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Books > Arts & Architecture > Performing arts > Technical & background skills
A handy source of essential data that every sound technician needs.
Whether you are a professional sound engineer, responsible for
broadcast or studio recording, or a student on a music technology
or sound recording course, you will find this book authoritative
and easily accessible.
Edward Gordon Craig's ideas regarding set and lighting have had an
enormous impact on the development of the theatre we know today.
Tracing Lyubimov's work play by play, we discover an indivudual
doomed to be at odds with the prevailing political and social
climate of his literary contemporaries. From this unique book there
emerges a clear picture of Lyubimov's mischievous, provocative,
fearless, and tireless imagination.
This popular book describes in detail a stage manager's job. It provides students, those just starting out in the profession and amateurs with a solid grounding in theatre stage management practices and procedures. The disciplines of lighting, set design and sound are discussed but the book's main concern is with the management of these elements and with the processes and scheduling that go together to provide the effective results. The author demonstrates that the methods used are as important as the final result. Chronologically following the production of a play, the book starts with pre-production planning and progresses to the first night.
(Excerpt)
As long as plays have been presented, choices have been made about the environment in which they occur, the garments the performers wear, and how to focus the audience's attention. Designers, then, have been instrumental in shaping the history of theater. But before designers were routinely listed in playbills, they could only be identified through other sources, including press releases, reviews, news articles, contracts, and personal papers. This reference provides alphabetically arranged entries for the more than 2,300 scenery, costume, and lighting designers who worked on Broadway in the 20th century. It begins with the 1899-1900 season and ends with the 2000-2001 season. Each entry includes a brief biography and a list of the designer's credits. The emphasis is on individuals rather than companies, but some small businesses formed by designers have been retained as examples. Appendices list the winners of major design awards, and the volume includes a selected bibliography. The extensive index cites the more than 10,000 plays produced on Broadway in the 20th century. While not a narrative history, this reference is nonetheless a comprehensive chronicle of theatrical design on Broadway.
Kinaesthesia and Visual Self-reflection in Contemporary Dance features interviews with UK-based professional-level contemporary, ballet, hip hop, and breaking dancers and cross-disciplinary explication of kinaesthesia and visual self-reflection discourses. Expanding on the concept of a 'kinaesthetic mode of attention' leads to discussion of some of the key values and practices which nurture and develop this mode in contemporary dance. Zooming in on entanglements with video self-images in dance practice provides further insights regarding kinaesthesia's historicised polarisation with the visual. It thus provides opportunities to dwell on and reconsider reflections, opening up to a set of playful yet disruptive diffractions inherent in the process of becoming a contemporary dancer, particularly amongst an increasingly complex landscape of visual and theoretical technologies.
Welcome to The Empire theatre 1922. When Jack Treadwell arrives at The Empire, in the middle of a rehearsal, he is instantly mesmerised. But amid the glitz and glamour, he soon learns that the true magic of the theatre lies in its cast of characters - both on stage and behind the scenes. There's stunning starlet Stella Stanmore and Hollywood heartthrob Lancelot Drake; and Ruby Rowntree, who keeps the music playing, while Lady Lillian Lassiter, theatre owner and former showgirl, is determined to take on a bigger role. And then there's cool, competent Grace Hawkins, without whom the show would never go on . . . could she be the leading lady Jack is looking for? When long-held rivalries threaten The Empire's future, tensions rise along with the curtain. There is treachery at the heart of the company and a shocking secret waiting in the wings. Can Jack discover the truth before it's too late, and the theatre he loves goes dark? Musical theatre legend Michael Ball brings his trademark warmth, wit and glamour to this, his debut novel. Enjoy the show! Real readers love The Empire 'A charming, captivating, majestic, electrifying, exciting and dazzling masterpiece' 'This book was perfect' 'The Empire is fantastic read, and one of my favourites of this year!' 'A real razzmatazz of a read' 'What a wonderful book, as full of warmth and wit as Michael himself . . . absolute magic!' The Empire was a Sunday Times No. 3 bestseller for w/c 24/10/2022'
Theatre Masks Out Side In examines masks from different angles and perspectives, combining the history, design, construction, and use of masks into one beautifully illustrated resource. Each chapter includes key information about an element of mask study: history and uses, theatre traditions, practical principles for directing, performing exercises, design considerations, mask making techniques, and considering makeup as mask. Artist interviews, theatre company profiles, and hundreds of images provide insight into the variety of mask styles and performance applications. Project suggestions, discussion questions, useful worksheets, creative prompts, and resources for sourcing masks are included to inspire further exploration. Theatre Masks Out Side In is designed with the beginning theatre maker in mind, as well as prop makers, costume designers and technicians, and actors learning to use masks in performance.
"Digital Practices" offers a description of a range of art and performance practices that have emerged within the context of a broad-based technological infiltration of all areas of human experience. They are integral to alternative and also to mainstream performance and culture, and demand perceptive strategies that can address the interface between the physical and the virtual. In this pioneering study, Susan Broadhurst explores the aesthetic theorisation of these practices and extends her analysis to include other approaches, including those offered by recent research into neuroesthetics.
The Environment on Stage: Scenery or Shapeshifter? investigates a pertinent voice of theatrical performance within the production and reception of ecotheatre. Theatre ecologies, unavoidably enmeshed in the environment, describe the system of sometimes perverse feedback loops running through theatrical events, productions, performances and installations. This volume applies an ecoaware spectatorial lens to explore live theatre as a living ecosystem in a literal sense. The vibrant chemistry between production and reception, and the spiralling ideas and emotions this generates in some conditions, are unavoidably driven by flows of matter and energy, thus, by the natural environment, even when human perspectives seem to dominate. The Environment on Stage is an intentionally eclectic mix of observation, close reading and qualitative research, undertaken with the aim of exploring ecocritical ideas embedded in ecotheatre from a range of perspectives. Individual chapters identify productions, performances and installations in which the environment is palpably present on stage, as it is in natural disasters such as floods, storms, famine, conflict and climate change. These themes and others are explored in the context of site-specificity, subversive spectators, frugal modes of narrative, the shifting 'stuff' of theatre productions, and imaginative substitutions. Ecotheatre is nothing less than vibrant matter that lets the environment speak for itself
Scenic Construction for the Stage is a comprehensive guide to the practical processes involved in constructing scenery for the theatre. Offering key insight into the role of the scenic carpenter, Mark Tweed details the progression from interpreting design, model boxes and drawings, to material selection, fabrication and finishing. Additional topics include advice for developing accuracy, finish and consistency; tool selection and sharpening; CDM, Health and Safety; practical workshop mathematics and geometry, and how to fit ironmongery. With an in-depth but accessible approach, this practical book offers advice on how to start out and improve as a scenic carpenter, building a solid repertoire of reliable techniques and working practices to achieve professional results. Includes a foreword by Sir Kenneth Branagh.
* This book curates new thinking through interviews with designers who are artists, producers, professors, partners, parents, and collaborators. This book is a place to observe how one career can contain many possibilities. * Would be recommended reading in scenic design, stage craft and theatre design courses. At the majority of universities in the United States there are theatrical design courses for undergraduate students. * The closest competitors focus more on a 'basics' approach to set design. This book is not only relevant to students but also early career and more established industry professionals.
Shakespeare's plays are fascinated by the problems of speed and flight. They are repeatedly interested in humans, spirits, and objects that move very fast; become airborne; and in some cases even travel into space. In Speed and Flight in Shakespeare, the first study of any kind on the subject, Steggle looks at how Shakespeare's language explores ideas of speed and flight, and what theatrical resources his plays use to represent these states. Shakespeare has, this book argues, an aesthetic of speed and flight. Featuring chapters on The Comedy of Errors, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Romeo and Juliet, Henry V, Macbeth and The Tempest, this study opens up a new field around the 'historical phenomenology' of early modern speed.
By casting designers as authors, cultural critics, activists, entrepreneurs, and global cartographers, Essin tells a story about scenic images on the page, stage, and beyond that helped American audiences see the everyday landscapes and exotic destinations from a modern perspective.
Why are so many women still not properly listened to? Why do they sometimes feel that they're less interesting than they are? Why do they often rush when they speak? Why do some women feel the pressure to sound like little girls? From one of the world's leading experts on the voice comes this call to arms for women to reclaim their voices. Using elements of experience and practice from her prolific career, Patsy Rodenburg examines these questions, and many more, to decipher what lies at the heart of female empowerment. From the age of four, Rodenburg knew that she found communication difficult. Her struggle with her own voice set her on the journey that led her to discover her vocation. She has spent her life re-finding and re-empowering voices, particularly the lost voices of women. Watching her highly intelligent working-class mother and grandmother ignored and often silenced gave her the insight to investigate why that was and how to help women overcome this centuries-old issue. With warmth and humour, Rodenburg interrogates Shakespeare's texts and his presentation of female characters; develops the notion of rhetoric in relation to the female voice; and applies concepts explored in her previous books, including The Three Circles of Energy. And, perhaps most crucially, through arguing that power and voice are directly linked to breath, Rodenburg makes the case that Western society's oppression of women has diminished their natural ability to breathe. Exploring the female voice through practical exercises and stories from the front line, as well as profoundly personal and formative experiences from her own life, Rodenburg defines the art of accessing the voice within and reclaiming the woman's right to speak.
Scenography is a comprehensive guide to the practical study and process of designing for performance. Rooted in theatre, scenography concerns artists who work through creative elements such as spaces, artefacts, garments, lighting and sound to mobilize new sensory experiences. As a result, scenography has gained broader interest and relevance across a wide range of fields, particularly where there is a desire to innovate with the perception of the live body. To this end, the book offers practical strategies to support the creative process from conception to completion; detailed advice on key actions such as drawing and modelling; tactical insights offered by professional practitioners from various disciplines and a case study on scenographic research. The book will be of great interest to artists looking to engage in or refresh their approach to performance design, and those wanting to integrate and adapt scenography within their existing practice.
Perfect for playwrights and screenwriters of all levels of experience, The Writer's Toolkit will equip you with everything required to kickstart your creativity, develop your craft, and make your writing the very best that it can be. Written by an experienced playwright, screenwriter and producer, this essential book is packed with almost two hundred practical exercises, techniques and ideas for every part of your process, designed to be used either solo or in a group. It includes: Writing warm-ups to focus your mind and get your creative muscles in gear Dozens of exercises to strengthen fundamental elements of your writing such as developing characters, improving dialogue, layering in subtext, creating a strong setting and constructing a compelling plot Immersive-writing techniques to lift the world of your script off the page and allow you to shape it more effectively A blueprint for writing a ten-minute play - a great way to practise your craft, explore a new idea and add to your portfolio A Submission Surgery with exercises and pointers so you can review and fine-tune your completed work before sending it out 101 quick-fire writing prompts to help you warm up, take a break from your current project, or just keep you feeling productive Also included are mindful meditations to use at the beginning and end of your writing sessions, to help you relax, boost your productivity and maximise your creative output. Whatever you need as a writer - whether that's to crack a problem in your current script, develop ideas for future projects, build up your skills and experience, or bust through writer's block - this book will give you the right tools for the job. So get writing! 'A generous and inventive book, packed full of the creativity it is bound to inspire' Anna Jordan, playwright and screenwriter (Succession, Killing Eve, Yen) 'An enthusiastic, encouraging guide with endless tips to make every stage of the writing process not only doable but enjoyable too' Diane Samuels, playwright and author (Kindertransport)
Scrapbooks, Snapshots and Memorabilia: Hidden Archives of Performance asks the questions: What constitutes an archive? What is worthy of being archived? And who decides? Performances are ephemeral, so archival questions of selection and appraisal determine which performances will be remembered by history and which will not. The essays in this collection each explore a different facet of the ephemerality of performance, and the traces it leaves behind: from photographic stills of actors or sets; draft scripts and production notes, theatre programs and reviews; the language used to evoke the experience of watching a dance; to the memories contained within a site which has been used for a site-specific performance. Each of the contributors to Scrapbooks, Snapshots and Memorabilia employs pertinent case studies to reveal performances that are so often 'hidden' from the authoritative archival view; for example, those by women, indigenous people, amateurs and working people, and those outside metropolitan centres. In this way, they build a powerful argument for reconsidering - or at the very least, broadening - notions of what the performance archive can be.
- Exciting new edition, containing new information on industry practices and protocols. - Contains first-hand information written by an experienced Broadway Assistant Lighting Designer and case studies from 120 working professionals. - This is the only book to cover the ins and outs of the role of the Assistant Lighting Designer.
There is an old phenomenon in theatre arts: Education! And there is a new tendency: theatre arts for the very young! The relationship to education is clear, but what about the profit for the arts? The world of children as a horizon of experiences? The role of music as a dramaturgical element? Is it needed to divide the performance in actors and spectators? Is there a special age for a successful reception? How much should theatre artists be confronted with the physical and psychological development of children? It seems that Theatre for Early Years is a work in progress. There are more and more examples on the stages of the world: In Europe, in the States, in Australia. A variety of different perspectives are included in this research in performing arts from birth to three. The authors are reflecting their work, their observations, their directorship - to discover a new audience, to accompany the new generation in aesthetics, to make the signs of the time transparent. And maybe the development of Theatre for Early Years is a new challenge to renew the language of theatre, to establish an art of simplicity for the complexity of theatre.
This original and timely collection features writings from international contributors who specialize in digital art and performance practices (including Johannes Birringer, Robert Weschler and Philip Auslander). There are few writings per se that attempt to interrogate the interaction between new technologies and performance practice. Furthermore, none have so far linked the sensuous contact that must exist between the physical and virtual, together with the resultant corporeal transformation. In certain technological practices, physicality is both transcended and ludically inscribed - the play ("jouer") being all. Consequently, digital practices potentiate creative and aesthetic possibilities and demand new perceptive strategies.
This book develops media archaeological approaches to theatre and intermediality. As an age-old art form, theatre has always embraced 'new' media. To create theatrical effects and optical illusions, theatre makers were ready to integrate state-of-the-art technics and technologies, and by doing so they playfully explored and popularized scientific knowledge on mechanics, optics and sound for live audiences. This book highlights this obvious but often overlooked relation between media developments and the history of intermedial theater. By considering the interplay between present intermedial performances and their archaeological traces, the authors assembled here revisit old and often forgotten media approaches and theatre technologies. This archaeology is understood less as the discovery of a forgotten past than as the establishment of an active relationship between past and present. Rather than treating archaeological remains as representative tokens of a fragmented past that need to be preserved, the authors stress the return of the past in the present, but in a different, performative guise.
Often viewed as theologically conservative, many theatrical works of late medieval and early Tudor England nevertheless exploited the performative nature of drama to flirt with unsanctioned expressions of desire, allowing queer identities and themes to emerge. Early plays faced vexing challenges in depicting sexuality, but modes of queerness, including queer scopophilia, queer dialogue, queer characters, and queer performances, fractured prevailing restraints. Many of these plays were produced within male homosocial environments, and thus homosociality served as a narrative precondition of their storylines. Building from these foundations, On the Queerness of Early English Drama investigates occluded depictions of sexuality in late medieval and early Tudor dramas. Tison Pugh explores a range of topics, including the unstable genders of the York Corpus Christi Plays, the morally instructive humour of excremental allegory in Mankind, the confused relationship of sodomy and chastity in John Bale's historical interludes, and the camp artifice and queer carnival of Sir David Lyndsay's Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis. Pugh concludes with Terrence McNally's Corpus Christi, pondering the afterlife of medieval drama and its continued utility in probing cultural constructions of gender and sexuality |
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