A classic work of theatre history and criticism when first published, Arnold Aronson's formative study surveyed the phenomenon known as environmental theatre. Now updated in this richly illustrated second edition to reflect developments and practice since the 1980s, it offers readers a comprehensive study of the theatre practice which has evolved to become the dominant mode of much contemporary innovative performance. For most audiences, particularly in the Western tradition, theatre means going to a building in which seats face a stage on which actors perform a play. But there has always been a vital alternative that came to be known as environmental theatre. Whether in folk performances, street theatre, avant-garde performance, utopian architecture, Happenings, mass spectacles, or contemporary immersive theatre, the relationship of the spectator to the performance has been one in which the audience is surrounded or immersed in a shared space, in which the multiple events may be happening simultaneously, and in which the experience of theatrical space is visceral and often kinetic. This book examines the history of this phenomenon and looks at a range of contemporary practice. New chapters examine how the 'transformed spaces' of earlier work have become the interactive and immersive productions that characterize the work of companies such as Punchdrunk, dreamthinkspeak, Teatro da Vertigem, En Garde Arts, and The Industry, among others. Updated to take account of the burgeoning scholarship on the subject, The History and Theory of Environmental Scenography remains the authoritative account that illuminates present day theatre practice and its antecedents.

Das politische Theater der zwanziger Jahre, als dessen zentraler Vertreter Erwin Piscator (1893-1966) gilt, wurde in den Inszenierungen der Berliner Piscatorbuhnen zwischen 1927 und 1931 zum theatergeschichtlichen Ereignis. Nach Piscators Ruckkehr aus der New Yorker Emigration in die Bundesrepublik im Jahr 1951 erscheint ein bruchloses Anknupfen an seine spektakularen theatralen Verfahren der Weimarer Republik ausgeschlossen. Als Piscator in den sechziger Jahren die Intendanz der Freien Volksbuhne in West-Berlin ubertragen wird, leitet er mit einer Serie couragierter Inszenierungen die AEra des Dokumentartheaters ein. Mit der Urauffuhrung von Rolf Hochhuths umstrittenem "Stellvertreter" und der Werke Heinar Kipphardts und Peter Weiss' wird das Theater abermals zum Brennspiegel seiner Zeit. Die erhebliche Provokanz des politischen Theaters der sechziger Jahre besteht dabei nicht in einer parteinahen Inszenierungspraxis, sondern vielmehr in Piscators beharrlicher Fursprache fur eine Aufarbeitung der NS-Vergangenheit und fur eine Deeskalation wahrend des Kalten Kriegs. Ausgehend von den Umstanden, unter denen der Regisseur 1951 die Vereinigten Staaten verlassen muss, zeichnet die vorliegende Untersuchung ein prazises Profil von Piscators interventionistischer spater Theaterarbeit und vergleicht diese im Sinne inszenierungsorientierter Theatergeschichtsschreibung mit Piscators stilbildenden Inszenierungen der zwanziger Jahre.

Teaching Introduction to Theatrical Design is a week-by-week guide that helps instructors who are new to teaching design, teaching outside of their fields of expertise, or looking for better ways to integrate and encourage non-designers in the design classroom. This book provides a syllabus to teach foundational theatrical design by illustrating process and application of the principals of design in costumes, sets, lights, and sound.

Scenography - the manipulation and orchestration of the performance environment - is an increasingly popular and key area in performance studies. This book introduces the reader to the purpose, identity and scope of scenography and its theories and concepts. Settings and structures, light, projected images, sound, costumes and props are considered in relation to performing bodies, text, space and the role of the audience. Concentrating on scenographic developments in the twentieth century, the Introduction examines how these continue to evolve in the twenty-first century. Scenographic principles are clearly explained through practical examples and their theoretical context. Although acknowledging the many different ways in which design shapes the creation of scenography, the book is not exclusively concerned with the role of the theatre designer. In order to map out the wider territory and potential of scenography, the theories of pioneering scenographers are discussed alongside the work of directors, writers and visual artists.

The Fake Food Cookbook: Props You Can't Eat for Theatre, Film, and TV contains step by step instructions on how to create the most realistic prop food for a theatrical production. From appetizers such as oysters on a half shell and chicken wings, entrees such as lobster and honey-glazed ham, to desserts, breakfasts, and even beverages, every meal is covered in this how-to guide. Full color images of each step and finished products illustrate each recipe, along with suggestions for keeping the budget for each project low. Safety Data Sheets and links to informative videos are hosted on a companion website.

Looking for a job in the theatre and entertainment industry can be daunting, especially when you are newly entering the work market. How do you take the skills and experience acquired through study and present them to prospective employers in the arts industry? Where does your search begin and what should you consider as you plan your future career steps? What is expected in a portfolio and what should you expect in an interview? This book provides straightforward strategies and practical exercises to turn anxiety into excitement and help you develop the job search skills and materials that will empower you to go after the job you want, and get it. If you are about to graduate or just ready to make a change, this book will teach you how to plan for your career as a designer, technician, or stage manager, and put your best professional persona forward when applying for jobs. Topics include resumes, cover letters, business cards and portfolios that will get you moved to the top of the pile; what to expect at an interview and how to answer any interview question; the how and why of negotiating for your worth; long term career planning, financial implications and much more. Filled with practical advice, examples of letters, resumes, CVs and portfolios, and with guidance from industry professionals, it will equip you to plan and succeed in your job search and career development in the entertainment industry.

Peter Brook is regarded as one of the most important and influential directors today. In this fascinating study, Albert Hunt and Geoffrey Reeves chronicle Brook's development beginning with his earliest productions and concluding with some of his most recent and innovative work. The book also focuses on Brook outside the theater including the film version of his Mahabharata and work for the opera house. The book will be of interest to theater practitioners, students and scholars as well as to the general reader. It includes a chronology of Brook's theater career and is illustrated with rare photographs from key productions.

The experiences of a diverse range of progressive theater and performance makers in their own words. Curated stories from over 75 interviews and informal exchanges offer insight into the field and point out limitations due to discrimination and unequal opportunity for performance artists in the United States over the past 55 years. In this work, performers, often unknown beyond their immediate audience, articulate diverse influences. They also reflect on how artists are educated and supported, what content is deemed valuable and how it is brought to bear, as well as which audiences are welcome and whether cross-community exchange is encouraged. The book's voices bring the reader from 1965 through the first wave of the covid-19 pandemic in 2020. They point to more diverse and inclusive practices and give hope for the future of the art.

"Introduction to Documentary Production" is designed for students who are approaching documentary production for the first time. The book is written in an accessible style by media staff at the University of Portsmouth, UK, all of whom have backgrounds in media production or journalism. The book covers the making of documentaries from concept through production to post-production and includes close readings of documentary makers' intent and target audiences.

In September-October 2010 and February-March 2011, Diana Cozma had the privilege of watching the rehearsals of The Chronic Life, directed by Eugenio Barba, in Holstebro, Denmark, when she lived at Odin Teatret's guest house. Eugenio Barba's dramaturgy is discussed in the first part of the book, The Biography of a Dramaturgical Language, while the second part, The Dramaturgy of a Spectator, based on her rehearsal diary, reveals her reflections on Barba's evocative dramaturgy and her emotional and intellectual responses to the rehearsal process. "I feel the author's intensity in describing the actions and thoughts of the director and the actors who for years have accompanied her in her writing both in Romanian and English. I recognise the same tension, the same desire and effort that flow from a certain passionate reaction in the human being: gratitude towards the person who opened our eyes and awakened our energies. I recognise the origin of this writing, the nature of its particular style. It reminds me of my struggle with words or with the incandescence of the actors, in the attempt to cross over into that dimension of reality which forces us to go beyond what we are. It is a struggle that is constantly accompanied by the temptation to abandon and give up. Style is the luminous radiography of the darkness within us." (excerpt from the Foreword by Eugenio Barba).

Transforming Space over Time: Set Design and Visual Storytelling with Broadway's Legendary Directors tells the stories of six diverse productions: five on Broadway and one Off-Broadway. Beowulf Boritt, theater designer and Tony Award winner, begins with the moment he was offered each job and takes readers through the conceptual development of the set, in collaboration with the director, the challenges of its physical creation, and the intense process of readying it for the stage. Since theater is at heart a collaborative art form, he includes details of his work with the many professionals-designers, technicians, producers, stage managers, and actors-who contribute their talent and ideas to each show. Boritt offers insight into the sometimes frustrating but unavoidable realities of the "biz" part of showbiz: budgets, promotion, reviews, and awards, and he provides enough detail to interest aspiring and seasoned theater professionals and enough spice to satisfy passionate theatergoers. Boritt includes extensive conversations with the directors of the productions, theater legends such as James Lapine, Kenny Leon, Hal Prince, Susan Stroman, Jerry Zaks, and Stephen Sondheim. Each takes a very different approach to theater, which necessitates a different approach to collaboration. By focusing on a variety of specific shows Boritt has worked on, he attempts to peel back the curtain on the creative and intellectual process-in particular, the way his designs develop over time, in concert with the director and other members of the creative team. Transforming Space over Time is about the creative journey of a production.

How do you navigate a career as an entertainment designer while maintaining a sense of self-worth and value in the various off-ramps and sidestreets you may choose to take on the journey? The Art of Scenic Design provides an in-depth look at the scenic design process for young designers as well as creative entrepreneurs seeking to nurture a collaborative environment that leads to rediscovery and innovation in their work. Based on his 30 years of experience in stage design, exhibit design, art direction for film, and theme park and industrial design, Robert Mark Morgan demonstrates that while a design process for creating these types of works can seem like niche professions, the lessons learned in collaboration, testing and re-testing ideas, prototyping concepts, overcoming fears, venturing guesses, divergent thinking, and the creative process in general are applicable - and valuable - in nearly all disciplines and professions both inside and outside of the entertainment industry. In The Art of Scenic Design: A Practical Guide to the Creative Process you will follow an accomplished designer on a narrative of the theatrical design process from early phases of a design with a creative team encompassing visual research, idea-making, and collaborative relationships, to sketching, prototyping, and testing ideas, through to the execution and manifestation of the design with a team of artists and collaborators. The design journey is contextualized with backstage stories of "what if?" moments, provocative discussions, and lessons that are indispensable to your professional development.

Draping Period Costumes provides you with the skill set you need to break away from two-dimensional patterns to drape three dimensional costumes. The basics of draping are explained in precise detail, followed by step-by-step draping projects from multiple historical periods. Packed with photographs that illustrate every seam, pleat, and tuck, you'll never be lost with this comprehensive guide. -Includes information on measurements, necessary tools, and basic rules of draping -Covers costumes for both men and women - Discusses appropriate period under garments and fabric choices Let expert draper Sharon Sobel teach you all you need to know to perfectly drape any period costume!

What is the purpose of a stage direction? These italicized lines written in between the lines of spoken dialogue tell us a great deal of information about a play's genre, mood, tone, visual setting, cast of characters, and more. Yet generations of actors have been taught to cross these words out as records of previous performances or signs of overly controlling playwrights, while scholars have either treated them as problems to be solved or as silent lines of dialogue. Stage directions can be all of these things, and yet there are examples from over one-hundred years of American playwriting that show that stage directions can also be so much more. The Lines Between the Lines focuses on how playwrights have written stage directions that engage readers, production team members, and scholars in a process of embodied creation in order to determine meaning. Author Bess Rowen calls the products of this method 'affective stage directions' because they reach out from the page and affect the bodies of those who encounter them. Affective stage directions do not tell a reader or production team what a given moment looks like, but rather how a moment feels. In this way, these stage directions provide playgrounds for individual readers or production teams to make sense of a given moment in a play based on their own individual cultural experience, geographic location, and identity-markers. Affective stage directions enable us to check our assumptions about what kinds of bodies are represented on stage, allowing for a greater multitude of voices and kinds of embodied identity to make their own interpretations of a play while still following the text exactly. The tools provided in this book are as useful for the theater scholar as they are for the theater audience member, casting director, and actor. Each chapter covers a different function of stage directions (spoken, affective, choreographic, multivalent, impossible) and looks at it through a different practical lens (focusing on actors, directors, designers, dramaturgs, and readers). Every embodied person will have a slightly different understanding of affective stage directions, and it is precisely this diversity that makes these stage directions crucial to understanding theater in our time.

A practical guide to the art and technique of lighting for the stage, this book explains the complex mixture of craft, collaboration and creativity behind successful lighting design. The designer paints with light - revealing form and composing a living picture from collections of objects and bodies in a given space. This handbook for professional practice walks you through how to achieve this, from first concept to development of design ideas, planning to realisation and, finally, public performance. Now fully revised, this second edition of Nick Moran's Performance Lighting Design has been brought up to date to consider advances made in the technology used for lighting design for live performance. Alongside this, Moran introduces new concepts and ways of working; includes a section on analysing the finished design; and discusses recent research into contemporary lighting practice, addressing emerging trends, particularly for drama. Combining practical information with aesthetic considerations, Performance Lighting Design is the ideal book for students and practitioners of stage lighting working on the contemporary stage.

How do theatre lighting designers decide what is 'the right light' for each moment of a production? What informs their choices? Why does the audience respond more strongly when the lighting feels 'right'? By interviewing nineteen prominent lighting designers and weaving their insights through his own narrative, Nick Moran aims to answer such questions. This book considers practice across different types of theatre, including opera, dance, musicals and drama. Rather than being a technical manual, it allows lighting designers to contribute contrasting and complementary ideas about how to approach lighting design. Moran argues that the best stage lighting is made with emotion, passion and soul, by creative artists willing to take risks. Includes interviews with: Neil Austin - Lucy Carter - Jon Clark - Natasha Chivers - Paule Constable - James Farncombe - Rick Fisher - Mark Henderson - David Howe - Michael Hulls - Mark Jonathan - Peter Mumford - Ben Ormerod - Bruno Poet - Paul Pyant - Nick Richings - Johanna Town - Hugh Vanstone - Katharine Williams

In this enlarged and thoroughly revised third edition of his widely used text, Darwin Reid Payne explores the principles and philosophies that shape the visual elements of theatre.

Payne sets out to discover who scenographers are and to define their responsibilities. He sees scenographers as not merely craftspersons but artists with "a special vision that spans all the arts." Such artists are in a position to "extend and amplify underlying meanings of the production." The proper goal of beginning scenographers, according to Payne, is one day to be able to approach the job as artists in full command of their craft.

Payne seeks to instill in beginning scenographers a basic core of knowledge: an understanding of theatre history and the development of drama; a knowledge of art history and an understanding of periods and styles of architecture, painting, sculpture, furnishings, and costume; and a familiarity with the principles, techniques, and materials of pictorial and three-dimensional design. This new edition contains 248 illustrations, 38 more than the second edition. Payne's goal, certainly, is to teach students what to do and how to do it; equally important, however, is Payne's view that scenographers must know why.

To Payne, "Scenography is an art whose scope is nothing less than the whole world outside the theatre." Scenographers must read not only in their own field but in others as well. Payne has incorporated into his text many suggestions for outside readings, quoting passages and even entire chapters from important works. Stressing research, Payne argues that without knowledge of the literature of their own and related arts, scenographers cannot grow. Andthat is the emphasis of this book: to present aspiring scenographers with an approach and a set of concepts that will enable them to grow. Toward that end, Payne establishes five priorities, the first of which is to develop in students what he calls "time vision," or the ability to "see" the historical past as a living place with living inhabitants. The second priority is to bring about an awareness that allows students to "see" beneath the surface of objects and events. Third, students must be helped to recognize and appreciate the difference between the "concept of space as it exists outside the theatre and the concept of space as it is used within the theatre." The fourth priority is to ingrain in students an understanding of the importance of imagery to the scenographer, and the final priority is to teach those technical skills necessary to carry out the concepts of the scenographer.

From the authors of the successful Grand-Guignol and London's Grand Guignol - also published by UEP - this book includes translations of a further eleven plays, adding significantly to the repertoire of Grand-Guignol plays available in the English language. The emphasis in the translation and adaptation of these plays is once again to foreground the performability of the scripts within a modern context - making Performing Grand-Guignol an ideal acting guide. Hand and Wilson have acquired extremely rare acting copies of plays which have never been published and scripts that were published in the early years of the twentieth century but have not been published since - even in French. Includes plays written by, or adapted from, such notable writers as Octave Mirbeau, Gaston Leroux and St John Ervine as well as examples by Grand-Guignol stalwarts Rene Berton and Andre de Lorde. Also included is the 1920s London translation of Blind Man's Buff written by Charles Hellem and Pol d'Estoc and banned by the Lord Chamberlain. A brief history of the Parisian theatre is also included, for the benefit of readers who have not read the previous books.

These three volumes represent the best Shakespeare criticism of the last fifty years. 140 articles have been included, with introductions by Stanley Wells, Terence Hawkes and Peter Holland under three main headings. The first volume covers Shakespeare's life and times, the texts of his plays and their staging in the period; the second consists of literary criticism applied to Shakespeare since World War II and the third includes performance-centered articles on staging and acting. The essays are reprinted from the Shakespeare Survey yearbook, selected and ordered by Catherine Alexander.

Directing plays in schools requires knowledge and talents far different than directing for community or professional theatre. In ten comprehensive chapters the author explains the "real world" of producing effective theatricals in the school environment. He details the pitfalls and the problems while providing ideas for consistently successful shows. He covers budgeting, scheduling, faculty, politics, motivating and disciplining students and many other school-life realities beyond a director or teacher's job definition. It speaks from years of experience of a talented teacher/director who has "been there and done that." Recommended. Ten chapters: Selecting the Script, Analyzing the Script, Preparing for Production, Blocking, Casting, Rehearsal, Acting and Student Actors, Recurrent Problems, Directing the Musical, Building a Theatre Program.

Scenography Expanded is a foundational text offering readers a thorough introduction to contemporary performance design, both in and beyond the theatre. It examines the potential of the visual, spatial, technological, material and environmental aspects of performance to shape performative encounters. It analyses examples of scenography as sites of imaginative exchange and transformative experience and it discusses the social, political and ethical dimensions of performance design. The international range of contributors and case studies provide clear perspectives on why scenographic design has become a central consideration for performance makers today. The extended introduction defines the characteristics of 21st-century scenography and examines the scope and potentials of this new field. Across five sections, the volume provides examples and case studies which richly illustrate the scope of contemporary scenographic practice and which analyse the various ways in which it is used in global cultural contexts. These include mainstream theatre practice, experimental theatre, installation and live art, performance in the city, large-scale events and popular entertainments, and performances by and for specific communities.