How to write a play and get it produced - a manual for playwrights. Playwright and former literary manager Tim Fountain guides the budding playwright over the many hurdles involved in getting a play on - from finding a story that only you know, through the detailed construction of the play, and on to the strategies you can use to get it on stage.

This book is the culmination of a lifetime's work in the theatre. In it Mike Aifreds dares to do what very few directors other than Stanislavsky have done: he takes us into the rehearsal room and describes an immensely detailed methodology for the actor to bring the text to life, and, crucially, to keep it alive right up to the final performance. Indeed, he demonstrates that by investing in the truth of every moment, the actor can ensure that a performance will be 'different every night'. Different Every Night offers an essential masterciass for actors and directors, taking them through the process of preparation, rehearsal and performance. It is intensely hands-on and full of the most practical advice on a wide range of techniques, often with examples from Aifreds' own productions. Mike Aifreds has been directing plays for more than fifty In the 1970s he founded Shared Experience, and has since worked for the National Theatre, Shakespeare's Globe, the Royal Shakespeare Company and also extensively abroad. He is hugely respected within the profession.

A practical guide to conducting improvisation sessions, for teachers, directors and workshop leaders. ***Comes with a full set of improvisation cards to use in any improvisation session. The Improvisation Book takes you step-by-step, session-by-session through a graded series of improvisation exercises. Starting with the very first class, it adds a new element at each stage until even the most inhibited students have gained a full vocabulary of improvisational techniques. John Abbott had a varied career as an actor in theatre, film and television before becoming a teacher of acting. He is Head of Academic Studies at the ArtsEd School of Acting in London, where he teaches Shakespeare, Stand Up and Improvisation.

Unrivalled practical insights into the play from one of the most influential actors and directors of Shakespeare of all time.

Unrivalled practical insights into the play from one of the most influential actors and directors of Shakespeare of all time.

A practical, hands-on guide to Stanislavsky's famous 'system' and to his later rehearsal processes - for actors, directors, teachers and students. From the author of Beyond Stanislavsky. The Complete Stanislavsky Toolkit collects together for the first time the terms and ideas developed by Stanislavsky throughout his career. It is organised into three sections: Actor-Training, Rehearsal Processes and Performance Practices. Key terms are explained and defined as they naturally occur in this process. They are illustrated with examples from both his own work and that of other practitioners. Each stage of the process is explored with sequences of practical exercises designed to help today's actors and students become thoroughly familiar with the tools in Stanislavsky's toolkit. Bella Merlin has successfully combined a professional career in acting (notably in Max Stafford-Clark's Out of Joint Theatre Company) with teaching at the drama departments of the Universities of Birmingham and Exeter. She is the author of Beyond Stanislavsky and Konstantin Stanislavsky in Routledge's Performance Practitioners series.

An authoritative, hands-on guide through the practical challenges involved in performing Shakespeare. Drawing on a lifetime's experience of playing Shakespearean roles, Oliver Ford Davies offers practical advice to actors, directors and drama students on a wide variety of scenes, characters, speeches and individual lines from almost every one of the plays. The three core sections of Performing Shakespeare take us through the whole process of Preparation, Rehearsal and Performance, preceded by discussions of the Elizabethan actor and Shakespeare's language. Also included are revealing interviews with other notable Shakespearean actors including Judi Dench, Ian McKellen, Harriet Walter, Simon Russell Beale and Juliet Stevenson.

Inside accounts of the making of some of the most influential theatre productions of the last four decades. Max Stafford-Clark has been at the cutting edge of theatre in Britain for more than thirty years. Taking Stock draws on diaries, photos and interviews to recreate the evolution of nine of his most famous and influential productions:

Director Stephen Unwin takes you scene by scene through the action of Ibsen's A Doll's House, analysing moment by moment what is actually said and done, and how the staging of these moments affects our understanding of them. Also included in this volume: a concise introduction to Ibsen and the historical background of the play; a discussion of the characters and setting; and an exploration of the possibilities for staging, lighting, costumes, props and furniture, and the sound and music.

Actor Michael Pennington conducts us scene by scene through the action of Chekhov's Three Sisters, analysing moment by moment what is actually said and done, and how the staging of these moments affects our understanding of them. Also included: a concise introduction to Chekhov and the historical background of the play; discussions of the play's themes and of Chekhovs playwriting technique; individual studies of each of the play's characters.

The best of Tynan's theatre criticism. This volume collects over 100 of his reviews. Kenneth Tynan was the 20th century's most influential theatre critic. Famous above all for championing the Angry Young Men at the Royal Court and for heralding Brecht, Beckett and Pinter, his writing was itself a 'high-definition performance'  stylish, discerning and scintillatingly witty.

Simon Callow's candid and moving memoir of his passionate friendship with legendary literary agent Peggy Ramsay. This extraordinary memoir brilliantly evokes one of the most formidable and influential figures in recent British cultural history, Peggy Ramsay, muse, patron and scourge of the post-Look Back in Anger generation... Those of us who loved her will be astonished by the vivid accuracy of Simon Callow's portrait; but even those ignorant of her existence will surely be touched, fascinated and challenged' Christopher Hampton, Sunday Times

Kenneth Tynan  the 20th century's most influential writer on theatre and performance  wrote profiles of many of the most significant performers and writers of his day. Amongst the fifty assembled here are profiles of actors such as Garbo, Bogart, Cagney, Olivier and Gielgud; the directors George Cukor, Peter Brook and Joan Littlewood; writers such as Bertolt Brecht, Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams; and comedians as diverse as Mel Brooks, Eric Morecambe, W.C. Fields and Lenny Bruce.