Social Presencing Theater


Book Description

Social Presencing Theater: The Art of Making a True Move is a journey into the origins, principles, and practices of an innovative social art form co-created by Arawana Hayashi and colleagues at the Presencing Institute. This embodiment practice deepens reflection and supports individual, team, organizational, and social transformation. This highly accessible book offers an introduction to newcomers and provides a deeper understanding of the work for experienced practitioners who wish to create powerful spaces for heart-based learning and action. The book addresses the origins and underlying principles of Social Presencing Theater, while containing practice instructions and stories that highlight its uses in companies, schools, and social projects. Social Presencing Theater invites us to tap into our natural creativity and ability to fully embody the "performance" of being human. Hayashi's intention with this work is to offer movement practices that support people in recognizing their own and others' embodied wisdom, compassion, and courage to act. In the face of today's enormous environmental, social, and spiritual challenges, we can become disconnected from the fundamental human goodness that lives in our presence. Social Presencing Theater invites us to make the true moves that are ours to make to create a society of brilliance, warmth, and strength.




The Art of Resonance


Book Description

What is artistic resonance and how can it be linked to one's life and one's art? This latest book of essays from legendary theatre director Anne Bogart, considers the creation of resonance in the artistic endeavour, with a focus on the performing arts. The word 'resonance' comes from the Latin meaning to 're-sound' or 'sound together'. From music to physics, resonance is a common thread that evokes a response and, in general, is understood as a quality that makes something personally meaningful and valuable. For Bogart, curiosity is a key personal quality to be nurtured throughout life and that very same curiosity, as an artist, thinker and human being. Creating pathways between performance theory, art history, neuroscience, music, architecture and the visual arts, and consistently forging new thought-paths, the writing draws upon Anne Bogart's own life and artistic journeys to illuminate potent philosophical ideas. Woven with personal anecdotes, stories and reflections, this is a book that will be of interest to any theatre artist and anyone who reflects on the power of the arts, of theatre-making and what it means to be engaged in the artistic process.




Introduction to Production


Book Description

Introduction to Production: Creating Theatre Onstage, Backstage, & Offstage defines the collaborative art of making theatre and the various job positions that go into realizing a production. Beginning with an overview of the art and industry of theatre, the book shows how theatre has evolved through history. The book then breaks down the nuts and bolts of the industry by looking at each professional role within it: from the topmost position of the producer down to the gopher, or production assistant. Each of these positions are defined along with their respective duties, rules, and resources that figure in obtaining these jobs. Each chapter offers exercises, links to videos and websites, review quizzes, and suggested readings to learn more about the creation and production of theatre.




Theatre, Education and the Making of Meanings


Book Description

Art or Instrument? studies theatre's educational role during the 20th and 21st centuries. It examines the ways theatre's educational potential has been harnessed, the claims made for its value, and the tension between theatre as education and theatre as "art." Following key theoretical approaches to aesthetics, the study is organized into two chronological periods: early developments in European and American theatre up to the end of world war two and participatory theatre and education since world war two. Topics covered include an early use of theatre to campaign for prison reform; workers' theatre, agit-pop, and American living newspapers in the 1930s; theatre's response to the dropping of the atom bomb; post-war theatre in education; theatre in prisons; and the use of performance in historic sites.




Theatre and Drama in the Making


Book Description

(Applause Books). Theatre and Drama in the Making introduces readers not only to important primary sources, but to the uses made of them by distinguished theorists, critics, and historians. Unlike other texts, it discusses theatre as a whole, embracing both the art of dramatic writing and the art of performance. Included in this new edition are greatly expanded sections covering "Latin Theatre and Drama" and "The Golden Age of Spain," as well as all the exciting new archaeological information relating to the excavation of the Rose and the Globe. The introduction to each essay has been revised and enlarged so that together they may be read independently as a concise and accurate narrative of theatre history. From Aeschylus to Calderon, from Agatharcus to Serlio, from Thespis to Burbage, from Aristotle to Sidney, here is the story of Western Theatre in all its glorious variety.




The Necessity of Theater


Book Description

What is unique and essential about theater? What separates it from other arts? Do we need "theater" in some fundamental way? The art of theater, as Paul Woodruff says in this elegant and unique book, is as necessary - and as powerful - as language itself. Defining theater broadly, including sporting events and social rituals, he treats traditional theater as only one possibility in an art that - at its most powerful - can change lives and (as some peoples believe) bring a divine presence to earth. The Necessity of Theater analyzes the unique power of theater by separating it into the twin arts of watching and being watched, practiced together in harmony by watchers and the watched. Whereas performers practice the art of being watched - making their actions worth watching, and paying attention to action, choice, plot, character, mimesis, and the sacredness of performance space - audiences practice the art of watching: paying close attention. A good audience is emotionally engaged as spectators; their engagement takes a form of empathy that can lead to a special kind of human wisdom. As Plato implied, theater cannot teach us transcendent truths, but it can teach us about ourselves. Characteristically thoughtful, probing, and original, Paul Woodruff makes the case for theater as a unique form of expression connected to our most human instincts. The Necessity of Theater should appeal to anyone seriously interested or involved in theater or performance more broadly.




The Art of Making Theatre


Book Description

In this book, world-renowned theatre artist Pamela Howard OBE shows how her life has always been part of the art of making theatre. Part memoir, part a personal account of artistic creation, it is a work of art in its own right. Its 12 chapters, accompanied by original drawings, offer insights into Pamela Howard's creative world and the journey through life of a celebrated artist, ranging from her early life and influences, to her time at art college and the inspiration she gained from travelling the world. Following the trajectory of her life, the 12 'dreams' are poised between memory and history and give an account of an artist's growth, resilience, working patterns, and life-changing encounters with remarkable personalities and artists, as well as the practical side of working in the theatre, in visual arts and in education. Her art tells unexpected stories of little-noticed people and émigré communities, and makes performance for diverse audiences from the unique experience of one's own life. Pamela Howard's dreams have led her to work across the globe and teach and inspire several generations of theatre makers, scenographers, designers and visual artists. The Art of Making Theatre passes on that inspiration afresh and demonstrates that being an artist is not a one-off project but a way of life.




Making Theatre


Book Description

The reality of a play is in its performance. Making Theatre focuses on the processes by which performance is realized, analyzing three major areas: "Words" and the interpretation of text; "Vision" including scenery, costume and lighting; and "Music" which illustrates the importance of music in all stage action.The forms of theater covered include straight drama, the musical and opera. Taking productions well-known on both sides of the Atlantic, Peter Mudford examines plays by Shakespeare, Chekhov, Pirandello, Beckett, Pinter, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller and David Mamet; musicals by Rodgers and Hammerstein, Cole Porter and Stephen Sondheim; and operas by Verdi, Wagner and Berg.This account of what makes theater important and how it works will be invaluable to teachers and students of drama and performance, as well as all those interested in theater as art.




Howard Barker's art of theatre


Book Description

Director-dramatist Howard Barker is a restlessly prolific, compulsively controversial and provocative multi-media artist. Beyond his internationally performed and acclaimed theatrical productions, and his award-winning theatre company The Wrestling School, he is also a poet, a painter whose work has been exhibited internationally, and a philosophical essayist cognisant of the unique power of art to provoke moral speculation, and of the distinctive theatricality of the human being in times of crisis. This collection of essays provides international perspectives on the full range of Barker’s achievements, theatrical and otherwise, and argues for their unique importance and urgency at the forefront of several genres of provocative modern art. It includes an interview with the artist and an essay by Barker himself.




Redefining Theatre Communities


Book Description

Redefining Theatre Communities explores the interplay between contemporary theatre and communities. It considers the aesthetic, social and cultural aspects of community-conscious theatre-making. It also reflects on transformations in structural, textual and theatrical conventions, and explores changing modes of production and spectatorship.