Applause Theatre & Cinema Books

The King and I opened on Broadway on March 29, 1951. The musical is based on a 1944 novel by Margaret Landon, Anna and the King of Siam, which in turn was adapted from the real-life reminiscences of A...

In a Maine coastal village toward the end of the 19th century, swaggering, carefree carnival barker Billy Bigelow captivates and marries naive millworker Julie Jordan. Billy loses his job just as he l...

Theater festivals are where we find groundbreaking work, work that often becomes part of our national theater canon. This anthology features ten full-length plays (60 minutes or more) that premiered i...

Music and Lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Book by Quiara Alegría Hudes, Conceived by Lin-Manuel Miranda In the Heights is an exciting musical about life in Washington Heights, a tight-knit commun...

This foray into the deeply serious and deeply funny (sometimes at the same time) world of life after 40 focuses primarily on scenes that depict the struggles of contemporary characters to come to term...

Music theory has an unfair reputation as an arcane, complicated subject. But it can be easy to learn and beneficial for a successful career in singing. In Music Essentials for Singers and Actors, awar...

More than 30 years ago Marty Di Bergi (played by director Rob Reiner) could not have known that as he introduced his rockumentary This Is Spinal Tap, he was creating a work of genius that would rock o...

Whether auditioning for graduate programs or professional productions, In Performance is an indispensable collection of monologues for today's aspiring young actors. Featured are dynamic monologues fr...

For this book, Lawrence Harbison has interviewed successful playwrights who have developed relationships with theaters that regularly produce their plays, have had at least one major New York producti...

This updated edition of one of the bestselling and most comprehensive Broadway reference books, first published in 1985, has been expanded to include many of the most important and memorable productio...

What does a producer actually do? How does one travel from that great idea for a show to a smash hit opening night on Broadway? John Breglio cannot guarantee you a hit, but he does take the reader on...

Featured in this year's volume: - Barbecue by Robert O'Hara - a wildly inventive new play that proves family can be a bigger vice than any other addiction. - New Country by Mark Roberts - a rowdy, rau...

This anthology of five full-length plays collectively outlines a cultural history of black America in the post-Civil Rights era, from the late 20th century through the first decades of the 21st. Black...

In this thoughtfully curated collection, teen actors preparing for an audition or searching for quality scenes to hone their chops will find a wealth of contemporary material from American and British...

In this thoughtfully curated collection, actors preparing for an audition or searching for quality scenes to hone their chops will find a wealth of contemporary material from American and British play...

Comical, offbeat, poignant, and fresh, The Best Plays of 2014 presents six of the most original plays of the year in a single volume - selected by renowned editor Lawrence Harbison. - The Country Hous...

You wanna be funny for your audition? This book of monologues, written by people who are actually funny for a living, has your back. This incredibly hysterical, cutting-edge monologue book will give t...

This cutting-edge, incredibly hysterical monologue book is specifically for teen girls who need the extra bang to land the perfect comedic role. Teen Girls' Comedic Monologues That Are Actually Funny...

Never before has a monologue book been written completely by people who are actually funny for a living! This incredibly hysterical, cutting-edge collection of monologues will give an actor the extra...

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. Really? Words can break spirits, destroy confidence. They can also build hope and incite great acts of heroism. Playwrights know thi...

Have a classical audition coming up? Don't know the plays or where to start? The Shakespeare Audition is here to help! Classical auditions terrify many actors, and yet they are required all the time....

Inside these pages, aspiring young performers will find 75 challenging monologues just right for kids. All of the pieces are about subjects appropriate for production in schools - much of it serious a...

The Best Scenes for Kids Ages 7-15 contains 50 challenging scenes for kids by some of our finest playwrights. All have subject matter appropriate for production in schools, much of it serious and chal...

Winner of the 1995 Pulitzer Prize. Sunday is itself a modernist creation, perhaps the first truly modernist work of musical theatre that Broadway has produced... a watershed event that demands nothing...

A collection of eight plays along with accompanying critical essays. Includes: The Oresteia - Aeschylus; Prometheus Bound - Aeschylus; Oedipus the King - Sophocles; Antigone - Sophocles; Medea - Eurip...