1 comments about Theatre Arts 1 Students Handbook: An Introductory Course (Theatre Arts (Meriwether)).

1. This would be a good book if someone was given a Theatre or drama class and didn't know much about what they are doing. I, on the other hand, did not find it that helpful. Many of the things were very elementary, not just in content but in presentation. It is a good but, but not my favorite resource.

No comments about Family Communication: Cohesion and Change (7th Edition).

1 comments about Choral Music in the Nineteenth Century.

1. Strimple does it again! A very useful resource for choral music enthusiasts. Great book to add to your personal library. Very educational and aids with programming.

5 comments about The House of Yes.

1. I devoured this in a half hour. As a theatre major, a friend of mine told me to look into the mother's role. I hate being typecast as a mom, so I went into it semi-hesitantly. I was seriously surprised and taken aback at the family dynamics so different from anything in our social norms. The play is daring, quick-paced, and brutally honest in its look at the dangerous topic of incest.



2. This play is so incredibly awesome that I strongly suggest any aspiring playwrights, actors, directors, and anyone who loves a good dark comedy MUST READ THIS PLAY! The movie features Parker Posey as Jackie-O and if you want to see this superbly written character come to life, then you should go out and rent the dvd as well. Wendy does an amazing job creating characters in a complex world of incest, murder, family disfunction, and insanity. You want all the characters to win even though you know they cannot. Beautifully comedic with crisp witty language and banter. Read it and I promise you will agree!



3. Upon finishing The House of Yes, I decided that it was without a doubt one of the best plays I have ever read. Set in the dysfunctional Pascal home during a hurricane on Thanksgiving, the audience gets a glimpse at the incestuous relationship of twins Jackie-O and Marty, their fascination with the Kennedy assasination, and what happens when an outsider (Marty's doughtnut shop worker fiancee Lesly) is thrown into the mix. Wendy MacLeod has written a brilliant play and I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys a good, black comedy.



4. I read this book and was completely thrown from my seat. If you like the utterly messed up than this is your book. Jackie O. is the best character I have ever encounterd in any of my reading escapades. You almost want her to get what she wants and that is why it is completely twisted. My review does not even give the book its proper justice. Order it.



5. I read this book and was completely thrown from my seat. If you like the utterly messed up than this is your book. Jackie O. is the best character I have ever encounterd in any of my reading escapades. You almost want her to get what she wants and that is why it is completely twisted.

4 comments about The Threepenny Opera.

1. It is also the best, gutteral and earthy, this transaltion had audiences and critics cheering in 1977. So why is the recording re-release on CD being blocked by the Weill Estate?



2. I have reviewed some of the Communist master playwright Bertolt Brecht's later more consciously political and didactic plays elsewhere in this space. The play under review is an earlier work, before he fully committed himself to communism, and is an adaptation of John Gay's 18th century Beggar's Opera to the modern theater. The subject at hand is a look at the way those in the lower depths of society survive under emergent capitalist conditions, especially the main character, one MacHealth a.k.a. Mac the Knife. As such Brecht's adaptation has given no end of problems for those critics who want to claim it for the communist cause. It is far too universal in it sentiment about human nature in the capitalist era and therefore properly is a transitional to his later more consciously partisan works like The Measures Taken and The Mother. Thus one should take it for is own worth as a look at survival in a seemingly Hobbesian world.
   
   The plot line is rather simply-MacHealth, a former British imperial soldier, has struck out on his own in dog-eat dog London and has created a name for himself as a master criminal and seducer of the ladies. Other forces including the constabulary, a small disreputable but conniving businessman and, let us be politically correct here, some sexual workers combine in an attempt to deprive Mac of life and limb. However luck and a royal coronation combine to thwart those best laid plans. All of this is performed in a light operatic format that allows Brecht to wax poetic at humanity's plight through a series of sharply-etched songs in which he collaborated with the legendary Kurt Weill.
   
   Above I referred to some controversy about Brecht's intention in this work. That the roguish, incipient capitalist MacHealth is saved in the end through royal intervention has caused some commentators to argue for the organic connection between the rising capitalist class and the monarchy in England. Others have noted the similarities in appetite between the lumpenproletariat element as represented by MacHealth and his criminal crew and the developing capitalism of the time. I think that both views overdraw what one can take out of Gay's story or Brecht's adaptation. This story line is much more conducive to a generalized treatment on the nature of survival in a world that has broken from its agrarian past and has not yet stabilized it bourgeois norms of propriety. Some of these same characteristics were played out in the development of American capitalism, especially in the Wild West. But as presented here this is only a rudimentary outline of where things could go. I stand by my comment in the first paragraph about the unmediated nature of Brecht's take on Gay's little work. He most definitely got more focused on the nature of the human plight under capitalism latter as he developed as a Marxist.



3. One has to know and understand the original German text of the Dreigroschenoper to be really able to judge the quality of the English translations. This one, used among others by Helen Schneider on her album with Weill songs, has nothing of the sarcasms of the German lyrics. Better read the 1954 translation of Marc Blitzstein or the translation made by Frank McGuinness in the early 1990s.



4. Of all the translations on the market, this one is the best -- most are watered-down, tepid versions. Manheim & Willet's was used in the late 1970's revival of the piece by the New York Shakespeare Festival, which starred the late Raul Julia and Ellen Greene (of "Little Shop of Horrors" fame, in the role originally intended for Lotte Lenya).

1 comments about The Japanese Theatre.

1. This volume somehow manages to cover the whole complex history of Japanese theatre in a single volume. It has an excellent glossary and a well-organized bibliography. An useful introduction to Japanese theatre both for the serious student and for the neophyte. Extremely useful for courses in Asian Theatre or Japanese Culture.

1 comments about A Dream Play.

1. One of the gods daughters came to earth to see how earth was. On earth one character is hunting for the love of his life, that has left him. Time passes with out memories. The play over all is a but confusing, the characters are different everythimg that they are mentioned. But in the long run the characters show you how lonely and depressed that they are.

No comments about 80 Years of the Oscar: The Official History of the Academy Awards.

5 comments about Montgomery Clift: A Biography.

1. I always admired Mr. Clift's work and wanted to know more about him. He certainly had one of the most bizare upbringings I've ever read about and had a mother who was truly toxic. How anyone could drink and drug as much as he did and have any career at all is an amazing accomplishment. It is too bad he died young but not surprizing given his lifestyle. It is a some what depressing story but well researched since most of his close friends outlived him and are frequently quoted.



2. I read the whole thing in almost a day..you won't be able to put it down..I had no idea he was so messed up..I think an institution would have did him well. His own private shrink took his money but never truly tried to help him. His friends deserted him when he got really bad..it's pretty sad..but that's fickle Hollywood..
   It's too bad he didn't believe in himself alittle more..seems he was very hung up(vanity) on his good looks and he must have thought that was his only vehicle at staying in the movies. Perhaps Hollywood agreed. They treated him very poorly after his car accident. Hollywood was obsessed with putting beautiful people on film. really too bad. He was also hung up on being a real and true "artist" trying to rewrite all the scripts of the movies he was in and being combatitive with directors. He really caused his own anguish most of the time. Get over it Monty!



3. I'm not at all attracted to biographies of Hollywood stars although I must have read at least one of the many bios of Marilyn Monroe. Ms Patricia Bosworth's biography of Montgomery Clift got such universal praise I decided to give it a go. Having read the book I now understand why she was heaped with praise. It is, quite simply, one of the most compelling bigraphies I have ever read, a story of beauty, privilege and talent gone seriously wrong. Ms Bosworth unfolds the story of Clift's life at a wonderful pace in clear, strong language that gave me the sense of being in Monty's presence not being removed at a distance observing him. She takes us through all of the triumphs and tragedies of his life supported by an interesting cast of mid-20th century characters ( both famous and unknown) with an even hand and a fine eye for detail. I couldn't help liking Clift although by the conclusion of his life he was so screwed up that there wasn't much of a person left. Bosworth completely engaged me from beginning to end with this tragic life story and by the time I was finished I wept saying out loud "I'm so sorry", "I'm so sorry". Highly recommended!



4. A broken life and talent... drugs and alcohol used to soothe the stress of having to cover up being gay... I'm a hetrosexual female but I've seen too many gifted friends go down this road. Montgomery Clift could be a poster child for the misery of leading a double life. This is such a well-written book that you may find yourself wanting to cry for this Hollywood star's lost life.



5. Montgomery Clift was certainly a troubled darling of the later 1940's and early 1950s,an actor who starred in "A Place in the Sun," "From Here to Eternity," "Suddenly Last Summer,"and "Raintree County." He played gentle and sensitive, empathetic, suffering, almost androgynous. He was extremely handsome before the serious automobile accident that nearly killed him; he got to play with Hollywood's best (and its worst), and he surely followed the adage "live fast, die young, and leave a beautiful corpse."
   
   This biography, by the former actress, and experienced, well-connected journalist Patricia Bosworth is more than fair. She has done a great deal of research: Clift was secretive about his life and kept his friends in compartments. She found a lot of people, and got them talking. Furthermore, she tackles his life with understanding and sympathy.
   
   Clift was born to an overpowering, suffocating woman who was a demented snob: she allowed her clouded descent from two of the South's finer families to ruin her own, and her children's lives. His weak father was bankrupted by the Depression of the 1930s, giving Monty, the beautiful teenager, the chance to escape Mom and head for the New York stage. He was an immediate hit, taken up by such esteemed actors as Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, and taking up,, in turn, with the older torch singer Libby Holman, and many others, male and female: he seems to have been a true bisexual. He went to Hollywood, and was again an immediate hit, worldwide. But he continued to live around the corner from, and have to fight his mother for, breathing room. He did not handle either his fame, or his family problems well, and drifted into drink, drugs, and unpleasant perversions. In the late 50's, he left Elizabeth Taylor's California house stoned, and had the car accident that devastated his face, and his nerves. Despite the interventions of Taylor and other devoted friends, he was broke and considered unemployable when he died young, but not particularly prematurely, if you consider his life. He is buried, oddly enough, in Brooklyn, New York, in the famous Green-wood Cemetery.
   
   Bosworth is quite deft in describing the interiors of Clift's life, and his inner circles. One man reminisces about his first meeting with Clift,"' ....he stared at me with those strange unblinking eyes of his. It was as if he was stripping me bare psychologically.'"
   
   She quotes a friend about Clift's relationship with his mother,"'He may have said he hated her, but Sunny remained the most important person in his life, and he was maddened by this. They still had a very close, almost conspiratorial relationship. Early on she had confided in him all of her secrets--now they were two-faced with each other. Sunny was always tender and affectionate when they were together; when speaking about him to other people she was often unduly harsh.'"
   
   And another friend,"' It didn't matter what sex you were. If Monty really liked you -- man or woman you ultimately went to bed with him. If he liked you, he couldn't keep his hands off you-- touching --caressing-- hugging-- he was very physical, and very, very affectionate. And of course he was always passing out with you and then you were undressing him and putting him to bed and finally you were ending up in bed with him too.'"
   
   Montgomery Clift was always compelling in his performances. So is his life, as recounted here by Bosworth, though you are watching him go over the cliff.

5 comments about Belly Dancing: The Sensual Art of Energy and Spirit.

1. I really liked this book because it gives you a lot of info regarding the beginings of belly dance and it's a great read for anyone interested in belly dance.



2. The author and their publishing/public relations people, whoever, needed to have re-thought this choice of review. I wonder how many people are turned away by it. I for one am. Are the Bellydance Superstars skinny little sticks??? -- Excuse me if I don't understand the specific dimensions of what constitutes a stick. I think I'll try another bellydance book.



3. Your friend Tom.
   i agree with holly. the review of a book is chosen by the author or publisher to represent the contents of a book. choosing an offensive critique of women in general as either "skinny little stick women" or "regular women" does say a lot about the contents of the book or it shouldnt of been chosen. i think its disgusting. reviews are listed by authors and publishers to represent the contents of a book, period. toned and fit women are attractive as belly dancers as watching the body and muscles moving is more interesting than watching a bowl of jello bouncing. describing overweight women as regular only enforces are cultures chronic obesity and all the associtated health problems as diabetis and heart disease etc. this isnt at all necessary and very offensive.



4. I was looking for a nice book on bellydance, but just from the review, I can tell this isn't a very nice book. According to the review: "Skinny little stick women look funny doing this dance but regular sized women suddenly look graceful, elegant, and confidently sexy."
   
   So I guess only the minority of women who are "regular size" can do this dance. That leaves out the 60 percent of American's who are overweight and whatever percentage are underweight. Or if "regular" means overweight here, then that leaves out the 40 percent who aren't.
   
   Whatever it is, it's not nice to be dissing women that way! Bellydance is a dance for women by women and should be supportive of ALL women, not critical like that. There's enough of that out there already!
   
   And, by the way, Rachel Brice could be described as one of those skinny stick women and she looks AWESOME and is an amazing dancer. The same could be said for Sonia (from Sonia and Issam Bellydance: The Art of the Drum Solo) and Adore, currently touring with Bellydance Superstars.



5. Belly Dancing: The Sensual Art of Energy and Spirit by P. Coluccia, A. Paffrath and J. Putz: While still wondering, should I try oriental dance perhaps? ... I came across this book, and I found it a very encouraging and easy-to-understand introduction for beginners or those who consider taking up belly dance. It gives you a lot of background and history and has great photos. There are very interesting chapters on oriental dance for children, and how it can be helpful for women with painful periods. Next, the movements are explained and illustrated with photos so that even a complete beginner can try them with some success! But the book doesn't stop there, it also has interesting chapters on Eastern music, scents and, yummy!, some great recipes. The book certainly won't replace a good class, but if you want a taster of oriental dance, why not start here! It certainly got me started.