Alexander Street Press News and Updates

New MARC Records now available

The complete set of MARC records for Asian American Drama is now available online.  Other recent releases include the MARC records for Twentieth Century North American Drama and The Digital Library of Classic Protestant Texts.    All available sets of records can be downloaded at http://www.alexanderstreet2.com/marc/.  If you have any questions please see the READ ME file, or contact support@alexanderstreet.com.

You can also sign-up to receive email notification when new MARC records become available,

 

New Content in North American Women’s Drama

We are pleased to announce the final release of North American Women’s Drama is now live. This release includes an additional 344 plays, including those of Alice Childress and Marina Irene Fornes.  Many of these works are previously unpublished,  and have not appeared in any format before now.

Other works new to this update include plays by: Kathy Acker, Claudia Allen, Claire Chafee, Paula Cizmar, Darah Cloud, Kia Corthron, Julie Jensen, Elinor Jones, Josephina Lopez, Stephanie Lehmann, Lisa Loomer, Emily Mann, Susan Miller, Toni Press-Coffman, Theresa Rebeck, Elaine Romero, Betty Smith, Susan Yankowitz, and Y. York, among others.

The completed database includes 1,517 plays by 330 playwrights from the 19th century to the present. More than 30% of these plays are previously unpublished, and the database also includes playbills, production photographs and other related ephemera.  Be sure to check out all of the new content at http://wodr.alexanderstreet.com.  If your library does not have access to this resource you may request a free trial.

COMPANY

We recently licensed a number of films from Pennebaker for Theatre in Video, all of which are extremely interesting.  I found the following description of one of these films, COMPANY, to be especially noteworthy.  Not many movies cause riots-- especially documentaries about Broadway productions!

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When COMPANY was first shown at the 1970 New York Film Festival, it caused considerable stir. A police riot squad had to be summoned to quell the outraged turnaways unable to get into the theater. The documentary, by D A Pennebaker, with Jim Desmond and Ricky Leacock, recounting a grueling 18 1/2 hour recording session for the Stephen Sondheim musical which had just opened on Broadway, became the sensation of the festival even though it was only 52 minutes long and intended for television. It seemed for an instant that it could be released sucessfully in theaters. Columbia Pictures was even interested. But the legal problems were considerable, and eventually it had its television run in the U.S. and in Great Britain, and then as usually happens, disappeared from view.

But not quite. Over the next thirty years, Pennebaker received a steady stream of requests to see the film, either from people who had seen it or people who had heard about it. Midnight phone calls from Los Angeles, and Berlin, and the weight of fans who considered the music to be among Sondheim’s best, finally persuaded Pennebaker to see if it couldn’t be resurrected. After years of legal unraveling and with the help of all participants and their lawyers and agents, the film lives again.