2009 : Links Featured Pages: Film-North on directing! Theatre Books Master Page * Illustrated Theatre Production Guide: Illustrated Theatre Production Guide contains a brief history of physical theatres and the development of various forms such as thrust, proscenium, and black box venues. Operation of theatre equipment is covered in detail in the chapters on rigging and curtains. Instructions for operating a fly system and basic stagehand skills such as knot tying and drapery folding, are clearly outlined. The use of metal tubing as a structural element is explored as an alternative to wooden scenery. The chapter on lighting discusses electrical theory as well as the practical aspects of hanging and focusing lights. The final chapter in Illustrated Theatre Production Guide is a compilation of many different projects that are easy to approach and to complete, and have practical value for a theatre group. $24 0240804937 The Production Notebooks: Theatre in Process (Theatre in Process, Vol 1): (Paperback) Theatre Audiences: A Theory of Production and Reception: Susan Bennett's highly successful Theatre Audiences is a unique full-length study of the audience as cultural phenomenon. It considers both theories of spectatorship and the practices of different theatres and their audiences. Published here in a new updated edition, Theatre Audiences now includes a new preface by the author, a new chapter on intercultural theatre, a revised conclusion encompassing the influences of cultural materialism and psychoanalysis on audience theory, as well as an updated bibliography. A must for anyone interested in spectatorship and theatre audiences. Create Your Own Stage Production Company: The practical, step-by-step guidance packed into this book shows aspiring theatrical producers just how to set up and run a successful stage company. Starting with forming a company, the author explains how to establish and fund a budget; book a stage venue; obtain necessary licenses and insurance; see that health/safety regulations are in compliance with local laws; then cast, rehearse, and put the show on view for the public and critics. Details on the duties of the house manager, stage manager, technical crew, and box office help are all included, along with tips on publicizing and promoting shows. How to Run a Theater: A Witty, Practical, and Fun Guide to Arts Management: The definitive arts management guide, this book is written with tremendous insight and humor and packed with dozens of lists, such as "22 Wonderful Ways to Improve Your Life in the Theater" and "20 Distractions that Erode Productivity." It provides information on improving an organization by building audiences, bolstering fundraising, and tightening finances. Also covered are tips for solidifying relationships with boards, volunteers, communities, and colleagues. It's all here, from managing one's own life, working with a board of trustees, and managing a team to negotiating, fundraising, marketing, and financial management. This resource will appeal to all those who work in arts management-from novices to veteran middle managers and executive directors. Stage Management (7th Edition) (Paperback): The "bible" in the field of stage management, this book is a practical examination of the role of the stage manager in overall theater production. Full of practical aids such as websites and email addresses in every chapter, checklists, diagrams, glossaries, and step-by-step directions, this volume has been used and admired by students and theater professionals alike. It eschews excessive discussion about method or philosophy and, instead, gets right to the essential materials and processes of putting on a production. Perhaps most importantly, Stern has continued to keep pace with the technological and professional developments affecting the stage. For theatre professionals, or anyone with an interest in stage management/ theatre management. Theatre on the Web: Waiting for Godot ...

PS

Shaw -- Pygmalion (under consideration)

Shows ... and Theory?

Theatremonkey.com

“Tradition itself, in times of dogmatism and dogmatic revolution, is a revolutionary force which must be safeguarded.” Peter Brook

http://www.gurdjieff.org/nicolescu3.htm

The Theatre as Field of Study — of Energy, Movement and Interrelations

[ * Peter Brook, The Empty Space, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1977 ]

The simultaneous presence of energy, movement and certain interrelations brings the theatrical event to life. With reference to Orghast, Brook spoke of ‘the fire of the event,’ which is ‘that marvelous thing of performance in the theatre. Through it, all the things that we’d been working on suddenly fell into place.’9 This ‘falling into place’ indicates the sudden discovery of a structure hidden beneath the multiplicity of forms, apparently extending in all directions. That is why Brook believes the essence of theatre work to be in ‘freeing the dynamic process.’10 It is a question of ‘freeing’ and not of ‘fixing’ or ‘capturing’ this process which explains the suddenness of the event. A linear unfolding would signify a mechanistic determinism, whereas here the event is linked to a structure which is clearly not linear at all—but rather one of lateral interrelationships and interconnections.

Event is another key word, frequently recurring in Brook’s work. Surely it is not simply coincidence that the same word covers a central notion in modern scientific theory, since Einstein and Minkowski? Beyond the infinite multiplicity of appearances, isn’t reality perhaps based on one single foundation?

In 1900, Max Planck introduced the concept of the ‘elementary quantum of action,’ a theory in physics based on the notion of continuity: energy has a discreet, discontinuous structure. In 1905, Einstein formulated his special theory of relativity, revealing a new relationship between space and time: it would contribute to a radical reevaluation of the object/energy hierarchy. Gradually, the notion of an object would be replaced by that of an ‘event,’ a ‘relationship’ and an ‘interconnection’—real movement being that of energy. Quantum mechanics as a theory was elaborated much later, around 1930: it shattered the concept of identity in a classical particle. For the first time, the possibility of a space/time discontinuum was recognised as logically valid. And finally the theory of elementary particles—a continuation of both quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity, as well as an attempt to go beyond both of these physical theories—is still in the process of elaboration today.

Like both contemporary scientists and Gurdjieff, Brook is convinced of the materiality of energy. Describing the characteristics of ‘rough theatre,’ he writes:

The Holy Theatre has one energy, the Rough has others. Lightheartedness and gaiety feed it, but so does the same energy that produces rebellion and opposition. This is a militant energy: it is the energy of anger, sometimes the energy of hate.

Notes

PETER BROOK, A Theatrical Casebook, edited by David Williams, published by Methuen

Next: part 5

Right, everyone has now performed a simple action. There is one question. Can what you just did be improved upon or not? Have we already reached the ultimate level of perfection together? If you really believe that it’s all that marvellous, we can go home with the wonderful satisfaction that a unique moment in life has been reached together. But if it isn’t the case, let’s begin to work. To do this better, there are two ways. One would be the sergeant major technique, which is to say to you "Now, all together, rise to your feet, count together – one, two, three – then sit down". That’s the old army way. But there’s another way which can lead to something quite different. I don’t want to do more than give you a signal. But just adjust yourselves, the way you’re sitting, so that you’re ready without any waste of energy to be able to get up. Now, something else can help us, which is to say that everyone possesses peripheral vision. However you’re sitting, bring into your field of vision as many people as possible on either side. Know that you can feel the people around you. Third thing – listen. When I give the signal, stand up, wait and then find how to sit down again. We won’t say how long the pause has to be, but there is just one natural pause. Let’s see if we can find a natural timing instinctively, all together, without a leader. The first condition is to be completely prepared. The second need is that there shouldn’t be any unnecessary movement.

[The action is repeated]

Watching you, I assure you that was better than the first time. If we did this for even twenty minutes, it would be astonishing to see how it’s possible for a large number of people to become more sensitive, more alert, more perceptive to one another than when they started, just by each person making a very special effort himself. If we did this every day for three weeks, there would come a quite uncanny moment when an enormous group of people could in fact do quite difficult things together.

I said I would first ask you to do something, then say why. The reason is very simple. When a group is meeting for the first time, they certainly are not sensitive to one another in the whole of their body. I was very recently in Germany and I asked actors in the big German theatres, "Do you do any exercises?". Either they said, "No, never", or they said "Oh yes, once or twice a week we have gymnastic classes and we work on our bodies". But the interesting thing is that such classes help no-one except the individual, because the real exercise with a group of actors is not for the person by himself. It isn’t to make him cleverer or a better actor, or a better athlete or dancer. It’s to make a group more sensitive to itself. Something quite different. When one does exercises, it isn’t to make people more powerfully skilful, it’s to make everybody from the start quite simply more sensitive. Once a group becomes more sensitive, each person feels the reward. He begins to find (as does the director, especially if he does exercises with the actors) that as you study the work you’re doing, you are actually seeing this work better, more fully, than when you sat at home trying to do it all by yourself. Step by step, through exercise, through preparation, one begins to see that everything that matters in the theatre is a collective process. Then you come to the point where a group who have had time to prepare something meets a group like yourselves, who have come from all different corners and are sitting in seats.

Then you see that the most rewarding aspect of all theatre is when, in an extraordinary way, the audience also becomes more sensitive than it has been when it’s in the foyer or the street. That is what, to me, the whole of the theatre process is about. In big buildings, in small buildings, in the open air, in cellars – no matter where – with plays, without plays, with a script, with improvisation, no matter – it is about giving everyone who is together at the moment when there’s a performance, a taste of being finer in their feelings, clearer in their way of seeing things, deeper in their understanding, than in their everyday isolation and solitude.

That’s all the theatre has to offer, and if it happens it’s a great deal. All the rest is variations on that, but to me there is only one real test, one real way of knowing whether going to the theatre has been worth one’s time and money. These are very good standards. You go to the theatre – and in a way it’s very healthy that one should have to fight to get a ticket and have to pay for it; it’s very healthy if that gives one a real demand. And the demand is that having got there, into the auditorium, one has to have for a moment an experience that is different from the experience in the street and which makes one feel, for a second, that one is closer to the truth.

The great thing about the truth is that nobody has ever seen it and nobody has ever been able to say what it is. If anybody had been able to put into words what a truth is, the theatre wouldn’t have any reason to exist. But the theatre exists because it can take philosophers, who would cut one another’s throats because each one thinks he knows what the truth is; it can take politicians, each of whom tries to sell an idea of the truth; it can mix them with every sort of ordinary audience of all ages, and if, during the evening, something happens which brings that whole audience into one breathless moment where they don’t even ask themselves "Do I believe this or not?" it just happens, at that moment – there’s an experience which no-one can get by thought or by argument. It can’t exist on television, it can’t exist on film, both of which give other experiences. This is something which can only exist because a group of people are living something together.

National Theatre -- http://www.nt-online.org/?lid=2632