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Welcome to Applausepub.com,
the internet home of America's foremost publishers of performing arts books, now
owned and operated by the Hal Leonard Corporation, the world's largest music print
publisher.
We are now pleased to feature the great Limelight Editions list,
in addition to Applause Theatre & Cinema Books. Our catalog covers everything from
books and DVDs on acting, to biographies of theatre and film luminaries, books on
dance, screenplays, playscripts, anthologies, and much more. Click on one of the
categories at left or use the SEARCH option above to find out more about our products,
or to look for a specific title.
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Scroll Down for Features
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In the Spotlight:
SHE ALWAYS KNEW HOW
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Actress, playwright, screenwriter, and iconic sex symbol Mae West (1893-1980)
created a scandal and a sensation on Broadway with her play Sex in 1926.
Convicted of obscenity, she was sentenced to ten days in prison. She went to
jail a convict but emerged a star. Later, in Hollywood, she was the number
one box-office attraction during the 1930s and saved Paramount Studios from
bankruptcy. Her films included some notorious one-liners – which she wrote
herself – that have become part of Hollywood lore. But behind the clever
quips was Mae's deep desire, decades before the word “feminism &rIdquo;
was in the news, to see women treated equally with men. She saw through the double
standard of the time that permitted men to do things that women would be ruined
for doing. Her cause was sexual equality, and she was shrewd enough to know that
it was perhaps the ultimate battleground.
In She Always Knew How, Charlotte Chandler draws on a series of extensive
interviews that she conducted with Mae West just months before the star's death.
Chandler also spoke with actors and directors who knew and worked with Mae,
the man with whom she lived for the last twenty-seven years of her life, and her
close assistant. Their insights enrich this fascinating book.
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In the Spotlight:
READING THE PLAYS OF WENDY WASSERSTEIN
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Playwright Wendy Wasserstein is, above all, a social historian.
Her plays balance drama and comedy to address such issues as social
class and Jewish-American identity. Most notably, however,
WassersteinÕs work explores the lives and struggles of women. Although
she never wanted to be called a feminist playwright, her plays ask
whether women can have both satisfying careers and families, concluding
that even well-educated women have not yet achieved parity with men.
In Reading the Plays of Wendy Wasserstein, author Jan Balakian places
WassersteinÕs seven major plays in a historical context. Close readings
of each play are interwoven with discussion of such topics as the Gilded
Age (Old Money), life at a womenÕs college in the early 1970s (Uncommon
Women and Others), challenges to liberal assumptions (Third), and the rise
and fall of feminism (The Heidi Chronicles, winner of the Pulitzer Prize).
Drawing on the recently established Wasserstein archives at Mount Holyoke
College, this book delves into primary sources such as commencement speeches
and popular songs and features unpublished handwritten pages from the
playwrightÕs notebooks. Lending further insight into WassersteinÕs concerns
are BalakianÕs own interviews with the playwright herself and conversations
with WassersteinÕs friends, including playwright Christopher Durang, director
Dan Sullivan, and playwright and director Emily Mann. Thoroughly researched,
accessible, and rich in detail, Reading the Plays of Wendy Wasserstein
will provide students, teachers, theatergoers, and other readers with fresh
perspective on the work of one of AmericaÕs great contemporary playwrights.
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