Book picks similar to
Stage Design by Tony Davis


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The Logic of Images: Essays and Conversations


Wim Wenders - 1988
    In the book Wenders moves from a contemplation of pure cinema, to a consideration and analysis of his own films. Beginning with the question: Why do you make films?, Wenders expresses his own unique approach to cinema.

Backwards and Forwards: A Technical Manual for Reading Plays


David Ball - 1983
    The text is full of tools for students and practitioners to use as they investigate plot, character, theme, exposition, imagery, motivation/obstacle/conflict, theatricality, and the other crucial parts of the superstructure of a play. He includes guides for discovering what the playwright considers the play’s most important elements, thus permitting interpretation based on the foundation of the play rather than its details.Using Hamlet as illustration, Ball assures a familiar base for illustrating script-reading techniques as well as examples of the kinds of misinterpretation readers can fall prey to by ignoring the craft of the playwright. Of immense utility to those who want to put plays on the stage (actors, directors, designers, production specialists) Backwards and Forwards is also a fine playwriting manual because the structures it describes are the primary tools of the playwright.

The Stage Management Handbook


Daniel A. Ionazzi - 1992
    He or she must have a working knowledge of how the various technical aspects of the theater work (scenery, props, costumes, lights and sound), be part director, part playwright, part designer and part producer, and be prepared to act as confidant, counselor and confessor to everyone else in the company.This book addresses all of these considerations in detail and offers the reader-professional or amateur, veteran or beginner-helpful guidance and practical advice, supported by many forms and examples to illustrate the points covered in the text.The three phrases of mounting and performing a show are covered. Part I takes the reader through the pre-production phase-research, the script, planning and organization, and auditions. Part II covers the rehearsal process-rehearsal rules, blocking, cues, prompting, information distribution, technical and dress rehearsals. Part III discusses the performance phase-calling the show, maintaining the director's work, working with understudies and replacements, and more.Part IV provides insights into the organizational structure or some theaters and aspects of human behavior in those organizations. Many stage managers of long-running commercial productions believe that-once the show is up and running-only ten percent of their work is related to everything covered in Parts I, II and III. The other ninety percent is associated with issues in Part IV; i.e. managing human behavior and maintaining working relationships.

Dress Code: The Naked Truth About Fashion


Mari Grinde Arntzen - 2014
    In this book, Mari Grinde Arntzen asks how and why this is—how can fashion simultaneously attract us to its glamour and repel us with its superficiality and how being called “fashionable” can be at once a compliment and an insult. Arntzen guides us through the major figures and brands of today’s fashion industry, showing how they shape us and in turn why we love to be shaped by them. She examines both everyday, affordable “fast fashion” brands, as well as the luxury market, to show how fashion commands a powerful influence on every socioeconomic level of our society. Stepping into our closets with us, she thinks about what happens when we get dressed: why fashion can make us feel powerful, beautiful, and original at the same time that it forces us into conformity. Stripping off the layers of the world’s fifth largest industry, garment by garment, she holds fashion up as a phenomenon, business, and art, exploring the questions it forces us to ask about the body, image, celebrity, and self-obsession. Ultimately, Arntzen asks the most direct question: what is fashion? How has it taken such a powerful hold on the world, forever propelling us toward its concepts of beauty?

The Challenge to Care in Schools: An Alternative Approach to Education


Nel Noddings - 1992
    Noddings argues that such emphasis shortchanges not only the noncollege-bound whose interests are almost ignored, but even those who are preparing for college. The latter receive schooling for the head but little for the heart and soul. Noddings counteracts this condition, insisting that our aim should be to encourage the growth of competent, caring, loving and lovable persons, a moral priority that our educational system ignores. She argues that liberal education dictates what areas of pedagogy are socially acceptable - ignoring a student's wider range of abilities - and undervalues skills, attitudes and capacities traditionally associated with women. Contrarily, it is precisely the competence for caring, Nodding posits, that will prepare our students for the environment of the school, the world of work, the realm of ideas, and ultimately, for each other.

Art as Experience


John Dewey - 1934
    Based on John Dewey's lectures on esthetics, delivered as the first William James Lecturer at Harvard in 1932, Art as Experience has grown to be considered internationally as the most distinguished work ever written by an American on the formal structure and characteristic effects of all the arts: architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and literature.

The Artist's Guide: How to Make a Living Doing What You Love


Jackie Battenfield - 2009
    Along with tips on planning and assessment, she presents strategies for self-management, including marketing, online promotion, building professional relationships, grant writing, and portfolio development.Each chapter ends with an insightful “Reality Check” interview, featuring advice and useful information from high-profile artists and professionals.The result is an inspiring, experiential guide brimming with field-tested techniques that readers can easily apply to their own career.

Making It in the Art World: New Approaches to Galleries, Shows, and Raising Money


Brainard Carey - 2011
    Whether you re a beginner, a student, or a career artist looking to be in the best museum shows, this book provides ways of advancing your plans on any level. Making It in the Art World is an invaluable resource for artists at every stage, offering readers a plethora of strategies and helpful tips to plan and execute a successful artistic career. Topics include how to evaluate your own work, how to submit art, how to present work to the public, how to avoid distractions in the studio, and much more.

Hilma af Klint: Notes and Methods


Hilma af Klint - 2018
    Many consider her the first trained artist to create abstract paintings. With Hilma af Klint: Notes and Methods, we get to experience the arc of af Klint’s artistic investigation in her own words. Hilma af Klint studied at the Royal Swedish Academy in Stockholm where she was part of the first generation of female students.  Up until the beginning of the century, she painted mainly landscapes and detailed botanical studies. Her work from this period was that of a young artist of her time who meticulously observed the world around her. But, like many of her contemporaries, af Klint was also interested in the invisible relationships that shape our world, believing strongly in a spiritual dimension. She joined the Theosophical Society, and, with four fellow female members who together called themselves “The Five,” began to study mediumship.  Between 1906 and 1915, purportedly guided by a higher power, af Klint created 193 individual works that, in both scale and scope of imagery, are like no other art created at that time.  Botanically inspired images and mystical symbols, diagrams, words, and geometric series, all form part of af Klint’s abstract language. These abstract techniques would not be seen again until years later.            Notes and Methods presents facsimile reproductions of a wide array of af Klint’s early notebooks accompanied by the first English translation of af Klint’s extensive writings. It contains the rarely seen “Blue Notebooks,” hand-painted and annotated catalogues af Klint created of her most famous series “Paintings for the Temple,” and a dictionary compiled by af Klint of the words and letters found in her work. An introduction by Iris Müller-Westermann illuminates this unique and important contribution to the legacy of Hilma af Klint.

Mies Van Der Rohe: 1886-1969


Claire Zimmerman - 2006
    The creator of the Barcelona Pavilion (1929), the Farnsworth House in Plano, Illinois (1945?1951) and the Seagram Building in New York (1954?1958), Mies was one of the founders of a new architectural style. Well known for his motto ?less is more, ? he sought a kind of refined purity in architectural expression that was not seen in the reduced vocabulary of other Bauhaus members. His goal was not simply building for those of modest income (Existenzminimum) but building economically in terms of sustainability, both in a technical and aesthetical way; the use of industrial materials such as steel and glass were the foundation of this approach. Though the extreme reduction of form and material in his work garnered some criticism, over the years many have tried?mostly unsuccessfully?to copy his original and elegant style. This book explores more than 20 of his projects between 1906 and 1967, from his early work around Berlin to his most important American buildings. Basic Architecture features: ? Each title contains approximately 120 images, including photographs, sketches, drawings, and floor plans ? Introductory essays explore the architect's life and work, touching on family and background as well as collaborations with other architects ? The body presents the most important works in chronological order, with descriptions of client and/or architect wishes, construction problems (why some projects were never executed), and resolutions ? The appendix includes a list of complete or selected works, biography, bibliography and a map indicating the locations ofthe architect's most famous buildings

Towards a New Architecture


Le Corbusier - 1923
    The present volume is an unabridged English translation of the 13th French edition of that historic manifesto, in which Le Corbusier expounded his technical and aesthetic theories, views on industry, economics, relation of form to function, the "mass-production spirit," and much else. A principal prophet of the "modern" movement in architecture, and a near-legendary figure of the "International School," he designed some of the twentieth century's most memorable buildings: Chapel at Ronchamp; Swiss dormitory at the Cité Universitaire, Paris; Unité d'Habitation, Marseilles; and many more.Le Corbusier brought great passion and intelligence to these essays, which present his ideas in a concise, pithy style, studded with epigrammatic, often provocative, observations: "American engineers overwhelm with their calculations our expiring architecture." "Architecture is stifled by custom. It is the only profession in which progress is not considered necessary." "A cathedral is not very beautiful . . ." and "Rome is the damnation of the half-educated. To send architectural students to Rome is to cripple them for life."Profusely illustrated with over 200 line drawings and photographs of his own works and other structures he considered important, Towards a New Architecture is indispensable reading for architects, city planners, and cultural historians―but will intrigue anyone fascinated by the wide-ranging ideas, unvarnished opinions, and innovative theories of one of this century's master builders.

Sense of Direction: Some Observations on the Art of Directing


William Ball - 1984
    Founder and long-time general director of the acclaimed American Conservatory Theatre, Bill Ball engages his audience in a wide-ranging discussion of the director's process from first reading through opening night. Speaking as a director's director, Ball offers a candid, personal account of his method of working including the choice of a play's essential elements, preproduction homework, casting, and rehearsal techniques. Throughout, his discovering and insights guide the director in building the world of the play and bringing it to life.

Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man


Marshall McLuhan - 1964
    Terms and phrases such as "the global village" and "the medium is the message" are now part of the lexicon, and McLuhan's theories continue to challenge our sensibilities and our assumptions about how and what we communicate.There has been a notable resurgence of interest in McLuhan's work in the last few years, fueled by the recent and continuing conjunctions between the cable companies and the regional phone companies, the appearance of magazines such as WiRed, and the development of new media models and information ecologies, many of which were spawned from MIT's Media Lab. In effect, media now begs to be redefined. In a new introduction to this edition of Understanding Media, Harper's editor Lewis Lapham reevaluates McLuhan's work in the light of the technological as well as the political and social changes that have occurred in the last part of this century.

Letters to a Young Artist


Anna Deavere Smith - 2006
    In vividly anecdotal letters to the young BZ, she addresses the full spectrum of issues that people starting out will face: from questions of confidence, discipline, and self-esteem, to fame, failure, and fear, to staying healthy, presenting yourself effectively, building a diverse social and professional network, and using your art to promote social change. At once inspiring and no-nonsense, Letters to a Young Artist will challenge you, motivate you, and set you on a course to pursue your art without compromise.

Untitled


Blaine Hogan - 2011
    The blank page.It has so much power.Some days it's terrifying, sometimes thrilling, but mostly it's just plain old scary.It is the reason many people never finish that novel, or complete that project, or follow through with that one thing they used to dream about.Sadly, it is the reason many people never even begin.Blaine Hogan's manifesto, UNTITLED: Thoughts on the Creative Process is here to change all that.As an artist who has designed t-shirts, made light fixtures, created performance art in alleyways, performed on big and small stages all across the country, acted on network television, and is now a creative director at one of the largest churches in North America, Blaine walks you through the creative process of attacking the blank page, executing vision, finding the importance of contemplation, fighting the battle with resistance, and learning from your failures.Blank pages be gone!Read UNTITLED and get ready to fill those suckers with good and meaningful work.