Fifty Key Theatre Designers looks at the history of theatrical scenography by examining the work and contributions of fifty ground-breaking set, costume, lighting, and projection designers since the Renaissance. Developments of scenic design are traced from the introduction of perspective painting to create illusionistic scenery in Renaissance Italy to the use of digital projection in the twenty-first century. The book also discusses important landmarks in the evolution of costume and lighting design, as well as the introduction of film and video technology to stage design. A broad range of work is explored, including opera, dance, Broadway and West End commercial theatre, avant-garde performance, and even Olympic spectacles. Each chapter features one designer, including basic biographical information and a discussion of that artist’s style, aesthetics, and contributions. Designers covered include Sebastiano Serlio, Ferdinando Bibiena, Richard Wagner, Adolphe Appia, and Edward Gordon Craig, amongst many other notable individuals. Each chapter also includes references to other significant designers with similar aesthetics or who made similarly important contributions to the development of that aspect of scenography. This book is ideal for undergraduates and graduates of scenography, theatrical design, and theatre history.

Discusses each director's key productions, ideas and rehearsal methods, combining theory and practice.

This volume in the Routledge Key Guides series provides a round-up of the fifty musicals whose creations were seminal in altering the landscape of musical theater discourse in the English-speaking world. Each entry summarises a show, including a full synopsis, discussion of the creators' process, show's critical reception, and its impact on the landscape of musical theater. This is the ideal primer for students of musical theater – its performance, history, and place in the modern theatrical world – as well as fans and lovers of musicals.

This expanded second edition of Contemporary European Theatre Directors is an ambitious and unprecedented overview of many of the key directors working in European theatre over the past 30 years. This book is a vivid account of the vast range of work undertaken in European theatre during the last three decades, situated lucidly in its artistic, cultural, and political context. Each chapter discusses a particular director, showing the influences on their work, how it has developed over time, its reception, and the complex relation it has with its social and cultural context. The volume includes directors living and working in Italy, Germany, France, Spain, Poland, Russia, Romania, the UK, Belgium, Switzerland, and the Netherlands, offering a broad and international picture of the directing landscape. Now revised and updated, Contemporary European Theatre Directors is an ideal text for both undergraduate and postgraduate directing students, as well as those researching contemporary theatre practices, providing a detailed guide to the generation of directors whose careers were forged and tempered in the changing Europe following the end of the Cold War.

The subject of this book is theatre directing in four internationally famous instances. The four directors—Konstantin Stanislavsky, Bertolt Brecht, Elia Kazan, and Peter Brook—all were monarchs of the profession in their time. Without their work, theatre in the twentieth century—so often called "the century of the director" —would have a radically different shape and meaning. The four men are also among the dozen or so modern directors whose theatrical achievements have become culture phenomena. In histories, theories, hagiographies, and polemics, these directors are conferred classic stature, as are the four plays on which they worked. Chekhov's The Seagull, Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children, and Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire have long been recognized, in the theatre and in the study, as masterpieces. They are anthologized, quoted, taught, parodied, read, and produced constantly and globally. The culturally conservative might question the presence of MaratiSade in such august company, but Peter Weiss's play stands every chance of figuring in Western repertories, classroom study, and theatrical histories until well into the twenty-first century. In their quite different ways, these are all classics of that Western drama which is part of our immediate heritage.

A vital and comprehensive starting place for understanding the key concepts, this book explores 177 diverse types and styles of listening named in academic scholarship to date. This book is an encyclopaedic-style synthesis of existing literature related to listening styles and types. Through online academic resource curation and literature review synthesis, this key reference work offers a deep dive into the interdisciplinary foundations of listening. By providing a brief descriptive overview of each of the identified listening styles and types as well as the inclusion of key scholars related to them, this book challenges assumptions about “listening” as a singular communicative activity and offers students and scholars alike a place from which to draw key listening concepts. No other text has attempted to bring together previous listening scholarship in this expansive interdisciplinary way. This book promotes both the field of listening itself while also expanding opportunities for students of many disciplines to embed listening scholarship in their knowledge and practical application. The first of its kind, Listening: The Key Concepts is an expansive, state-of the-field exploration of listening scholarship that can be used as a guidebook for undergraduate and graduate students in Listening, Public Speaking, Interpersonal Communication, and Intercultural Communication courses as well as other related disciplines.