I read this book by accident as part of my endeavor to read all of Peter Brook’s published work. It was miscatalogued as being written by him, but actually, the authors are Andrew Todd and Jean-Guy Lecat. This was a happy mistake, though, in that I learned a lot from this book, so I’m glad […]
I’m usually a super fast reader, but it took me forever to get through The Shifting Point. I’m trying to pin down exactly what about it was such a slog, but it’s hard to identify exactly. Certainly one factor is that the book isn’t at all cohesive. It’s a mishmash of speeches, articles, diaries, and […]
Of all the books in this project, I think this is the one I was the least excited about (and it was first, yay for me). Not that it isn’t an amazing book—it is!—but I’ve read it, conservatively, twelve times. When I was 14, I went to visit my aunt in Buffalo. I had just […]
I’m curious whether other people set themselves these sorts of experiments or challenges. I’d love to hear what artists you’ve taken the time to become a completist in.
I’ve been into preordering books lately. By the time they show up, I’ve usually forgotten about them. It’s like a present from my past self. Which is to say that I had forgotten entirely about Working on a Song: The Lyrics of Hadestown by Anaïs Mitchell, until it showed up at my doorstep. Once I […]
One of the most exciting developments in the way people create theater that has happened in the course of my career as a professional director is a shift in professional standards around how we talk about and work with actors’ bodies. I’m old enough to remember a high school director telling a boy who was […]
The book itself (oh, right, this is a Book Report post!) is a fantastic tool for actors and directors. It’s more accessible than Shakespeare’s Metrical Art, but more advanced than Mastering Shakespeare. I loved how, throughout, Block connected rhetorical and rhythmic concepts to playable actions. This is not an abstract text; it’s grounded in the work of the theater.
When I was at the Shakespeare Theater Association conference in January (back when one Went To Things), three different people recommended Steven Wangh’s An Acrobat of the Heart to me. When something like that—something that isn’t new and trendy—pops into my world a number of times, I pay attention. So as soon as I got […]
Ms. Directing Shakespeare, by Elizabeth Schafer was an interesting read, a scholarly project of interviews with British women who were directing in professional theaters. Because time keeps moving and the world is changing, I’d like to start by noting that this book was published over 20 years ago, in 1998. That said, while a good […]
I literally don’t know how many times someone has said, “Well, you’ve read Tina Packer’s book, of course”…and I hadn’t. Women of Will has been on my TBR list since it was published, and I’ve only just now gotten to it. It was worth the wait. The book details Packer’s own experiences directing and performing […]