How To Tell If You’re a Theatre Kid
In this excerpt from a new memoir about his years toiling Off-Off-Broadway, the author reflects on what it means to be young and bitten by the acting bug.
Category Archives: Books
‘We Are in the Wrong Place’
In 1968, one of the regional theatre’s founding mothers wrote an urgent memo to her board: It was long past time to integrate the company and diversify the audience.
Burning Down the Spouse
A new book looks at the marriages of convenience—and backstage inconveniences—behind the filming of ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’
The Theatre of Politics, or the Politics of Theatre? Yes.
Two new books consider the possibilities and limits of documentary theatre in a polarized nation.
Reading Race Through Shakespeare, and Vice Versa
Two books come not to bury the Bard but to bring his writing down to the common ground we share.
Can a Theatre Critic Be a Good Dad?
Priscilla Gilman’s memoir portrays her father, Richard Gilman, as a passionate, difficult figure who bequeathed her life lessons, many unwittingly.
A Man in Full: August Wilson and His Plays, in All Their Complexity
Patti Hartigan’s excellent new biography gives us a rich portrait of the playwright’s life and art, and a measure of his significance.
How Patti Hartigan Learned What She Learned About August Wilson
A reporter and critic who knew Wilson nearly from the start of his playwriting peak, she wrote the biography she wanted to see.
How to Empower a New Generation of Latinx Actors
Whether students are in the process of reclaiming or rejecting their identities, a new book offers resources to help subvert stereotypes and understand embodiment.
What’s True in ‘True West’?
A new biography of Sam Shepard focuses on the man as an icon rather than as a writer—though, as with everything in the late dramatist’s work, such delineations are never so neat.
