Anne Bogart

A Director Prepares is a thought-provoking examination of the challenges of making theatre. In it, Anne Bogart speaks candidly and with wisdom of the courage required to create 'art with great presence'.
Each chapter tackles one of the seven major areas Bogart has identified as both potential partner and potential obstacle to art-making. They are Violence; Memory; Terror; Eroticism; Stereotype; Embarrassment; and Resistance. Each one can be used to generate extraordinary creative energy, if show more we know how to use it. show less

While the content is excellently written, in order to do all of the material you would need a ridiculous amount of time. A portion of the guide should have been sample workshops and more options of exercises to cut due to rehearsal time.

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 show more 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. show less

Amazon: Bogart (directing, Columbia Univ.) is the artistic director of the SITI Company, an ensemble-based theater company that she founded with Tadshi Suzuki. Her book is aimed at the practitioner but has value for the avid theater goer as well. What we see on stage, as a whole, is a culmination of bits and pieces, steps forward and backward, as a work of "art" is created and then presented. In each essay, Bogart discusses one of seven concepts violence, memory, terror, eroticism, show more stereotype, embarrassment, and resistance that can work as an obstruction or catalyst to this creative process. The concepts themselves are thought-provoking, and Bogart's text is even more so. For Bogart, these concepts incite energy (positive or negative) that both actors and director absorb and radiate. One suspects that the energy acts on the viewer (and reader) as well. show less