English Theater

It’s just another Thanksgiving for the Sullivans - until the walls disappear and they discover they are being transported to Arenia, a place where game rules are real and their Earthen ability to reincarnate grants them unlimited potential. Or it would, if the celestial administrator in charge of their case hadn’t mixed up longitude and latitude and sent the wrong family. Now scattered throughout the Arenian wilderness and armed only with their Tomes, the family members must discover a strength they didn’t know they had if they are going to survive.

For those who reside in the outer regions of Aleria, the day of bestowal is what determines their destiny. It is the holy day of the Goddess. The day that allows those of age to step forward and receive their blessing, to embark on the path that she has chosen for them. To receive their Classification, which dictates their strength and ability. For those people, the holy day of bestowal represents fate itself. For Dante, it represents salvation.

Palmyre. A city of questions and a family short on answers. And foremost on everyone’s mind is the question that matters most: Where is Grandpa Jack? After a long and arduous journey, the Sullivan family has made it to Palmyre. The initial joy over their reunion soon fades, however, when Grandpa Jack fails to arrive. With no way of seeking him out, they turn their attention to surviving in a town far different from anything they have experienced before.

The game has changed. After receiving a mysterious message from a famous Proxima developer, Chase Knowles takes a step toward an incredible future. With an important tournament coming up, everything seems to be working in his favor. But there are other forces at play, even if some of those forces are internal. Wanting more from his relationship with Lady C., Chase goes to extreme lengths to bring her digital form to New York City through an android shell.

Oric Rune is on the hunt for retribution. As the sky shifts crimson, a plague engulfs the continent. Oric must act. Revenge can come later; destiny awaits. Joined by a wolf, a mage, a giant, and a cunning illusionist, Oric's unlikely team is his best chance for survival in this fantasy LitRPG adventure. As the enemies close in from all sides, Oric must make the difficult choice between personal vengeance and becoming the hero he is destined to be. Or die. Because a player can actually die in the online fantasy world known as Unigaea.

As author Ethan Mordden looks back at Chicago's various moving parts - including the original 1926 play that started it all, a sexy silent film directed by Cecil B. DeMille, a talkie remake with Ginger Rogers, the musical itself, and at last the movie of the musical - we learn how the American theater serves as a kind of alternative news medium, a town crier warning the public about the racy, devious interior contradictions of American society. Opinionated, witty, and rich in backstage anecdotes, All That Jazz brings the American musical to life in all its artistry and excitement.

Year 2286. Alex Bell has put in 20 years of work in the VR game Eternal Dominion, a full dive fantasy VRMMO game that accounts for around 20 percent of the world's economy. He had risen to the top as a vice guild leader, and thanks to his work, his guild was steps away from truly standing with the other top guilds. Only fate decided to rip it all away at the last moment. After his fall, Alex awakens to see his 18-year-old self looking back at him in the mirror. It's 2266, and Eternal Dominion is set to launch in a matter of hours; this time, things will be different.

With less than six months on the clock until the planet's destruction, Nate and his friends scramble to find a way to get everyone to move on to the second planet in the System of Twelve. Laybor is a dangerous world, one that cannot be safely traversed by anyone below the 30th rank, and things only get worse from there.

Theater of Lies provides an in-depth examination of the lies, misinformation, and propaganda in our lives. For centuries, we’ve been persuaded to trust the lies told by our governments, businesses, and religions to manage how we think and act, to their benefit, not ours. Filled with real-life examples, Theater of Lies demonstrates the impact lies and misinformation have had through the centuries and today on topics including racism, gender debates, entrenched political divides, and the status of women.

Desperate to save as many people as he can from a horrible fate in the cruel game of the gods, Lee and his small group of friends abandon the relative safety of Satterfield for the great city of Kirshtein. Tensions within the city have reached a breaking point after the arrival of an enemy Herald, and Lee is soon caught up in the struggle for power.

Tennegan Felter (Ten) is a humble servant in Epoch Sol, a beacon of light in a world full of darkness. Her deepest desire is to serve the city she loves and defend it from the creatures of the Dark that live all around. The only way to do that is to join the Dragon Guard. There’s one big problem, though. She is a mere servant and faces near insurmountable odds just to get in.

Before he was producing the musical hits of our generation, Jeffrey was just a kid coming to terms with his adoption, trying to understand his sexuality, and determined to escape his dysfunctional household in a poor neighborhood just outside Detroit. We see him find his voice through musical theater and move to New York, where he is determined to shed his past and make a name for himself on Broadway. But moving to the big city is never easy—especially not at the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis—and Jeffrey learns to survive and thrive in the colorful and cutthroat world of commercial theatre.

Daniel's Guide to Early Retirement: 1. Intercept illegal money transfer from mafia boss. 2. Hide out in super-exclusive Full Immersion Virtual Reality game until the heat is off. 3. Roll a bard. Max out charisma. Live it up. 4. Profit. With all the pesky planning out of the way, Daniel set out to realize his ultimate dream: gaining enough money to buy a tropical island and spend his days playing the violin and RPGs. What could possibly go wrong?

Nothing will get in the way of Millie Price’s dream of becoming a Broadway star. Not her lovable but super introverted dad, who raised Millie alone since she was a baby. Not her drama club rival, Oliver, who is the very definition of Simmering Romantic Tension. And not her “Millie Moods,” the feelings of intense emotion that threaten to overwhelm. Millie needs an ally. And when an accidentally left-open browser brings Millie to her dad’s embarrassingly moody LiveJournal from 2003, Millie knows just what to do—find her mom.

Life is cruel. Arbor learns this lesson the hard way, when everything he loves is taken from him in a single night. Left alive by the men who butchered his family, Arbor has two options: give up and perish, or rise up and fight to take back the life he's lost. To do that though, he'll have to leave behind the only home he's ever known and venture out into the world beyond.

From 1935 to 1939, the Federal Theatre Project staged over a thousand productions in 29 states that were seen by thirty million (or nearly one in four) Americans, two thirds of whom had never seen a play before. At its helm was an unassuming theater professor, Hallie Flanagan. It employed, at its peak, over twelve thousand struggling artists, some of whom, like Orson Welles and Arthur Miller, would soon be famous, but most of whom were just ordinary people eager to work again at their craft. The Playbook takes us through some of its most remarkable productions.

Helen Hayes, acclaimed "First Lady of the American Theatre", has been on stage, screen, and television for more than fifty years. In that time she moved among the world's most famous and talented: actors, film stars, writers, businessmen. She speaks with wit, wisdom, and candor on topics both public and private.

In Yankee Doodle Dandy, the first book on Cohan in fifty years, author Elizabeth T. Craft situates Cohan as a central figure of his day. Examining his multifaceted contributions and the various sociocultural identities he came to embody, Craft shows how Cohan and his works indelibly shaped the American cultural landscape. Informative and engaging, this book offers rich listening for Broadway musical aficionados as well as scholars of musical theater and American cultural history.

At the height of the McCarthy era, an experimental theater troupe set up shop in a bar near the University of Chicago. Via word-of-mouth, astonished crowds packed the ad-hoc venue to see its unscripted, interactive, consciousness-raising style. From this unlikely seed grew the Second City, the massively influential comedy theater troupe, and its offshoots - the Groundlings, Upright Citizens Brigade, SNL, and a slew of others. Sam Wasson charts the meteoric rise of improv in this richly reported, scene-driven narrative.

August Wilson wrote a series of ten plays celebrating African American life in the 20th century, one play for each decade. No other American playwright has completed such an ambitious oeuvre. Two of the plays became successful films, Fences, starring Denzel Washington and Viola Davis; and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, starring Viola Davis and Chadwick Boseman. Fences and The Piano Lesson won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama; Fences won the Tony Award for Best Play, and years after Wilson’s death in 2005, Jitney earned a Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play.