Below is a list of theater books that were published in 2025, most of which I read and enjoyed (sometimes immensely, sometimes with caveats), several I hope to get to in the new year.
Beneath that is a list of playscripts. The first is an anthology of recent plays. The other nine are of Broadway plays currently on stage or slated for Spring 2026, all of which were published in previous years.
(And if you haven’t read them yet, here are two more recommended books published in previous years – James Shapiro’s 2020 Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us About Our Past and Future (My review.) who also has a book in the list below. And, the 2022 Shy: The Alarmingly Outspoken Memoirs of Mary Rodgers published in 2022 (My review.) These are two in my list of the 12 Best Theater Books in the Past 10 Years)
Click on the titles to find more information and to purchase these books.* The books are listed alphabetically by author within the first four categories: biography and memoir; history and criticism; fiction; poetry/comic book/introduction to theater.
Biography and Memoir
Baldwin: A Love Story by Nicholas Boggs
The first major biography in three decades of James Baldwin (1924-1987), the Harlem-born writer and civil rights activist probably best known for his coming-of-age novel “Go Tell It on the Mountain,” and his collections of eloquent essays on race and racial justice, “Notes of a Native Son” and “The Fire Next Time.” Boggs uses Baldwin’s homosexuality as the prism through which we’re asked to view his life and art. This is not to say that Baldwin’s homosexuality is the sole subject of the book. Far from it… Theater lovers might be surprised at how interested and involved Baldwin was throughout his life in writing and directing plays..My full review
“Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare’s Greatest Rival” by Stephen Greenblatt.
A biography of Christopher Marlowe and his times. A shoemaker’s son who became a scholar and a playwright and possibly a spy, he was killed at the age of 29. Despite his brief life, his plays (“Tamburlaine the Great,” “The Jew of Malta,” “Doctor Faustus” and “Edward II.“), Greenblatt argues, ignited the English Renaissance. And inspired Shakespeare: Without his invention of blank verse and the soliloquy, there would be no “Hamlet.”
“Actress of a Certain Age: My Twenty-Year Trail to Overnight Success” by Jeff Hiller
Jeff Hiller has written a celebrity memoir to end all celebrity memoirs. Each of his twenty-four chapters is given the title of an actual celebrity memoir, and the age at which the author of that memoir became a celebrity – by which Hiller is expressing his envy and irritation…Hiller, you see, was 45 when he first performed the role of Joel, the Bridgett Everett character’s best friend in the HBO series “Somebody Somewhere,” which gave him the clout to get his own celebrity memoir published, after two decades of mostly bit parts on TV, movies and commercials, as well as the stage (including Broadway)…Hiller’s gift for finding the hilarious, as well as the heartfelt, in many embarrassing moments that most of the 24 celebrity titles he cites would probably judge too embarrassing to include, makes this sort-of-celebrity-memoir memorable. My full review
“Lin-Manuel Miranda : The Education of an Artist” by Daniel Pollack-Pelzner
A chronological narrative of Miranda’s life and work, “womb to Tick…Tick Boom,” as the author puts it in a prologue. That’s where he tries to argue that his book is different from the many previous chronicles of the composer (lyricist, actor, rapper, filmmaker, book store owner, etc.) and his accomplishments.
Pollack-Pelzner’s plan, as he pitched it to Miranda seeking his cooperation, was to write about Miranda’s “education as an artist, focusing on the range of teachers – friends, relatives, classroom instructors, mentors, professionals – who helped him learn how to do what he now does so well.” With this focus, he hoped to illustrate “ a different understanding of creativity” – that it is not necessarily the result of genius, but of hard work and an openness to learning….The author, a Portland-based theater professor and magazine writer who has reported on Miranda (for the New Yorker and the Atlantic) over the years, is dutiful and adept in recounting Miranda’s much-celebrated career, which takes up three-quarters of the book and goes show by show. My full review
“Theater Kid: A Broadway Memoir” by Jeffrey Seller
When Jeffrey Seller was 18 years old and frustrated at his new job as the drama director at a summer camp for kids, somebody handed him a copy of Moss Hart’s 1959 memoir “Act One,” touting it as the best book about the theater ever written. Seller, who went on to become a successful Broadway producer best-known for the landmark musicals “Rent” and “Hamilton,” sees reading Hart’s book, and later Hal Prince’s memoir “Contradictions,” as a significant enough moment in his life that he writes about them in his own memoir…If we don’t know exactly how much these two memoirs goaded Seller into his illustrious career, they both seem to have helped guide him in writing his new memoir. “Theater Kid” may not be the best book about the theater ever written, but it’s pretty damn engaging: convincing dialogue, well-drawn portraits; the appealing perspective of a yearning outsider; the useful perspective of a knowledgeable insider..My full review
History and Criticism
Broadway Nation: How Immigrant, Jewish, Queer and Black Artists invented the Broadway Musical by David Armstrong
A critical analysis and general chronological history of the Broadway musical that is readable enough for the casual theater lover (with more than fifty photographs); informed enough to serve as a reference work (albeit neither comprehensive nor definitive enough to be the sole one on your shelf); and broad but compact enough to be used as a college textbook, perhaps in Professor Armstrong’s own classroom: He teaches at the University of Washington School of Drama, after serving as the long-time artistic director of the Fifth Avenue Theater of Seattle. (He also now has a podcast, called of course Broadway Nation.) In the book, Armstrong creates a symbol for each of the groups in his subtitle (I for Immigrant, etc), plus W for Women, which he places besides the chapters that contain content about those groups. So presumably you can focus just on, say, immigrants by following the chapters with “I” next to them — except that only three of the sixteen chapters don’t have an I next to them.
“Acting the Part: Audience Participation in Performance,” by E.M. Hunter
An academic “critical theorist” at WashU.in St. Louis but also a theater maker, Hunter explains that this book came about after she produced Shakespeare’s “Henry V” in an abandoned 20-acre industrial site in Birmingham, Alabama that had been turned into a public attraction but was still in a dilapidated state. The audience was so inspired that, unbidden, they joined the professional actors in the charge of the English army against the French. Her book is her effort to try to understand what it was about the production that got the audience to engage so fully. She devotes a chapter each to Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More, the new Globe playhouse in London, social virtual reality and augmented reality. (My brief review is in the same post as my review of the following book)
“The Future of Storytelling: How Immersive Experiences Are Transforming Our World” by Charles Melcher
This gorgeously designed book offers some fifty examples of what Melcher describes as “a new type of storytelling, one that is participatory, multisensory, interactive and highly personal. I have come to call them living stories.” My full review
Michael John LaChiusa: A Critical Companion by Joshua Robinson
The analysis focuses on seven of LaChiusa’s musicals: Marie Christine, First Lady Suite, First Daughter Suite, Giant, Hello Again, See What I Wanna See, and The Wild Party.
“The Playbook: A Story of Theater, Democracy, and the Making of a Culture War” by James Shapiro.
The Federal Theatre Project, the author tells us, “staged, for a pittance, over a thousand productions in 29 states seen by 30 million, or roughly one in four Americans, two-thirds of whom …had never seen a play before.” Yet it lasted only four years, from 1935 to 1939, “the first program of FDR’s New Deal “to be successfully attacked and abruptly terminated, on the grounds that it promoted un-American activity.” Shapiro’s book was published in 2024, before the reelection of Donald Trump. But its central insight, a dispiriting twist on the long connection between theater and democracy, makes it even more relevant these days. My full review.
“The Dream Factory: London’s First Playhouse and the Making of William Shakespeare” by Daniel Swift
James Burbage’s theater, which he named “the Theater,” lasted from 1576 to 1598, until it was secretly torn down and its timbers used to build the much more famous Globe. It was where the young William Shakespeare worked when he first arrived in London, and where he wrote many of his early plays.
Fiction
“The Mother Act” by Heidi Reimer
Sadie is an actress who so hates motherhood that she put together a one-woman show about how her daughter ruined her life; it is one of the reasons her daughter Jude feels Sadie ruined hers. Heidi Reimer’s debut novel is not just a great read; it’s a terrifically savvy take on the ways of the stage,one to which I responded personally from the very first paragraph, which describes in spot-on detail what sounds like The Actors’ Playhouse. That landmark theater served as a showcase for a raft of future stars and influential plays. It was also in the neighborhood where I grew up. My full review.
“Bring the House Down” by Charlotte Runcie
A novel about an acerbic and soon-to-be reviled theater critic, set in Edinburgh, Scotland during the fringe festival, which is where I happened to be headed the week after I read it, my first visit to the world’s biggest arts festival. The book is largely a knowing and funny read – until it’s not – with the added advantage for me of serving as a kind of preview of both the festival and the city. My full review
Flashout” by Alexis Soloski
What at first seems to be a novel about a 1960s experimental theater troupe turns out to be genre fiction that uses theater as a backdrop for a plot involving murder and menace. This is not what I was hoping for from author Alexis Soloski, whose day job is writing about theater for the New York Times. It shouldn’t have surprised me; her first novel featured a theater critic as the protagonist but turned out to be a crime thriller. But “Here in the Dark” two years ago was at least playful and knowing about the current theater scene in New York. “Flashout” is a darker book and a less enjoyable read for a theater lover. My full review.
Poetry/Comic Book/Introduction to Theater
Limelight: Curtain Up on Poetry Comics” poems by Renee M. Latulippe and illustrations by Chuck Gonzales.
What goes into the making of a musical theater production? The process, from audition to curtain call, is presented in verse and illustrations about the people involved, from director to actor to stage crew, but also the inanimate objects that the theater depends on such as the script and the rehearsal piano. This unusual book is intended for middle school readers who are involved in school shows, but the process doesn’t much differ whoever is putting together a musical, and wherever it’s staged. My full review.
Scripts
“What This Place Makes Me: Contemporary Plays On Immigration” edited by Isaiah Stavchansky, introduction by Luis Valdez
An anthology of seven new plays with a useful introduction and editor’s note. Shayok Misha Chowdhury’s| Public Obscenities, Hansol Jung’s Wolf Play, Martyna Majok’s Sanctuary City, Mona Mansour’sThe Hour of Feeling, Charlie Oh’sColeman ’72, Mfoniso Udofia’s Sojourners, Jesús I. Valles’ a river, its mouths. My review
Waiting for Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts
Marjorie Prime by Jordan Harrison, closing February 15
Bug by Tracy Letts, opening January 8
Every Brilliant Thing by Duncan MacMillan, opening March 12
Becky Shaw by Gina Gionfriddo, opening April 8
Death of a Salesman 
Proof by David Auburn, opening April 16
Fallen Angels by Noel Coward (in Coward Plays 1), opening April 19
Joe Turner’s Come and Gone by August Wilson, opening April 25
*Your purchase through some of the links above may generate a small commission, which helps support my work. Most of these books are available to borrow at the New York Public Library and other local libraries.
