Blog Posts by Subject: Theatre

At this point, it's safe to call Werner Herzog a cinema legend. Born in Munich, the director, screenwriter, and producer has directed sixty-seven films. He has won four awards at the Cannes Film Festival and been nominated for one Academy Award.

He's Eli Gold on The Good Wife. He's been Nightcrawler in X-2: Men United and Hamlet and Mr. Elton in the film adaptation of Jane Austen's Emma. Alan Cumming has also written a memoir, Not My Father's Son. He recently spoke to us at Books at Noon.

Alan Cumming comes to Books at Noon next Wednesday, May 6 to discuss his latest work, Not My Father's Son. We asked him six questions about what he likes to read.

The history behind these comedic British Suffrage plays and their warm reception in the United States.

As we begin Black History Month, The New York Public Library Podcast welcomes the great American playwright and poet Ntozake Shange, creator of the Obie-Award-winning play “for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf.”

Our Digital Collection includes Yiddish theater posters dating back more than a hundred years. These ephemeral pieces, with their bold titles, portraits of actors, and exuberant descriptions of plays, illustrate the dynamic Yiddish theater tradition.

Shakespeare is so important that he is the only author to have his own Dewey Decimal number! The works of Shakespeare and their criticism all live under call number 822.33. With countless editions of the same play, and even more works written about that same play, it’s no wonder Shakespeare requires a number all to himself. This handy guide will de-mystify Shakespeare’s home in your library, and help you find the right book on the Bard for you.

The show opened at the 46th Street (now the Richard Rodgers) Theater in October 1960 to mixed reviews and closed the following spring after only 271 performances. It has received respectful attention in performances off-Broadway and in City Center’s Encores! series, but has never been revived on Broadway. What exactly went wrong?

The Cranach Press enlisted the help of an international stable of artists and scholars to produce hand-made books that doubled as works of art. My favorite is an edition of Hamlet based on the text of Shakespeare’s Second Quarto.

Vivien Leigh, who was born November 5, 1913, may not have lived to see her 54th birthday, but she is one of the rare performers whose fame has long outlasted her death. Leigh's distinctive blend of delicacy and power as an actress, coupled with her great beauty, have helped to enshrine her.

A few months ago, I posted three demo recordings of Fiorello! from the Jerry Bock recordings in the Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound. This month, in honor of Fiddler's 50th anniversary, I am happy to share six demos of Fiddler on the Roof.

In the following blog post, Alisa Solomon examines three typescripts of Fiddler on the Roof that can be studied at the Library for the Performing Arts. Her book, Wonder of Wonders: A Cultural History of Fiddler on the Roof, is available to borrow.

While reading about riots in my hometown last night, I saw, out of the corner of my eye, a headline announcing the shocking death of Robin Williams. I really can add very little to the many expressions of grief from those whose for whom his films were foundational stories of childhood.

On exhibition on the 3rd floor currently are 3 of the lithographs—illustrating the Play of the Week productions of Henry IV, part 1, The Dybbuk, and Rashomon.

In the week following the announcement of the TONY awards, the winner for best musical, Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, enjoyed its best week ever, bringing in more than $100,000 than the week before. The winner for best play, All The Way, seems to have been helped even more by the award, bringing in $200,000 more than the previous week. If it ever was in doubt, a TONY award is clearly good for business. At least if you win the big one.

The life and career of Fosse, the only director to win the triple crown of show business awards in one year (an Oscar for Cabaret, a Tony Award for Pippin, and an Emmy Award for Liza With a Z—all in 1973) is well-documented through the holdings of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts (LPA) and elsewhere. Clippings, reviews, posters and lobby cards, Playbills and programs—all the standard theatrical ephemera—on Fosse's shows and films are easily available in the Billy Rose Theatre Division and Jerome Robbins Dance Division.

Given New York City’s major role in the Yiddish theater, it’s no surprise that The New York Public Library has a wonderful Yiddish theater collection. Here you’ll find posters, playbills, sheet music, published plays, photographs, manuscripts, memoirs, oral histories and recordings that tell the story of Yiddish theater and its legendary stars.

Photographs from the Circle in the Square Papers provide a one-of-a-kind record of nearly all of the hundreds of productions mounted on the Circle’s round stage during its five-decade history. Founded in 1951, the Circle in the Square became one of the key theaters in the Off-Broadway movement.

By the time that you read this post, the exhibition Pioneering Poet of Light: Florence Vandamm & the Vandamm Studio will have been de-installed. The photograph and key sheets will be returned to the Performing Arts Library divisions. But the blogging will continue since there are thousands of photographs representing thousands of shows, dances and people.