Suzanne M Trauth Books in Order

The tide has turned for Dodie O'Dell since a hurricane upended her life on the Jersey Shore. Now she's further up the coast in sleepy Etonville, managing a restaurant that dishes dinners themed around the community theater's latest productions. But Dodie just never imagined she'd land the starring role in a case of bloody homicide .

. .Intrigued by rumors of vanishing box office money, Dodie has agreed to help oversee the casting of Romeo and Juliet at the modest Etonville Little Theater. If nothing else, it's a welcome escape from the thirty-something's usual going-to-bed-with-a-mystery-novel routine.

But when Jerome Angleton, a well-respected member of the theater company, is inexplicably found murdered on the loading dock, deadly drama transcends the stage-and the page. As a crime wave crashes over the small town, the spotlight is on Dodie to orchestrate her own investigation behind the scenes .

. . before someone has a chance at a killer encore.

Restaurant manager Dodie O'Dell's themed food ideas have been called cute, clever, and delicious, but never revolutionary-until now. Dodie's Windjammer Restaurant is stocking the Etonville Little Theatre's concession stand with colonial-era desserts and drinks: Swamp Yankee applesauce cake, pumpkin bread, hot cider punch, and mulled wine to complement the latest production.

A local playwright has adapted Thornton Wilder's Our Town into Eton Town, shifting the story to colonial America and the founding of Etonville, New Jersey, shortly after the Revolutionary War. On opening night, hours before the curtain rises, Dodie runs into an agitated actress backstage with blood on her hands.

Then a stranger is found among the chairs set for a graveyard scene with a knife in his chest. The show will not go on-the theatre is now a crime scene. Hoping to clear the red-handed suspect, Dodie returns to the role of amateur sleuth to mull over the clues and beat the backstage stabber to the punch-before someone else becomes history .

. .

"Face The Music Business is humming at Dodie O'Dell's Windjammer Restaurant, where she offers theme menus connected to the Etonville Little Theatre's amateur productions. This June, the theatre is collaborating with the neighboring Creston Players to stage Bye Bye Birdie under the stars--their first musical! There's a contest in the play to pick a fan to receive rock idol Conrad Birdie's last kiss before he ships off for the Army, so Dodie plans a contest to pick the food for a pre-show picnic.

But before the show opens, Ruby, the rehearsal accompanist, is found dead in her car. Why would anyone murder the crusty old gal who loved to sneak a smoke and a nip between wisecracks? Once again, the resourceful restaurant manager must play the part of amateur sleuth, accompanied by Police Chief Bill Thompson, who also happens to be her beau.

Confronted with a chorus of suspects, she'll need to stay composed to catch the killer--or it'll be bye bye Dodie... "

The plays collected in this volume give artistic expression to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina. In so doing, they also illuminate many social, political, and environmental issues central to American life. Besides telling the kinds of stories that the news media could not, these plays explore the deeply rooted problems plaguing New Orleans.

The factual basis of these plays serves a documentary purpose, but, as drama, they also depict the flood's consequences for individuals - unimaginable loss, powerlessness, displacement. The plays collected here - Rising Water by John Biguenet; The Breach by Catherine Filloux, Tarell Alvin McCraney, and Joe Sutton; Because They Have No Words by Tim Maddock and Lotti Louise Pharrissis; Trash Bag Tourist by Samuel Brett Williams; and Katrina: The K Word by Lisa Brenner and Suzanne Trauth - show how theatre can both enhance our understanding of disastrous events and facilitate a sense of community between audiences and those who experienced them.

As a young woman, Sonia Moore studied at the Third Studio of the Moscow Art Theatre under the direction of Evgeni Vakhtangov, a protégé of Konstantin Stanislavski. When she emerged in the American theatre, her first book, The Stanislavski Method (later revised as The Stanislavski System), was written to counteract Lee Strasberg's Method.

Its publication initiated her quest to reveal Stanislavski's work faithfully and to train American actors in the Method of Physical Actions. Through subsequent books, the Sonia Moore Studio, and her non-profit organization, the American Center for Stanislavski Theatre Art, Sonia Moore sought ways to promote Stanislavski's legacy through her own evolving theory and practice.

Yet she is often omitted from the list of notable acting teachers in America, such as Lee Strasberg, Stella Adler, Uta Hagen, and Sanford Meisner. This book places her appropriately in the company of these teaching legends.Sonia Moore was a fascinating personality as well as theatre artist.

Though charming and charismatic, she was also headstrong and independent. These traits served her well in surviving the Russian Revolution and the Stalinist purges of World War II from which she escaped. Upon her arrival in the United States, she carried a "sliver of wood" in hand to knock on whenever she confronted the turmoil of life.

Some of this turmoil arose as she struggled to find acceptance for her interpretation of Stanislavski's Method of Physical Actions, a technique she believed necessary for the artistic vigor of the American theatre. As former students and teachers of the Sonia Moore Studio, Suzanne Trauth and Elizabeth Stroppel are uniquely positioned to undertake a study of Moore's work.

Their book illuminates Moore's life and analyzes her texts, her research, and her teaching in a comprehensive manner, thus providing practitioners and educators with detailed knowledge of Sonia Moore, her professional persona, and the woman behind it.