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.
Category Archives: Books
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.
Triple Threats
A look at two new reads for musical theatre fans: a thought-provoking analysis of Broadway’s body biases and a breezy memoir by dance icon Chita Rivera.
Are You Even Here? Or Are You Just Represented?
2 artists who’ve explored the ways city politics are like theatre wonder: What might theatre learn from city politics?
What Is to Be Done 2.0: Some Notes on Theatre in a Time of Climate Crisis
What will it take to change our ways before climate crisis makes such change impossible? We can start by using one of the greatest human inventions: story.
Drama, Onstage and Off, at the Public Theater
A new book documents Oskar Eustis’s regime at the pivotal New York theatre, with its heady mix of idealism, triumph, compromise, and controversy.
Asian American History, Told in Stages
The theatre is one place where the disparate, diverse Asian American experience has found common expression, as a new entry in Routledge’s Milestones series shows.
The Rise and Fall of Arthur Miller
John Lahr’s new biography recounts the story of a playwright who met his historical moment like few before or since, then struggled for a second act.
