Theatre: Background Information

Provides essential information on the best-known, best-loved, and most important plays in world theatre. Each entry includes details of the title, author, date of writing, date of first performance, genre, setting, and composition of cast; there is also a summary of the play's plot, and a brief commentary. Genres covered include: burlesque, comedy, farce, historical drama, kabuki, masque, melodrama, morality play, mystery play, No, romantic comedy, tragicomedy, satire, and tragedy.

With more than two thousand entries, this illustrated guide offers a wealth of information on musicals, performers, composers, lyricists, producers, choreographers, and much more. Biographical entries range from early stars Fred Astaire, Bing Crosby, Mary Martin, and Mae West to contemporary show-stoppers Nathan Lane, Savion Glover, and Kristin Chenoweth, while composers Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Richard Rodgers, and Andrew Lloyd Webber all have articles, and the choreography of Bob Fosse, Tommy Tune, and Debbie Allen receives due examination. The plays and films covered range from modern hits like Mamma Mia! and Moulin Rouge! to timeless classics such as Yankee Doodle Dandy and Show Boat. Also, numerous musicals written specifically for television appear throughout, and many entries follow a work as it moves across genres, from stage, to film, to television. The Companion also includes cross references, a comprehensive listing of recommended recordings and further reading, a useful chronology of all the musicals described in the book, plus a complete index of Tony Award and Academy Award winners.

The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare is the most comprehensive reference work available on Shakespeare's life, times, works, and his 400-year global legacy. In addition to the authoritative A-Z entries, it includes nearly 100 illustrations, a chronology, a guide to further reading, a thematic contents list, and special feature entries on each of Shakespeare's works. The online edition was revised in 2011, with updates to over 200 entries plus 16 new entries.

First published in 1984, Gerald Bordman's Oxford Companion to American Theatre is the standard one-volume source on our national theatre, an up-to-date guide to the American stage from its beginnings to the present. Completely updated by theater professor Thomas Hischak, the volume includes playwrights, plays, actors, directors, producers, songwriters, famous playhouses, dramatic movements, and much more. The book covers not only classic works (such as Death of a Salesman) but also many commercially successful plays (such as Getting Gertie's Garter), plus entries on foreign figures that have influenced our dramatic development (from Shakespeare to Beckett and Pinter).

This edition includes entries on dramatists, from Plautus and Ibsen to August Wilson and Václav Havel; actors and actresses, from Sarah Bernhardt to Laurence Olivier and Anthony Hopkins; directors, such as Peter Brook, Peter Hall, and Mike Nichols; theaters, from Shakespeare's Globe to the Palais Royal in Paris and the Lunt-Fontanne in New York; and critics, such as Kenneth Tynan and Clive Barnes. In addition, there are entries on theater styles, drama festivals, and fascinating details about everything from theater companies, designers, and producers to winners of the Pulitzer Prize. The more technical aspects of theatre such as lighting, sound, method acting, and the different parts of a stage, are also covered.

The Oxford Companion to Theatre and Performance is a concise adaptation of the celebrated Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance, covering styles and movements, buildings, organizations, regions and traditions, and in particular, a strong focus upon biographies of actors, playwrights, directors, designers, and critics.