In praising “the witty high school romp” How I Paid for College, the New York Times Book Review said, it “makes you hope there’s a lot more where this came from.” There is. In this hilarious sequel Attack of the Theater People, Edward Zanni and his merry crew of high school musical-comedy miscreants move to the magical wonderland that is Manhattan. It is 1986, and aspiring actor Edward Zanni has been kicked out of drama school for being “too jazz hands for Juilliard.” Mortified, Edward heads out into the urban jungle of eighties New York City and finally lands a job as a “party motivator” who gets thirteen-year-olds to dance at bar mitzvahs and charms businesspeople as a “stealth guest” at corporate events. When he accidentally gets caught up in insider trading with a handsome stockbroker named Chad, only the help of his crew from How I Paid for College can rescue him from a stretch in Club Fed. Laced with the inspired zaniness of classic American musical comedy, Attack of the Theater People matches the big hair of the eighties with an even bigger heart.
In praising “the witty high school romp” How I Paid for College, the New York Times Book Review said, it “makes you hope there’s a lot more where this came from.” There is. In this hilarious sequel Attack of the Theater People, Edward Zanni and his merry crew of high school musical-comedy miscreants move to the magical wonderland that is Manhattan. It is 1986, and aspiring actor Edward Zanni has been kicked out of drama school for being “too jazz hands for Juilliard.” Mortified, Edward heads out into the urban jungle of eighties New York City and finally lands a job as a “party motivator” who gets thirteen-year-olds to dance at bar mitzvahs and charms businesspeople as a “stealth guest” at corporate events. When he accidentally gets caught up in insider trading with a handsome stockbroker named Chad, only the help of his crew from How I Paid for College can rescue him from a stretch in Club Fed. Laced with the inspired zaniness of classic American musical comedy, Attack of the Theater People matches the big hair of the eighties with an even bigger heart.
A deliciously funny romp of a novel about one overly theatrical and sexually confused New Jersey teenager’s larcenous quest for his acting school tuition It’s 1983 in Wallingford, New Jersey, a sleepy bedroom community outside of Manhattan. Seventeen-year-old Edward Zanni, a feckless Ferris Bueller–type, is Peter Panning his way through a carefree summer of magic and mischief. The fun comes to a halt, however, when Edward’s father remarries and refuses to pay for Edward to study acting at Juilliard. Edward’s truly in a bind. He’s ineligible for scholarships because his father earns too much. He’s unable to contact his mother because she’s somewhere in Peru trying to commune with Incan spirits. And, as a sure sign he’s destined for a life in the arts, Edward’s incapable of holding down a job. So he turns to his loyal (but immoral) misfit friends to help him steal the tuition money from his father, all the while practicing for his high school performance of Grease. Disguising themselves as nuns and priests, they merrily scheme their way through embezzlement, money laundering, identity theft, forgery, and blackmail. But, along the way, Edward also learns the value of friendship, hard work, and how you’re not really a man until you can beat up your father—metaphorically, that is. How I Paid for College is a farcical coming-of-age story that combines the first-person tone of David Sedaris with the byzantine plot twists of Armistead Maupin. It is a novel for anyone who has ever had a dream or a scheme, and it marks the introduction to an original and audacious talent.
April 14, 1865. A famous actor pulls a trigger in the presidential balcony, leaps to the stage and escapes, as the president lies fatally wounded. In the panic that follows, forty-six terrified people scatter in and around Ford’s Theater as soldiers take up stations by the doors and the audience surges into the streets chanting, “Burn the place down!” This is the untold story of Lincoln’s assassination: the forty-six stage hands, actors, and theater workers on hand for the bewildering events in the theater that night, and what each of them witnessed in the chaos-streaked hours before John Wilkes Booth was discovered to be the culprit. In Backstage at the Lincoln Assassination, historian Thomas A. Bogar delves into previously unpublished sources to tell the story of Lincoln’s assassination from behind the curtain, and the tale is shocking. Police rounded up and arrested dozens of innocent people, wasting time that allowed the real culprit to get further away. Some closely connected to John Wilkes Booth were not even questioned, while innocent witnesses were relentlessly pursued. Booth was more connected with the production than you might have known—learn how he knew each member of the cast and crew, which was a hotbed of secessionist resentment. Backstage at the Lincoln Assassination also tells the story of what happened to each of these witnesses to history, after the investigation was over—how each one lived their lives after seeing one of America’s greatest presidents shot dead without warning. Backstage at the Lincoln Assassination is an exquisitely detailed look at this famous event from an entirely new angle. It is must reading for anyone fascinated with the saga of Lincoln’s life and the Civil War era.
"This is the fullest and most richly detailed study available of the popular theater that developed during the last decades of tsarist Russia. Swift brings alive the world of Ostrovsky, Stanislavsky, Chekhov, and Tolstoy as he examines the origins and significance of the new 'people's theaters' that were created for the lower classes in St. Petersburg and Moscow between 1861 and 1917. His extensively researched study, full of anecdotes from the theater world of the day, shows how these people's theaters became a major arena in which the cultural contests of late imperial Russia were played out and how they contributed to the emergence of an urban consumer culture during this period of rapid social and political change."--Cover leaf.
Where Are the People? How Could the People’s Bodies Voice Themselves in the Form of Theatrical Aesthetics? At That Time, the Audience Really Stood Up. In this evening, theater practitioners initiated the conversation with physical action. They engage with contemporary issues through their unique performance styles. From a discursive context, they enter the scene of resistance and undertake the labor of performance. Their performance is not just the preface to a series of dialogues, but also a witness to thirty years of People’s Theater. “People’s theater” belongs to the people. It is the theater created by the people and speaks for the people as it has appeared in history in diverse forms. People theater in Inter-Asian Societies began to grow in a cross-region, which included Jakarta, Manila, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Busan, Maputo, Beijing, Shanghai, Hualien, Taichung, and Taipei. Through the writings and images written down by theatrical artists from these spaces, we can figure out the body aesthetics that carry historical conflicts and the experience to find the form and channel of expression, and continue for work of thinking and creation. “People Theater” is nothing but a rehearsal for a revolution. This book has reviewed and reflected on the half-century development of people’s theater in inter-Asian societies, demonstrates how the theatrical practitioners and artists in different communities strived to open various spaces, dealt with the censorship from the authoritarian regime to the neoliberal societies, and experimented with diverse aesthetics and local objects to address political issues. ▍Preface “It is a collection with the premise that can motivate our critical thinking with bodily energy. It reflects how we realize the statement—‘Viewing as participating; audience as actors.’It is also a book where some keywords constantly appear, like resistance, politics, the oppressed, and conversation. With its humming buzz and murmur against the present situation, it is a collection of words refusing to remain silent.”— Lin Hsin I（Associate Professor at the Institute of Applied Art, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University） ▍People’s Theater Practitioners Asian People’s Theatre Festival Society (Hong Kong)／Assignment Theatre (Taiwan)／Centre for Applied Theatre, Taiwan (Taipei)／Grass Stage (Shanghai)／Langasan Theatre (Hualien)／Makhampom Theatre Group (Ching Dao/Bangkok)／Oz Theatre Company (Taipei)／Philippine Educational Theater Association, PETA (Manila)／Shigang Mama Theater (Taichung Shigang)／Teater Kubur (Jakarta)／Teatro em Casa (Mozambique)／Theater Playground SHIIM (Busan)／Trans-Asia Sisters Theater (Taiwan)／WANG Mo-lin (Taiwan)／Wiji Thukul (Solo)／Yasen no Tsuki (Tokyo) ▍Characteristics of this book 1.Beyond the geographical limitations of Taiwan and East Asia, combined the context of Inter-Asian societies and Third-World society, appreciate the theater work methods that are intertwined with folk culture and community traditions, and promote the practice of public theater. 2. This book focuses on depicting network relationships in specific historical periods, and explores how the cooperation and interaction of troupes in these heterogeneous regions occurred. And how do these interactions affect the characteristics and forms of popular theater organizations in the transition of different policies? 3. What this book looks back on is not only the continuation and development of troupes but also the sudden change or gap between new people theaters and old people theaters.
"There is an actual, living relationship between the spaces of the body and the spaces the body moves through; human living tissue does not abruptly stop at the skin, exercises with space are built on the assumption that human beings and space are both alive." Here are the exercises which began as radical departures from standard actor training etiquette and which stand now as classic means through which the performer discovers his or her true power of transformation. Available for the first time in fifteen years, the new expanded edition of Environmental Theater offers a new generation of theater artists the gospel according to Richard Schechner, the guru whose principles and influence have survived a quarter-century of reaction and debate.
In recent seasons, theater has witnessed one of the fiercest examination yet of its art, as playwrights and performance artists continue to re-form image and language. In this collection, editor Michael Feingold has gathered the works of six contemporary and frequently controversial authors, all of whom have won acclaim for their originality and accomplishment.
The Kwagh-hir Theater: A Weapon for Social Action represents a significant milestone in the documentation and theorization of non-Western theater. The book describes how the Tiv people of Nigeria used their indigenous theater to fight against British colonialism and oppression by dominant groups in Nigeria. It celebrates the power of the theater to give voice to the voiceless and to become a catalyst for positive change.
