Category Archives: Book/Media Reviews
TLA Annouces 2014 Book Award Winners!
The Theatre Library Association is proud to announce the TLA Book Award winners for English language works of scholarship on theatre, film, and broadcasting, published in 2014. The 2014 George Freedley Memorial Award for an exemplary work in the field of live theatre or performance will be awarded to Arnold Aronson for Ming Cho Lee: […]
Book Review: The Travels of Benjamin Zuskin
The Travels of Benjamin Zuskin Ala Zuskin Perelman Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2015 ISBN: 9780815610502 320 pp. The Travels of Benjamin Zuskin, part of the series Judaic Traditions in Literature, Music and Art, is an account of the artistic and personal life of one of the stars of the Moscow State Jewish Theatre. Benjamin […]
Book Review: The Routledge Companion to Commedia dell’Arte
The Routledge Companion to Commedia dell’arte Judith Chaffee and Olly Crick, editors London and NY: Routledge, 2014 ISBN: 9780415745062 540 pp. Commedia dell’arte was born in Italy almost certainly as a result of influences from the ancient Roman comic theatre, borrowing archetypal characters from its traditions while emphasizing improvisation as its style. Commedia actors […]
Book Review: Follies of God: Tennessee Williams and the Women of the Fog
Follies of God: Tennessee Williams and the Women of the Fog James Grissom New York: Knopf, 2015 ISBN: 9780307265692 404 pp. There is no question that Tennessee Williams is having a banner year. Productions of his plays continue to find appreciative audiences, John Lahr’s recently published biography of Williams masterfully reconstructs the playwright’s chaotic […]
Meet our New Book Review Editor — Welcome Emily Witkowski!
I am pleased to introduce Emily Witkowski as the new TLA Book Review Editor. Many thanks to Charlotte Cubbage for her fine work as editor. Charlotte will help with the transition which should be completed by early summer. The Book Review Editor works with the review writers to produce approximately 4-6 reviews which will be published […]
Book Review: Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh
Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh John Lahr New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2014 736 pp. John Lahr’s much-anticipated and long-awaited biography of Tennessee Williams is also long overdue. In 1995, Lyle Leverich published a massive and copiously researched work, Tom: The Unknown Tennessee Williams, covering Williams’s life from birth to the […]
Book Review: Eugene O’Neill: A Life in Four Acts
Eugene O’Neill: A Life in Four Acts Robert M. Dowling New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014 ISBN-13: 9780300170337 584 pp. “Tragic. Bitter. Pessimistic. Fatalistic. Gloomy. Take your pick from the run of adjectives trotted out to describe Eugene Gladstone O’Neill, the Irish American ‘master of the misbegotten,’ ‘dean of dysfunction,’ ‘black magician,’ ‘apostle of woe,’ […]
Book Review: Reading Joss Whedon
Reading Joss Whedon Edited by Rhonda V. Wilcox, Tanya R. Cochran, Cynthea Masson & David Lavery Syracuse University Press, 2014 ISBN: 9780815633648 461 p. Beginning with the 1997 premiere of the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Joss Whedon has benefited from a devoted yet critical following. Within a couple of years of the […]
Book Review: The Selected Letters of Elia Kazan
The Selected Letters of Elia Kazan Kazan, Elia Edited by Albert J. Devlin ; with Marlene J. Devlin Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2014 ISBN: 978-0307267160 649 pp. Albert and Marlene Devlin’s The Selected Letters of Elia Kazan paints a vivid portrait of the legendary director’s life and times that is frequently at odds with the […]
Book Review: Simming: Participatory Performance and the Making of Meaning
Simming: Participatory Performance and the Making of Meaning Scott Magelssen Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2014. ISBN: 9780472072149 249 pp. Few scholarly books open with as enticing a hook as Scott Magelssen’s excellent study of participatory performance, Simming. Magelssen seemed destined to write this book since his career as a simulator began […]