The DRAMA BOOK SHOP, Inc.: Thurs, Nov 4 @ 6.00 P.M:The Brilliance of the American Theatre: Four Distinguished Authors at The Drama Book Shop

The American Theatre and Drama Society presents an evening with four authors—Mark Cosdon (Allegheny College), Barbara W. Grossman (Tufts University), Marc Robinson (Yale University), and David Savran (Graduate Center, City University of New York)—each of whom has written a compelling and utterly fascinating new contribution to American theatre scholarship.

The four authors examine critical players, genres and developments in the American theatre. The four books are fascinating works, eminently readable, and sure to engage any theatre lover! Mark Cosdon's new book The Hanlon Brothers: From Daredevil Acrobatics to Spectacle Pantomime, 1833 - 1931 details one of the nineteenth century's premiere troupes, acclaimed for aerial performance, slapstick comedy, and scenic spectacle. Nearly forgotten, the Hanlon Brothers' influence can be traced through the work of Keaton and Chaplin, the Marx Brothers and Three Stooges, and into the American circus. Once called "America's greatest actress," renowned for the passion and power of her performances, Clara Morris (1847-1925) has been largely forgotten. In her book A Spectacle of Suffering: Clara Morris on the American Stage, Barbara Grossman offers the first full-length study of the actress's importance as a feminist in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Marc Robinson's The American Play, 1787 - 2000 explores more than two hundred years of plays, styles, and stagings of American theater. Mapping the changing cultural landscape from the late eighteenth century to the start of the twenty-first, Robinson's book is ambitiously interdisciplinary, linking advances in theater to developments in American literature, dance, and visual art. In Highbrow/Lowdown: Theater, Jazz, and the Making of the New Middle Class, David Savran explores the twentieth century's first culture war and the forces that permanently transformed American theater into the art form we know today. Jazz affected every stratum of U.S. society and culture, including theater, confusing and challenging long-entrenched hierarchies based on class, race, and ethnicity.