Setting the Stage: Attention to What We Do, How We Do It, and Why (Driftless Connecticut) - Hardcover

Hays, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0819577219 ISBN 13: 9780819577214

Publisher: Wesleyan University Press, 2017

Synopsis

David Hays, elected to the Theater Hall of Fame in 2014, created an exciting and successful career designing scenery and lighting for plays and musicals on Broadway, in London, and in Japan. Told with passion and wit, this book takes readers behind the scenes of the theater world to show how a stage designer collaborates with directors and producers to create great works of theater and dance. A designer who collaborated with the great directors of his time―Arthur Penn, Garson Kanin, Tyrone Guthrie, Elia Kazan, Jose Quintero, and Joe Layton―shares anecdotes that integrate technical insight with life lessons. He designed sets for the Metropolitan Opera, for Lincoln Center, for Martha Graham, and thirty ballets for George Balanchine. This colorful account of theater life is for scholars, practitioners, and theatregoers interested in how it all works.

About this title

Review

"In his charming combination memoir and anecdotal set design textbook-cum-life primer, all laced with sly humor and the occasional witty barb, Hays opens our eyes to the magic and thought processes behind taking a bare stage and mystically converting it into just about anything."--Cathy Ritchie, Theater Jones

About the Author

DAVID HAYS has taught at New York University, Columbia, Boston University, and Harvard. He then directed the National Theatre of the Deaf for thirty years. He is the author of Today I Am a Boy and coauthor with his son, Daniel, of the New York Times bestseller My Old Man and the Sea. He lives in Chester, Connecticut.

Edition details

• Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0819577219
• ISBN 13: 9780819577214
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 192