Welcome to the UK's most exciting theatre publisher To BUY a book, search by title, author or ISBN on the search engine on the left hand side, click on Add Book and follow the instructions. Alongside over 800 of the latest modern plays and classics from some of the world's leading dramatists, our list includes a wide range of new titles on theatre, opera, dance, biography, performance studies, monologues, practical guides and fiction. Current and forthcoming highlights include -

Classic Voice Catherine Weate Those who teach, train and coach actors are always seeking new ideas for their workshops, rehearsals and classes. This is particularly true when it comes to working vocally on classical texts, where students must grapple with the demands of character and story, presented in an unfamiliar heightened language, using complex images and, more often than not, text that is written in verse form. Classic Voice is a unique resource that provides practical information, and ideas for dealing with the vocal demands of classical text in workshop contexts. A unique and useful guide for teachers and students alike by one Britain’s leading voice coaches - Essential for actors approaching classical roles - One of the few books offering insight into exploring the vocal style of other classical text forms with detailed workshop plans for teachers. Price (UK): £12.99 | Paperback ISBN: 9781840028270	The Yearbook 2009/10 The Royal Ballet The 2009/10 Yearbook is a richly illustrated companion to The Royal Ballet, its history, repertory, dancers and staff. The book features a lavish reminder of the 2008/9 Season and a special preview of the current one, as well as lively and informative articles on choreographer Sir Kenneth MacMillan, the pleasures and pains of pointe shoes, and what it is like to become a professional dancer in The Royal Ballet complete this indispensable new addition to the Yearbook series. Price (UK): £15.00 | Paperback ISBN:9781840029390	Starf*cker The Rolling Stones in Concert '76 Nobby Clark In 1976 The Rolling Stones were the greatest rock band on earth. To prove it, they set off on their now legendary European Tour ‘76, often known as the “Starf*cker” tour, in part due to the extraordinary lotus-shaped stage they played on. Along the way they invented stadium rock, and, onstage and off, set a standard for decadence, excess, and sheer rock 'n’ roll anarchy that has yet to be surpassed. Commissioned by the Observer to record the rollercoaster tour at its zenith - the concerts at London’ Earls Court from 21-27 May - was Nobby Clark. The result is a unique visual record, by one of the best photographers in Britain, of the greatest rock n’ roll band on the planet cementing their place in music history. Featuring over 120 colour and black & white pictures, Starf*cker is a timeless photographic document of the Stones at their inimitable peak. Price (UK): £20 | Landscape Hardback ISBN: 9781840028393

The Life in My Years Virginia McKenna Virginia McKenna starred in some of the most popular and enduring movies of our time, among them Carve Her Name With Pride, A Town Like Alice and Born Free, in which she played opposite her husband, Bill Travers. After Born Free both actors were at the peak of their careers but the film and all it still stands for changed their lives. Its powerful message stayed with them and so began a worldwide campaign to save animals from commercial exploitation, "imprisonment" in zoos and loss of their natural habitat. At the heart of this book is a cry for change in attitude - to respect nature and all that it provides. Virginia McKenna has pushed aside the glamour of movie stardom, the West End and Broadway where she starred in major shows like The King and I and A Little Night Music. Instead she focuses relentlessly on her personal mission with the Born Free Foundation or the plight of orphaned children across the world. Through the prism of memory a lifetime of experiences, ecstatic, amusing or tragic have flooded back in the form of anecdotes, meditations and poems to form this book. This book will inspire anyone who cares about the future of the planet and all the creatures dependent on it, including human beings. Part of the proceeds from each book sold will go to support Born Free Foundation campaigns. Price (UK): £25 | Hardback ISBN: 9781840028980	To Set Prometheus Free A C Grayling In 2007 Anthony Grayling wrote Against all Gods, a collection of polemical essays attacking religion. Now in To Set Prometheus Free he develops these themes more comprehensively, unpicking the claims and arguments of religious apologists, summarising the views of his fellow secularists (Bertrand Russell in particular), detailing the controversy over 'Intelligent Design' and outlining his personal, naturalistic world-view. He robustly calls for humanity to choose deliverance from religion because, as he puts it, 'large portions of mankind remain in some degree of thrall to myths dating from an ignorant and illiterate past.' Price (UK): £9.99 | Paperback ISBN:9781840029628	Exit Pursued by a Badger Nick Asbury We are engaged in performing four shows by night and restaging four different shows by day. And restaging all the understudy work as well. This is a lot of work. And my mind has turned to slush. Nick Asbury was in the ensemble from the Royal Shakespeare Company who, over the course of two and a half years, performed eight history plays by Shakespeare in repertory, beginning with the overthrow of Richard II and ending with the death of Richard III: a sequence of productions both critically acclaimed and watched by over 250,000 people. To keep a record of his involvement in this extraordinary and ambitious project, Nick wrote a Blog which was posted on the RSC website. This in turn became a massive success, regularly notching up 6,000 hits a week from avid followers around the world. Through Nick's engaging, observant, often hilarious words, we experience the camaraderie of actors, the terror of forgetting lines, technical difficulties, money problems, finding strange things in the bath, thirty-three broadsword fights and, and, of course, the ever-present threat of being assaulted by demented badgers after a performance. Price (UK): £9.99 | Paperback ISBN: 9781840028928

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New plays Add to Basket View Basket Pressure Drop Mick Gordon Maverick theatre makers On Theatre join forces with legendary singer-songwriter Billy Bragg to explore what it means to be English in contemporary Britain. A drama of passion and predjudice, Pressure Droptakes us to the heart of one family's struggle to define home. It was in production at the Wellcome Collection in Spring 2010. "Mick Gordon and Billy Bragg's Pressure Drop addresses the subject of immigration with honesty and clarity. Rating: * * * * " (Dominic Cavendish, The Telegraph) Price (UK): £8.99 | Paperback | ISBN: 9781840029710 Add to Basket View Basket Craig Higginson An elderly white couple, are packing up to leave the farm they’ve sold to developers in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Their preparations are interrupted by the arrival of a young man – ‘Look Smart’ – who used to be one of the black workers on their estate until he disappeared fifteen years ago... Dream of the Dog is a richly textured and complex story of South Africa’s emerging democracy, and its continued negotiation with its past in order to find a workable identity for its future. Critically acclaimed in South Africa, this new play takes an unflinching look at the twin mantras of the post-Mandela age – reconciliation and forgiveness – as it asks whether black and white can ever live together peacefully. Price (UK): £8.99 | Paperback | ISBN: 9781849431132 Add to Basket View Basket DNA (Schools Edition) Dennis Kelly A group of teenagers do something bad, really bad, then panic and cover the whole thing up. But when they find that the cover-up unites them and brings harmony to their otherwise fractious lives, where’s the incentive to put things right? DNA is a poignant and, sometimes, hilarious tale with a very dark heart. A new play for younger people DNA opened at the National Theatre in February 2008. Includes notes for teachers and those studying the play for GCSE English, as written by Anthony Banks theatre director and Associate Director of the National Theatre Discover Programme. Price (UK): £8.99 | Paperback | ISBN: 9781840029529 Some recent titles In Print View Basket A new B-format paperback edition Shakespeare's Advice to the Players Peter Hall Shakespeare tells the actor when to go fast and when to go slow; when to pause, when to come in on cue and when to accent a word. His text is full of such cues He tells the actor when but never tells him why or how. That is up to the actor. It is much like making a musical score live; Shakespeare heard the lines as he wrote them. Shakespeare's Advice to the Players makes watching Shakespeare or reading Shakespeare a richer experience, for audiences as well as actors. Price (UK): £9.99 | Paperback | ISBN: 9781840029192 In Print View Basket The Story of the Ring Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen Michael Birkett/ Elizabeth Bury A retelling in English by Michael Birkett of the story of Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle, with illustrations by Elizabeth Bury and a foreword by Peter Hall. Price (UK): £20 | Hardback | ISBN: 9781840029383 Add to Basket View Basket A series of essays by one of Britains most prolific and well-known writers On Theatre Arnold Wesker On Theatre is a series of essays by one of Britains most prolific and well-known writers, exploring his thoughts on drama and the theatre. Sir Arnold Wesker FRSL, knighted in 2006, has written more than 40 plays – the most well known being The Wesker Trilogy (Chicken Soup with Barley, Roots and I'm Talking about Jerusalem), The Kitchen, Chips with Everything and Shylock. He has also written two opera librettos, volumes of fiction and non-fiction, poetry, a book for young people, an autobiography (As Much as I Dare, 1992) and a novel (Honey, 2005). His work has been translated into 16 languages. The Oberon Masters Series is a brand new series of good-value and attractively presented hardbacks on key themes within the theatre written by leading lights in each subject. These will be of interest to students, academics, practitioners and theatre buffs. Price (UK): £9.99 | Hardback | ISBN: 9781840029864 Add to Basket View Basket Reprinted to form part of the Oberon Masters series Exposed by the Mask Peter Hall "The wisest and most stimulating short book about theatre since Peter Brook’s ‘The Empty Space’" - Charles Spencer, Sunday Telegraph In these four lectures Peter Hall reveals a lifetime of discoveries about classical theatre, Shakespeare, opera and modern drama. The central argument is that form and structured language paradoxically give freedom to power of thought and feeling, much as the masks of early Greek drama enabled actors to express extreme emotion. The mask may take many forms – the precise language of Beckett and Pinter, the classical form of Mozart’s operas, or Shakespeare’s verse. Price (UK): £9.99 | Hardback | ISBN: 9781840029932 Add to Basket View Basket A groundbreaking and informative text-book for actors wishing to explore using accents within drama How to do Accents Edda Sharpe and Jan Hadyn Rowles Sharpe and Haydn Rowles are two of the of Britain's leading voice coaches, who within How to do Accents have pioneered a groundbreaking and insightful technique for actors wishing to develop the ability to do accents. Using a theory based upon actors specifically listening out for the ways in which accents are put together, then reconstructing them, the pair have created a technique which enables actors to pronounce accents otherwise foriegn to themselves with greater flexibility and ease. Includes a CD containing detailed exercises and sample sentences, along with eleven extended recordings of voices from the USA, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England. 'At last! A really practical and fun guide to accent training. I recommend it to all actors and voice teachers.' - Jeannette Nelson, Head of Voice, National Theatre Price (UK): £18.99 | Paperback with CD | ISBN: 9781840026009

Also on stage Add to Basket View Basket The Lion's Face Glyn Maxwell Developed by the award-winning The Opera Group, The Lion’s Face is a new opera which explores the issues surrounding dementia. Oberon here presents Glyn Maxwell’s beautiful poems around which the production is built. Equally appealing to children and adults, an earlier version of the opera won the Audience Prize at the Zurich Opera House's New Opera Festival in January 2009. A production of The Lion's Face opens at the Brighton Festival in May 2010 followed by a UK tour. Price (UK): £8.99 | Paperback | ISBN: 9781840029949 Add to Basket View Basket Naked Soldiers Mark Norfolk There’s been a near fatal stabbing in a local park and a young teenager is in a critical condition. Seventeen year old Tony’s been accused of what has been called a racially motivated crime and goes on the run. But he has chosen to hide out in a place where Jamal, an African refugee is also hiding. The two fugitives, forced to co-exist in their self imposed exile find themselves hostages to fortune. However, they must each set aside their preconceived prejudices as they discover things about themselves as human beings. Ka Zimba Theatre Company presents Naked Soldiers at the Warehouse Theatre, in Croydon, South London, from 21 May to 20 June 2010. Price (UK): £8.99 | Paperback | ISBN: 9781849430197 Add to Basket View Basket Twelfth Night William Shakespeare, adapted by Carl Heap Nothing that is so is so. This is the latest in the Primary Classics series produced by the National Theatre's Discover programme which aims to introduce children aged 7-11 to Shakespeare. Carl Heap's adaptation retains the original language but also includes a clear, concise and helpful introduction which will aid readers, teachers and practitioners alike to imagine or produce their own version. The production tours UK schools in early 2010 before playing at the National Theatre's Cottesloe Theatre in February. Following on from the success of Macbeth, this new adaptation is perfect for all educators seeking to bring a little more drama to the classroom. Price (UK): £4.99 | Paperback | ISBN: 9781840029833

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