Book Awards
Attention Publishers, Authors, and Members of the Theatre Library Association Community
The Executive Board of Theatre Library Association has regretfully decided to put the Book Awards on hiatus until further notice. If you have questions about the future of the Book Awards, contact Book Awards Committee Co-Chairs Tiffany Nixon and Linda Miles.
The George Freedley Memorial Award
The George Freedley Memorial Award was established in 1968 in honor of the first Curator of the New York Public Library’s Theatre Collection and first President of Theatre Library Association. The Award is presented annually to an English-language book of exceptional scholarship published or distributed in the United States during the previous calendar year that examines some aspect of live theatre or performance. The jurors may also designate an additional title for a Special Jury Prize.
2012 Freedley Award Winner
Jonathan Kalb. Great Lengths: Seven Works of Marathon Theatre. University of Michigan Press, 2011.
A fascinating study by theater critic and scholar Jonathan Kalb, Great Lengths: Seven Works of Marathon Theater (University of Michigan Press), considers large-scale theater productions that often run five hours or more and present special challenges to the artists involved as well as the audience. He takes a close look at seven internationally prominent theater productions, including Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, Robert Wilson’s Einstein on the Beach, the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Nicholas Nickleby, Peter Brook’s The Mahabharata, and the “durational works” of the British experimental company Forced Entertainment. Diverse and savvy viewers who may otherwise be distracted by film, television and other media nevertheless continue to seek out the increasingly rare experiences of awe, transcendence, and sustained immersion provided by monumental theater works.
2012 Special Jury Prize Winner
Steven Serafin (Editor). BAM: The Complete Works. Brooklyn Academy of Music in association with The Quantuck Lane Press, 2011.
BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music) is at once the oldest performing arts center in the U.S. and a legendary nexus for contemporary global and local culture. From its opening night in 1861, BAM has forged an unmatched artistic legacy, emerging in the second half of the 20th century as the preeminent stage for the most visionary artists and performers of the age. The gorgeous new book BAM: The Complete Works is a narrative chronology of the past 150 years, with more than 350 archival images of artists and performances and essays by and about some of the many artists integral to the fabric of BAM’s identity.
2012 Finalists
Mark Bayer. Theatre, Community, and Civic Engagement in Jacobean London. University of Iowa Press, 2011.
Jonathan Croall. John Gielgud: From Matinee Idol to Movie Star. Methuen Drama and Bloomsbury, 2011.
Michael Dobson. Shakespeare and Amateur Performance: A Cultural History. Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Alan D. Filewod. Committing Theatre: Theatre Radicalism and Political Intervention in Canada. Between the Lines, 2011.
Nadine Holdsworth. Joan Littlewood's Theatre. Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Yael Tamar Lewin. Night's Dancer: The Life of Janet Collins. Wesleyan University Press, 2011.
John Lithgow. Drama: An Actor's Education. Harper, 2011.
James S. Marino. Owning William Shakespeare: The King's Men and Their Intellectual Property. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011.
Judith Pascoe. The Sarah Siddons Audio Files: Romanticism and the Lost Voice. University of Michigan Press, 2011.
Kristin L. Spangenberg and Deborah W. Walk (Editors). The Amazing American Circus Poster: The Strobridge Lithographing Company. The Cincinnati Art Museum and The Ringling Museum of Art, 2011.
2012 Freedley Award Jury: Charlotte Cubbage, Northwestern University; Robert Melton, University of California, San Diego; Don B. Wilmeth, Brown University
Freedley Award Winners, 1969-Present
Freedley Award Finalists, 2001-Present
The Richard Wall Memorial Award
The Richard Wall Memorial Award, established in 1973, honors an English-language book of exceptional scholarship in the field of recorded performance published or distributed in the United States during the previous calendar year. The jurors may also designate an additional title for a Special Jury Prize. Formerly known as the Theatre Library Association Award, the prize was renamed in 2010 to honor the memory of the late Richard Wall, longtime TLA member and Book Awards Chair.
2012 Wall Award Winner
Christopher Sieving. Soul Searching: Black-Themed Cinema from the March on Washington to the Rise of Blaxploitation. Wesleyan University Press, 2011.
The sixties were a tremendously important time of transition for both civil rights activism and the U.S. film industry. Soul Searching examines a subject that, despite its significance to African American film history, has gone largely unexplored until now. By revisiting films produced between the March on Washington in 1963 and the dawn of the "blaxploitation" movie cycle in 1970, Christopher Sieving reveals how race relations influenced black-themed cinema before it was recognized as commercially viable by the major studios. The films that are central to this book—Gone Are the Days (1963), The Cool World (1964), The Confessions of Nat Turner (never produced), Uptight (1968), and The Landlord (1970)--are all ripe for reevaluation and newfound appreciation. Soul Searching is essential reading for anyone interested in the politics and cultural movements of the 1960s, cinematic trends like blaxploitation and the American "indie film" explosion, or black experience and its many facets.
2012 Special Jury Prize Winner
Susan Orlean. Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend. Simon & Schuster, 2011.
"He believed the dog was immortal." So begins Susan Orlean's sweeping, powerfully moving story of Rin Tin Tin's journey from orphaned puppy to movie star and international icon. From the moment in 1918 when Corporal Lee Duncan discovers Rin Tin Tin on a World War I battlefield, he recognizes something in the pup that he needs to share with the world. Rin Tin Tin's improbable introduction to Hollywood leads to the dog's first blockbuster film and over time, the many radio programs, movies, and television shows that follow. The canine hero's legacy is cemented by Duncan and a small group of others who devote their lives to keeping him and his descendants alive.
2012 Finalists
Donald Bogle. Heat Wave: The Life and Career of Ethel Waters. HarperCollins Publishers, 2011.
James Curtis. Spencer Tracy, A Biography. Alfred A. Knopf, 2011.
Lisa Dombrowski (Editor). Kazan Revisited. Wesleyan University Press, 2011.
Angelica Fenner. Race Under Reconstruction in German Cinema: Robert Stemmle's Toxi. University of Toronto Press, 2011.
Rosalind Galt. Pretty: Film and the Decorative Image. Columbia University Press, 2011.
Jeffrey Geiger. American Documentary Film: Projecting the Nation. Edinburgh University Press, 2011.
Brian Kellow. Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark. Viking, 2011.
Emily W. Leider. Myrna Loy: The Only Good Girl in Hollywood. University of California Press, 2011.
Walter Raubicheck and Walter Srebnick. Scripting Hitchcock: Psycho, the Birds, and Marnie. University of Illinois Press, 2011.
Malcolm Turvey. Filming of Modern Life: European Avant-Garde Film of the 1920s. MIT Press, 2011.
2012 Wall Award Jury: John Calhoun, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts; Madeline Matz, The Library of Congress; Stephen Tropiano, Ithaca College
Wall Award Winners, 1974-Present
Wall Award Finalists, 2001-Present
Last updated: April 27, 2013