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 Cathy 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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Some recent titles Add to Basket View Basket Wet Weather Cover Oliver Cotton Oliver Cotton is a British stage and screen actor, well known for his work on stage, TV and film. In this, his first published stage play, Cotton draws on his own experience as he presents two actors—one English, the other American—marooned on location miles from anywhere, confined in their tiny dressing space by the unrelenting rain. Growing increasingly frustrated, they engage in a magnificently sustained verbal duel, a love-hate clash of cultures, countries and personalities. Price (UK): £8.99 | Paperback | ISBN: 9781840029963 Add to Basket View Basket Babel Patrick Neate Whitbread prize-winning writer Patrick Neate collaborates with choreographic mavericks Liam Steel and Robert Tannion to produce a provocative new work. The show combines explosive choreography with words of mass destruction to create the ultimate act of dance terrorism. Violent but beautifully choreographed polemics collapse our safe ivory towers of political correctness, and the audience are compelled to sift through the wreckage to uncover the truth of their downfall in the shards of sound-bites, celebrity and brand recognition. Price (UK): £8.99 | Paperback | ISBN: 9781840029819 Add to Basket View Basket Really Old, Like Forty Five Tamsin Oglesby Tamsin Oglesby is one of today’s most respected and established young playwrights. She is currently under commission to the National Theatre, The Royal Shakespeare company and Hampstead Theatre, and has enjoyed well-received, sell-out runs at the Hampstead, Bush and National Theatres. This, her latest play, opens at the National Theatre in January 2010. This furious comedy confronts head-on our embarrassment and fear about old age. It exposes a society in which compassion vies with pragmatism and, by asking unequivocal questions, it comes up with some extraordinary answers. Price (UK): £8.99 | Paperback | ISBN: 9781840029826 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 Currently/Recently Onstage Add to Basket View Basket Heldenplatz Thomas Bernhard Translated by Meredith Oakes and Andrea Tierney Austria, 1988. For the Schuster family - intellectual, Jewish, Viennese to the core - the country remains as uninhabitable as it was when they fled in 1938. Forty years on from World War II, irrational hatred, neurosis and decadence still reign. In Heldenplatz, Thomas Bernhard's final play, he explores the shared isolation of people who have lost their bearings along with most of their illusions. In production at the Arcola Theatre. Price (UK): £8.99 | Paperback | ISBN: 9781840029956 Add to Basket View Basket Serenading Louie Lanford Wilson Friends since college, Carl and Alex are struggling to deal with the harsh realities of adulthood as they enter their 30s. Disillusioned by work and struggling to keep their marriages alive, they are desperately trying to make sense of it all. Lanford Wilson’s timeless portrait of two suburban American couples exploring the destruction of dreams and the loss of passion and purpose. In production at the Donmar Warehouse, London. Price (UK): £8.99 | Paperback | ISBN: 9781840029970 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 Add to Basket View Basket 1984 George Orwell, adapted by Matthew Dunster War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. Winston Smith rewrites history for the Ministry of Truth, but when he's handed a note that says simply 'I love you' by a woman he hardly knows, he decides to risk everything in a search for the real truth. In a world where cheap entertainment keeps the proles ignorant but content, where a war without end is always fought and the government is always watching, can Winston possibly hold onto what he feels inside? Or will he renounce everything, accept the Party's reality and learn to love Big Brother? This is a sinister and sensual stage adaptation of Orwell’s classic, written by the brilliant Matthew Dunster. Price (UK): £8.99 | Paperback | ISBN: 9781840029987 Add to Basket View Basket London Assurance Dion Boucicault, adapted by Richard Bean Sir Harcourt Courtly is lured away from the epicentre of fashionable London by the promise of a rich and beautiful bride, Grace, several decades his junior. Arriving at Oak Hall, Gloucestershire, he marvels at this rural Venus until her charms are eclipsed by her hearty cousin, the foxhunting Lady Gay Spanker. Meanwhile his disguised son turns up in flight from his creditors and falls head over heels for Grace. When Lady Spanker discovers the young couple, she needs little prompting from the visiting chancer Dazzle to lead Sir Harcourt astray. Dion Boucicault, the Irish genius of London theatre in the age of Dickens, wrote the brilliantly funny London Assurance in 1841 and thereby created – in Sir Harcourt and Lady Spanker – two of the great comic roles of the English stage, played at the NT by Simon Russell Beale and Fiona Shaw. This stage revival has been brilliantly adapted by the prolific and award-winning playwright Richard Bean. Price (UK): £8.99 | Paperback | ISBN: 9781840029994 format