Theater & Drama: Reference Resources

As its title suggests, this book aspires to be at once a guide to the world of opera, prepared under the auspices of the Metropolitan Opera Guild (a “Metropolitan Opera Encyclopedia”), and a compendium of information specifically related to the Metropolitan Opera, its history, repertory, and performers (a “Metropolitan Opera Encyclopedia”). While intended to answer a wide range of questions about this international art form, its composers and librettists and their works, its singers and conductors, designers and producers, its terms and the places where it has been most notably practiced, the book also offers, where appropriate, greater detail about their Met-related aspects (and, as the first such book compiled in the United States in some years, also a more generally American focus).

Shakespeare's Theatre consolidates the author's forty years of experience in studying and staging Shakespeare's plays. Under an alphabetical list of relevant terms, names and concepts (from a to ’zounds), the book reviews current knowledge of the character and operation of theatres in Shakespeare's time, with an explanation of their origins. Coverage includes the practices of Elizabethan actors and script writers: methods of characterization; gesture, blocking and choreography, including music, dance and fighting; actors' rhetorical interaction with audiences; and use of costumes, stage props, and make-up. The author makes use of scripts and scholarship about original stagings of Shakespeare and suggests how those productions related to modern staging.

The Cambridge Guide to Theatre offers a wealth of information on the history and present practice of theatre in all parts of the world. Written by a team of international experts, it clearly depicts the dynamic interaction of performance traditions from all cultures in present-day theatre. While saluting the history and traditions of 'high' art in the theatre, the Guide also celebrates the importance of 'low' art: the energy and animation that has infused popular theatre and popular entertainment for thousands of years.