Suzuki is Japan's best-known director. He has been internationally acclaimed for his postmodern adaptations of classics by Nanboku, Euripides, Shakespeare and Chekhov since the 1970s, including The Trojan Women, King Lear and Three Sisters and, equally, for his powerful actor training system, which combines elements of Noh and Kabuki with Western realism. Inviting artists from around the world to perform at his Toga and Shizuoka International Festivals, Suzuki has fostered productive exchanges with Jean-Louis Barrault, Robert Wilson, Kanze Hisao, Ashikawa Yoko and numerous others. This 2004 book traces Suzuki's rise from Little Theatre director to international festival celebrity, links his unique Surrealist dramaturgy with his intercultural training system, and gives in-depth descriptions of his most acclaimed productions.

For over forty years, Tadashi Suzuki has been a unique and vital force in both Japanese and Western theater, creating and directing many internationally acclaimed productions including his famous production of The Trojan Women, which subsequently toured around the world. An intergral part of his work has been the development and teaching of his rigorous and controversial training system, the Suzuki method, whose principles have also been highly influential in contemporary theater. Paul Allain, an experienced practitioner of the Suzuki method, re-evaluates Suzuki's work, giving a lucid overview of his development towards an international theater aesthetic. He examines Suzuki's collaborators, the importance of architecture and environment in his theater and his impact on performance all over the world. The Art of Stillness is a lively, critical study of one of the most important and uncompromising figures in contemporary world theater.

A useful, provocative introduction to the influential director's philosophical and practical approaches to the stage.

A lively, critical study of one of the most important innovators, thinkers and directors in contemporary world theatre: Tadashi Suzuki. This book explores Suzuki's theatre practice and contains accompanying video content with practical Suzuki Method actor-training examples. For over forty years Tadashi Suzuki has been a unique and vital force in both Japanese and Western theatre, creating and directing many internationally acclaimed productions including his most famous production, The Trojan Women, which toured throughout the world. Dr Paul Allain, an experienced practitioner of the Suzuki Method, re-evaluates Suzuki's work, his development towards an international theatre aesthetic and his impact on performance all over the world. The accompanying video content covers an actor training session (featuring both novices and an experienced practitioner with over ten years of Suzuki training) showing the physical moves. "Captures aspects of Suzuki's work with an insider's grasp of theatre-making - an informative and inspirational read" From the foreword by Katie Mitchell.

Explores Suzuki's theatre practice and contains a DVD with practical Suzuki Method actor-training examples.

Anne Bogart is an award-winning theatre maker, and a best-selling writer of books about theatre, art, and cultural politics. In this her latest collection of essays she explores the story-telling impulse, and asks how she, as a ‘product of postmodernism’, can reconnect to the primal act of making meaning and telling stories. She also asks how theatre practitioners can think of themselves not as stagers of plays but ‘orchestrators of social interactions’ and participants in an on-going dialogue about the future. We dream. And then occasionally we attempt to share our dreams with others. In recounting our dreams we try to construct a narrative... We also make stories out of our daytime existence. The human brain is a narrative creating machine that takes whatever happens and imposes chronology, meaning, cause and effect... We choose. We can choose to relate to our circumstances with bitterness or with openness. The stories that we tell determine nothing less than personal destiny. (From the introduction) This compelling new book is characteristically made up of chapters with one-word titles: Spaciousness, Narrative, Heat, Limits, Error, Politics, Arrest, Empathy, Opposition, Collaboration and Sustenance. In addition to dipping into neuroscience, performance theory and sociology, Bogart also recounts vivid stories from her own life. But as neuroscience indicates, the event of remembering what happened is in fact the creation of something new.

The Viewpoints is a technique of improvisation that grew out of the postmodern dance world. It was first articulated by choreographer Mary Overlie, who broke down the two dominant issues performers deal with—space and time—into six categories. Since that time, directors Anne Bogart and Tina Landau have expanded her notions and adapted them for actors to function together spontaneously and intuitively and to generate bold, theatrical work. The Viewpoints are a set of names given to certain principles of movement through time and space—they constitute a language for talking about what happens on stage. Coupling this with Composition, which is the practice of selecting and arranging the separate components of theatrical language into a cohesive work of art, provides theatre artists with an important new tool for creating and understanding their art form. Primarily intended for the many theatre artists who, in the last several years, have become intrigued with Viewpoints yet have had no single source to refer to in their investigations. It can also be used by anyone with a general interest in collaboration and the creative process, whether in art, business or daily life. Anne Bogart is Artistic Director of the SITI Company, which she founded with Japanese director Tadashi Suzuki in 1992. She is the recipient of two OBIE Awards and a Bessie Award, and is an associate professor at Columbia University. Her recent works include Alice’s Adventures; Bobrauschenbergamerica; Small Lives, Big Dreams; Marathon Dancing; and The Baltimore Waltz. Tina Landau, noted director and playwright, whose original work includes Space (Time magazine 10 Best), Dream True (with composer Ricky Ian Gordon) and Floyd Collins (with composer Adam Guettel), which received the Lucille Lortel Award for Best Musical, an OBIE Award and seven Drama Desk nominations. She has been an ensemble member of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company since 1997.