Oberon Books – serie

There are many skills one needs to produce a piece of dance. Bruce describes the basic foundation or ingredients of his version of Dance Theatre as: Movement, Drama, Sound and Vision. A choreographer has to study all of them to the best of their ability and learn how to combine them.There is no definitive method of choreography. Any choreographer who has a voice has learnt and executed it in their way. Choreographers pick up things here and there from what they see, who they work with, and assemble a craft themselves. So much of what they do as artists is intuition and instinct. Creativity cannot be tamed and fully understood or concluded. Artists are dealing with imagination. On Choreography and Making Dance Theatre will be an invaluable insight into Bruce's approach, both artistic and practical, as he documents his process from the beginnings of ideas to the realisation of a full-length production. Bruce provides am explanation of the range of skills he believes are required, and all that needs to be considered in the creation of dance theatre. Award-winning choreographer Mark Bruce’s aim as an artist is to tap the subconscious, our hearts; transcend our everyday lives and hopefully stumble upon some truth along the way. On Choreography and Making Dance Theatre is an invaluable artist’s guide to making innovative new dance work.

Peter Wright has been a dancer, choreographer, teacher, producer and director in the theatre as well as in television for over 70 years.In Wrights & Wrongs, Peter offers his often surprising views of today’s dance world, lessons learned – and yet to learn – from a lifetime’s experience of ballet, commercial theatre and television. Peter started his career in wartime, with the Kurt Jooss company. He has worked with such greats as Pina Bausch, Margot Fonteyn, Rudolf Nureyev, Marcia Haydée, Richard Cragun, Monica mason, Karen Kain, Miyako Yoshida and Carlos Acosta - as well as today's generation of starts including Alina Cajocaru, Marianela Nunez, Natalia Osipova and Lauren Cuthbertson. While now regarded as part of the British ballet establishment, for many years Peter developed his career outside London, particularly in Germany with John Cranko's Stuttgart Ballet. That distance gives him a unique and unrivalled view on ballet companies. His close association with choreographers Frederick Ashton, Ninette de Valois, founder of the Royal Ballet, Kenneth MacMillan and David Bintley gives Peter an authoritative perspective on British ballet. Wrights and Wrongs includes black-and-white photographs from Wright's career, and as Exeunt magazine comments: 'Anyone with an interest in British ballet will find plenty to occupy them in Wright’s book… the many dramas and delights of his life in dance spring forth from the page with brio.’

This beautifully produced new Royal Ballet branded book with photographs by Bill Cooper is a collection of exclusive photographs which shines the spotlight on Swan Lake. These exquisite photos feature some of the finest dancers on stage today and give an exclusive insight into the Royal Ballet’s work.Swan Lake was Tchaikovsky’s first score for the ballet. Given its status today as arguably the best-loved and most admired of all classical ballets, it is perhaps surprising that at its premiere in 1877 Swan Lake was poorly received. It is thanks to the 1895 production by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov that Swan Lake has become part of not only ballet consciousness but also wider popular culture. That success is secured not only by the sublime, symphonic sweep of Tchaikovsky’s score but also by the striking choreographic contrasts between Petipa’s royal palace scenes and the lyric lakeside scenes created by Ivanov.Swan Lake has had a special role in the repertory of The Royal Ballet since 1934. Since then there has been a succession of productions, the most recent of which was overseen by Anthony Dowell. The 2019 Season sees a new production with additional choreography by ROH Artist-in-Residence Liam Scarlett. Scarlett, while remaining faithful to the Petipa-Ivanov text, will bring fresh eyes to the staging of this classic ballet, in collaboration with his long-term designer John Macfarlane.

Peggy Ramsay (1908-1991) was the foremost play agent of her time. Her list of clients shows her to have been at the centre of British playwriting for several generations from the late 1950s on.To her remarkable array of clients, her letter writing was notorious, marked by searing candour, both a wondrous motivation and an unforgiving scrutiny to be feared.‘Peggy judged by the most exalted standards and lashed her writers when they failed to meet them. Her force of personality made her well-nigh irresistible. The letters she wrote to her writers and to producers are extraordinary documents, filled with all these qualities, and indiscreet, blasphemous and saucy to boot.’ – Simon Callow

‘Draws on a vital history of trans performance – an emerging canon that may no longer be ignored.’ – Morgan M Page, from her forewordSeven turbulent years. Five radical performances. One landmark publication.None of Us is Yet a Robot charts artist and performer Emma Frankland’s gender transition against a shifting social and political landscape, while grappling with the systematic erasure of trans history.Richly illustrated with images from the performances and designed in close collaboration with the author, the book is a new experience in itself as well as a vital document of Emma's groundbreaking work in theatre.Featuring introductions from foremost theatre practitioners, including Maddy Costa and Travis Alabanza, this collection of work is an evocative exploration of a trans experience in twenty-first century Britain.

An impoverished family are evicted from their country smallholding. They agree to go their separate ways for five years, then to meet again to reassess their fortunes. Swankiller, the thrusting eldest son, decides to try his luck in the big city. Homeless, jobless, penniless and eventually alone, he discovers the brutal undertow beneath the city's varied and beguiling surface. Steeped in the atmospere and folklore of Suffolk coastal towns, Swankiller describes a man's search for identity and happiness in a fallen world. A genuinely epic play, it was performed with a cast of fifty at Snape Maltings, Aldeburgh in 1996.

This is a new edition prepared by English Touring Theatre's Artistic Director, Stephen Unwin and actor Michael Cronin, which simplifies both punctuation and stage direction, allowing directors, actors and readers to approach this most familiar of plays with a fresh and open mind.

An Argentinian play translated, by the author of Frozen, for England's National Theatre.

"There is a mystery in every play that is written, no matter whether classical and poetic or modern and demotic, and it is the sound and the rhythm of the writing which take us there."Cicely Berry, the Royal Shakespeare Company's Voice Director, has been working alongside some of Britain's greatest actors and directors for over fifty years and is widely regarded as one of the most significant voice teachers in the world.From Word to Play draws on Cicely's extensive experience of working with theatre companies in Britain and throughout the world. It is her manifesto for a return to the words themselves: for moving away from an over-conceptualised, over-literal view of language and rediscovering the meaning in its sounds and rhythms. At the heart of this book is a concise, practical guide for directors in rehearsal, setting out work strategies that help bring out both the shape and the details within all kinds of text - whether verse or prose, seventeenth-century or contemporary.With a Foreword by Michael Boyd, Artistic Director of the RSC.

Five specially commissioned discussions of verbatim theatre - in the words of the people who make it.'What a verbatim play does is flash your research nakedly. It’s like cooking a meal but the meat is left raw.’ - Max Stafford-ClarkPlays which use people’s actual words as the basis for their dramaare not a new phenomenon. But from the stages of national theatres to fringe venues and universities everywhere, ‘verbatim’ theatre, as it has come to be known, is currently enjoying unprecedented attention and success. It has also attracted high-profile criticism and impassioned debate. In these wide-ranging essays and interviews, six leading dramatists describe their varying approaches to verbatim, examine the strengths and weaknesses of its techniques and explore the reasons for its current popularity. They discuss frankly the unique opportunities and ethical dilemmas that arise when portraying real people on stage, and consider some of the criticisms levelled at this controversial documentary form.'The intention is always to arrive at the truth.' - Nicolas Kent

We are engaged in performing four shows by night and restaging four different shows by day. And restaging all the understudy work as well. This is a lot of work. And my mind has turned to slush.Nick Asbury was in the ensemble from the Royal Shakespeare Company who, over the course of two and a half years, performed eight history plays by Shakespeare in repertory, beginning with the overthrow of Richard II and ending with the death of Richard III: a sequence of productions both critically acclaimed and watched by over 250,000 people. To keep a record of his involvement in this extraordinary and ambitious project, Nick wrote a Blog which was posted on the RSC website. This in turn became a massive success, regularly notching up 6,000 hits a week from avid followers around the world. Through Nick's engaging, observant, often hilarious words, we experience the camaraderie of actors, the terror of forgetting lines, technical difficulties, money problems, finding strange things in the bath, thirty-three broadsword fights and, and, of course, the ever-present threat of being assaulted by demented badgers after a performance.Nominated as one of 'Six Inspiring Biographies or Memoirs Every Actor Should Read' by Drama Bookshop New York, this really is a must have book for all actors and theatre fans.

Two plays for young people by one distinctive voice. Diary of An Action Man and Whiter Than Snow reveal an imagination that has raised the writer Mike Kenny onto the international stage. Renowned for producing multi-layered, stimulating children’s plays, his work often also appeals to adults.Refreshingly bold, adeptly sculpted and highly original, these texts draw audiences into the real myths of childhood and challenge our perceptions of normality. Whiter than Snow opened at the New Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich in March 2009 in a production by Graeae.

There was an owl sat up an oak;The more he heard the less he spoke;The less he spoke, the more he heard;Oh that we were all like that wise old bird.The verbatim monologues in Deep Heat are drawn from conversations Robin Soans has had or overheard, or are edited versions of interviews he has conducted in the course of research for his plays. Subjects range from people who have held high office to those who have blown them up; from those who live in large country houses to others whose home is two blankets and a pile of leaves in the corner of a disused garage. So much of what is passed on as historical fact is the version of events that those with an ulterior motive choose to project. This book doesn’t seek to judge, nor provide solutions; it seeks to redress the balance by giving a fair hearing even to those who may not share the same views as ours. Useful as audition pieces for actors, but equally of interest to the historian and sociologist in all of us. We are after all human, full of contradictions, and we can never inch our way towards greater self-knowledge if we don’t see more of the picture than is traditionally the case.