Theatre direction and production Books

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Book SynopsisA musical play dealing with emigration and the lack of jobs at home that forced people to leave their native Ireland for England. It describes the emigrants 'longing for home’ - 'Everyone is lonesome leaving home' - their annual homecomings and their return to jobs and places they disliked - 'back to their night shifts, an' filthy digs ... with their long faces leanin' out o' the carriage windows with the thoughts of what's waitin' over'.

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Book Synopsis"Simon Usher is one of the most clear headed thinkers about theatre in this country. He taps onto a well of experience spanning four decades with grace and ferocious honesty. He writes with precision and wit and insight. There is no more essential book for anybody working in or hoping to work in theatre." Simon Stephens ‘Only direct if you can do nothing else.’ ‘Directors: People with incurable cases of writer’s block.’ ‘Direct plays whose authors know more than you do.’ Not so much a how-to-direct book but reflections on a long career directing plays. Presented in the form of aphorisms, apercu, questions, maxims, dialogues and miniature essays aimed at the vocational rather than the career director. Usher emphasizes the reality of life as a theatre director. Directing vocationally is a state of mind, an attitude to life, a philosophical adventure. Directing: A Miscellany is about survival: how to remain creative in good times and bad; how to remain alive as a director in any circumstance. Commenting extensively on the process of acting, Shakespeare and the classics, working with writers and designers, directing techniques, the trials and tribulations of working with others, the book is an aid to reflection for readers.

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Book Synopsis"There is a mystery in every play that is written, no matter whether classical and poetic or modern and demotic, and it is the sound and the rhythm of the writing which take us there." Cicely Berry, the Royal Shakespeare Company's Voice Director, has been working alongside some of Britain's greatest actors and directors for over fifty years and is widely regarded as one of the most significant voice teachers in the world. From Word to Play draws on Cicely's extensive experience of working with theatre companies in Britain and throughout the world. It is her manifesto for a return to the words themselves: for moving away from an over-conceptualised, over-literal view of language and rediscovering the meaning in its sounds and rhythms. At the heart of this book is a concise, practical guide for directors in rehearsal, setting out work strategies that help bring out both the shape and the details within all kinds of text - whether verse or prose, seventeenth-century or contemporary. With a Foreword by Michael Boyd, Artistic Director of the RSC. Trade Review'Cicely Berry has based her work on the conviction that while all is present in nature our natural instincts have been crippled from birth by many processes – by the conditioning, in fact, of a warped society. So an actor needs precise exercise and clear understanding to liberate his hidden possibilities and to learn the hard task of being true to "the instinct of the moment"' - Peter Brook -- Peter Brook

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Book SynopsisWhat is the role of costume in Shakespeare production? Shakespeare and Costume in Practice argues that costume design choices are central not only to the creation of period setting and the actor’s work on character, but to the cultural, political, and psychological meanings that the theatre makes of Shakespeare. The book explores questions about what the first Hamlet looked like in his mourning cloak; how costumes for a Shakespeare comedy can reflect or critique the collective nostalgias a culture has for its past; how costume and casting work together to ask new questions about Shakespeare and race. Using production case studies of Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing, and The Tempest, the book demonstrates that costume design can be a site of experimentation, playfulness, and transgression in the theatre – and that it can provoke audiences to think again about what power, race, and gender look like on the Shakespearean stage. Table of Contents1. Chapter One: Introduction.- 2. Chapter Two: Hamlet, Mourning and the Disappearing Costume: Inky Cloaks and Solemn Black.- 3. Chapter Three: Much Ado About Nothing, Restorative Nostalgia and the Costume Drama: Tires and Rebatoes, Corsets and Lace.- 4. Chapter Four: The Post-Colonial Tempest: Costume and Race.- 5. Chapter Five: Conclusion: Practitioner Interviews.

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Book Synopsis

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Book Synopsis

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Book Synopsis

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Book Synopsis

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Book Synopsis

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