Customer Reviews

Structural Design for the Stage

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

 

 

If you are a technical director looking to improve your knowledge base and are committed to protecting the people who rely on your decisions, this book is invaluable. If you have ever looked at the Timber Construction Manual, you know that building safe structures is a very complicated process. This book is built on the fundamental principles that allow professionals to build structures like the Sears Tower and the Empire State Building. It coalesces those ideas and applies them to scenery construction. It allows TD's to learn how to make informed decisions regarding the scenery they build. It is not for the faint-hearted. There is math involved. And it can be easy to get lost in the calculations. But, if you stick to it, the benefits are far reaching; from knowing that you have done your job well, to instilling confidence in those people who put their lives into your hands. Any serious TD must understand the principles that this book imparts. You owe it to yourself and the people with which you work. This book is the first to take difficult principals and make them accessible to everyone, not just those with engineerings degrees.

Structural Design for The Stage is every teacher's dream come true. You can work with it in your classes just the way it is. Everything is organized around a normal one-hour lesson. Unfortunately the book is not metric, which makes it hard to use in Europe.

this book contains just enough theory and math to get an idea of load ratings for various things you build for the stage. very well done. it's college level, but assumes nothing.

Although it may be perfect for some people, this book was not what I was looking for. It promises to keep it simple--wow, I'd hate to see what's considered complicated. It's very heavy on the math and physics. If you are an engineer or a math-minded TD you might find this book fascinating. If you are looking for how-to stuff, you'll be disappointed. It contains almost no illustrations or plans and is mostly physics formulas. I'm looking for instructions and plans on how to build lighter, stronger, better sets--in other words, the findings of TD's working with theses formulas, not the math itself. If you want to design your own new stuff and get yourself into a Yale Tech Brief, this book is for you, but if you're hoping this book will be another Tech Brief Collection, you'll be disappointed.

This book does a nice job of attempting to simplify engineering theories and practices for theatrical Technical Directors. Unfortunately, in an attempt to make it palatable, the authors often get very convoluted in their explanations. We have also found that the solution appendix has several wrong answers in it.

I would definately wait for a second edition. Rumor has it though that a second edition is not in the foreseeable future.