Category Archives: Books

Dream Ballet Vs. Steam Heat

Two new dance biographies show what we can (and can’t) learn from the revolutionary choreography of Agnes de Mille and Bob Fosse.

A massive new oral history recreates the drama behind Kushner’s modern epic, but does it do his ideas justice?

Sam Shepard and Meryl Streep both made defining marks on New York stages before wandering afield.

An O’Neill biography puts the drama centerstage, while a tantalizing compendium of Beckett-iana largely elides it.

The new book ‘Drop Dead’ puts a debate we’re still having—between art for art’s sake and art for the common good—into stark relief.

Two new bios examine the lives and careers of two musical-theatre giants: one most at home onstage, the other too big for any single medium.

More than a mere play collection, the author’s new anthology is a meta-meditation on identity, memory, and meaning.

Western colonizers thought Shakespeare proved their cultural superiority, but a new book explores what his plays have meant to the colonized.

The playwright’s new nonfiction collection offers a grab bag of alternately brilliant and brittle asides.

The megahit of the moment, like many revolutionary popular works, has strong roots in musical theatre’s past.