Creating Life on Stage: A Director's Approach to Working with Actors

by Marshall W. Mason

Marshall W. Masons unique methods will help all theatre artists find the only thing that creative truth. When I was a young actor, he taught me everything I needed to know and continue to use today. In fact, I dont set foot inside any character I play unless Marshalls with me.
Jeff Daniels Marshall is the director who has brought almost all my plays to life on stage. No one gets better performances from actors than he does, so he knows what hes talking about. His approach should prove useful to actors who want to inhabit a playwrights creation without appearing to act.
Lanford Wilson The theatrical magic that theatergoers experience isnt magic at allits hard work. Before the curtain goes up, an intense collaborative process transforms the words of a writers script into a production that involves thousands of details, hundreds of decisions, and dozens of dedicated people. Making that collaboration a successful journey is a directors job, and in Creating Life on Stage , youll find out how a major American director does it. Award-winning director Marshall Mason guides you through the entire from choosing a script to pre-production preparations, through rehearsals to opening night. He shows you how sound fundamental choices and a dynamic vision can make productions at any level large or small; national, regional, or local. Mason takes you inside a directors mind to see how imaginative ideas can lend thematic structure and coherence to costuming, design, music, and lighting. Then he shows how a director can take a vision and bring it to life through the actors. With hard-won wisdom, Mason describes a collaborative process that helps actors locate the impulses to action that lead to strong, truthful choices inside the world of the play. See how a director becomes what Marshall Mason calls "a sculptor of movement." Read Creating Life on Stage and understand how an artistic vision and creative collaboration can help audience members live the play from their seats and relive it again and again in their memories.

Genres: Theatre

272 pages, Paperback

First published November 22, 2006

Reviews

[Matt]

This will be the textbook for the play directing class I'm GTA'ing next term, for good reason. Mason lays out a director's process step by step with a warm, highly readable voice that uses anecdotes effectively to communicate where a director can succeed or fail. Highly recommended.

[Arlitia Jones]

Essential reading for anyone working in the theatre. This is not just a how to manual. Mason never lets us forget there is something at stake for all of us when we create theatre. It's a passionate approach to art, honest and very very user friendly.

[lids ☆彡]

A useful crash-course and resource for my first time directing a show.