"Upcoming" items and similar pieces are drawn from material published or distributed by credited arts organizations or individuals and may have been lightly edited by ALT
ALT always credits photos and images from other sources when information is available; ALT acknowledges rights of artists and producing organizations to production images
The daily ArtsJournal on-line signals this review of James Shapiro's history/investigation of the question, published March 25 in The Economist:
William Shakespeare
Hero or hoax
The man and his pen
Mar 25th 2010 | From The Economist print edition
Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? By James Shapiro. Simon & Schuster; 367 pages; $26. Faber and Faber; £20. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk
[ . . . ] “What difference does it make who wrote the plays?” someone asked the author wearily. Mr Shapiro (for whom Shakespeare was definitely the man) thinks it matters a lot, and by the end of this book, his readers will think so too.
The authorship controversy turns on two things: snobbery and the assumption that, in a literal way, you are what you write. How could an untutored, untravelled glover’s son from hickville, the argument goes, understand kings and courtiers, affairs of state, philosophy, law, music—let alone the noble art of falconry? Worse still, how could the business-minded, property-owning, moneylending materialist that emerges from the documentary scraps, be the same man as the poet of the plays? Many have shaken their heads at the sheer vulgarity of it all, among them Mark Twain, Helen Keller, Henry James, his brother William, and Sigmund Freud.
Mr Shapiro teases out the cultural prejudices, the historical blind spots, and above all the anachronism inherent in these questions. No one before the late 18th century had ever asked them, or thought to read the plays or sonnets for biographical insights. No one had even bothered to work out a chronology for them. The idea that works of literature hold personal clues, or that—more grandly—writing is an expression and exploration of the self, is a relatively recent phenomenon. [ . . . ]
Making the Scene: A History of Stage Design and Technology in Europe and the United States
Oscar G. Brockett and Margaret A. Mitchell [click image to view larger version]
The University of Texas at Austin Department of Theatre and Dance announces the publication of professor emeritus, Oscar G. Brockett's, new book, Making the Scene: A History of Stage Design and Technology in Europe and the United States.
Co-authored by Margaret A. Mitchell, Professor of Theatre Arts at the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio, Texas, Making the Scene offers an unprecedented survey of the evolving context, theory, and practice of scene design from ancient Greek times to the present. The work is enhanced by 350 full-color illustrations edited by Linda Hardberger, founding curator of the Tobin Collection of Theatre Arts at the Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, Texas.
[Click 'Read More' for additional information and three illustrative images]
If anyone is steeped in the texts of Shakespeare, it's David Bevington, Distinguished Service Emeritus Professor in Humanities at the University of Chicago. He has written or edited more than 30 books on Elizabethan drama, including the Longman complete edition of Shakespeare's works in 1992, Bantam's twenty-nine paperback editions of the plays, and the Norton Anthology of English Renaissance Drama (2002).
This compact and readable volume shows that Bevington is devoted as well to the art of staging Shakespeare.
His introductory chapter Actions That A Man Might Play gives his three-fold intent for the book:
"to provide an account of Shakespeare's theatre in all its complexity of physical space, casting capacities and audience expectations; to place Shakespeare's plays in that original theatrical space as a way of suggesting how an awareness of their theatrical dimensions can illuminate numberless dramatic situations inherent in the dialogue; and to juxtapose those insights with more modern instances in film, television, and theatrical performance in order to appreciate some ways in which changed modes of presentation can arise out of, and contribute to, changed perceptions of the text."
David Bevington delivers handsomely on that time-machine approach, in a thoughtful text amply illustrated with sketches, reproduced images and photographs.
The American Alliance of Theatre Education awarded its "Distinguished Book Award" last month to the UT Press publication of nine plays by California playwright José Cruz González, edited by UT faculty member Coleman A. Jennings.
In today's multicultural world there is an urgent need for more plays and books that represent a diverse array of ethnic groups. Theatre and book critics, scholars, and theatre professionals have long campaigned for a broader representation of minorities in book and play publishing.
In this anthology, renowned theatre expert Coleman A. Jennings has compiled a selection of plays by José Cruz González that meets these multicultural demands head-on. González is a foremost voice in theatre for children and youth whose plays address themes, often through imaginary lands and extraordinary characters, faced by children in their everyday lives.
Born to migrant workers in Calexico, California, in 1957, González learned at a young age how to tap into the vast world of his imagination. From his grandfather, who would regale the family with stories and riddles as they worked on the farm, he learned the power of storytelling. He spent afternoons, weekends, and summers working in the fields, so it is no surprise that his plays are strongly tied to the natural world. His use of magical realism has become one of his trademarks.
Editors Rebecca Dunn Jaroff, Bob Shuman, Joyce E. Henry. Spotlighting the best of Broadway, Off-Broadway, regional, and experimental writings since 2000 ... pieces for performance, acting class, and study.
Culled from the work of more than 100 playwrights - including Tracy Letts confronts the aftermath of betrayal on a night too hot for sleep in August: Osage County; Karen Finley exposes sexual politics outside the Oval Office in George and Martha; Tom Stoppard investigates the difficulties of understanding Greek as well as the younger generation in Rock 'n' Roll; Lynn Nottage delineates gentility, the fear of being alone, and the passage of time in Intimate Apparel; Richard Greenberg weighs the costs of being godly or becoming merely human in the baseball-themed Take Me Out; and Tina Howe bends time, showing the universal power of dramatic recognition across the ages, in Water Music.
Newly published, signalled by talkinbroadway.com: 
