Download or read book Questors Jesters and Renegades written by Michael Coveney and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-03-05 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shortlisted for the Theatre Book Prize 2021 This is the vital story of the amateur theatre as it developed from the medieval guilds to the modern theatre of Ayckbourn and Pinter, with a few mishaps and missed cues along the way. Michael Coveney – a former member of Ilford's Renegades - tells this tale with a charm and wit that will have you shouting out for an encore. This is the first account of its kind, packed with anecdote and previously unheard stories, and it shows how amateur theatre is more than a popular pastime: it has been endemic to the birth of the National Theatre, as well as a seedbed of talent and a fascinating barometer and product of the times in which we live. Some of the companies Coveney delves into – all taking centre stage in this entertaining and lively book - include the Questors and Tower Theatre in London; Birmingham's Crescent Theatre; The Little Theatre in Bolton, where Ian McKellen was a schoolboy participant; Lincolnshire's Broadbent Theatre, co-founded by Jim Broadbent's father and other conscientious objectors at the end of World War II; and Cornwall's stunning cliff-top Minack.
Download or read book The Last Emperor of Mexico written by Edward Shawcross and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2021-10-19 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The true operatic tragedy of Maximilian and Carlota, the European aristocrats who stumbled into power in Mexico—and faced bloody consequences. In the 1860s, Napoleon III, intent on curbing the rise of American imperialism, persuaded a young Austrian archduke and a Belgian princess to leave Europe and become the emperor and empress of Mexico. They and their entourage arrived in a Mexico ruled by terror, where revolutionary fervor was barely suppressed by French troops. When the United States, now clear of its own Civil War, aided the rebels in pushing back Maximilian’s imperial soldiers, the French army withdrew, abandoning the young couple. The regime fell apart. Maximilian was executed by a firing squad and Carlota, secluded in a Belgian castle, descended into madness. Assiduously researched and vividly told, The Last Emperor of Mexico is a dramatic story of European hubris, imperialist aspirations clashing with revolutionary fervor, and the Old World breaking from the New.
Download or read book Maggie Smith written by Michael Coveney and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2015-12-29 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This perfect gift book for fans of Downton Abbey will take them behind the scenes of the Grand Dame who brings the Dowager Countess to life. No one does glamour, severity, girlish charm or tight-lipped witticism better than Dame Maggie Smith. Michael Coveney's biography shines a light on the life and career of a truly remarkable performer, one whose stage and screen career spans six decades. From her days as a West End star of comedy and revue, Dame Maggie's path would cross with those of the greatest actors, playwrights and directors of the era. Whether stealing scenes from Richard Burton, answering back to Laurence Olivier, or playing opposite Judi Dench in Breath of Life, her career can be seen as a 'Who's Who' of British theatre. Her film and television career has been just as starry. From the title character in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and the meddling chaperone in A Room With a View to the Harry Potter films in which she played Minerva McGonagall (as she put it 'Miss Jean Brodie in a wizard's hat') and the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel films in which she played the wise Muriel Donnelly, Smith has thrilled, engaged and made audiences laugh. As Violet Crawley, the formidable Dowager Countess of Downton Abbey she conquered millions more. Paradoxically she remains an enigmatic figure, rarely appearing in public. Michael Coveney's absorbing biography, written with the actress's blessing and drawing on personal archives, as well as interviews with immediate family and close friends, is a portrait of one of the greatest actors of our time.
Download or read book London Theatres New Edition written by Michael Coveney and published by Frances Lincoln. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This fully revised and updated edition of the hugely successful London Theatres features ten additional theatres, including the Victoria Palace Theatre, the Sondheim Theatre, the Bridge Theatre and the Noël Coward Theatre. London is the undisputed theatre capital of the world. From world-famous musicals to West End shows, from cutting-edge plays to Shakespeare in its original staging, from outdoor performance to intimate fringe theatre, the range and quality are unsurpassed. Leading drama critic Michael Coveney invites you on a tour of more than 50 theatres that make the London stage what it is. With stories of the architecture, the people and the productions which have defined each one, alongside sumptuous photographs by Peter Dazeley of the auditoriums, public and backstage areas, this illustrated overview of London's theatres is a book like no other. A must for fans of the stage! Praise for the first edition: ‘This coffee table whopper ... dazzles’ Spectator ‘London Theatres ... will surely feature on any theatre buff's present list’ Sightlines
Download or read book The Art of Coarse Acting Or How to Wreck an Amateur Dramatic Society written by Michael Green and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Strategy Gap written by Michael Coveney and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2003-04-21 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With shortened business cycles, increased competition, and rapidly changing technologies, companies need to be more nimble than ever. They must narrow the gap between strategy formulation and operation execution to guarantee success. The Strategy Gap will provide a framework that senior financial managers can use to ensure that their strategies are implemented successfully and that their corporations remain competitive. Filled with informative case studies and best practices for optimum financial processes, this valuable resource will help managers leverage information technology to successfully implement corporate strategies. This book also shows managers how to eliminate surprises in poorly managed or unforeseen activities, while applying new approaches to financial management for faster and more accurate business modeling. Expert advice from those who have used these strategies clearly explains how to integrate planning, budgeting, consolidation, and reporting into one cohesive management system.
Download or read book The Suppliant Women written by Aeschylus and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2017-10-19 with total page 65 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If we help, we invite trouble. If we don't, we bring shame.Fifty women board a boat in North Africa. They flee across the Mediterranean, leaving everything behind. They are escaping forced marriage in their home and seeking asylum in Greece.Written 2,500 years ago, The Suppliant Women is one of the world's oldest plays. It's about the plight of refugees, about moral and human rights, civil war, democracy and ultimately the triumph of love. It tells a story that echoes down the ages to find striking and poignant resonance today.Featuring in performance a chorus of local women, this is part play, part ritual, part theatrical archaeology. It explores fundamental questions of humanity: who are we, where do we belong and, if all goes wrong, who will take us in?Aeschylus' The Suppliant Women, in a version by David Greig, premiered at the Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, in October 2016, in a production by ATC.
Download or read book Beneath the Streets written by Adam Macqueen and published by Eye Books (US&CA). This book was released on 2020-06-01 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Liberal Party leader Jeremy Thorpe hired thugs to kill his ex-lover, they botched it. What if they had succeeded? It is February 1976, and the naked corpse of a shockingly underage rent boy is fished out of a pond on Hampstead Heath. Since the police don't seem to care, 20-year-old Tommy Wildeblood—himself a former 'Dilly boy' prostitute—finds himself investigating. Dodging murderous Soho hoodlums and the agents of a more sinister power, Tommy uncovers another, even more shocking crime: the Liberal leader and likely next Home Secretary, Jeremy Thorpe, has had his former male lover executed on Exmoor and got clean away with it. Now the trail of guilt seems to lead higher still, and a ruthless Establishment will stop at nothing to cover its tracks. In a gripping thriller whose cast of real-life characters includes Prime Minister Harold Wilson, his senior adviser Lady Falkender, gay Labour peer Tom Driberg and the investigative journalist Paul Foot, Adam Macqueen plays "what if" with Seventies UK political history—with a sting in the tail that reminds us that the truth can be just as chilling as fiction.
Download or read book The Oxford Book of Theatrical Anecdotes written by Gyles Brandreth and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-08 with total page 511 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the ultimate anthology of theatrical anecdotes, edited by lifelong theatre-lover Gyles Brandreth in the Oxford tradition, and covering every kind of theatrical story and experience from the age of Shakespeare and Marlowe to the age of Stoppard and Mamet, from Richard Burbage to Richard Briers, from Nell Gwynn to Daniel Day-Lewis, from Sarah Bernhardt to Judi Dench. Players, playwrights, prompters, producers—they all feature. The Oxford Book of Theatrical Anecdotes provides a comprehensive, revealing, and hugely entertaining portrait of the world of theatre across four hundred years. Many of the anecdotes are humorous: all have something pertinent and illuminating to say about an aspect of theatrical life—whether it is the art of playwriting, the craft of covering up missed cues, the drama of the First Night, the nightmare of touring, or the secret ingredients of star quality. Edmund Kean, Henry Irving, John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier, Ellen Terry, Edith Evans, Maggie Smith, Helen Mirren—the great 'names' are all here, of course, but there are tales of the unexpected, too—and the unknown. This is a book—presented in five acts, with a suitably anecdotal and personal prologue from Gyles Brandreth—where, once in a while, the understudy takes centre-stage and Gyles Brandreth treats triumph and disaster just the same, including stories from the tattiest touring companies as well as from Broadway, the West End and theatres, large and small, in Australia, India, and across Europe.
Download or read book The Last Protector James Marwood Cat Lovett Book 4 written by Andrew Taylor and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2020-04-02 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the No.1 Sunday Times bestselling author of The Ashes of London comes the next book in the phenomenally successful series following James Marwood and Cat Lovett.
Download or read book My Life in Pieces written by Simon Callow and published by Nick Hern Books. This book was released on 2012-02 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Sheridan Morley Prize for theatre biography and Theatre book of the Year, 2010-The Times.
Download or read book Shakespearean Rhetoric written by Benet Brandreth and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-03-25 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Classical Rhetoric, the art of persuasion, formed the sum and substance of Shakespeare's education and was the basis of his understanding of the power of language and how it worked to move, delight and teach. Rhetoric, which seeks to explain the way that language works to influence others, provides a powerful, transformative tool for approaching text in performance. This book helps you understand the key concepts of rhetoric. It gives clear explanations, stripped of jargon, and examples of rhetorical technique in the plays. It also provides engaging, practical exercises to unlock character and to identify themes in the plays through the lens of rhetoric. Academically rigorous, based on more than a decade of practical experience in the use of rhetoric in drama at the highest level, it is an ideal companion for anyone engaging with Shakespeare in performance.
Download or read book George Alexander and the Work of the Actor Manager written by Lucie Sutherland and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-07-03 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the first book-length study of the work and legacy of West End actor-manager George Alexander since the 1930s, George Alexander and the Work of the Actor Manager examines the key part this figure played in presenting new drama by authors including Oscar Wilde and Henry James. The book sheds new light on the figure of the actor-manager, assessing in detail the influence of Alexander within and beyond his time. At the St. James’s Theatre in London between 1891 and 1918, through a range of strategies including the support of new writers, and adaptation of fiction to the stage, Alexander sustained professional status through practices that continue to be reflected in the cultural industries today. A range of evidence is employed including production reviews, anecdotal accounts, financial records, and personal correspondence, to reveal how he operated as a business entrepreneur as well as an artistic innovator.
Download or read book Break a Leg written by Jenny Landreth and published by Random House. This book was released on 2020-10-01 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'With spot-on injections of humour and a frequently raised sardonic eyebrow, joy and warmth shine from this fascinating and funny book' Jo Brand A joyful celebration of amateur theatre From the Mystery Plays of the Middle Ages, via the Georgian aristocrats who built opulent private theatres in their own homes, to the radical lefties taking political theatre to the streets, this is the story of amateur dramatics in Britain. We meet a cast of characters who tell us about the joy amateur theatre brings them and we follow the full arc of a production, from first auditions to last night party, with all the mishaps and forgotten lines that come in between. In a triumphant mix of memoir, social history and manifesto, Jenny Landreth opens our eyes to am-dram and shows us a vibrant world that is a crucial part of our culture.
Download or read book Clanbook written by Andrew Greenberg and published by White Wolf Games Studio. This book was released on 1997 with total page 74 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Clanbook: Malkavian presents this special clan in all its demented glory.
Download or read book The Spy of Venice written by Benet Brandreth and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2018-08-07 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When he is caught by his wife in one ill-advised seduction too many, young William Shakespeare flees Stratford to seek his fortune. Cast adrift in London, Will falls in with a band of players, but greater men have their eye on this talented young wordsmith. England’s very survival hangs in the balance, and Will finds himself dispatched to Venice on a crucial assignment. Once there, Will is dazzled by the city’s masques and its beauties, but Catholic assassins would stop at nothing to end his mission on the point of their sharpened knives—and lurking in the shadows is a killer as clever as he is cruel.Suspenseful, seductive, and as sharp as an assassin’s blade, The Spy of Venice introduces a major new literary talent to the genre—thrilling if you’ve never read a word of Shakespeare and sublime if you have.
Download or read book The World According to Mike Leigh written by Michael Coveney and published by Trafalgar Square Publishing. This book was released on 1997 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a biography of Mike Leigh, one of Britain's most original film makers and playwrights, and the creator of High Hopes, Abigail's Party and Naked. He is well-known for the unique methods that he uses.
