The story of how the sudden fame of an author affects the lives of a score of people, including his brother.

"Perhaps the best place in 1943 Hollywood to see the stars is the Hollywood Canteen, a club for servicemen staffed exclusively by those in show business. Murder mystery playwright Annie Laurence, new in town after a devastating breakup, definitely hopes to rub elbows with the right stars. Maybe then she can get her movie made. But Hollywood proves to be more than tinsel and glamour. When despised film critic Fiona Farris is found dead in the Canteen...

Chandra Eaton can't believe she left her journals—containing very private, very erotic dreams she's been having for the past two years—in a Philly taxicab. Her embarrassment turns to intrigue when Preston Tucker finds and returns them. The soulful playwright fires up Chandra's body and her mind. An irresistible combination, until she starts to suspect that he's just using her for creative inspiration.
Preston has spent years running...

Presents a brief profile of the life and works of sixteenth-century playwright, William Shakespeare; and contains black-and-white illustrations that include a diagram of the Globe Theater.

"Open the door... Holly Sherwin has been a struggling playwright for years, but now, after receiving a grant to develop her play Witching Night, she may finally be close to her big break. All she needs is time and space to bring her vision to life. When she stumbles across Hill House on a weekend getaway upstate, she is immediately taken in by the mansion, nearly hidden outside a remote village. It's enormous, old, and ever-so eerie--the perfect place...

"Happily married and in the flush of hard-earned professional success, with her first play opening on Broadway, Sarah Ruhl has just survived a high risk pregnancy and given birth to twins when she discovers the left side of her face entirely paralyzed. Bell's palsy. Ninety percent of Bell's palsy sufferers see spontaneous improvement and full recovery. Like Ruhl's mother. Like Angelina Jolie. But not like Sarah Ruhl. Sarah Ruhl is in the unlucky ten...

Wilson's decade-by-decade cycle of ten plays about the African American experience in the twentieth century put Black life center stage, celebrating themes and voices that had been sorely missing from Broadway and regional theaters. Hartigan shows how Wilson's body of work paved the way for a new generation of African American playwrights. She combines interviews with Wilson, his friends, colleagues, and family member to show how Wilson left his indelible...

This documentary sheds valuable light on all aspects of Lorraine Hansberry's play, A Raisin in the Sun, including the daunting challenge of securing investment and a venue for this production about a working class Black family, the casting process, artistic debates and finally its public reception. The film features interviews with the play's original cast members, Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee, Louis Gossett, Jr. and Glynn Turman, director Lloyd Richards,...

"Teddy's a world-famous playwright in the mold of David Mamet, but for the past year he's been stuck. An assignment to write a play about Emily Dickinson should have been simple - but instead it has turned into pure obsession. Then, one night, she comes to life in his office, like magic, seducing him, torturing him, begging him to uncover the shocking secret about her life that she has woven between the lines of her text. And tonight, he's finally...

William Shakespeare, the most celebrated poet in the English language, left behind nearly a million words of text, but his biography has long been a thicket of supposition arranged around scant facts. With his trademark wit, Bill Bryson sorts through this colorful muddle to reveal the man himself. Bryson documents the efforts of earlier scholars, and, emulating the style of his travelogues, records episodes in his own research. He celebrates Shakespeare...