Theater-lovers everywhere can keep up with their reading with a selection of four publications offering a range of topics for all ages and interests, from a child’s introduction to a Shakespeare classic and a little-known endeavor of a musical theater legend to the collected works of a Black playwright and the long saga of blackface minstrelsy in America.
Macbeth: A Potions Primer – Introduce toddlers to the world and language of Shakespeare with a colorful illustrated children’s book on the famous witches from Macbeth, their frenzied dancing, and the potion they concoct in a fiery cauldron. Along with the short, simple, and easily understandable excerpts from The Bard’s original text, the book also includes a glossary identifying the herbs and plants of the potion’s ingredients with the names they were known by in Shakespeare’s time (e.g., eye of newt was the nickname for mustard seed; toe of frog signified a buttercup).
Part of the BabyLit series, designed for ages three and under, these Little Master Shakespeare books are a must for every nursery library to get kids excited about classic literature and plays.
Jennifer Adams, with art by Alison Oliver, Macbeth: A Potions Primer (Kaysville, UT: Gibbs Smith, BabyLit, 2025), mix paper, 22 pages, ISBN-13: 978-1-4236-6868-7, $11.99.
Matching Minds with Sondheim – Few people are aware of the fact that before the legendary Stephen Sondheim became an award-winning musical theater composer and lyricist, he was a creator and designer of puzzles, games, and treasure hunts, which continued to occupy him over 80 years. The new book by gaming expert Barry Joseph, with forewords by former Games magazine editor Will Shortz and producer, performer, and author Ted Chapin, takes a look at this largely unknown aspect of Sondheim’s career through archival research, interviews with his celebrated friends and colleagues from the theater community, analyses by other puzzle professionals from around the world, and an exploration of what he self-described as his “puzzler’s mind,” to help fans understand the man, his work, and his desire to deliver “moments of clarity and connection.”
In addition to the playful and illuminating text, with each chapter beginning with a “Cast of Characters” referenced in his ludological biography, the tome is filled with illustrations of rare designs never before seen by the public, which challenge readers to match minds with the great master by attempting to solve his cryptic puzzles and bring his parlor games into their own homes, with detailed instructions on how to do it in authentic Sondheimian style.
Barry Joseph, Matching Minds with Sondheim (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2025), hardcover, 353 pages, ISBN 978-1-4930-8583-5, $35.00.
The Struggle Continues – Award-winning playwright, director, performer, and educator Robbie McCauley (1942-2021) was an active presence in American avant-garde theater since the 1970s, internationally acclaimed for her boundary-breaking work on the experiences of Black women and their impact on global culture. Her uncompromising, thought-provoking, and uplifting plays have focused on the truth about race and racism in our country, while breaking down the fourth wall between performer and spectator, in an attempt to facilitate dialogues that address the ongoing struggle.
The present volume includes essays by McCauley offering thoughts on her career and community projects (among them, the complete text of Mississippi Freedom), the full scripts of four of her plays (Sally’s Rape, Indian Blood, Sugar, and Jazz ’n Class), with introductions to each by specialists in the field, and reflections on her legacy by leading writers and academics deeply affected by her, in what combines an anthology of her work with a tribute to her transformative contributions.
Robbie McCauley, The Struggle Continues, edited by Alisa Solomon, Elin Diamond, and Cynthia Carr (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2025), paperback, 314 pages, ISBN 978-1-55936-974-9, $22.95.
Darkology – For her upcoming volume, to be released in March of 2026, American cultural historian Rhae Lynn Barnes undertook 20 years of exhaustive research and extensive travel throughout the US to expose the often suppressed and deliberately expunged documentation of the development, evolution, and proliferation of the genre of blackface minstrelsy, in which, for nearly two centuries of racial derision and degrading stereotypes, white performers caricatured Black slaves as a form of entertainment.
The searing, comprehensive study traces its roots and the origins of Jim Crow back to the 1830s, both on stage and in print, its increasingly lucrative popularity in a white supremacist capitalist culture, its reclamation and proliferation on the silver screen and in music in the 1930s, its unsettling endorsement by the US government and introduction to Japan in WWII, and its survival into the 1970s, despite the mid-century backlash, protests, and lawsuits led by the NAACP. It’s a shocking lesson in American history that should be read and must be acknowledged.
Rhae Lynn Barnes, Darkology (Liveright Publishing Corporation, March 2026), hardcover, 576 pages, ISBN 9781631496349, $39.99.
