Todd London with Ben Pesner and Zannie Giraud Voss, Outrageous Fortune: The Life and Times of the New American Play (Theatre Development Fund, $14.95 paper). This is the book that everybody in the theater business is talking about, with good reason. Based on a survey of playwrights and other theater professionals, it offers a detailed and dismayingly candid portrait of how new American plays get produced–or, more often, don’t. Can a professional playwright really hope to make a living today without teaching or writing for TV? Who decides what plays get on stage? Are playwrights and producers talking past one another? All these questions are answered in Outrageous Fortune, and the answers are both provocative and disturbing (TT).
Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
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