The careers, directing accomplishments, ideas, and techniques of six distinguished directors of the European stage--each considered a master of the art--are surveyed in depth by author Samuel L. Leiter in this groundbreaking study. Konstantin Stanislavsky, Vsevolod Meyerhold, Max Reinhardt, Jacques Copeau, Bertolt Brecht, and Jean-Louis Barrault, representative of the broad spectrum of directorial art as it has developed in this century, are examined in six exhaustively detailed, yet compact chapters. In Leiter's informative introduction, salient aspects of the director's art exemplified...

This multifaceted study, the companion volume to Leiter's "From Stanislavsky to Barrault: Representative Directors of the European Stage" (Greenwood Press, 1991), provides exhaustively detailed, yet compact accounts of the careers and accomplishments of eight outstanding directors of the English-speaking stage as well as separate, thorough bibliographies and chronologies of each. Samuel L. Leiter selected directors David Belasco, Harley Granville-Barker, George Abbott, Sir Tyrone Guthrie, Margaret Webster, Elia Kazan, Joan Littlewood, and Peter Brook as exemplars of the broad spectrum of...

Kabuki has been a part of Japanese culture for nearly four centuries. The plays performed today are generally selected from a classic repertoire that gradually ceased to develop once Japan broke the chains of its isolationist policy and began the surge toward Westernization. The plays largely reflect the values of feudal Japan, and they portray a world of noble samurai overcoming evil adversaries, adulterous lovers overcoming their dilemmas through double suicide, parents sacrificing their children in the name of loyalty to a superior, and children giving up their lives for the sake of...

This volume presents a broad picture of the theatrical controversies, developments, and talents of the 1970s. Among the many topics discussed are the avant-garde's stretching of the traditional boundaries, the redefinition of the musical theatre, the expansion of Off Off-Broadway productions, institutionalized and subsidized productions, the economic turnaround of the commercial theatre, and the rise of many talented young actors and director. This is the first comprehensive account of the New York theatre of the 1970s.

The most reliable source for data on productions of the New York stage, both Broadway and Off Broadway, is now complete from 1920 through 1950 with the publication of this third volume devoted to the 1940s. The volumes for 1920-1930 and 1930-1940 have been called invaluable, indispensable, essential, and other superlatives by reviewers, widely utilized by theatre scholars and researchers, consulted by companies producing revivals, and quoted by Playbill magazine in answering readers' queries. The continuing series represents a remarkable achievement for theatre historian Samuel Leiter, who...