How To Produce A West End Show

Revised and updated edition: Coming November 2014 How to Produce A West End Show demystifies the working world of live theatre. This is an insider account that maps an entry route into the industry and examines the challenges faced by West End producers. • How to budget and finance a show • How to assemble a cast and creative team • How to work with writers, directors and designers • How to book a West End theatre and a pre-West End tour • How to advertise and market your show Julius Green shares the experience he’s gained as one of the UK’s most prolific theatre producers to illuminate the glamorous, gritty process of putting on a West End show. A compelling read for anyone who works in or is interested in the theatre.

This book offers the first full historical treatment of a music theatre that was once at the centre of London's West End. From the late Victorian period to the early 1920s, musical comedy was the single most popular form of 'legitimate' theatre entertainment. This lively account establishes musical comedy as one of the first industrial cultures and offers fascinating insights into how it functioned ideologically as a celebrated embracing of the modern condition.

Set in 1930, a world-renowned Italian tenor arrives to perform Othello but is too indisposed to go on.

From the bestselling author of Tides of Honour and Promises to Keep comes a poignant novel about a young couple caught on opposite sides of the Second World War. In the fall of 1939, Grace Baker’s three brothers, sharp and proud in their uniforms, board Canadian ships headed for a faraway war. Grace stays behind, tending to the homefront and the general store that helps keep her small Nova Scotian community running. The war, everyone says, will be over before it starts. But three years later, the fighting rages on and rumours swirl about “wolf packs” of German U-Boats lurking in the deep waters along the shores of East Jeddore, a stone’s throw from Grace’s window. As the harsh realities of war come closer to home, Grace buries herself in her work at the store. Then, one day, a handsome stranger ventures into the store. He claims to be a trapper come from away, and as Grace gets to know him, she becomes enamoured by his gentle smile and thoughtful ways. But after several weeks, she discovers that Rudi, her mysterious visitor, is not the lonely outsider he appears to be. He is someone else entirely—someone not to be trusted. When a shocking truth about her family forces Grace to question everything she has so strongly believed, she realizes that she and Rudi have more in common than she had thought. And if Grace is to have a chance at love, she must not only choose a side, but take a stand. Come from Away is a mesmerizing story of love, shifting allegiances, and second chances, set against the tumultuous years of the Second World War.

A The Times (UK) and Sunday Times Best Book of the Year A moving, laugh-out-loud memoir from one of today’s best-loved British actors, whose credits include Downton Abbey, Notting Hill, and Paddington. From getting his big break as Third Shepherd in the school nativity play, to mistaking a Hollywood star for an estate agent, Hugh Bonneville creates a brilliantly vivid picture of a career on stage and screen. What is it like working with Judi Dench and Julia Roberts, or playing Robert De Niro’s right leg, or not being Gary Oldman, twice? A wickedly funny storyteller, Bonneville also writes with poignancy about his father’s dementia and of his mother, whose life in the secret service emerged only after her death. Whether telling stories of working with divas, Dames, or a bear with a penchant for marmalade, this is a richly entertaining account of his life as an actor.

Global and authoritative, this textbook maps modern, live experience media, the categories that thrive on real-time engagement and human connection – even in the age of synthetic content, AI and the Metaverse. Sports and sports betting, festivals, comedy, concerts, tours and theme parks are covered – plus theatre, trade events, conventions, museums and galleries, and immersive media. Live media events included are Burning Man, Glastonbury, the Indian Premier League, the English Premier League, Olympics, NBA and Bundesliga – plus sell-out Taylor Swift tours, the World Cup, Super Bowl, Ryder Cup and Formula One. Business models in this media category start with ticketing and advertising – now amplified with ecommerce, affiliate marketing, subscription and gambling transactions. Deep dives ask: Why is Saudi Arabia investing billions into golf and football? Why is standup comedy big in Nigeria? How are Broadway and the West End evolving? What do immersive technologies like Abba Voyage and the MSG Sphere offer for the future? With class questions, a quiz, summaries and slides for each chapter, this is a guide and course structure for anyone at university level or in industry studying the media, music, entertainment, events, exhibitions, sports, social media or gambling industries.

To what extent is theatre a contagious practice, capable of undoing and enlivening people and cultures? Theatres of Contagion responds to some of the anxieties of our current political and cultural climate by exploring theatre's status as a contagious cultural force, questioning its role in the spread or control of medical, psychological and emotional conditions and phenomena. Observing a diverse range of practices from the early modern to contemporary period, the volume considers how this contagion is understood to happen and operate, its real and imagined effects, and how these have been a source of pleasure and fear for theatre makers, audiences and authorities. Drawing on perspectives from medicine, neuroscience, psychology, anthropology, philosophy, law and affect theory, essays investigate some of the ways in which theatre can be viewed as a powerful agent of containment and transmission. Among the works analysed include a musical adaptation and an intercultural variation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet; a contemporary queer take on Hamlet; Grand Guignol and theatres of horror; the writings and influence of Artaud; immersive theatre and the work of Punchdrunk, and computer gaming and smartphone apps

From the celebrated and controversial writer of Shopping and Fucking Some Explicit Polaroids premiered at the New Ambassadors Theatre, London in October 1999 in a production directed by Max Stafford-Clark for Out of Joint, prior to a national tour. "There are few stage authors writing more interestingly than Mark Ravenhill . . . He is - it is now yet more evident - a searing, intelligent, disturbing sociologist with a talent for satirical dialogue and a flair for sexual sensationalism" (Financial Times)