Shops and Galleries on Prospero Lane: February 2010

February 20, 2010

Included in the Storque Etsy Finds: The Red Detachment of Women - Chinese Revolutionary Ballet

A happy day today at Prospero's Bookshelf!

My vintage copy of The Red Detachment of Women, a Chinese Revolutionary Ballet, is featured in Etsy's Storque Blog entitled "Burn After Reading," exploring the "Books and Zines" category!

Please click here to read the Storque article ~
and here to view the book!

As you can see, this book is packed with beautiful photos. Of course, it's written in Chinese!

February 16, 2010

February is Black History Month ~ Celebrate with Vintage Books

For the month of February, in celebration of Black History Month, I'm featuring books dealing with Black Americans, especially African American writers, dramatists and poets.

Here are a few of the books you'll find on Prospero's Bookshelf at Etsy ~

You'll find more available through my Feedback Theatrebooks website!

February 13, 2010

The First African American Playwright

We the People of the United States have our First African American President.

But who was our First African American Playwright?

William Wells Brown! His contribution to our Amer

ican Theatre -- The Escape; or, A Leap for Freedom, published in 1858. Although Brown, born into slavery, wrote that "this play was written for my own amusement, and not with the remotest thought that it would ever be seen by the public eye," and "never aspired to be a dramatist" -- and his play was never produced during his lifetime (1816?-1884) -- The Escape presents its abolitionist message in the remarkably theatrical structure popular on the late 19th century stage. We have this play, and many more books available for sale! Click here to see them all!

Learn more about African American contributions to the American Theatre with Bernard Peterson's Contemporary Black American Playwrights and Their Plays.

The works of Langston Hughes, "The Poet Laureate of the Harlem Renaissance," with The Langston Hughes Readerautographed and presented to a faculty member at the University of Kansas during Hughes' lecture-visit in 1958 to Lawrence, where he once lived).