An examination of the role of direct address within fiction cinema, focusing on its role in avant-garde or experimental cinema, and popular genre traditions.

What happens when a performing actor leaves behind his lines, staging, sets, and lighting, and steps beyond the fourth wall? For three years, Amy Arbus has been exploring this question in a series of dramatic portraits of celebrated actors, both on and off Broadway. Fully costumed but stripped of their context, Arbus's actors remain in character as they step outside the fiction of theater into the reality of the world beyond. Staged in anonymous public spaces--in theater lobbies, on city streets, in parks, and in stage door alleys--Arbus's images achieve an unexpected blend of spectacle and high art; formality and sontaneity; vulnerability and pretense. Collected in The Fourth Wall are some of the modern stage's most gifted actors, including Alan Cumming in Cabaret, John Malkovitch in Lost Land, Liev Schreiber in Talk Radio, Ed Harris in Wrecks, Cherry Jones in Doubt, Christine Ebersol in Grey Gardens, and Ethan Hawke and Martha Plimpton in The Coast of Utopia. Actors are included from such successful and ambitioud productions as Wicked, The Light in the Piazza, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and The Color Purple, to name but a few. Portraits are accompanied by synopses of the plays as well as quotes from a number of the actors portrayed. In 2006's critically acclaimed book On the Street, Arbus focused her lens on those who dressed to express themselves--now she turns her attention to those who dress to become someone else. The result is a collection of potent photographs that pay remarkable tribute to contemporary theater and the performers who bring fantasy to life.

'Hasa Diga Eebowai' In 2011, a musical full of curse words and Mormon missionaries swept that year’s Tony Awards and was praised as a triumphant return of the American musical. This book explores the inherent achievements (and failures) of The Book of Mormon—one of the most ambitious, and problematic, musicals to achieve widespread success. The creative team members—Matt Parker, Trey Stone and composer Robert Lopez—were collectively known for their aggressive use of taboo subjects and crude, punchy humor. Using the metaphor of boxing, Granger explores the metaphorical punches the trio delivers and ruminates over the less-discussed ideological wounds that their style of shock absurdism might leave behind. This careful examination of where The Book of Mormon succeeds and fails is sure to challenge discussion of our understanding of musical comedy and our appreciation for this cultural landmark in theatre.

Collects The Unbelievable Gwenpool #16-20. Gwen Poole is everyone's favorite character from the "real" world! And her super-power is Official Handbook-level knowledge of top-secret comic-book facts! But the longer she's in the Marvel Universe, and not reading about it from the outside, the more her powers run out...or do they? Maybe a trip back to her world might help - but if that happens, will she be able to return to the MU? And at what cost? Plus: Gwenpool is no stranger to trouble, but she'll brand herself a menace when she blurts out a certain somebody's secret identity! You'd have thought by now that she'd know what comes with great power. How can she fix her self-induced continuity drama? And, er, who's that evil-looking version of Gwen?

Since its publication in 1984, The Mysteries of Harris Burdick has stimulated the minds of readers of all ages and backgrounds. Now the original fourteen drawings are available in a large portfolio edition of loose sheets. In addition, a newly discovered fifteenth drawing, titled The Youngest Magician, has been added, as well as an updated introduction by the author. The puzzles of these mysterious drawings will be even more provocative because of the larger size and the exceptional printing quality. For the first time, the drawings can be shared with groups or displayed singly. The Mysteries of Harris Burdick was a New York Times Best Illustrated Book of 1984.

After a turbulent year, Michelle Sevigny heard it as she ran seaside: do more of this. After researching long-distance coastal routes, she prepared to solo hike the 509-kilometre Lycian Way. The journey doesn't take her where she planned, but as she camps in the wild, gets lost without water and confronts charging sheepdogs, it guides her to exactly where she needs to be. Breaking the Fourth Wall: An Uncertain Journey on Turkey's Lycian Way is a story about learning to embrace uncertainty, of both destination and self, and discovering an answer to the universal question: who are we? "With elegant prose, sometimes verging on poetic, and Sevigny's clever, multilingual word play, Breaking the Fourth Wall establishes Sevigny as a serious and dynamic author of travel writing. This isn't a book just about Turkey, or even just about travel, making Breaking the Fourth Wall a book with universal appeal." -- Self-Publishing Review

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • John Barth's lively, highly original collection of short pieces is a major landmark of experimental fiction exploring themes of purpose and the meaning of existence. "[Barth] ran riot over literary rules and conventions, even as he displayed, with meticulous discipline, mastery of and respect for them." —The New York Times From its opening story, "Frame-Tale"--printed sideways and designed to be cut out by the reader and twisted into a never-ending Mobius strip--to the much-anthologized "Life-Story," whose details are left to the reader to "fill in the blank," Barth's acclaimed collection challenges our ideas of what fiction can do. Highlights include the Homerian story-wthin-a-story-within-a-story (times seven) of "Menalaiad,' and "Night-Sea Journey," a first-person account of a confused human sperm on its way to fertilize an egg. All of the characters in Lost in the Funhouse are searching, in one way or another, for their purpose and the meaning of their existence. Together, their stories form a kaleidescope of exuberant metafictional inventiveness.