Customer Reviews

The Artistic Home: Discussions with Artistic Directors of America's Institutional Theatres

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I ran across this book accidentally. Having worked in both theater administration and as a theater artist, I was curious. The author, Todd London, is currently the Artistic Director at New Dramatist in New York City. There is and introduction by Lloyd Richard, former Artistic Director of the O'neill Conference and well know Director, and a forward by Peter Zeisler.

Basically, this is a book that covers everything discussed in a series of meetings with the Nation's Artistic Directors in 1987. This is an important read if you are a theater artist and have never worked running a theater, or if you wish to pursue a carrer in theater. I gave it five stars not because it is a fun read, and it's not about new directions in theater art. Theaters from all over the country are represented in this book. This is a serious glimps into the questions theaters constantly struggle with in terms of artists, adressing audience, and operating a theater. It's good to understand while artists ar busy being accepted and rejected, theaters are constantly trying to forge some kind of a direction where they can nurture a portion of artists, and create an audince for them, and survive themselves. This book lets you know what theaters are trying to do. It shows the best side of theaters, but I think the information in this book will help artists know when a theater is not aiding thier growth while working with one.

If you work for a theater, then you probably have addressed some or many of the issues and questions here in some form, but there are a lot of ideas here, and that's what theater has been build with.

This book is packed with information, unfortunately very little of it is useful. I purchased it for my school work and was unable to use it as source material. The book is layed out with a bunch of statements that Artistic directors should follow and then it lists how or why Artistic directors should follow them. It dosen't really cover much ground that is useful for a small time director or artist. If you were managing a large scale theatre than this book might be helpful to you.