Product Description

Marshall W. Mason's unique methods will help all theatre artists find the only thing that matters: creative truth. When I was a young actor, he taught me everything I needed to know and continue to use today. In fact, I don't set foot inside any character I play unless Marshall's with me.
- Jeff Daniels

Marshall is the director who has brought almost all my plays to life on stage. No one gets better performances from actors than he does, so he knows what he's talking about. His approach should prove useful to actors who want to inhabit a playwright's creation without appearing to act.
- Lanford Wilson

The theatrical magic that theatergoers experience isn't magic at all - it's hard work. Before the curtain goes up, an intense collaborative process transforms the words of a writer's script into a production that involves thousands of details, hundreds of decisions, and dozens of dedicated people. Making that collaboration a successful journey is a director's job, and in Creating Life on Stage, you'll find out how a major American director does it.

Award-winning director Marshall Mason guides you through the entire adventure: from choosing a script to pre-production preparations, through rehearsals to opening night. He shows you how sound fundamental choices and a dynamic vision can make productions at any level successful: large or small; national, regional, or local. Mason takes you inside a director's mind to see how imaginative ideas can lend thematic structure and coherence to costuming, design, music, and lighting. Then he shows how a director can take a vision and bring it to life through the actors. With hard-won wisdom, Mason describes a collaborative process that helps actors locate the impulses to action that lead to strong, truthful choices inside the world of the play.

See how a director becomes what Marshall Mason calls "a sculptor of movement." Read Creating Life on Stage and understand how an artistic vision and creative collaboration can help audience members live the play from their seats and relive it again and again in their memories.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #415160 in Books
• Published on: 2006-11-22
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

About the Author
Marshall W. Mason was the founding artistic director for New York's legendary Circle Repertory Company, which The New York Times identified as "the chief source for new American plays." His twelve Broadway productions including Burn This, The Fifth of July, Talley's Folly, As Is, and Knock Knock have earned him five Tony nominations for Best Director. He's won six Obies for his work, and in 1999 he received a Mr. Abbott Special Millennium Award that named him "one of the most innovative and influential directors of the twentieth century."

Customer Reviews

For Both Directors and Actors, truly "...utterly invaluable"
Without doubt the most important book on directing since Harold Clurman's seminal On Directing, I found Marshall Mason's Creating Life on Stage both moving and inspiring. When this book was released earlier this year, I was preparing to direct a production of Wilder's "The Matchmaker". I found Mason's insights into the most critical aspect of directing: how to coax the most inspired performance out of an actor truly illuminating.

How do we create the most fertile ground for truthful living on stage? In an almost simplistic, highly organized methodology, Marshall Mason lays out a set of tools for us to use. Mason manages to present this material so simply and lucidly, that almost anyone who picks up this book, interested amateur or Broadway veteran will profit from its contents. This is very difficult material to articulate, but he manages to relate concepts of character, behavior, even consciousness and spirituality in a way that is practical and executable on stage.

Highly useful for both actors and directors of all levels, it truly is "...utterly invaluable".

NOT JUST FOR DIRECTORS
One might think that directing plays was an arcane art for certain geniuses, but as the great Alvina Krause would agree, directing plays is about LIFE and it IS life and therefore this advice about organizing work, interacting with others, managing one's own drive is good advice for anyone. I would particularly recommend it for writers. And especially people who write about the theatre. This is a clear book, not as simple as might seem on first reading, and a joy to read.

Mary Scriver

So You Want to Be A Director!
This book provides complete instructions on how to be an excellent director, from choosing the project to opening night and beyond. Theatergoers with an interest in how a play gets from a script to the performance they see should find the book fascinating. Mr. Mason writes in a gentle, intensely serious, sometimes wry style that is a pleasure to read. Young directors would surely benefit from Mr. Mason's 40-some years of experience in the theater. Actors should find it very interesting to know what a director does before first rehearsal (and it is a lot), and to read in print a description of the sort of direction they know in their hearts they deserve. Mr. Mason touches frequently and perceptively on Stanislavski and has an appendix on Sandy Meisner's teachings (and other illuminating appendices). If you know a young person considering a theater career, this book would be a very useful and supportive gift.