Here is a list of books that we've found useful at SLT. Click on the image to read the reviews at Amazon.com or to order. If you'd like to suggest a book you've found helpful, please email the information to us.

The Stagecraft Handbook

This scene-shop manual covers every aspect of scenery construction. Those who put the set on the stage will welcome The Stagecraft Handbook's clear presentation of this technical topic, wealth of illustrations (244 drawings and photographs), and information on shop organization, tools, safety, scaled drawings, materials, construction techniques and more. With this book's help, readers will be able to make good scenery quickly and inexpensively. Perfect for schools and community theaters.

The Back Stage Guide to Stage Management

This widely used manual for stage managers has been revised to include new methods that employ computers and spread-sheet software, automation in the theater, and contemporary event managing. Whether you work in the amateur, educational, or professional theater, you'll find all the nuts and bolts of the craft clearly laid out in this engaging, friendly book. And there's good advice on finding employment, too. The text, supported by many sample documents, diagrams, and charts, straddles traditional approaches and the use of computers. It shows how the communication skills of the stage manager can be applied with success to event managing - a field that offers increasing opportunities for work - and it explores the benefits and disadvantages of the latest stage machinery.

Rehearsal Management for Directors

When Alberts discovered that one of his directing students had no idea of how best to organize a production, from auditions to rehearsals, David Alberts realized there was a gap in all the literature that has been written on the art and craft of directing. This book fills that gap. It is an intensely practical book, outlining the various roles a director must fill, from negotiator (with producers, play selection committees, the artistic staff, the actors) to guide. He then gives the aspiring, or even experienced, director a superbly detailed guide to organizing and managing rehearsals, whether for plays or musicals. Includes a sample breakdown of scene rehearsals and a production schedule.

Play Director's Survival Kit : A Complete Step-By-Step Guide to Producing Theatre in Any School or Community Setting

A complete step-by-step guide to producing theater in any school or community setting, organized into six sections Play Selection, Pre-Production, Rehearsals & Performances, Audience Development, and Directory. Includes proven strategies for working with students, over 55 reproducible checklists, forms, samples, and more.

Period Make-Up for the Stage : Step-By-Step

Trade secrets for creating vividly realistic characters from ancient history to modern day. This practical sourcebook contains more than 200 full-color photographs clearly describing every step of make-up applications.

Stage Makeup Step-By-Step : The Complete Guide to Basic Makeup, Planning and Designing Makeup, Adding and Reducing Age, Ethnic Makeup, Special effects

Aspiring makeup artists will become accomplished makeup artists who can create appearances from the subtle to the shocking. Here, Swinfield reveals the professional way to create and apply makeup for all types of theater, film and television for people of all ages and ethnic groups. Readers will learn how to broaden or thin a face, distort a nose, hide scars and blemishes; plan and execute makeup for effective characterization; add 50 years to an actor's age; create frighteningly realistic crash injuries; use wigs and facial hair and make beards and moustaches. Includes color step-by-step photographic sequences.

The Stuff of Dreams : Behind the Scenes of an American Community Theater

In this unique theatrical memoir, novelist Leah Cohen chronicles the ups and downs of her suburban community theater's struggles over the staging of David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly. The project is fraught with problems: the Arlington, Mass., theater and its conservative supporters are reluctant to stage a play that deals daringly with sexuality and race; meanwhile, it proves quite difficult to find an Asian man to play the transgendered lead (who also has a nude scene) but the show must and does go on. Cohen, who loves working in theater, is a keen observer who never hesitates to pinpoint the problems and personality clashes endemic to the process of putting on a play. Cohen's backstage drama gives us a miniature yet nuanced glimpse into a world rarely explored.