Kategoria BISAC: Performing Arts >> Theater - Playwriting

This edition of the orator Demosthenes' speech On the Crown includes introduction, the Greek text, commentary and useful essays on such topics as the constitution of the Amphictyonic council and the manuscript tradition.

This edition is in part a new work, and partly a revised and expanded version of the Pitt Press edition by J.M. MacGregor (Cambridge University Press, 1915). The Introduction is based on MacGregor's, revised and with an additional sections on Olynthos and the Chalcidian League, and Demosthenes' oratory. There is a also a new bibliography. The Greek text follows, along with a completely new commentary by E.I. McQueen, concentrating mainly on questions of grammar and syntax. The two Appendixes, on the Order of the Olynthiac Speeches and the Theoric Fund, have been completely rewritten to...

A seriously funny look at the roots of American Entertainment

When Groucho Marx and Charlie Chaplin were born, variety entertainment had been going on for decades in America, and like Harry Houdini, Milton Berle, Mae West, and countless others, these performers got their start on the vaudeville stage. From 1881 to 1932, vaudeville was at the heart of show business in the States. Its stars were America's first stars in the modern sense, and it utterly dominated American popular culture. Writer and modern-day vaudevillian Trav S.D. chronicles vaudeville's far-reaching...

The Overcoat which is generally acknowledged as the finest of Gogol's
memorable Saint Petersburg stories, is a tale of the absurd and
misplaced obsessions.

Revizor is the great comic masterpiece of nineteenth- century Russian theatre. Its central role, that of Khlestakov - the opportunistic yarn-spinner who is mistaken by provincial officials for a government inspector from St. Petersburg - has attracted performances from such western comic actors as Danny Kaye, Tony Hancock and Rick Mayall, as well as mainstays of the Russian theatre. This sweeping satire of Russian bureaucratic life directs its message, conveyed in apocalyptic undertones, at audiences from all backgrounds.

This translation of Checkov's tragi-comic play - perhaps his most
popular - is being published to coincide with a production at the
National Theatre, starring Vanessa Regrave

"Bahnwarter Thiel" (1988), by far the best story ever written by Gerhart Hauptmann, follows the principles of the Naturalist movement in its detailed study of the life and milieu of a humble and apparently unexceptional Prussian railwayman. Yet in its exploitation of symbolism, of techniques sometimes close to Impressionism, and in its subtle use of a changing narrative perspective, this Novelle goes beyond the essentially 'scientific' Naturalist approach: Hauptmann thus succeeds in exploring the complex interaction of suppressed social, psychological, physiological, and religious impulses...

The theatrical genius of Nikolay Gogol has gone largely unappreciated by English-speaking audiences because pedantically literal translations have left his plays virtually unperformable. These fresh translations restore the vitality of Gogol's language and humor, finally allowing his dramatic art to speak directly to Western readers, directors, actors, and theater-goers. This volume contains The Government Inspector and Marriage - Gogol's greatest full-length plays, comedic cornerstones of the Russian theatrical repertoire - and a one-act satire, The Gamblers. Also included are writings on...

Chekhov's penultimate play has inspired a bewildering variety of interpretations since its premiere at the Moscow Arts Theatre on 31 January 1901. Three Sisters has been viewed both as tragedy and as comedy, as a poignant testimony to the eternal yearning for love, happiness, beauty and meaning, and as a devastating indictment of the folly of inert gentility and vacuous day-dreaming. Its characters have been deemed worthy embodiments of the universal 'human condition', keenly experiencing hope, disappointment, frustration, loneliness and the passage of time - or passive products of...

Anton Chekhov has long been regarded as the master of the Russian short story and one of the leading exponents of the genre in world literature. This volume comprises the classic selection edited by Birkett and Struve, in Russian, here furnished with a new bibliography, and complements the stories and plays by Chekhov already available in the BCP Russian Texts series. The twelve stories, which date from 1883 to 1896, range from miniatures of comic levity such as Tolsttyi i tonkii to stories of sophisticated maturity such as Dom s mezoninom. The stories included are as follows...

Gogol's most remarkable exercise in the genre of the absurd.

Gogol's "The Government Inspector" must be one of the most misunderstood and misinterpreted plays in the history of drama. This work shows the wisdom, humour and subtlety that is missing in many English translations. The work is part of a series aimed at school and university students.

Originally published in 1835, this is one of two works by Gogol dealing with the "little man" (the other is "The Overcoat"). Of over 150 examples of this genre, these two stories are often considered the most complex, both linguistically and psychologically. Poprischin is not at the bottom of the social ladder; he is a middle-aged, grade nine civil servant, with at least ten minions under him. Nevertheless he is painfully aware of the social gap between himself and his Director and, even more so, between himself and Sophie, the Director's daughter. Poprischin's frustrated love for Sophie...