John Lahr Knihy

"We all perform. It's what we do for each other all the time, deliberately or unintentionally. It's a way of telling about ourselves in the hope of being recognized as what we'd like to be."--Richard Avedon, 1974The preeminent stars and artists of the performing arts from the second half of the 20th century offered their greatest gifts―and, sometimes, their inner lives―to Richard Avedon. More than 200 are portrayed in Performance, many in photographs that have been rarely or never seen before. Of course, the great stars light the Hepburn and Chaplin, Monroe and Garland, Brando and Sinatra. But here too are the actors and comedians, pop stars and divas, musicians and dancers, artists in all mediums with public lives that were essentially performances, who stand at the pinnacle of our cultural achievement. The celebrated author and critic John Lahr offers an elegant assessment of Avedon’s achievement. Four supremely talented artists from the performing arts―Mike Nichols, André Gregory, Mitsuko Uchida, and Twyla Tharp―contribute lively and moving memoirs about their collaborations with Avedon.

This text reconstructs the life and death of Joe Orton, an extraordinary and anarchic playwright, whose plays scandalised and delighted the public, and whose indecisive loyalty to a friend caused his tragic and untimely death.

Elia Kazan was the twentieth century’s most celebrated director of both stage and screen, and this monumental, revelatory book shows us the master at work. Kazan’s list of Broadway and Hollywood successes—A Streetcar Named Desire, Death of a Salesman, On the Waterfront, to name a few—is a testament to his profound impact on the art of directing. This remarkable book, drawn from his notebooks, letters, interviews, and autobiography, reveals Kazan’s method: how he uncovered the “spine,” or core, of each script; how he analyzed each piece in terms of his own experience; and how he determined the specifics of his production. And in the final section, “The Pleasures of Directing”—written during Kazan’s final years—he becomes a wise old pro offering advice and insight for budding artists, writers, actors, and directors.

Here, celebrated drama critic John Lahr gives intimate access to the mind of one of the most brilliant dramatists of his century, whose plays reshaped the American theater and the nation's sense of itself. This astute, deeply researched biography sheds light on Williams's warring family, his guilt, his creative triumphs and failures, his sexuality and numerous affairs, his misreported death, even the shenanigans surrounding his estate. With vivid cameos of the formative influences in Williams's life, this book is as much a biography of the man as it is a trenchant exploration of his plays and the tortured process of bringing them to stage and screen. Lahr explores how Williams's relationships informed his work and how the resulting success brought turmoil to his personal life. Lahr captures not just his tempestuous public persona but also his backstage life, where his agent Audrey Wood and the director Elia Kazan play major roles, and Marlon Brando, Anna Magnani, Bette Davis, Maureen Stapleton, Diana Barrymore, and Tallulah Bankhead have scintillating walk-on parts. This is a theater biography like no other.--Frompublisher description

Critic Kenneth Tynan, the impresario who created Oh Calcutta, was also an eccentric and connoisseur of cuisine, wine, literature and women. His diaries record a judicious blend of aesthetics, theatre lore, love, marriage, sex and politics.

Screenplay to John Lahr's successful dramatization of The Orton Diaries that chronicles the last eight months of Joe Orton's life, his growing theatrical celebrity, and the corresponding punishing effect it had on his relationship with his friend and mentor Kenneth Halliwell, who murdered him on August 9, 1967, and then took his own life.

A great theater critic brings twentieth-century playwright Arthur Miller's dramatic story to life with bold and revealing new insights

"Joy Ride" by John Lahr is a captivating collection of profiles and reviews from his time as a senior drama critic at The New Yorker. It offers an insider's look at contemporary theater, featuring influential figures like August Wilson and Stephen Sondheim, making it an essential read for theater enthusiasts.

'John Lahr manages to write better about the theatre than anybody in the English language,' says Richard Eyre. Joy Ride, which includes the best of his New Yorker profiles and reviews, makes his expertise and his exhilaration palpable. From modern greats, like Arthur Miller, Harold Pinter, David Mamet, Tony Kushner and August Wilson, through the work of directors like Nicholas Hytner and Ingmar Bergman, to Shakespeare himself, the depth of Lahr's understanding is plain to see and extraordinary to read. He brings the reader up close and personal to the artists and their art. Whether you are a regular theatre-goer, or just starting out, Lahr's book delights as both a celebration and a guide.