Designers' Shakespeare

Theatre Design involves everything seen on stage: not only scenery but costumes, wigs, makeup, properties, lighting, sound, even the shape and material of the stage itself. Designers Shakespeare presents and analyses the work of a half-dozen leading practitioners of this specialist art. By focusing specifically on their Shakespearean work, it also offers a fresh, exciting perspective on some of the best-known drama of all time. Shakespeare s plays offer an unusual range of opportunities to designers. As they were written for a theatre which gave no opportunity for scenic support or embellishment, designers are freed from any compulsion to imitate original practices. This has resulted in the extraordinarily diverse range of works presented in this volume, which considers among others the work of Josef Svoboda, Karl-Ernst Herrmann, Ming Cho Lee, Alison Chitty, Robert Wilson, Societas Raffaello Sanzio, Filter Theatre, Catherine Zuber, John Bury , Christopher Morley, Ralph Koltai and Sean Kenny. -- Amazon.com.

Preface -- Looking at contemporary design practice and Shakespeare / Stephen Di Benedetto -- "Here is my space": Josef Svoboda's Shakespearean imagination / Christian M. Billing -- Scenography at the Royal Shakespeare Company 1963-1968: towards an empty space / Liam Doona -- Karl-Ernst Herrmann: unfolding Shakespeare's space / Klaus Van Den Berg -- Ming Cho Lee / Arnold Aronson -- Alison Chitty: "the public sketch" / Hilary Baxter -- Robert Wilson / Maria Shevtsova -- The form of (her) intent: Catherine Zuber's costume design for Nicholas Hytner's Twelfth night (1998) / Brandin Barón-Nusbaum -- Designing sound for Shakespeare: connecting past and present / Adrian Curtin -- Beyond language: performing "true-meant design;" "that risky and dangerous negotiation between a doing... and a thing done" / Dorita Hannah -- Afterword.