Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Creating Outdoor Theatre is a practical guide to putting on a performance outside, offering a brief history of outdoor theatre and explaining the unique production opportunities it offers. The book explains the design and production considerations peculiar to performing outdoors, including health and safety aspects, facilities for actors and audience, transporting equipment, and the logistics of licensing, negotiating with local authorities and even police liaison. Topics covered:· Choosing the right venue· Designing and making props· Constructing the stage· Seating· Coping with bad weather AUTHOR: Nina Ayres graduated from the Central School of Speech and Drama, specializing in theatre design, and is now a highly-respected freelance theatre designer, and maker of props, costumes and puppets. She has worked with a wide range of theatre, film and television production companies, both in the UK and overseas, in roles ranging from costume designer to art director. The productions she has been involved in have included small-scale touring pieces to large community theatre events. Resident - London ILLUSTRATIONS: 100 colour

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Howell, senior tutor of stage combat at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, sums up Stage Fighting well with his tongue-in-cheek comment that his "job as a teacher of stage fighting is to turn men into dancers and women into warriors." Covering physical preparation, unarmed combat, and weapons, he provides step-by-step instruction accompanied by photographs for each move from "attacker" and "victim" points of view-including safety tips to prevent injury. Howell's discussion of how a fight works as part of the story, following either script or musical score, is essential for understanding what it takes to create an illusion of violence that is visually effective and safe. While much of what freelance theater designer Ayres covers in Creating Outdoor Theatre is found in any work on theater production, she adds that extra component of responsibility, safety, or practicality necessary when leaving the haven of an indoor performance space. Chapters cover, e.g., the whys and types of outdoor theater, designing and setup for outdoor spaces, audiences, and weather. The useful photographs will tickle the reader's creativity. As with all the guides in Crowood's "Practical Guide" series, the language is British rather than American (e.g., "get-out" rather than "strike" a show). And Creating Outdoor Theatre has sections dealing with local laws/regulations useless to an American reader, though they do provide the questions/concerns that need to be addressed anywhere. VERDICT Both guides focus in detail on topics that are often overlooked in other books. Stage Fighting is for actors, directors, and choreographers as well as anyone interested in staging a fight scene in theater or film. Creating Outdoor Theatre should be interesting to anyone involved in dramaturgy, but it is primarily targeted at directors, artistic directors, producers, and designers.-Laura A. Ewald, Greenville Coll. Lib., IL (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Nina Ayres is a freelance theater designer, and maker of props, costumes, and puppets.