Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

A Director Prepares is a thought-provoking examination of the challenges of making theatre. In it, Anne Bogart speaks candidly and with wisdom of the courage required to create 'art with great presence'.
Each chapter tackles one of the seven major areas Bogart has identified as both potential partner and potential obstacle to art-making. They are Violence; Memory; Terror; Eroticism; Stereotype; Embarrassment; and Resistance. Each one can be used to generate extraordinary creative energy, if we know how to use it.
A Director Prepares offers every practitioner an extraordinary insight into the creative process. It is a handbook, Bible and manifesto, all in one. No other book on the art of theatre comes even close to offering this much understanding, experience and inspiration.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Acknowledgements (p. ix)
• Introduction (p. 1)
• Preface: Story and Anti-Story (p. 7)
• Memory (p. 21)
• Violence (p. 43)
• Eroticism (p. 61)
• Terror (p. 79)
• Stereotype (p. 91)
• Embarrassment (p. 113)
• Resistance (p. 137)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Bogart (directing, Columbia Univ.) is the artistic director of the SITI Company, an ensemble-based theater company that she founded with Tadshi Suzuki. Her book is aimed at the practitioner but has value for the avid theater goer as well. What we see on stage, as a whole, is a culmination of bits and pieces, steps forward and backward, as a work of "art" is created and then presented. In each essay, Bogart discusses one of seven concepts violence, memory, terror, eroticism, stereotype, embarrassment, and resistance that can work as an obstruction or catalyst to this creative process. The concepts themselves are thought-provoking, and Bogart's text is even more so. For Bogart, these concepts incite energy (positive or negative) that both actors and director absorb and radiate. One suspects that the energy acts on the viewer (and reader) as well. A quote by Jeanette Winterson on the first page clearly illustrates Bogart's passion and love of the theater experience: "Art is the burning bush that both shelters and makes visible our profounder longings." For all theater collections. Susan L. Peters, Univ. of Texas Medical Branch on Galveston (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.