No comments about Teaching TV Production in a Digital World: Integrating Media Literacy Student Workbook Second Edition.

No comments about The Master Builder and Other Plays (Classics).

5 comments about Anne Bogart: Viewpoints (Career Development Series).

1. These are supposed to be reviews of Viewpoints, the book about Bogart's technique. Some of you are reviewing A Director Prepares (which I recommend more). Don't get mixed up. They're very different texts.



2. Having been introduced to the concept of "Viewpoints" in a weekend directing workshop, I was eager to read more about it. After reading this book, I know less about "Viewpoints" than before I started. If you're looking for an insight into how Anne Bogart works (and she very well may be very talented - I don't know, as I've never seen one of her productions) you won't find it here. There is much discussion about "the Viewpoints" and referrences to "the Viewpoints" and even definitions of "the Viewpoints", but as far as what Anne Bogart does WITH "the Viewpoints" I have no idea. One reviewer is correct - this book is a love story, written by people who think that Anne Bogart is the Messiah of Modern, er Postmodern Theatre. If you're looking to join in the lovefest, by all means, sign up. If you're looking for insights into how to work "the Viewpoints" into your work...you'll be disappointed.



3. I hadn't intended to respond, but when I read the review below I felt I must try to explain NY reader's misconception about Anne Bogart and her attitude toward the audience. In the opening essay of this book, Bogart retells one of her first experiences with the theatre: she was fifteen years old, and she attended a production of Macbeth at the Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, Rhode Island. She writes that she was confused and disoriented by the language and staging, but that she left the theatre with a realization that she follows to this day: "Never talk down to the audience. It was immediately clear to me that the experience of theatre was not about us understanding the meaning of the play or the significance of the staging." Instead, she was able to experience the play "directly, in a visceral and fantastic manner."

   So, yes... Bogart does insinuate that the audience won't understand every play she directs--but she doesn't say this contemptuously. Even now, Bogart admits that she is often confused by productions she sees, and she writes that this feeling of confronting the unexpected and confusing is essential to quality theatre. She acknowledges that not everyone in the audience will understand because not every human can understand everything; indeed, not even one human can understand everything.

   The opportunity to reach beyond your boundaries, to traverse places where you aren't entirely comfortable--that is one of the greatest assets of the theatre. And that devotion to the challenge of understanding characterizes every aspect of Anne Bogart's work. Bogart is an intelligent, creative, talented director--and this book is an excellent introduction to her poignant process.




4. I know Anne well and was curious to read this book. Obviously, everyone who wrote for this book loves her, so the book is basically a love story, about people who love Anne and why they love her work. Too bad. So many of her productions have been failures; so much of her work is over the heads of the general audience. Too many people love her work without understanding what it means; they love the energy but miss the message. Why? Anne admits it herself, her ultimate failure: she believes her audience is beneath her, that it is her duty to correct her audience's limited view of the theater. Anne, when are you going to start making plays for your audience rather than for yourself?



5. This short book gives a view into the methods of Anne Bogarts visionary style. Although no book can do Ms. Bogart justice, VIEWPOINTS allows readers to understand how her presence is effecting American contemporary theater. Her compassion, love for theater, and energy pervade every essay. Ms. Bogart's work is in line with Brecht and Stanislavski and this book is an insight into her brilliance.

No comments about Stage Management: A Gentle Art (Theatre Arts (Routledge Paperback)).

No comments about Goldoni: Volume Two.

2 comments about Grand-Guignol: The French Theatre of Horror (UEP - Exeter Performance Studies).

1. In researching the genre, I was pointed to this book in several references. Although the wealth of full scripts is a plus, the scholarly portion relies too frequently on other sources (end notes galore) to be of any first-hand value. The authors cite Gordon's "Grand Guignol" with frequency...however, not frequent enough for me to shell out the ninety bucks it's going for these days!



2. This book proves that Hollywood writers and directors weren't the ones who invented Horror, it was the Grand Guignol theatre and its playwrights.

No comments about Forms of Being: Cinema, Aesthetics, Subjectivity.

2 comments about La Boheme (Opera Classics Library Series) (Opera Classics Library).

1. I would like to recommend this because the series is beautifully produced and readable, and the musical examples illuminating. I just purchased the libretto of The Girl of the Golden West, in this series, which seemed to me well worth the money.
   
   The librettists of La Boheme, Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, were not hacks, but accomplished playwrights. They didn't write colloquial Italian but a hightened poetic Latinate Italian prose that requires a certain attentiveness and learning on the part of the audience. In fact, it is in large part the ineffable poetry of the libretto of La Boheme that makes it so supremely moving. Unfortunately, the translation here is highly inadequate. If one is going to make wild guesses as to what words mean why have a libretto at all?
   
   For example, "Importuna" does not mean "unfortunate" but "importunate" (troublesome). "La luna l'abbiam vicina" does not mean "We have the moon as our neighbor" but "we have the moon close by." "Scialgo da gran signore" does not mean "I climb a ladder" but "I squander like a great lord" (i.e., am as extravagant as a lord.") And so on.
   
   In an opera where words matter, such errors are inexusable. Burton D. Fisher or whoever is responsible should at least use a dictionary for EVERY WORD and also consult other, more accurate translations (of which there must be hundreds) or consign the task of translation to someone who knows the language (and perhaps has a classical background) and have a native speaker double check it.
   
   I gave the book 2 stars instead of one because the production is good. Please, publishers, withdraw this edition right away and do another, better one.



2. La Boheme in all its glory. Full libretto with history of the story and music excerpts...original Italian text beside English translation. Easy to follow, great translation. For anyone who loves this opera...or RENT for that matter--this is a must have, or at the very least, a must-read. This is a fantastic piece of literature and a landmark theatre piece. This book captures the spendor of the opera well.

No comments about Acting Like a Pro: Who's Who, What's What, and the Way Things Really Work in the Theatre.

2 comments about Jacob's Ladder (Applause Screenplay Series).

1. Jacob's Ladder is one of my all time favourite films and this screenplay is the perfect piece of paraphernalia for collectors and fans of the movie. Initially I bought this just as a sign of devotion to this movie but was impressed by the content of the book. There is an introduction and notes by Bruce Joel Rubin which give great insight into the politics of producing this movie. The script is also interlaced with hundreds of beautiful black and white photographs, and we are also treated to the script of a number of deleted scenes, including alternate endings. Perhaps the most fascinating part of this book is the original Buddhist ending, which initially was to represent a kind of "zen" moment for Jacob, but was deemed pretty much impossible to produce, hence leading to the current ending.
   
   Overall, a very worthwhile companion to one of the finest, scariest, most beautiful and most underrated movies ever made.



2. It's difficult to say too much about the insights given in this book without creating spoilers for the movie.

   Bruce's description of the evolution of the script and the basic story content, such as Jacob's Book of the Dead journey of the soul, including the inspiration for some of the stark gothic imagery, is enormously helpful for any fan of the movie.

   I found the movie to be very uplifting, and in its own way, quite beautiful. There are many excellent and representative photos to accompany the full script and Bruce's superb descriptive rundown on JL which he calls Jacob's Chronicle.

   This book would be very helpful for anybody who was confused by the movie or parts of the movie, yet who would like to understand more.

   The only minor blips in the script concern the Vietnam scenes. One point is that (in my copy anyway) he refers to a Field Hospital, yet a soldier in Jacob's shape would have been Dusted Off (air medevaced) to either a Surgical Hospital or an Evacuation Hospital (possibly having gone through the Battalion Surgeon's Forward Aid Station first.) In Nam, the Field Hospital was a larger, longer term care facility, which was more remote from likely action (despite its misleading name.)

   There is also a memo from Adrian Lyne stating that the movie is set in 1975, "three years after the end of the Vietnam War". The war officially ended in April 1973.

   The only other Nam technicality was that where Bruce refers to "two Orderlies" in the script, the men would have actually been Corpsmen (a form of Medic.)

   Great movie, powerful ending. Read all about it.