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New Books Network

About Andy Boyd

Andy Boyd is a playwright based in Brooklyn, New York. He is a graduate of the playwriting MFA at Columbia University, Harvard University, and the Arizona School for the Arts.

NBN Episodes hosted by Andy:

Performing Arts April 27, 2022

This Is My Office and Notes on My Mother's Decline

Two Plays

Andy Bragen

Hosted by Andy Boyd
On this episode of New Books in Performing Arts, we talk with Andy Bragen about two plays of his published in a new volume by Northwestern University Press: This is …
Performing Arts April 22, 2022

The Federal Theatre Project, 1935-1939

Engagement and Experimentation

Rania Karoula

Hosted by Andy Boyd
Rania Karoula's The Federal Theatre Project, 1935-1939 (Edinburgh University Press, 2020) offers a readable and engaging summary of an important chapter in American theatre history. Now safe from the 30s-era anti-Communist backlash that …
Performing Arts April 6, 2022

A Revolution in Three Acts

The Radical Vaudeville of Bert Williams, Eva Tanguay, and Julian Eltinge

David Hajdu and John Carey

Hosted by Andy Boyd
Too often, vaudeville is seen from the perspective of its decline: it is the corny, messy art form that predated the book musical, or that gave us Chaplin, Keaton, and …
Performing Arts March 10, 2022

Kraftwerk

Future Music from Germany

Uwe Schütte

Hosted by Andy Boyd
Uwe Schütte's Kraftwerk: Future Music from Germany (Penguin, 2021) is not your typical rock star biography. Eschewing gossipy interpersonal details, Schütte instead contextualizes Kraftwerk within contemporaneous debates about German cultural identity in …
Performing Arts March 9, 2022

The Thanksgiving Play / What Would Crazy Horse Do?

Larissa FastHorse

Hosted by Andy Boyd
Larissa FastHorse's new collection of plays includes the wildly successful plays The Thanksgiving Play/What Would Crazy Horse Do? (Theatre Communications Group, 2021). In both plays, FastHorse explores issues facing contemporary Native …
Performing Arts March 4, 2022

Putting It Together

How Stephen Sondheim and I Created "Sunday in the Park with George"

James Lapine

Hosted by Andy Boyd
James Lapine's Putting it Together: How Stephen Sondheim and I Created "Sunday in the Park with George" (FSG, 2021)  is a fascinating behind the scenes look at the creation of a modern masterpiece. Through …
Performing Arts February 3, 2022

The Queer Nuyorican

Racialized Sexualities and Aesthetics in Loisaida

Karen Jaime

Hosted by Andy Boyd
In The Queer Nuyorican: Racialized Sexualities and Aesthetics in Losaida (NYU Press, 2021), Karen Jaime argues that the Nuyorican Poet's Cafe has always been a queer space. While acknowledging elements of masculinist …
Performing Arts December 10, 2021

The Girl Singer

Poems

Marianne Worthington

Hosted by Andy Boyd
In The Girl Singer (Fireside Industries, 2021), her latest collection of poems, Marianne Worthington weaves together nature writing, feminism, and country music to form a powerful strand of interlocking poems. In the …
Performing Arts November 23, 2021

Love Like Light

Plays and Performance Texts by Daniel Alexander Jones

Daniel Alexander Jones

Hosted by Andy Boyd
Daniel Alexander Jones' Love Like Light: Plays and Performance Texts (53rd State Press, 2021) collects seven plays and performance texts from the past twenty-five years. Together, they provide a panoramic view …
Performing Arts November 5, 2021

Buffy Sainte-Marie

The Authorized Biography

Andrea Warner

Hosted by Andy Boyd
Andrea Warner's Buffy Sainte-Marie: The Authorized Biography (Graystone Books, 2018) tells the story, often in Buffy's own words, of the life of the remarkable artist and activist. Buffy Sainte-Marie's musical career is …
Performing Arts October 19, 2021

Chartist Drama

Gregory Vargo

Hosted by Andy Boyd
Greg Vargo's Chartist Drama (Manchester UP, 2021) opens a window into a fascinating aspect of working-class radical drama. This book includes scripts of four dramas performed or published by members …
Performing Arts October 6, 2021

The Art of Resonance

Anne Bogart

Hosted by Andy Boyd
Anne Bogart's The Art of Resonance (Methuen Drama, 2021) locates the essence of theatre in the experience of resonant vibration among performers and between performers and audience members. The point of art …
Performing Arts September 15, 2021

Someone Should Pay for Your Pain

Franz Nicolay

Hosted by Andy Boyd
Franz Nicolay's Someone Should Pay for Your Pain (Gibson House Press, 2021) is a moving, funny, and sometimes brutal novel about the life of a touring musician. Rudy Pauver is a punk-turned-singer-songwriter …
Performing Arts September 10, 2021

Starring Women

Celebrity, Patriarchy, and American Theater, 1790-1851

Sara E. Lampert

Hosted by Andy Boyd
Women performers played a vital role in the development of American and transatlantic entertainment, celebrity culture, and gender ideology. In Starring Women: Celebrity, Patriarchy, and American Theater, 1790-1851 (U Illinois Press, 2020), Sara …
Performing Arts August 31, 2021

Footnotes

The Black Artists Who Rewrote the Rules of the Great White Way

Caseen Gaines

Hosted by Andy Boyd
Caseen Gaines' Footnotes: The Black Artists Who Rewrote the Rules of the Great White Way (Sourcebooks, 2021) is a rollicking, entertaining, and fascinating cultural history of the 1921 Broadway musical Shuffle Along. Created …
Performing Arts August 20, 2021

Green River Valley

Robert Lashley

Hosted by Andy Boyd
Green River Valley, Robert Lashley's third book of poetry, is a moving and complex tribute to the Hilltop neighborhood of Tacoma, Washington. Whether writing about finding love in the aisles of …
Performing Arts August 11, 2021

Writing and the Modern Stage

Theater beyond Drama

Julia Jarcho

Hosted by Andy Boyd
Julia Jarcho's Writing and the Modern Stage: Theater beyond Drama (Cambridge UP, 2017) is a fascinating argument for the centrality of writing in experimental theater from Gertrude Stein to Suzan-Lori Parks …
Performing Arts July 30, 2021

The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic

Jessica Hopper

Hosted by Andy Boyd
Throughout her career, spanning more than two decades, Jessica Hopper, a revered and pioneering music critic, has examined women recording and producing music, in all genres, through an intersectional feminist …
Performing Arts July 14, 2021

Staging Lives in Latin American Theater

Bodies, Objects, Archives

Paola Hernández

Hosted by Andy Boyd
Paola Hernandez's book Staging Lives in Latin American Theater: Bodies, Objects, Archives (Northwestern UP, 2021) looks at a wide range of documentary theatre practices across South and Central America, including the …
Performing Arts June 25, 2021

From Aphra Behn to Fun Home

A Cultural History of Feminist Theater

Carey Purcell

Hosted by Andy Boyd
Theatre has long been considered a feminine interest for which women consistently purchase the majority of tickets, while the shows they are seeing typically are written and brought to the …
Performing Arts June 21, 2021

Beeswing

Losing My Way and Finding My Voice 1967-1975

Richard Thompson

Hosted by Andy Boyd
Richard Thompson's Beeswing: Losing My Way and Finding My Voice 1967-1975 (Algonquin Books, 2021) gives fans of his music a tale as rollicking and entertaining as the reels and ballads he …
Performing Arts June 15, 2021

2 Washington Square

Constance Congdon

Hosted by Andy Boyd
Constance Congdon's 2 Washington Square (Broadway Play Publishing, 2020) is a free-wheeling adaptation of Henry James' novel Washington Square set on the cusp of the 1960s as one era gives way to a startlingly …
Performing Arts June 7, 2021

Deviant Opera

Sex, Power, and Perversion on Stage

Axel Englund

Hosted by Andy Boyd
In Deviant Opera: Sex, Power, and Perversion on Stage (University of California Press, 2020), Axel Englund examines an increasingly common trope in opera direction: the use of imagery associated with the kink …
Performing Arts June 1, 2021

Ann, Fran, and Mary Ann

Erin Courtney

Hosted by Andy Boyd
Ann, Fran, & Mary Ann (53rd State Press, 2020) is a new play by Erin Courtney, one of the most exciting contemporary American playwrights. This is a play that engages with …