Matt Ball – författare

The Art of Collaboration explores the critical relationship between directors and stage managers; an essential guide for theatre professionals seeking to build strong creative partnerships, emphasising mutual respect, clear communication and shared goals.

Through real-world examples, practical strategies and expert advice, it offers a framework that stimulates collaboration, enhances the rehearsal process and promotes a seamless production.

Whether you’re a seasoned director, an aspiring stage manager or simply want to know more about how to navigate the production process, this book provides insight to the vital, often overlooked, role of teamwork in bringing performances to stage.

The Art of Collaboration explores the critical relationship between directors and stage managers; an essential guide for theatre professionals seeking to build strong creative partnerships, emphasising mutual respect, clear communication and shared goals.

Through real-world examples, practical strategies and expert advice, it offers a framework that stimulates collaboration, enhances the rehearsal process and promotes a seamless production.

Whether you’re a seasoned director, an aspiring stage manager or simply want to know more about how to navigate the production process, this book provides insight to the vital, often overlooked, role of teamwork in bringing performances to stage.

Discover a geographic approach to resilience strategies for wildland fire. 

Wildfires claim lives, destroy structures, and devastate communities and landscapes. The increasing areas where development meets nature—and more days of hot and dry weather— have magnified the impact of wildfires from Canada to Australia and around the world. The response to and recovery from increasingly complex firestorms stress budgets, economies, communities, and environments. 

Increasingly, responders use the latest tools of geographic information systems (GIS) to analyze wildfires through data that can be modeled to visualize threats in real time. Prepare, Respond, Renew: GIS for Wildland Fire explores a collection of real-life stories about wildland fire agencies successfully using GIS technology for preparedness, mitigation, response, and recovery and rehabilitation workflows. Preemptively, GIS helps firefighters model how wildfires spread depending on weather, geologic features, and human development. Through predictive analytics and mapping technologies, firefighters can model the direction and rate of spread of wildfire can give a community, a nature preserve, a fire department, or a single homeowner time to prepare for or even prevent the next wildland fire. As they identify priorities and reduce fire vulnerabilities, agencies can visualize, record, and track the status of their accomplishments in the field. 

The book also includes a section on next steps that provides ideas, strategies, tools, and actions to help jump-start your own use of GIS for wildland fire management. A collection of online resources, including additional stories, videos, new ideas and concepts, and downloadable tools and content, complements this book. 

Zwischenzug! is the first-ever comprehensive guide to the chess tactic also known as the intermediate move, or intermezzo. This exciting manoeuvre can catch opponents off guard because it is against the expected run of play. You will learn how to spot Zwischenzugs, when to look out for them, and how to set them up in your games.

The authors have studied thousands of games and have identified the patterns that appear frequently in practical play. The book categorizes the different types of Zwischenzugs and distils them into easily accessible themes. The concepts are given catchy names to make them more memorable, and historical details and anecdotes are added throughout the book.

Included is an extensive mix of sample puzzles for learning and practice.

When published on Chessable, the course was received very enthusiastically and awarded an average rating of 4.82 out of a possible five stars. Another welcome effect is that the authors are now finding a lot of Zwischenzugs in their own games!