Stagecraft Books

Wicked is not just a musical, it is a phenomenon. Every week 15,000 people pack New York+s Gershwin Theatre to see the show. The most successful musical on Broadway in 2004, Wicked is based on the bestselling novel of the same name by Gregory Maguire. It tells the story of ...more

What happened to the boy who suddenly got everything he ever wanted? He lived happily ever after. Terry Fator overcame many odds—an abusive father, a peripatetic and isolated childhood, and decades of struggles—before winning America's Got Talent. In one year, he went from being a struggling entertainer to appearing on ...more

Sanford Meisner has been called "the theater's best-kept secret," and Sanford Meisner on Acting by Dennis Longwell gives some insight into what techniques the hugely influential drama teacher used in his 50-plus years of work. One of the founding members of the Actors Studio (with Lee Strasberg, Stella Adler, and ...more

So much mystery and veneration surrounds the writings of the great Russian teacher and director Stanislavski that perhaps the greatest surprise awaiting a first-time reader of An Actor Prepares is how conversational, commonsensical, and even at times funny this legendary book is. After many productions with the Moscow Arts Company, ...more

The anticipation is ratcheting up for one of this summer's biggest action-adventure events, Hellboy II: The Golden Army, and Dark Horse is taking you behind the scenes! As we delved into the original box-office hit, this 200-page tome likewise presents the most extensive look into the film's evolution, from early ...more

First published in 1988, Backstage Handbook is one of the most widely used stagecraft textbooks in the United States, with about 10,000 copies sold every year. This handy reference book brings together under one cover an incredible variety of information useful to designers, technicians and students who work behind the ...more

Painting With Light was the first book on cinematography written by a major Hollywood cameraman. Published in 1949 and now put back into print, it is one of the best and most unusual books in the field. Written with good humor and full of helpful diagrams and photographs, it is ...more

For actors by an actor of rare subtlety and imagination; for directors by a brilliant versatile director. Richard Boleslavsky's knowledge of the theatre was based on wide experience. A member of the Moscow Art Theatre and director of its First Studio, he worked in Russia, Germany and America as actor, ...more

This book captures the essence of an important chapter in television history: coverage of the origins of the Emergency!, a dramatic series significant beyond entertainment. Emergency! followed the daily lives of a pair of Los Angeles County Fire Department firefighters/paramedics, along with their colleagues at Station 51 and the emergency ...more