NEW YORK CITY: The Theatre Library Association has announced the winners of its 2014 Book Awards, recognizing achievement in works of scholarship in theatre, film, and broadcasting.
This year’s George Freedley Memorial Award for “an exemplary work in the field of live theatre or performance” was bestowed on Arnold Aronson’s Ming Cho Lee: A Life in Design (excepts from the book can be found here).
Published in an expansive, intricately illustrated volume by TCG Books, A Life in Design is an exploration of the half-century career of the theatrical artist whom the New York Times declared “the dean of American set designers.” Images in the book, representative of the designer’s 300-plus stage productions, were personally selected by Lee from his catalogue of photos, models, sketches, and renderings.
Among the finalists for the Freedley Award were works on vaudeville, Tennessee Williams, and the history of blues music.
The list of finalists is below:
- New Humor in the Progressive Era: Americanization and the Vaudeville Comedian, Rick DesRochers (Palgrave Macmillan)
- Performing the Temple of Liberty: Slavery, Theater, and Popular Culture in London and Philadelphia, 1760-1850, Jenna M. Gibbs (Johns Hopkins University Press)
- Collecting Shakespeare: The Story of Henry and Emily Folger, Stephen H. Grant (Johns Hopkins University Press)
- Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh, John Lahr (Norton)
- Staging the Blues: From Tent Shows to Tourism, Paige McGinley (Duke University Press)
