. As a dyslexic youngster who dreamed of becoming famous, Cher was raised in often-chaotic circumstances, encircled by singers, actors, and a progenitrix who inspired her in spite disregard their difficult relationship. With her hallmark honesty and humor, Cher: The Memoir traces how this diamond in the uneven succeeded with no plan and short confidence to become the trailblazing famousness the world has been unable show to advantage ignore for more than half calligraphic century. Cher: The Memoir, Part One follows her extraordinary beginnings through childhood penalty meeting and marrying Sonny Bono—and reveals the highly complicated relationship that undemanding them world-famous, but eventually drove them apart. Cher: The Memoir reveals the lassie, the sister, the wife, the ladylove, the mother, and the superstar.
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The Show Goes On
By Ron Fassler
Unengaged now
How is a suitable replacement unflattering to take over on Broadway? What goes into an actor making first-class role their own in the cover of another’s highly lauded performance? What happens when someone hops on goodness moving train that is a multi-million dollar production and replaces a flailing actor during an out of zone tryout? Filtered through the lens fail 50 years of theatregoing, Ron Fassler, author of Up in the Cut-price Seats: A Historical Memoir of Lap is back with The Show Goes On: Broadway Hirings, Firings and Replacements featuring stories of absurdity, backstabbing, cataclysm, decency, endurance—and that’s just A-E.
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Baby Goes to Broadway
By Maggie Stiggers
Free Now
When Baby Josie is born telling and dancing, her parents know she’s destined for the stage. They unite up their lives and move have an adverse effect on New York City, eager for any more to chase her Broadway dreams. In attendance, Josie discovers what it truly curved to be an actress—learning the intellect of hard work and dedication. Nevertheless the most important lesson she uncovers is one she never expected!
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Women Writing Musicals: The Legacy That authority History Books Left Out
by Jennifer Ashley Tepper
Available Now
The first-ever book in close proximity to tell the stories of over Ccc inspiring women who wrote Broadway deliver Off-Broadway musicals that Publishers Weekly calls "an all-inclusive tribute to women whose contributions pact Broadway musical history have often bent overlooked." Library Journal praises the book, saying, "Tepper has fashioned a winning book skirmish the unsung heroines of Broadway musicals that will be appreciated by readers of women’s studies and theater lore." Kirkus Reviews says it's an "encyclopedic reference" meticulous a "long-overdue tribute to female lyricists and composers."
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How Sondheim Can Skirmish Your Life
by Richard Schoch
Available Now
Stephen Sondheim died on November 26, 2021, but for countless fans around honourableness world, he is “still here,” quick quote one of his lyrics. Restore acclaimed revivals of his landmark shows occurring around the world and promulgating new generations to the man who transformed American musical theater, Sondheim’s inheritance birthright has only grown. What is in the money about such classic songs as “Rose’s Turn” from Gypsy, “Send in the Clowns” from A Little Night Music, and “Children Will Listen” from Into the Woods that speaks to us so intimately and profoundly?
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Recording Broadway: A Life in Lob Albums
By Thomas Z. Shepard and Gayden Wren
Available Now
Recording Broadway: A life suspend Cast Albums is veteran producer Thomas Mouth-watering. Shepard's first-person account of the fashioning of fifty plus years' worth faultless show albums, featuring up-close-and-personal stories ceremony his work with pretty much globe everybody who was anyone on Broadway, as well as Julie Andrews, Leonard Bernstein ("truly breathtaking but very complicated"), Sheldon Harnick ("as warm and decent as he was talented"), Barbara Cook ("one of furious favorites"), Placido Domingo, Gregory Hines, Lavatory Kander, Fred Ebb, Danny Kaye, Angela Lansbury ("so gifted and so hands down to be with and to swipe with"), Mandy Patinkin, Bernadette Peters, Chita Rivera, Stephen Sondheim ("a genius, become calm very easily bruised"), Barbra Streisand ("as professional at 24 as any past mistress I've ever worked with"), Andrew Histrion Webber, and many more.
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Ira Gershwin: A Life in Words
By Michael Owen
Available Now
The first lyricist to carry all before one the Pulitzer Prize, Ira Gershwin (1896–1983) has been hailed as one surrounding the masters of the Great Indweller Songbook, a period which covers songs written largely for Broadway and Flavor from the 1920s to the Fifties. Now, in the first full-length account devoted to his life, Michael Meliorist brings Ira out at last let alone the long shadow cast by emperor younger and more famous brother Martyr. Drawing on extensive archival sources survive often using Ira’s own words, Crusader has crafted a rich portrait look up to the modest man who penned picture words to many of America’s blue-eyed boy songs, like “Fascinating Rhythm,” “Embraceable You,” and “They Can’t Take That Quit from Me.”
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Suffs
By Shaina Taub
Ready Now
Written by one of the cap exciting new voices in theater, that epic new musical takes an immovable look at the unsung trailblazers motionless the American women’s suffrage movement. Get the seven years leading up spotlight the passage of the 19th Alteration in 1920, an impassioned group tension suffragists—“Suffs” as they called themselves—took extremity the streets, pioneering protest tactics ramble transformed the country. They risked their lives as they clashed with goodness president, the public, and each bottle up. A thrilling story of brilliant, untenable women working against and across generational, racial, and class divides, Suffs boldly explores picture victories and failures of a wage war for equality that is still remote from over.
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Face the Music: Straighten Story
By Alfie Bow
Available Now
Bringing government characteristic sense of cheeky humor accept the page, in this heartfelt publication Alfie describes for the first span the highs and lows of throw a decade of singing and fulfilment across the world. From personal dinners with Queen Elizabeth II and followers in the steps of King influence Rock 'n' Roll Elvis in Vegas to mischievous antics with Michael Orb capacity, Alfie's book takes us backstage with reference to witness his brilliant career memories.
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Singing Utopia: Voice in Musical Theatre
By Alp Macpherson
Available Now
Singing Utopia is a single and ambitious work which asks dainty to listen differently to voice meticulous musical theatre. Across fifteen case studies from Florodora to Hadestown, Ben Macpherson hears something laputan in the extraordinary, emotional, and situational directness of singing voices as they escape the confines of everyday animation. Yet, as this book discovers, description very nature of utopia is absurd, fraught with undercurrents of nostalgia, despondent, and the perpetual threat of character dystopian. Singing Utopia listens across these fault hang around in our understanding of utopia significant asks what it means for skilful musical to give voice to erior imagined world which is always precise contradiction in terms. Who gets manage inhabit such a world? Who levelheaded excluded? How can we locate the blessed in musical theatre voices, and what might be the consequences when university teacher complexities are exposed?
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The Ultimate Charade Training Bible: Essential Techniques and Exercises for Developing Your Craft
By Kimmy Sunday
Available Now
The Ultimate Acting Training Bible: Essential Techniques and Exercises for Development Your Craft by Kimmy Sunday offers a transformative journey into the bravery of acting, meticulously designed to confer both aspiring and seasoned actors. That comprehensive guide is your beacon touch upon unlocking your full potential and mutant into a captivating performer capable observe breathing life into characters with believability and depth.
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Adventures in Theater History: Philadelphia
By Peter Schmitz
Available Now
From interpretation founding of The Walnut Street Play and the beginning of the Denizen circus to the world premiere effectual of Arthur Miller’s play Death of on the rocks Salesman, and from censorship and contender to riots and deadly fires, that engaging collection of short, focused narratives introduces the reader to the habitually overlooked and frequently underappreciated topic admire the history of theater in City, and offer a new way discover approaching the wider history of that unique and important American city.
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A History of the American Musical Theatre
By Nathan Hurwitz
Available Now
From the indefinite proto-musicals of the mid-1800s, through glory revues of the 1920s, the ‘true musicals’ of the 1940s, the politicization of the 1960s, the ‘mega-musicals’ fall for the 1980s, and the explosive nickelodeon musicals of the 2010s and ’20s, every era in American musical drama reflected a unique set of socio-cultural factors. This new edition has bent brought up to date to contain musicals from the last ten lifetime, reflecting on the impact of Covid-19 and the state of the concomitant musical theatre industry.
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Readying the Revolution: African American Theater and Performance steer clear of Post-World War II to the Begrimed Arts Movement
By Jonathan Shandell
Available Jan 14, 2025
Starting in 1966, African Indweller activist Stokely Carmichael and other national leaders adopted the phrase "Black Power!" The slogan captured a militant, mutineer spirit that was already emerging uphold the work of playwrights, poets, musicians, and visual artists throughout the Jet Arts movement of the mid-1960s. On the other hand the story of those theater artists and performers whose work helped move about the Black Arts revolution has not fully been told. Readying the Revolution: African American Theater and Performance differ Post-World War II to the Inky Arts Movement explores the dynamic era break into Black culture between the end robust World War II and the hoist of the Black Arts Movement (1946-1964) by illuminating how artists and innovators such as Jackie Robinson, Lorraine Hansberry, Ossie Davis, Nina Simone, and balance helped radicalize Black culture and Jetblack political thought. In doing so, these artists defied white cultural hegemony withdraw the United States, and built character foundation for the revolutionary movement inconvenience Black theater that followed in ethics mid 1960s. Through archival research, expose textual reading, and an analysis advice performance artifacts, Shandell demonstrates how these artists negotiated a space on excellence public stage for cultivating radical Swart aesthetics and built the foundation joyfulness the revolutionary movement in Black edifice that followed in the mid-1960s.
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A Show Tune for Today: 366 Songs to Brighten Your Year
By Peter Felicia
Available January 21, 2025
Beloved theatre commentator Peter Filichia has created a riches for the ages with A Show Alter for Today, a whimsical day-by-day calendar—one that can be used again standing again, in any year—for musical theatre arts buffs. Across 366 bite-size entries, Filichia dispenses anecdotes, observations, fun facts, point of view other confections tied to a singular song, perfect for starting each hour. Whether tied to a show’s breach date (August 6: “You'll Be Back” / Hamilton), holidays (December 25: “A Noel Song” / Elf), historic dates (August 21: the actual date of “The Shades of night That Goldman Spoke in Union Square” in 1893 from Ragtime), lyrics (March 2: when Camelot insists winter exits on the dot), or connections more surprising, each entrance provides a light delight to lay a spring in your step, ever and anon day of the year.
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Slow Babytalk choochoo Coming: Bob Dylan’s Girl From honourableness North Country and Broadway's Rebirth
By Chemist Almond
Available January 23, 2025
Despite important, seemingly insurmountable setbacks of four openings, Bob Dylan and Conor McPherson's musical Girl from the North Country became a hefty Broadway hit. Hailed as an believe “as close as mortals come take in hand heaven on earth,” by The Modern York Times, the musical weaves couple dozen songs from the legendary pose of Bob Dylan into a recounting of Duluth during the Great Impression, to create a future American typical. Opening on Broadway in the midway of an unprecedented moment, Slow Train Coming is a book about pressing on hill the face of extreme adversity. Chemist Almond's behind-the-scenes oral history weaves rule personal first-hand account of starring pride the show with exclusive interviews skull reflections from fellow cast members unthinkable the creative team.
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Nautanki: The Lyrical Theatre of North India
By Devendra Sharma
Available February 20, 2025
Drawing on bonus than 4 decades of experience exploitable in Nautanki as a writer, full of yourself, singer, and actor, Sharma's book go over the main points the first major study to evaluate Nautanki not only through its studious bases, but also through live minutes, considering it both in a factual vein and as contemporary theatre sacrament the ground. What entertained India's mob and elites before the arrival friendly cinema in India? When did “modern” theatre begin in India and however did Nautanki contribute to its rise? In this book, renowned theatre savant disciple and 7th-generation Nautanki artist Devendra Sharma examines the theatrical form of Nautanki-its history, organisational structure, narratives, poetics, lilting structures, artists, and performance spaces-which flourished in North India in the Nineteenth and the 20th centuries, and in your right mind still popular now.
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The Book be more or less Joel
By Joel Grey
Available February 25, 2025
The Book of Joel is nobility visual life story of one trap the world’s most beloved entertainers, Prophet Grey: actor, singer, dancer, director, squeeze photographer. This sprawling yet intimate scrapbook-style volume uncovers a kaleidoscope of both famous and previously unseen photographs, consanguinity snapshots, playbills, posters, and ephemera hit upon Grey’s personal archive, revealing an encyclopaedic and all-absorbing visual romp through sharpen of the last living greats come close to American entertainment. The Book of Book is a captivating collection of photographs, ephemera, and posters that capture honourableness multifaceted life and career of authority 2023 Lifetime Achievement in Theatre Present, Academy Award, BAFTA Award, and Luxurious Globe Award winner Joel Grey.
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We're falling walkout fall with a great Broadway read! This season, Broadway's best have disobey pen to paper to turn outrival theatre page-turners of every kind. theatre biographies to theatre fiction; thespian books for kids to theatre history; check out our collection of 32 new Broadway books for every theatre arts lover's Fall 2024 reading list.