The Play"s The Thing: The Plays of William Shakespeare is aimed at a YA (young adult) audience as an introduction to the greatest plays ever written. Direct and personal and decidedly non-academic, each play gets its own essay, giving the reader an overview of the play with an emphasis on the relevance that the play has to the reader"s own life and concerns. As I wrote in the introduction, "The goal of this guide, then, is to turn Shakespeare from somebody you have to read into somebody that you want to read." A young man struggles with his father s unexpected death. A young couple pledges their love to each other despite their families angry disapproval. A young man rebels against his father while at the same time craving his approval. A father and his family roam across what appears to be a post-apocalyptic dystopian landscape. A Roman general kills the sons of his enemy and serves them to her baked in a pie. Two young couples escape into a forest where magic rules and nothing is quite what it seems. A group of young men decide to give up on women and dating in order to devote themselves to their studies, until a group of beautiful young women changes their minds. The latest YA novels? While they certainly sound like they can be, they re not. They re just one way of looking at some of the plays of William Shakespeare (to be precise, Hamlet, Romeo & Juliet, Henry IV Parts I & 2, King Lear, Love s Labour s Lost) that shows that they re not just old-school classic plays they re old-school classic plays that tell stories that are relevant to my life, to your lives, and to the way we all live today. These are stories of love. Of families. Of fathers and sons. Of the rise and fall of kings. Of what it s like to grow old. Of what it s like to love someone so much it hurts. Of treachery and revenge. Of ambition. Of jealousy. Of forgiveness. Of murder. Almost every human experience you can think of is brought to life in these plays. Which is why, for more than 400 years, they have been seen as the central glory of Western literature. And that s also why the plays of William Shakespeare are, on a daily basis, performed on stages around the world. The stories he told, the characters he created, are universal. Audiences in China, in Ghana, in India, in Brazil, in every part of the world, can appreciate and love Shakespeare as much as the British and Americans.

An insider's spirited history of Yale Repertory Theatre In this serious and entertaining chronicle of the first fifty years of Yale Repertory Theatre, award-winning dramaturg James Magruder shows how dozens of theater artists have played their parts in the evolution of a sterling American institution. Each of its four chapters is dedicated to one of the Yale Rep's artistic directors to date: Robert Brustein, Lloyd Richards, Stan Wojewodski Jr., and James Bundy. Numerous sidebars--dedicated to the spaces used by the theater, the playwrights produced most often, casting, the prop shop, the costume shop, artist housing, and other topics--enliven the lavishly illustrated four-color text. This fascinating insider account, full of indelible descriptions of crucial moments in the Rep's history, is based in part on interviews with some of America's most respected actors about their experiences at the Rep, including Paul Giamatti, James Earl Jones, Frances McDormand, Meryl Streep, Courtney B. Vance, Dianne Wiest, and Henry Winkler--among many others. More than just a valentine to an important American theater, The Play's the Thing is a story about institution-building and the force of personality; about the tug-of-war between vision and realpolitik; and about the continuous negotiation between educational needs and artistic demands.

Because unsupervised free play is nature’s way of teaching us the skills we need as adults – the skills of cooperation, making and enforcing rules, compromise, negotiating conflicts, accepting defeat, children have been dependent on others to regulate them. More and more they have become “other directed.” It is no surprise then that during the days of self-quarantine, when schools, playgrounds and other recreational activities were shut down, children were subject to the emotional stresses of having to find their own way. Their self-direction having had little chance of development failed them when they needed it most. This is a book for teachers and parents as well who seek to develop such self-directed, “can-do” children.

The sequel to Roddy Doyle’s beloved novel A Star Called Henry – an entertaining romp across America in the 1920s Fleeing the Irish Republican paymasters for whom he committed murder and mayhem, Henry Smart has left his wife and infant daughter in Dublin and is off to start a new life. When he lands in America, it is 1924 and New York City is the center of the universe. Henry turns to hawking cheap hooch on the Lower East Side, only to catch the attention of the mobsters who run the district. In Chicago, Henry finds a newer America alive with wild, happy music played by a man with a trumpet and bleeding lips called Louis Armstrong. But in a city also owned by the mob, Armstrong is a prisoner of his color. He needs a man--a white man--and the man he chooses is Henry Smart.

Marina Jenkyns conveys the excitement of working therapeutically with dramatic text though a personal and highly readable analysis of plays from a variety of periods and cultures. Influenced by the theories of Winnicott and Klein she lays bare the dynamics of relationships and plots to show how they can be used to help us understand our own relationships to each other and the world around us. This highly innovative text integrates therapeutic practice and literature in an engaging and challenging book which will hold the attention of a wide audience. This book contains new ideas for dramatherapy practice, theatre directors and teachers.

P.G. Wodehouse's adaptation of Jatek a Kastelyban (The Play in the Castle) brings Ferenc Molnar's classic comedy to a wider audience. The play is a romantic farce without the usual door-slamming and comic entrances and exits. Instead, we are treated to a party of guests seemingly overhearing a lover's tryst, only to find (with the help of a very quick-witted playwright) that they are actually hearing something very different. The play combines beautifully formed characters with an exquisite text.

Marina Jenkyns conveys the excitement of working therapeutically with dramatic text though a personal and highly readable analysis of plays from a variety of periods and cultures. Influenced by the theories of Winnicott and Klein she lays bare the dynamics of relationships and plots to show how they can be used to help us understand our own relationships to each other and the world around us. This highly innovative text integrates therapeutic practice and literature in an engaging and challenging book which will hold the attention of a wide audience. This book contains new ideas for dramatherapy practice, theatre directors and teachers.

The book presents 18 games and develops the concepts of game analysis and winning strategies. Students are encouraged to play these mathematical games together, collect data developed through their play, and analyze the data to develop a winning strategy. The book provides the basis for a six- to eight-week unit on mathematical games. Each chapter also functions as a self-contained and independent exploration so that selected chapters may be used as supplementary classroom investigations or as independent projects. The book includes both familiar games (such as Quadrangles and Nim) and many others that will be new and exciting to most readers. Through the exploration of mathematical games, 'The Play's the Thing' introduces teachers and students to the fun of play and to the mathematics behind the fun.

Responding to current debates on the place of play in schools, the authors have extensively revised their groundbreaking book. They explain how and why play is a critical part of children’s development, as well as the central role adults have to promote it. This classic textbook and popular practitioner resource offers systematic descriptions and analyses of the different roles a teacher adopts to support play, including those of stage manager, mediator, player, scribe, assessor, communicator, and planner. This new edition has been expanded to include significant developments in the broadening landscape of early learning and care, such as assessment, diversity and culture, intentional teaching, inquiry, and the construction of knowledge. New for the Second Edition of The Play’s the Thing! Additional theories on the relationship of teachers and children’s play, e.g., Vygotsky and the role of imaginary play and Reggio Emilia’s image of the competent child.Current issues from media content, consumer culture, and environmental concerns.Standards and testing in preschool and kindergarten.Bridging the cultural gap between home and school.Using digital technology to make children’s play visible.Recent brain development research.And much more! Elizabeth Jones is faculty emerita in human development at Pacific Oaks College in Pasadena, California. Gretchen Reynolds is on the faculty in the early childhood education program at Algonquin College in Ottawa, Canada. Their other books on play include Master Players (Reynolds & Jones) and Playing to Get Smart (Jones & Cooper). “The Play’s the Thing provides an excellent summary of theories related to the importance of children's play and illustrates the six roles teachers can use to put these theories into practice.” —Harvard Educational Review “This book describes the knowledge that is required to foster play and to use it as a solid foundation on which to build learning.” —From the Foreword to the First Edition by Elizabeth Prescott, Faculty Emerita, Pacific Oaks College “Playful learning offers educators a plan for creating fun and engaging pedagogies that support rich curricula. . . . And this book offers magnificent descriptions and evidence-based examples of how teachers can pave this new road and create a climate for learning via play.” —From the Foreword to the Second Edition by Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Temple University, and Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, University of Delaware

P.G. Wodehouse's adaptation of Jatek a Kastelyban (The Play in the Castle) brings Ferenc Molnar's classic comedy to a wider audience. The play is a romantic farce without the usual door-slamming and comic entrances and exits. Instead, we are treated to a party of guests seemingly overhearing a lover's tryst, only to find (with the help of a very quick-witted playwright) that they are actually hearing something very different. The play combines beautifully formed characters with an exquisite text.