Research & Subject Guides: MFA Theatre: Books and E-Books

Spotlight on Theatre

To request the print books below, see Inter-Campus Delivery. To access the ebooks, use your NET ID and password.

Philosophical Actor: A Practical Meditation for Practicing Theatre Artists by Donna Soto-Morettini
ISBN: 9781841503905
Publication Date: 2010
The Philosophical Actor is the first attempt to grapple with the fundamental questions of truth, art, and human nature unexamined in past treatments, from the first great essay by Diderot to the exhaustive system described by Stanislavski. With wide appeal to actors, directors, acting students, acting teachers and trainers, Donna Soto-Morettini draws from twenty-five years of experience as an acting teacher and director to introduce innovative ways of thinking about acting.
The Aliens by Annie Baker
Call Number: Main Library Stacks PS3602 .A775 A45 2011
ISBN: 0822224739
Publication Date: 2011
"Two angry young men who sit outside a Vermont coffee shop and discuss music and Bukowski. When a lonely high school student arrives on the scene, they decide to teach him everything they know."
Offstage Space, Narrative, and the Theatre of the Imagination by William E. Gruber
ISBN: 9780230105645
Publication Date: 2010
A study of extrascenic space and how playwrights have used narrative as an alternative to conventional scenic enactment. The book covers the work of writers as diverse as Euripides, Plautus, Shakespeare, Susan Glaspell, Gertrude Stein, Bertolt Brecht, Samuel Beckett, Marguerite Duras, Brian Friel, and Thomas Bernhard. William Gruber offers a wide-ranging overview of the dramaturgical choices dramatists make when they substitute imagined events for perceptual ones.
Passion play by Sarah Ruhl
Call Number: Main Library Stacks PS3618 .U437 P37 2010
Named one of the "Ten Best Plays of 2008" by The New Yorker

Passion Play is Sarah Ruhl’s “biggest, most ambitious effort yet” (The New York Times), a three-and-a-half hour intimate epic, plunging the depths of the timely intersection of politics and religion. Ruhl dramatizes a community of players rehearsing their annual staging of the Easter Passion in three different eras: 1575 northern England, just before Queen Elizabeth outlaws the ritual; 1934 Oberammergua, Bavaria, as Hitler is rising to power; and Spearfish, South Dakota, from the time of Vietnam through Reagan’s presidency. In each period, the players grapple in different ways with the transformative nature of art, and politics are never far in the background, as Queen Elizabeth, Hitler, and Reagan each appear, played by a single commanding actor.
Time Stands Still: A Play by Donald Margulies
Call Number: Main Library Stacks PS3563 .A653 T56 2010 - Normal Loan
Theatre Communications Group, 2010.

In his “absorbing intelligent” (Los Angeles Times) and timely new play, Donald Margulies uncovers the layers of a relationship between a photojournalist and foreign correspondent—once addicted to the adrenaline of documenting the atrocities of war, and now grounded in the couple’s Brooklyn loft. Photographer Sarah was seriously injured while covering the war in Iraq; her reporter partner James had left weeks earlier, when the stress and horrors became too much for him. Now James writes online movie reviews while Sarah recovers, mourning for her Iraqi driver (and former lover) killed in the explosion, and itching to get back behind the camera. With this play—coming to Broadway this winter—Margulies revisits themes of being an artist, as characters ask: What does it mean to capture suffering on film, rather than stopping to intervene? (Publisher)

Spotlight on Film

The following titles are all ebooks. You can access them from off campus using your NET ID and password.

Cinematography: Theory and Practice: Image Making for Cinematographers and Directors by Blain Brown
ISBN: 9780080958958
Publication Date: 2012
Writing a Screenplay by John Costello
ISBN: 9781423753384
Publication Date: 2004
Scheduling and Budgeting Your Film: A Panic-Free Guide by Paula Landry
ISBN: 9780240816654
Publication Date: 2011

Newmarket Shooting Script Series

The Library has nearly 60 titles in the acclaimed Newmarket Shooting Script Series.

Being John Malkovich by Charlie Kaufman
Call Number: Main Library Stacks PN1997 .B3642 K38 2011
Publication Date: 2011
The Hurt Locker by Mark Boal; Kathryn Bigelow
Call Number: Main Library Stacks PN1997.2 .H87 2009
ISBN: 9781557049094
Publication Date: 2009
Inception by Christopher Nolan; Jonah Nolan (Preface by)
Call Number: Main Library Stacks PN1997.2 .I615 N65 2010
ISBN: 9781608870158
Publication Date: 2010
Juno: The Shooting Script by Diablo Cody
Call Number: Main Library Stacks PN1997.2 .J86 2007
Publication Date: 2007
The Kids Are All Right by Lisa Cholodenko; Stuart Blumberg
Call Number: Main Library Stacks PN1997.2 .K53 2011
ISBN: 9781557049377
Publication Date: 2011
Michael Clayton: The Shooting Script by Tony Gilroy; foreword by William Goldman
Call Number: Main Library Stacks PN1997.2 .M53 2007
Publication Date: 2007

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There are two versions of WorldCat, the subscription version from First Search, which is below and which I recommend, and the free version. If you find something you need while searching in WorldCat, and we don't own it, we can usually get it from another library. See InterLibrary Loan (ILL) to learn more. One great feature of the First Search version is that it automatically fills out your ILL request form.

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Pre-1000 BC to present. Licensed WorldCat product. A catalog of books and a wide variety of other materials in libraries worldwide.

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Google Books

Google Books is extremely useful, because it searches the complete text of a book. It can help you find books that may not come up in the library catalog. When you find a book that looks good, then do a "Title starts with" search in SEARCH to see if the Library has it.

As of 2019, Google Books contained over 40 million scanned books. Many from before 1925 are available full-text.

MFA Theatre