Theater 347 Advanced Lighting Design

The first book in the industry tailored specifically for the entertainment professional, Vectorworks for Entertainment Design covers the ins and outs of Vectorworks software for lighting, scenic, and sound design. With adetailed look at the design process, from idea to development, to the documentation necessary for execution, Vectorworks for Entertainment Designwill encourage you to create your own process and workflow through exercises that build on one another. The text stresses the process of developing an idea, visualizing it, and evolving it for presentation, documentation, or drafting. The author focuses on both the technical how-to and the art of design, giving you the tools you need to learn and then use the application professionally. Fully illustrated with step-by-step instructions, it contains inspirational work from Broadway, major regional companies, and non-theatrical, entertainment design.

Designer Drafting for the Entertainment World provides essential information for designers, covering traditional hand drafting techniques as well as computer-based drawing programs. This new text begins with the basic tools and comprehensive coverage of the principles of scenic drafting and goes on to cover professional applications for the stage, motion pictures, television, trade shows, and amusement park scenery. It also includes a chapter on virtual scenery and lighting. The principles of drafting are explained with simple drawings from the world of scenery as well as many examples of more complex draftings from some of the finest scenic designers working professionally. Patricia Woodbridge has worked professionally in theatre, film and television, and uses examples from all industries throughout the book. Since the examples of drafting are taken from a wide variety of different scenic applications, it gives the young designer a survey of scenic career possibilities.

The most recent innovation brought to theater technology by the eminent theater designer George C. Izenour is a "trans-sondant" curtain, mimicking a wall, which allows halls visually to metamorphose into small or large performance spaces while retaining optimum acoustic quality in both guises. A full set of drawings and photographs of the first trans-sondant structure, in the Vern Riffe Center for the Arts (1995), is one of the new features in the second edition of this incomparable reference guide to theater engineering and technology. Izenour ties detailed information on construction, lighting, acoustical structures, electro-mechanical-hydraulic systems, and stage controls to a rich history of technological developments from the invention of the proscenium stage in late Renaissance Italy to the contributions of our own time. All the drawings are produced on the same scale for plan, transverse section, and perspective section. Theater Technology is a reference and source of ideas and inspiration for students, teachers, and practitioners in fields including acoustics, structural engineering, design, lighting, and architecture for the theater. For theater and architecture buffs it offers a detailed and illustrated history of the field and speculation on its future directions.

Since the third edition of The Oxford Companion to the Theatre appeared in 1967, theatre throughout the world, and especially in European and all English-speaking countries, has undergone a series of changes swifter and more far-reaching than at any other time in its history. While maintaining the primary purpose of preceding editions in providing a solid survey of the development of the theatre from its beginnings in primitive ritual to the present day in all countries that have a continuing theatrical tradition, this new edition offers more information on contemporary writers, directors, players, companies, and theatres, both metropolitan and regional. An extensive system of cross-referencing leads the reader to entries containing related information, and a generous bibliography offers aguidance on further reading. Entries dealing with technical subjects emphasize the historical perspective, throwing light on the remarkable accomplishments of earlier practitioners of theatrical illusion: they are illustrated where necessary with diagrams. Over 200 other illustrations are placed in thematically-arranged groups: functioning independently of the text, they show the changes of vision brought to bear on theatrical production over more than 2000 years.

From puppets to living players and musical speech to colloquial prose, Asian theatre is a rich world of contrasting expressions. While it has thrived for centuries and embodies the folk traditions of the Asian people, it also reflects contemporary concerns and innovative theatrical practices. At a time when Asia is of tremendous importance to the West, its theatre is a key to understanding its culture as well as the heritage of Asian Americans. This book is a detailed and authoritative survey of traditional and contemporary Asian theatre. The Encyclopedia includes hundreds of alphabetically arranged entries written by more than 90 expert contributors. Entries on the most important topics cite works for further reading, and the Encyclopedia closes with an extensive bibliography. Social studies students will appreciate its glimpses of Asian culture, while literature and drama students will value its exploration of the Asian theatrical tradition.

African American Theater is a vibrant and unique entity enriched by ancient Egyptian rituals, West African folklore, and European theatrical practices. A continuum of African folk traditions, it combines storytelling, mythology, rituals, music, song, and dance with ancestor worship from ancient times to the present. It afforded black artists a cultural gold mine to celebrate what it was like to be an African American in The New World. The Historical Dictionary of African American Theater celebrates nearly 200 years of black theater in the United States, identifying representative African American theater-producing organizations and chronicling their contributions to the field from its birth in 1816 to the present. This is done through a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, and over 500 cross-referenced dictionary entries on actors, directors, playwrights, plays, theater producing organizations, themes, locations, and theater movements and awards.