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
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.
I only can hope that you learn something from my classes, the directing is most difficult... because it's the most challenging course.
Sample from THR331 class (self-evaluation):
Director’s Notes
Darren Johnson
Fundamentals of Directing for Stage and Film
Spring, 2003
I took a scene from Act Two of Moliere’s Don Juan and entitled the scene “Two-Timing Done Old School.” This scene was one which was cut from the Theatre UAF production of Don Juan. I had initially included Sganarelle’s reaction to his master’s duplicity, but upon advice from Anatoly and several students, Sganarelle was dropped altogether, as his input constituted a second scene, separate from and distracting to the conflict between Charlotte and Mathurine, who both believe Don Juan’s empty promises.
The actors I finally cast were Honie Harvey as Charlotte, Tara Kulwicke as Mathurine, and the overworked Zachary Hochstetler as Don Juan. I am not making excuses when I say that Zach was overworked; it was my error to try to get a third performance from him. I had asked the actresses if they had other roles, and had even recast an actress to allow her (Tara) to perform in this scene. Zach seemed willing enough, but as director, I should have found someone less pressed upon at this time.
I had also rewritten the scene in a modern, hip-hop vernacular, which I was apparently the only one who found this funny. It could have worked, but given the time constraints on my late start, this idea was mitigated, although some elements were to remain.
After falling behind schedule, the desperation for rehearsals had become such that I left Fairbanks Memorial Hospital with intravenous tubing intact, bandaged, in hospital slippers, and without proper discharge papers. Medicated with antibiotics and more, I made it to rehearsals on time, with all of the actors present. I figured that had I died in the spirit of “the show must go on,” that despite my poor directing skills for the stage that I might somehow become a legend of determination. Unfortunately, for the audience of “War on Comedy,” I survived whereas the scene didn’t.
During the 9th and 10th rehearsals in the Great Hall, I felt we had finally found our rhythm and rapport. Zachary, however, being the pivotal character, was both nervous and ill-prepared when we finally hit the stage on Final Friday (the latter being as much my fault as I mentioned above), and Honie and Tara tried to improvise their way through. I thanked them after the performance, and I pointed out that they made valiant efforts to save a dying cause.
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[ continued from notes page -- interview with Peter Brook (PB) ]
"I lay down my story so that somebody else can pick it up."
FW: You say somewhere, I think it’s about an African storyteller that “I lay down my story so that somebody else can pick it up.” For a new, young director picking up that story, in a sentence what would you say, what advice would you give them?
PB: My advice is very, very simple. Everything is possible but you must find your own way. So, if you look at my work and think, ‘Ah there is an example, I will start by what he’s done’, you are bound to go wrong. Because the work that I do today is the result of all the work that I’ve done through trial and error, in changing times. And what the young director can take from my work is not in the form nor in the result. It’s in the fact that I’ve been going on for so long. This can encourage them to believe that they mustn’t give up, that they can go forward, that they can have aims beyond what seems possible, that they don’t have to stay with all that other people tell them that they should be doing. Today, it has become a cliché, to praise my work for its simplicity. I’ve never aimed at simplicity. Simplicity happens when things that once were interesting begin to fall away. But when I started work in the theatre, I saw the work of directors of that time doing Shakespeare, who were highly praised because they were so simple. And I looked at them with horror, because their simplicity was dreary. I saw they were aiming at simplicity only because it was considered morally good to be simple. It was like being clean or not showing off. I was so appalled at the barren drabness in which Shakespeare was being done, and I’d be told it was so good because it was simple - "all done in curtains". And there were these grey curtains and Shakespeare, and they said that’s beautiful because it is so simple. And it made me at once react the other way, looking for anything that was elaborate, complicated, rich, startling, anything was better than that dreaded thing called simplicity. Now, it’s taken me a long, long while to go through all that, but someone today must go through it from a different starting point, because the world is different. There is always something to be found. But never in imitating a form even if you think the form is absolutely right. Only in asking oneself: "why did this form touch me? What was behind that form? Can it lead me to another form that can capture the same thing in a way that’s right for us today?"
FW: But having inspirations.
PB: That yes. One must. That’s very, very important. One must constantly be influenced as I was by the mere fact that someone has managed at some time to do something of a certain quality. That makes one know that a certain quality is possible. It comes back to the Icon. Today I think that for a young painter it’s vital from time to time to go to a museum and look at the amazing quality that was reached at certain periods of history that today is virtually impossible. Just to be reminded of that before you get caught up in people saying that what you do is so wonderful. For us in the theatre it is important to go back to Shakespeare just for that. Come back to Shakespeare, for a moment. Then go back to doing your own thing realizing that whatever you do can never be all that good. This sense of perspective is not discouraging, it’s an inspiration.
FW: What do you look for in your collaborators, particularly your actors?
PB: First of all, what I always said about Paul Scofield, an actor who will listen to you, let you explain with all your possible means of persuasion something you think is absolutely right, then do the exact opposite and make you realize that this is what you really meant. That’s a creative collaboration. But the actor who says, “No, I’ll do the opposite because to hell with it, I don’t trust you”, is a dead loss. That’s a bad relationship and you both suffer. You need openness linked with absolute independence.
FW: And what about the future? What are you working on?
PB: God knows. I’ve always worked a bit like a cook in a big restaurant, where you’ve got lots and lots of things laid out and you go and look into one cauldron and you look into the other and you see what’s coming to the boil. I’ve got further projects on the Brain, further projects with Africa, because these are things and areas where one can never feel “ah now we’ve finished”. And also we need always to come back to doing things that are unshown, unsung and untalked about like these relationships with directors and with other people. These are part of ongoing work.
... PB: I hate the word ‘warm up’. It’s really a ‘cool down’. When we did the first rehearsal of Oedipus at the National Theatre I had this whole young company and there was also Irene Worth and there was John Gielgud. That was the 60s, when I had already started with the Theatre of Cruelty and I think it was after Marat/Sade, so doing exercises was already a way of life. And the young company were thrilled at the idea of doing all these difficult physical exercises to start with, and there was John sitting down and I hadn’t spoken about it or warned him. I said, "Now we’ll do an exercise". Then everyone came and tried something difficult, saying a line and doing something else and doing a leap or a somersault at the same time or some physical thing along with it, and one after another they all came through except John. It was a crucial moment because you could feel the whole company waiting tensely. They knew that Olivier wouldn’t have joined in. He would have thought ‘this is ridiculous nonsense’, because Olivier in that way was so very old school in rehearsal, although he was new school as a performer. And there was John, this ancient traditionalist - though in human terms, completely different - sitting there. To everyone’s amazement he got up and threw himself into the exercise, and what was so marvelous, with such humility did nothing to disguise the fact that with a stiff embarrassed body he couldn’t do it at all. But he wasn’t ashamed of showing this. He was just admiring all the young people, seeing them do things that he couldn’t do. And they were seeing this Icon, this real Icon trying his best to enter into their thing. In an instant, a real deep feeling of mutual respect began to flow between him and all these rough, young long-haired actors from a different generation.
