Life as Theater is about understanding people and how the dramaturgical way of thinking helps or hinders such understanding. A volume that has deservedly attained the status of a landmark work, this was the first book to explore systematically the material and subject matter of social psychology from the dramaturgical viewpoint. It has been widely used and quoted, and has sparked ferment and debate in fields as diverse as sociology, psychology, anthropology, political science, speech communication, and formal theater studies.Life as Theater is organized around five substantive issues in social psychology: Social Relationships as Drama; The Dramaturgical Self; Motivation and Drama; Organizational Dramas; and Political Dramas. This classic text was revised and updated for a second edition in 1990, and includes approximately 66 percent new materials, all featuring individual introductions that provide the dramaturgical perspective and reflect the most learned thinking and work being done within this point of view. This book's sophistication will appeal to the scholar, and its clarity and conciseness to the student. Like its predecessor, it is designed to serve as a primary text or supplementary reader in classes. This new paperback edition includes an introduction by Robert A. Stebbins that explains why, even fifteen years after its publication,Life as Theater remains the best single sourcebook on the dramaturgic perspective as applied in the social sciences.

While working backstage on a high school production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream," sixteen-year-old Adam develops feelings for a beautiful actress--which violates an unwritten code--and begins to overcome the grief that has controlled him since his father's death nearly two years earlier.

Rather than focus on the well-known truism that great plays and dramatic performances can deeply transform and ennoble us, this explores how actors and actresses learn dramatic performance as an art, profession and way of life. Drawing from the psychological insights of Constantin Stanislavski and other master teachers, as well as performers like Lawrence Olivier, this is the first book that makes the actors magical soul craft into a character accessible and applicable to real-life.

Macelle Mahala’s rich study of contemporary African American theater institutions reveals how they reflect and shape the histories and cultural realities of their cities. Arguing that the community in which a play is staged is as important to the work’s meaning as the script or set, Mahala focuses on four cities’ “arts ecologies” to shed new light on the unique relationship between performance and place: Cleveland, home to the oldest continuously operating Black theater in the country; Pittsburgh, birthplace of the legendary playwright August Wilson; San Francisco, a metropolis currently experiencing displacement of its Black population; and Atlanta, a city with forty years of progressive Black leadership and reverse migration. Black Theater, City Life looks at Karamu House Theatre, the August Wilson African American Cultural Center, Pittsburgh Playwrights’ Theatre Company, the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, the African American Shakespeare Company, the Atlanta Black Theatre Festival, and Kenny Leon’s True Colors Theatre Company to demonstrate how each organization articulates the cultural specificities, sociopolitical realities, and histories of African Americans. These companies have faced challenges that mirror the larger racial and economic disparities in arts funding and social practice in America, while their achievements exemplify such institutions’ vital role in enacting an artistic practice that reflects the cultural backgrounds of their local communities. Timely, significant, and deeply researched, this book spotlights the artistic and civic import of Black theaters in American cities.

In this “absorbing and moving” memoir, a scholar of children’s literature considers the relationship between fathers and sons, and between literature and life (Kenneth Gross, author of Puppet). Through elliptical memories and reflections, Seth Lerer delves into his own evolution from boyhood to fatherhood, as well as his intellectual evolution through his lifelong love of reading. While presenting an intimate portrait of Lerer’s life, Prospero’s Son is about the power of books and theater, the excitement of stories in a young man’s life, and the transformative magic of words and performance. Lerer’s father, a teacher and lifelong actor, comes to terms with his life as a gay man. Meanwhile, Lerer himself grows from bookish boy to professor of literature and an acclaimed expert on the very children’s books that set him on his path. Only then does he learn how hard it is to be a father—and how much books can, and cannot, instruct him. Throughout these intertwined accounts of changing selves, Lerer returns again and again to stories—the ways they teach us about discovery, deliverance, forgetting, and remembering.

Chronicles the life of American ballet choreographer Jerome Robbins, discussing his career and private life, his Russian Jewish heritage, and his impact on dance and theater.

This book applies a dramaturgical perspective to familiar psychological topics including fear, greed, shame, guilt, rejection, well-being and terrorism. In presenting vivid illustrations of how our understanding of psychological problems can be enriched and enlivened by employing dramatic language and concepts, it brings the well-established field of narrative psychology to life. Providing an accessible and fresh understanding of psychological problems through the language and concepts of theatre, Karl Scheibe builds on the work of leading scholars in the field including Sarbin, Gergen, Bruner and Goffman. This exciting and accessible book acts as a sequel to Scheibe's, The Drama of Everyday Life, and will appeal to students and scholars of narrative and social psychology, theatre studies and the studies of self and identity.

A series of interviews with prominet producers, directors, choreographers, designers, dancers, and actors who tell the history of African American culture in Chicago.

While most books about Vaclav Havel are concerned with his role as dissident, activist, and then president of the Czech Republic, Rocamora's (New York University's Tisch School of the Arts) examines Havel's life as a playwright. She tells his story chronologically, from childhood in the 1940s, through presidency in the early 2000s, and addresses his work in theater in great detail, along with his relationships with other writers, and his legacy as a playwright. The book includes a chronology of plays, and photographs of productions. Annotation : 2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

What do Natalie Portman, Robert Downey, Jr., Zach Braff, and Mandy Moore have in common? Before they were stars, they were campers at Stagedoor Manor, the premier summer theater camp for children and teenagers. Founded in 1975, Stagedoor continues to attract scores of young performers eager to find kindred spirits, to sing out loud, to become working actors—or maybe even stars. Every summer for the past thirty-five years, a new crop of campers has come to the Catskills for an intense, often wrenching introduction to professional theater. (The camp produces thirteen full-scale productions during each of its three sessions.) These kids come from varying backgrounds—the offspring of Hollywood players from Nora Ephron to Bruce Willis work alongside kids on scholarship. Some campers have agents, others are seeking representation. When Mickey Rapkin, a senior editor at GQ and self-proclaimed theater fanatic, learned about this place, he fled Manhattan for an escape to upstate New York. At Stagedoor, he tracked a trio of especially talented and determined teen actors through their final session at camp. Enter Rachael Singer, Brian Muller, and Harry Katzman, three high school seniors closing out their sometimes sheltered Stagedoor experiences and graduating into the real world of industry competition and rejection. These veteran campers—still battling childhood insecurities, but simultaneously searching for that professional gig that will catapult them to fame—pour their souls into what might be their last amateur shows. Their riveting stories are told in Theater Geek, an eye-opening, laugh-out-loud chronicle full of drama and heart, but also about the business of training kids to be professional thespians and, in some cases, child stars. (The camp has long acted as a farm system for Broadway and Hollywood, attracting visits from studio executives and casting directors.) Via original interviews with former and current campers and staff—including Mandy Moore, Zach Braff, and Jon Cryer—Rapkin also recounts Stagedoor Manor’s colorful, star-studded history: What was Natalie Portman’s breakout role as a camper? What big-time Hollywood director, then barely a teenager, dated a much older Stagedoor staff member? Why did Courtney Love (at Stagedoor visiting her daughter) get into an argument with a hot dog vendor who had set up shop at the camp? Theater Geek leads readers through the triumphs and tragedies of the three senior campers’ final summer in an absorbing, thought-provoking narrative that reveals the dynamic and inspiring human beings who populate this world. It also explores what the proliferation of theater camps says about our celebrity-obsessed youth and our most basic but vital need to fit in. Through the rivalry, heartbreak, and joy of one summer at Stagedoor Manor, Rapkin offers theater geeks of all ages a dishy, illuminating romp through the lives of serious child actors. Rich, insightful, and thoroughly entertaining, Theater Geek pulls back the curtain on an elite and intriguing world to reveal what’s really at its core: children who simply love to perform.