Reddit mentions: The best performing arts history books

The Power of the Playwright's Vision by Gordon Farrell: I have the privilege of being able to learn from Gordon Farrell directly this year (he is, among other things, a professor at NYU's Dept. of Dramatic Writing) and I cannot endorse his genius enough. His understanding of the techniques and mechanisms that playwrights use in their craft is mind-boggling, and they're catalogued in this book in a surprisingly digestible way. The best thing about this book is that it isn't prescriptive; Farrell doesn't tell you "this is how you write a naturalist play" or "this is where you would always put a reversal." Rather, he familiarizes you with all the tools you can use to write an effective script and how to combine them. To me, this is as good as it gets.

Three Uses of the Knife by David Mamet: This is a slightly more controversial (and much shorter) text, in which famed playwright David Mamet sits down and tells you what it's all about, man. It's rather rambly, and some people say it's contradictory, but I absolutely love the way he breaks down dramatic technique in informal ways. It's tangential and a bit of a mess at times, but you get a sense of why Mamet's plays are so damn good. Farrell's guide you understand rationally, this one you just experience.

Those are my two favorites, and I highly recommend you read both.

EDIT: Forgot about a very important piece of information that you probably already know but that I'll toss in regardless. Reading books on playwriting is a good way to get better, but the best way to get better is to write more plays. There is no better teacher than experience (read: catastrophic failure). Yes, reading books is a great way to understand the techniques and basic structure you can use, but don't cling to the things you read about. Martin McDonagh--arguably today's most successful playwright--came to prominence by writing plays that actually disrespected theatrical convention through his elaborate staging and action sequences (smashing skulls with hammers, shooting cats, shooting an oven with a shotgun). He didn't study classical playwriting techniques, he watched a lot of movies and read Jorge Luis Borges and brought that to the stage.

Basically what I'm saying is: finding your voice is worth a great deal more than learning the "right" way to write.

From the article:

" this Halloween is like every Halloween of the last two or so decades, at least one white college student or minor celebrity will arrive at a party wearing dark-brown face paint as part of a costume imitating a famous black person, photos of the incident will emerge on the Internet, and condemnations will rain down from authority figures.

In recent years, Facebook surveillors discovered and publicized photos of six University of Southern Mississippi students who colored their white skin to depict the Huxtable family from The Cosby Show, two Northwestern University students who painted themselves coal-black and dressed as Bob Marley and Serena Williams, Raffi Torres of the Phoenix Coyotes and his wife dressed and darkened as Jay-Z and Beyoncé, and a blonde Dallas Cowboys cheerleader appearing at a costume event as the rapper Lil' Wayne, complete with gold teeth, long black braids, tattoos, and chocolate-brown makeup covering her body.

As with all blackface performers since the civil rights era, charges against the latest range from insensitivity to outright racism. But virtually all critics of blackface agree that, as the Northwestern University president put it, the practice "demeans a segment of our community."

Some recent instances of blackface were obviously and viciously hostile toward African Americans. A photo of a 2001 Halloween party at the University of Mississippi showed a white student dressed as a policeman holding a gun to the head of another, who was wearing blackface and a straw hat while kneeling and picking cotton. A year later, two fraternity brothers at Oklahoma State were photographed wearing Ku Klux Klan robes and holding a noose over the head of another sporting black face paint and a striped prisoner's uniform.

But while blackface is nearly always assumed to be anti-black, the most common charge against contemporary blackface performers is that they are ignorant of its meaning and history—that they don't "know" that it's necessarily bigoted—which suggests that their intentions were not in fact hostile.

In fact, blackface performances are not always unambiguously antagonistic toward African Americans. Several scholars of the phenomenon have argued that blackface has usually been, to some degree, an expression of envy and an unconscious rebellion against what it means to be "white." There is substantial evidence that this was especially true in the first half of the 19th century, when white men first painted their faces with burnt cork and imitated slaves on stage in what were called "minstrel" shows.

Some early blackface minstrel performance was clearly little more than anti-black parody, but many historians see the songs and dances of T.D. Rice, Dan Emmett, Dan Rice (Abraham Lincoln's favorite), and other originators of the genre as expressions of desire for the freedoms they saw in the culture of slaves. "Just as the minstrel stage held out the possibility that whites could be 'black' for awhile but nonetheless white," David Roediger, the leading historian of "whiteness," has written, "it offered the possibilities that, via blackface, preindustrial joys could survive amidst industrial discipline." Similarly, the Smith College scholar W.T. Lhamon argues that slave culture represented liberation to blackface performers and fans, who "unmistakably expressed fondness for black wit and gestures." In early blackface minstrel shows, whites identified with blacks as representations of all the freedoms and pleasures that employers, moral reformers, and churches "were working to suppress."

The latest addition to this revision of our understanding of blackface is Yuval Taylor and Jake Austen's book Darkest America: Black Minstrelsy From Slavery to Hip-Hop. The authors focus on the many, largely unknown, African Americans who performed in blackface from before the Civil War to the middle of the 20th century, but they also rescue white blackface performance from the simplistic moralizing that normally greets it. "If you dismiss [minstrelsy] as simply 'demeaning,'" they write, "you miss half the picture."

Taylor and Austen's book is an encyclopedic record of not only the black performers who coaled their faces but also of the minstrelsy's many contributions to what is now considered respectable popular culture: "If we were to throw out every song originally composed for the minstrel stage, every joke first uttered by painted minstrel lips, every performer who blackened up, every dance step developed for the olio (variety) portion of a minstrel show, our entertainment coffers might seem bare." They show that much of American music, dance, and comedy originated in an art form that was "wildly popular with black audiences" but is now reflexively dismissed as mere racism. For whites, they argue, minstrelsy offered the opportunity to indulge in a "carefree life liberated from oppression, responsibilities, and burdens"; and for blacks it represented freedom as well. "Despite the appearance of minstrelsy as a servile tradition, there were elements ofliberation in it from its very beginning, and these were instrumental to its popularity."

The enormous popularity of blackface in the 19th century cannot be explained without understanding that it coincided with a period in American culture in which Puritan values merged with Victorian ideas about work, leisure, sex, and emotional expression. Nineteenth-century children's books, school primers, newspaper editorials, poems, pamphlets, sermons, and political speeches told Americans that work in itself was a virtue, regardless of what one gained from it materially. European visitors frequently commented on what they called the American "disease of work." Typical was a popular textbook of the time, which instructed children that "Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do."

There was no such idea of work as godly in Africa, nor among American slaves. According to the African-American social scientist W.E.B. DuBois, the slave "was not as easily reduced to be the mechanical draft-horse which the northern European laborer became. He was not easily brought to recognize any ethical sanctions in work as such but tended to work as the results pleased him and refused to work or sought to refuse when he did not find the spiritual returns adequate; thus he was easily accused of laziness and driven as a slave when in truth he brought to modern manual labor a renewed valuation of life."

​

​

Scene Design and Stage Lighting is an often-used text-book from what I can tell. I have an old version myself, but can't attest to the current version. Design and Drawing for the Theatre is also an old standby (and denser), though it appears it's out of print.

If you want something lighter and less expensive, perhaps Fundamentals of Theatrical Design or An Introduction to Theatre Design, though they aren't limited to just scenery. I haven't read the former, but the I've taught from the latter in an intro to design course. It's rather light, but that can be good for a first book.

You can also go the more theoretical route, and pick up the classic Dramatic Imagination by Robert Edmund Jones. What is Scenography? and Scenographic Imagination are chock-full of great theoretical discussion for the long term, but not suited for your first dip into the pool. Might be worth bookmarking for down the road, though.

And sometimes it's good to just have a survey of other's work. American Set Design isn't a bad place to start for that. I recently picked up World Scenography, and while I haven't had the chance to sit down extensively with it, it's a gorgeous book.

This is of course just going from scene design, there's also options out there about the history of design, useful technical handbooks for the craft, or even more specific things like model-making.

If you're already generally familiar with theater and roughly understand the production process, maybe grab one of the two in the first paragraph. If you're coming in completely fresh, starting with one of the cheaper super-introductory books in the second paragraph might be better to ease in. If you have the funds, I'd suggest one from each paragraph. Perhaps others in this sub have more specific choices they feel are definitively superior than other options.

Also, I'm guessing your university may not have a design professor, but you might suggest an independent study in scene design as a course. Hope this helps!

>Photograph of a mini children's' train parked in front of a Trans-Texas Theater that was located at 5601 North Lamar Boulevard. The engine of the train has an illustration of a Native American in a headdress, and each of the cars behind it have various animal illustrations on them. A road can be seen behind the train, part of which leads behind a sign for the drive-in theater that stands tall in the background. A light colored vehicle can be seen parked on the road beside the sign.

source

It seems like most people have heard of the old Burnet Drive In Theater that is now the site of a public storage lot. I thought today I would share a bit of what's on the internet about some other less-remembered Austin drive in theaters. We start at the beginning. If you look closely in the bonus pics from last week's historypost of mine showing the Austin Daily Tribune Building's construction at 9th and Colorado streets in the early 1940s, Bonus Pic #3 from last week shows something peculiar in the foreground (besides being misdated as 1949, it was really 1940). You can just make out the name on the marquee: 'Bell Air Dome'.

From 1913 to 1924, during at a time when the Paramount Theater downtown was still called The Majestic, this Bell Air Dome place was Austin's first open air theater, right there at 9th and Colorado across from the Governor's Mansion. I don't know much about this place to tell ya'll but cinematreasures.com has an old, small news clipping saved about it. This was not a true drive in theater, though, because it was at a time when cars hadn't yet fully proliferated throughout society.

According to Wikipedia the first true drive in theater in America (with the speakers in the parking lot) was opened in 1933 in New Jersey. It took another 7 years for the first one to open in Austin. Again according to cinematreasures (who I will be depending on for most of the links today) this place, at 6600. N. Lamar
(then called Dallas Highway) was the first one. It's a bit confusing, however, because if you will notice that address is awfully similar to the address in the OP, 5600 N. Lamar. What's up with that? I can't say for sure, although the cinematreasures listing for Chief Drive In both agrees with and contradicts the notion that they were different theaters. The two entries have different topographical maps, but they are both listed as being "Joseph's Drive In" and "North Austin Drive In" at different points. In any event, whether renamed or brand new, the Chief Drive-In Theater opened in 1947. The short history on the site goes on:

>The Chief Drive-In was opened in September 19, 1947 by Charles Ezell & Associates. The opening movie was Joel McRea in “The Virginian”. It was Austin’s oldest drive-in. In 1964 the screen was resurfaced and a twin box-office was built, plus a new marquee and remodeled concession area. The Chief Drive-In parked 814 cars and was a Trans-Texas Theatre. It was closed on July 24, 1973 with Charlton Heston in “Soylent Green” & Charlton Heston in “Skyjacked”.

If I may digress for a moment, there was another sort of drive-in right next door to there at 5534 N. Lamar around this time period, the Stallion Drive-Inn Restaurant. The Statesman recently had a couple of recent good writeups on the place that tell the story probably better than I ever could with quotes from people who were there.

You will notice that the cinematreasures article on the Chief mentions that it was once called the North Austin Drive in(whether the same location or not) and that there was also a South Austin Drive In. If you thought things were confusing before, just wait... When the Chief opened in the North Austin slot, so too, according to this newspaper clipping did the Montopolis Drive in theater. This place, like the Chief, apparently is the source of some small historynerd controversy today over where exactly it was. Apparently there is some confusion between this place and the Fiesta Drive In at Riverside Dr. and Montopolis Rd. which opened in the 1960s. A comment on the cinematreasures listing for Montopolis Drive In says the following:

>A 1954 aerial does not show a drive-in anywhere near the address which is currently listed.

>However, there was a drive-in that was at 7201 Levander Loop, Austin, TX. It was near the old Bastrop Highway on the north side of the Colorado River which seems to be the Montopolis Drive-In. By 1965, the drive-in had been demolished. Since then, the highway has changed and the Levander Loop is now the road which sits next to the property.

>Today, the property is occupied by a charging station and the Austin Animal Center.

The cinematreasures listing for Fiesta Drive In backs that up:

>Located at 1601 Montopolis Drive to the north of the junction with E. Riverside Drive. The Fiesta Drive-In was opened on August 4, 1964. From August 4, 1967 it was playing Mexican movies in Spanish. It was closed in 1979.

These were not the only drive in theaters in the Austin area. Let's go over a full list with cinematreasures links.

* Burnet Drive In - 6400 Burnet Road

* Fiesta Drive In - 1601 Montopolis Drive (at E. Riverside)

* Monotpolis/SouthAustin Drive In - 7201 Levander Loop

* Chief/NorthAustin/Joseph's Drive In - 5600 N Lamar (possibly the same as NorthAustin/ Drive In at 6600 N Lamar)

* Showtime USA Drive In - 8801 Cameron Road (at Rutherford Ln., now a car dealership)

* Southside Twin Drive In - 710 E. Ben White Boulevard (now the site of a Wal Mart)

* Rebel Drive In - 6902 Burleson Road (across from BergstromAFB/ABIA, mostly remembered as a porn theater)

* Longhorn Drive In - 108 Anderson Lane (lot is now office buildings, a hotel, and an apartment complex)

* Delwood Drive In - 3909 N. Interstate 35 Frontage Road (now the Fiesta grocery store, across from original Delwood Shopping Center)


There is a great book about all the history of all Austin cinemas, movieplexes, and drive ins down at the library or perhaps at your local bookseller that could probably answer a few of these small history mysteries. It's called Historic Moviehouses of Austin by Susan Rittereiser and Michael C. Miller. I have not read it myself but it's on my to-read list. If anyone here has already read it and has some answers to these or other similar mysteries, please speak in comments!

To my knowledge there are a couple of new drive in theaters that have opened in the past few years. Blue Star Mini Urban Drive In does what they can on a blow-up screen, and then I heard there is a new place called Doc's Drive In located in Buda. If you know of others, tell us about them!

The UNT archive does not have a lot of other pics of Austin drive ins. I will include the few cheezy other shots they have. That cinema treasures site has many more highly relevant but lower quality pics for the individual theater locations. They don't just have drive ins on that site either, but also many other well-remembered long gone Austin theaters, such as The Fox, The Americana, The Texas, The Varsity, The Aquarius IV, and The Mann Westgate 3 theaters, and then after that even more historic ones I don't have space to list.

Bonus Pic #1 - "Photograph of a mini train for children at theater located at 5601 North Lamar Boulevard. On the the engine where the conductor sits, an illustration of a Native American with a headdress can be seen painted on the side. Four children of varying ages can be seen riding in the cars of the train, which have animal cutouts placed on them for decoration. A train tunnel with a field beyond it can be seen in the back ground, and crossing signal light can be seen to the right" - November 4, 1961

Bonus Pic #2 - Night shot of a movie playing at Burnet Drive In - July 7, 1954

Bonus Pic #3 - Another night shot of a movie playing at Burnet Drive In - July 7, 1954

Bonus Pic #4 - Blank movie screen at Burnet Drive In in daytime, chairs in front - July 7, 1954

P.S. According to comments on the cinematrasures site the Children's Train in the OP was named "Toots". Toots the train.

I wanted to do a theatre EE originally, but I ended up doing an English Lit EE. Why? Because I wanted to explore contextual work (i.e. Waiting for Godot ) and about how its themes were represented in the text. While this sounds like a theatre EE it is technically an English EE because I was exploring the text itself and not the production of Waiting for Godot since different directors may choose something different for the text.

Idk what you want your EE to be specifically about, but if it's about studying the play through the text, it's better off as an english EE.

If you want to write an EE about theatre in specific (e.g. how proxemics influence a character's story arc, or how lighting affects moods of scene or whatever) then a theatre EE would be optimal.

In IB Theatre, a lot of emphasis is placed on the 'creative process' which is fancy way of saying 'how did you come up with this original theatre?'. A very low scoring answer would be 'i saw it online lol' while a higher scoring one would be along the lines of 'I experimented with different ideas of presenting this topic, and I asked a bunch of people what they thought and worked from there." Honestly, IB theatre isnt a great place to start for an EE in theatre unless your EE is specifically about a creative process. If you really need something to work off of, you could read this book by Frantic assembly about their own creative process. Maybe it'll spark your interest which you can then bring to your supervisor. Here's the link -->
https://www.amazon.com/Frantic-Assembly-Book-Devising-Theatre/dp/1138777005/ref=dp_ob_title_bk

have fun with your EE!

A friend of mine recommended this book for me a few months back, and I found it to be incredibly informative and entertaining: Black Broadway: African Americans on the Great White Way by Stewart F. Lane. It has a lot of fascinating information and includes a lot of really cool pictures.

Other recommendations I have (which are great for anyone who wants to learn more about the Theater history in New York City) include: Lost Broadway Theaters by Nicholas van Hoogstraten, Music in German Immigrant Theater: New York City, 1840-1940 by John Koegel, It Happened on Broadway: An Oral History of the Great White Way by Myrna Katz Frommer, and Razzle Dazzle: The Battle for Broadway by Michael Riedel.

I hope some of those recommendations pique your interest. I’m curious, what books would you recommend?

I agree. Your hunger is an incredibly good thing. But you should always be training and stretching If you're interested in some books on technique here's what I've been reading.

A Practical Handbook for the Actor by a bunch of interesting people. It's a practical, repeatable, and analytical way of approaching acting. While it is best practiced in a classroom with a knowledgable instructor, the text is good enough to stand on it's own.

History of the Theatre by Brockett is a longggggg read. But it's detailed and a great perspective on what was happening when in relation to plays. Also you can older editions for way way less.

I'm just now reading Sanford Meisner on Acting and that's been an interesting so far, it has a lot more of a narrative which is enjoyable to read.

Hope any of that helps someone!

Here is your answer, straight from an academic in the field:

"1. Play Between Worlds- TL Taylor
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Play-Between-Worlds-Exploring-Culture/dp/0262512629/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1303123694&sr=8-1
This one is based on a study of Everquest players and might not be relevant if they're interested solely in table top, but it is my all time favourite video game studies book and does have bits on online role play/avatar studies. I've also studied under the author- she's on my FB friends' list too!

2. Dungeons and Desktops by Matt Barton- http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dungeons-Desktops-History-Computer-Role-playing/dp/1568814119/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1303123917&sr=1-1
Historical time line of the development of RPGs- from early baseball stats games post WWII to WoW. Very comprehensive.

3. Shared Fantasy- Gary Alan Fine http://www.amazon.co.uk/Shared-Fantasy-Playing-Social-Worlds/dp/0226249441/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1303124135&sr=1-1
This is probably the text they'd find most useful. Its a bit dated, but it deals with focus groups from D&D players about their experiences.

4. Medieval Fantasy as Performance by Michael A Cramer
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Medieval-Fantasy-Performance-Creative-Anachronism/dp/0810869950/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1303124316&sr=1-1
An account of (somewhat) LARP/ recreation as an expression of social identity."

EDIT: Waaagh!! Bloody reddit and its double-posting tricksiness...

I think there are a lot of good answer in this thread, but i just wanted to add the link to Brecht on Theater, a collection of essays written by Brecht regarding his view of theater.

Also this book 20th Century Theatre which does a good job of boiling down the salient bits from Brecht on Theater, as well as including essays from some of Brecht's actors (e.g., Helene Weigel). This is also a great reference for pretty much everyone of note in 20th Cent. Theater, from Vakhtangov and Mayakovsky, down through Brecht, Grotowski, Peter Brook, etc.

Searching around a little this book looks promising: https://www.amazon.com/Lesbian-Theatrical-Legacy-Pre-Stonewall-Triangulations/dp/047206858X
I would definitely recommend poking around Amazon. Try searching different terms like "queer" "gay" "lesbian" theatre and history of. And I recommend doing the same thing over at half price books: https://www.hpb.com
Best of luck!!

The only other humorous approach to marketing opera that I've come across so far are a few very brief videos by Des Moines Opera. They aren't giving synopses; they're just very short promos that parody specific opera characters ...

http://www.youtube.com/user/DesMoinesMetroOpera/videos


There is also a blog about attractive baritones, which can be amusing. Search for "BariHunks blog".


There is also a handful of humorous books on opera:.

http://www.amazon.com/Tenors-Tantrums-Trills-Opera-Dictionary/dp/0920151191/ref=sr_1_1

http://www.amazon.com/When-Fat-Lady-Sings-History/dp/0920151345/ref=sr_1_6

http://www.amazon.com/Grabbing-Operas-Their-Tales-Liberating/dp/0920151388/ref=sr_1_16


I greatly admire a book by Hector Berlioz that contains a wealth of humor, entitled "Evenings with the Orchestra".

http://www.amazon.com/Evenings-Orchestra-Hector-Berlioz/dp/0226043746/ref=sr_1_1



That's all I've come across.

So the book you're going to want to read is Shakespeare & Co., written by perhaps the preeminent living Shakespeare Scholar, Stanley Wells. It details the careers of the most notable and well-remembered contemporaries of Shakespeare...

Chief amongst them in the collective cultural memory is certainly Christopher Marlowe... His major works - Edward II, Doctor Faustus, and Tamburlaine have proven popular and been well studied next to Shakespeare's fairly since the Restoration. He gets bonus points in that he lived an interesting and mysterious life - there's a very popular theory (the academic bona fides of which I'll leave to more specialized scholars) that he actually worked as a spy for Queen Elizabeth I, which led to his premature death in a "tavern brawl". Whether he was the James Bond of the early modern period or not, it is fairly certain that had he lived long enough to create a larger body of work, he might be a household name today.

The other contemporary of Shakespeare whose name comes up fairly frequently is Thomas Kyd whose ultra-violent and melodramatic The Spanish Tragedy is still regularly produced at universities and Shakespeare theatres.

Also of some significant note is John Fletcher, who succeeded Shakespeare as the resident playwright of The Kings Men, and is thought to have collaborated with The Man Himself on AT LEAST some of his minor works - Two Noble Kinsmen, Henry VIII, and the lost Cardenio, though there is very real academic debate about exactly what hand he may have had in many other pieces traditionally attributed solely to Shax (when someone talks to you about an "authorship question", this - and things like Edward III, Edmund Ironside, etc. - are hopefully what they're talking about. If not, best to move on and not encourage the crazy).

I've been fairly scattershot here and hardly provided a comprehensive overview of the "scene" back in Elizabethan/Jacobean London... the Wells book goes into far greater detail... and if you're still curious I could pull it off the shelf and expand this when I get home from work... but for now, TPS reports await.

Okay, so I'm two months too late to this thread so this might not ever get seen, but you would probably be interested in this book! Fascinating read, I referenced it a lot for my degree. Cool story, I know.

For Chekhov I always start with these photos:
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/08/russia_in_color_a_century_ago.html
And this book (I gave mine to a friend, so now I ask BN to order it and then don't buy it so I can look at it in the store.)
http://www.amazon.com/Anton-Chekhov-Moscow-Theatre-ebook/dp/B000Q36EMO
Wikipedia's entry on Cherry Orchard gives a great place to start for general character analysis.
It's been a long time now, but in Chicago I used to go to the Russian / Slavic neighborhoods and eat at a cafe observing people about the same age of the character I was playing. I did that for Kulygin and Astrov. I believe there are similar neighborhoods in Queens.
Hope this helps! Any other questions, throw them my way :-)

Hello! Nice to meet a fellow art deco enthusiast. As far as books I have this one which is general Oakland https://www.amazon.com/Oakland-Postcard-History-Annalee-Allen/dp/073853014X/ and Theaters of Oakland - https://www.amazon.com/Theatres-Oakland-Jack-Tillmany-ebook/dp/B0099EAJFO/ They have pictures and a lot of interesting facts and descriptions on the buildings. I found them cheaper on booksprice btw. There is also the Art Deco Society which I have not participated in yet but heard good things http://artdecosociety.squarespace.com/ Welcome :D

The best way, in my opinion, to learn more about it is to just do it! Based on your post history, looks like you're in NYC? I personally recommend either the Magnet or UCB. (I've taken classes at both. There's a lot more improv in NYC but I haven't taken classes at them yet!)

EDIT: To learn more about how improv was done by Alan Alda, check out Something Wonderful Right Away or The Second City Almanac of Improvisation.

I quite enjoy Making the Scene. It's just a general history of the craft, but it's a gorgeous book and exceedingly well thought out.

There is a great book called "I'm Dying Up Here' that talks about Steve a lot. He made a movie called "Dante Shocko" that was never released that I would love to see.

It looks like a fictionalized take on the 2010 book I'm Dying Up Here which is a sorta-biography of the origins of The Comedy Store. It's an amazing read.

Two books that I found very helpful:

[The Anatomy of Story by John Truby](https://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Story-
Becoming-Master-Storyteller/dp/0865479933/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1494365551&sr=8-1&keywords=john+truby)

(Also look him up on Youtube: Anatomy Of Story: The Complete Film Courage Interview with John Truby)

and

Three Uses of the Knife by David Mamet

Jerzy Grotowski - Towards a Poor Theatre

Antonin Artaud - The Theatre and Its Double

Bertolt Brecht - Brecht on Theatre

Jacques Ranciere - The Emancipated Spectator

Guy Debord - The Society of the Spectacle

Del Close + Charna Halpern - Truth in Comedy

Extreme Exposure - An Anthology of Solo Performance Texts from the 20th Century

New Downtown Now - An Anthology of New Theatre from Downtown New York

Those books should give you a good introduction to directing in the theatre outside of traditional American realism. Where were you hoping to go to school?

I'm Dying Up Here is a great book about the start of the stand up club industry, specifically the LA scene.

1. Johnny Thompson Commercial Classics of Magic - $140
   
   
2. Michael Ammar Complete Introduction to Coin Magic - $20
   
   
3. Amateur Magician's Handbook - $15
   
   
4. The Collected Almanac - $60, if available
   
   
5. Three Uses for a Knife - $11
   
   
6. Regular Decks Red and Blue - $4/Deck ~8
   
   
7. 6 Kennedy half dollars - $3
   
   
8. 1 Expanded Shell - $35
   
   
9. 1 set of 4 sponge balls - $5
   
   
10. Strong Magic - $35
    
    
11. Tarbell Course in Magic - $168
    
    At this point, total is $500..
    
    
12. Art of Astonishment vol 1-3 - $35/book = $105
    
    
13. Five Points in Magic - $35
    
    
14. Mark Wilson's Complete Course in Magic - $15
    
    
15. Greater Magic - $195
    
    
16. Conjurors Psychological Secrets - $50
    
    
17. Essential Dai Vernon - $98
    
    Instructions to student:
    
    Read and study Three Uses for a Knife and Strong Magic. Notice the theories at work in other forms of media beyond magic.
    
    Watch Johnny Thompson and Ammar vids and observe the theories in practice. Work through Amateur Magician’s Handbook and Ammar vid.
    
    Read Five Points in Magic.
    
    Read Essential Dai Vernon and note how the five points work with those effects.
    
    Read Conjurors Psychological Secrets.
    
    Learn and practice Thompson effects.
    
    Pick and choose through remaining books what you want to learn.
    
    Keep re-reading theory books and modifying your routines.

Three Uses of the Knife - David Mamet

One of my favorites, and pretty heady stuff, but Mamet plays no games when it comes to drama.

It's from the book "Something Wonderful Right Away" by Jeffrey Sweet about the Second City improv group. This quote in particular comes from the founder, Paul Sills.

Edit: Accidentally linked to a review rather than the book.

This is not technically true. There are some texts, like Medieval Fantasy as Performance by Michael Cramer (Valgard Stonecleaver, IIRC).

https://www.amazon.com/Medieval-Fantasy-Performance-Creative-Anachronism/dp/0810869950

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1586488961?ie=UTF8&at=&force-full-site=1&ref_=aw_bottom_links

http://www.amazon.com/Gasping-Airtime-Years-Trenches-Saturday-ebook/dp/B000FC1RF0/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1415255002&sr=1-1&keywords=Jay+mohr

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Sctv

Video: Lessons from the Screenplay’s Black Swan vs Whiplash

Script: Monster

Book: Three Uses of the Knife

Get these books by David Mamet:
Three Uses of The Knife, and True and False: heresay and common sense for the actor

I think some people get confused by what blackface is on both sides. There are those who say "oh shuttup it's no problem PC baby" and those who are are a bit too quick and knee-jerky to examine the specifics of a situation before shouting "RACIST!" Blackface is not just about the makeup, but is about a sort of performance that reinforces negative stereotypes; a specific and unique kind of horrid artform that has its own cliches and tropes. I'm not going to say that Hugo Weaving in this image isn't problematic - I'm not touching the debate. I just think that, because he is playing all these characters and because we have yet to see him in action (is he affecting an unrealistic stereotypical accent, is the character akin to what a blackface character would be but for asians) that this isn't as cut and dry as people on both sides may want to make it.




Also, something like this has nuance...it can be part of a racist culture and art you can appreciate. If you are interested in the topic, read: Raising Cain: Blackface Performance from Jim Crow to Hip Hop, which is a fascinating book about the history of blackface performance from its origins on the eastern docks of Manhattan where the supports of the Brooklyn Bridge now stand to more modern examples and criticisms (such as Spike Lee's fascinating but problematic film Bamboozled), and posits that while it was a horrific form of racism, that it was also a form of expression; many black actors who would never have been on a stage otherwise got their start in blackface, and when you parse some of the works they created you can often find, carefully hidden in lyrics and skits, subtle jibes at blackface itself and at racism that went unnoticed by the white audiences. There are always shades of gray to these things, so no one should be too quick to dismiss it as entirely racist or to forgive it as entirely acceptable. Things can be a bit of both.