About the Book
This brief version of Cohen’s best-selling text uses equal measures of appreciation of theatrical arts and descriptions of the collaborative theatrical crafts to introduce students to the performance of drama. The author’s enthusiasm for and knowledge of the current theatre, highlighted by contemporary production shots from around the world, put the students in the front row.
Table of Contents:
Chapter 1: What Is the Theatre? The Theatre BuildingThe Company, or Troupe, of PlayersThe Occupation of TheatreChapter 2: What Is a Play? Classifying PlaysStructureChapter 3: The ActorWhat Is Acting?Becoming an ActorThe Actor’s RoutineThe Actor in LifeChapter 4: The PlaywrightWe Are All PlaywrightsThe Playwright’s CareerLiterary and Nonliterary Aspects of PlaywritingPlaywriting as Event WritingThe Qualities of a Fine PlayThe Playwright’s ProcessThe Playwright’s RewardsContemporary American PlaywrightsChapter 5: Designers and Technicians Theatre ArchitectureSceneryLightingCostumeMakeupSound DesignSpecial EffectsComputer Technologies in Theatre DesignTechnical ProductionChapter 6: The Director The Arrival of the Director: A Historical OverviewDirectional FunctionsThe Training of a DirectorChapter 7: Theatre Traditions: East and West The Origins of TheatreRecorded DramaTheatre in the WestTheatre in the EastThe Theatrical Tradition Today: East and WestChapter 8: The Modern Theatre RealismNaturalismAntirealismChapter 9: The Musical Theatre The Development of the Broadway Musical: America’s ContributionThe Contemporary MusicalChapter 10: Theatre Today – What, Who, and Where?What’s Happening?Who’s Doing Today’s Theatre?Theatre of Today: Where Can You Find It?Conclusions on the Current Theatre?Chapter 11: The Critic Critical Perspectives Critical FocusWe Are the CriticsAppendix: Writing on TheatreGlossarySelected BibliographyIndex
About the Author :
ROBERT COHEN was the founding chair Drama at the University of California at Irvine, where he continues to serve as the department's Claire Trevor Professor of Drama. He has also been a resident acting teacher at the Actors Center in New York, the Shanghai Theatre Academy, the Korean National Arts University, and the national theatre academies of Hungary, Finland, and Estonia. He is an accomplished stage director, scholar, playwright, drama critic, and teacher. A director by training (Doctor of Fine Arts, Yale Drama School), Cohen has staged thirteen professional productions at the Utah and Colorado Shakespeare Festivals, plus well over a hundred productions at Stages Theatre Center (Hollywood), Virginia Museum Theatre (Richmond), Theatre 40 (Beverly Hills), Image Theatre (Boston), Summer Repertory Theatre (Santa Rosa), the Medieval Drama Project (Irvine), the Manhattan Theatre Source, various universities, and several operas, videos and films. In addition to Theatre and Theatre: Brief Edition, he is also the author of many theatre books, including Acting One, Advanced Acting, Acting in Shakespeare, Acting Professionally, Acting Power, More Power to You, Giraudoux: Three Faces of Destiny, Creative Play Direction, and two dramatic anthologies. His essays have appeared in Theatre Journal, Theatre Topics, Theatre Forum, Theatre Survey, Modern Drama, Theater der Zeit, Essays in Theatre, On Stage Studies, The Drama Review, Contemporary Literature, Contemporary Literary Criticism, Slavic and East European Performance, Experiment and Innovation, and Dramatic Theory and Criticism. Cohen's play, The Prince, published by Dramatic Publishing Company, has been professionally produced in Long Beach, Pittsburgh, Budapest, and in staged readings in New York and Los Angeles; his dramatic translations (The Bourgeois Gentleman, The Misanthrope, Clizia, Tibi's Law) and opera translations (The Magic Flute, Carmen) have been both produced and published widely. For the past twenty years, Cohen has been the Southern California drama critic for Plays International, reviewing over two hundred plays. In 1999, he received the national Career Achievement award from ATHE - the Association for Theatre in Higher Education.
