The Seven Addictions and Five Professions of Anita Berber chronicles a remarkable career, including dozens of photographs and drawings that recreate Anita's "Repertoire of the Damned." Book jacket.

This seductive sourcebook of rare visual delights from pre-Nazi, Cabaret-period “Babylon on the Spree” has the distinction of being praised both by scholars and avatars of contemporary culture, inspiring hip club goers, filmmakers, gay historians, graphic designers, and musicians like the Dresden Dolls and Marilyn Manson. This expanded edition includes “Sex Magic and the Occult,” documenting German pagan cults and their often-bizarre erotic rituals, including instructions for entering into the “Sexual Fourth Dimension.” Mel Gordon is professor of theater at the University of California, Berkeley, and is also the author of Erik Jan Hanussen: Hitler’s Jewish Clairvoyant (Feral House).

One of the most controversial and ironic of twentieth-century modernisms, Dada swept through the arts after the shock of World War I, when poets, painters, filmmakers, and performers joined forces to challenge conventions of society and art. The only collection of its kind, this volume includes writings by leading Dadaists: Hugo Ball, Kurt Schwitters, Richard Huelsenbeck, Roger Vitrac, Tristan Tzara, Emmy Hennings, Francis Picabia, and others.

"Bloodcurdling shrieks, fiendish schemes, deeds of darkness, mayhem and mutilation—we all have a rough idea of what Grand Guignol stands for. But until now it has been hard to find out much more about it than that. According to the American theater historian Mel Gordon, no major history of the theater so much as mentions it, although it is a form of entertainment that held its own on the Paris stage for more than half a century. But Mr. Gordon has made a thorough job of filling the gap."—John Gross, The New York Times Here is the expanded edition of classic outré book, The Grand Guignol, first published in 1988 and now long out of print. Like the original anthology, it includes an illustrated introduction to the theater of Paris and abroad, a breakdown of its stage tricks, a summary of one hundred plots, extensive photo documentation, André de Lord's essay, "Fear in Literature," and two originally produced Grand Guignol scripts. The expanded edition also contains additional graphic and textual material including a color insert of Grand Guignol posters; the 1938 autobiographical account of Maxa, the company's leading female performer entitled "I Am the Maddest Woman in the World"; and the controversial playscript Orgy in the Lighthouse.

Stop reading about Stanislavsky and wondering what it's all supposed to mean. Meet the master and his disciples as they evolve new techniques and exercises in a workshop atmosphere over a quarter of a century.

The subject of a major Werner Herzog film starring Tim Roth, Erik Jan Hanussen was Europe's most audacious soothsayer. Billing himself as 'The Man Who Knows All,' he performed in music halls reading minds and hypnotising women to orgasm. In March 1932, when Adolph Hitler's political future seemed destined to failure, Hanussen predicted a resurgence of the Nazi party and soon after became Hitler's confidant. Extraordinarily, what Hitler did not know was that Hanussen was not the Dane he claimed to be but a Jew from Moravia whose name was Herschel Steinschneider. Lavishly illustrated.

"An important addition to the literature on Italian Commedia dell'Arte."--Choice This best-selling PAJ volume presents over 250 comedy routines used by commedia performers in Europe from 1550 to 1750. Includes an introduction, two complete commedia scenarios, and a glossary of commedia characters.