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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</ul>
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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</ul>
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.

Creating Life on Stage: A Director's Approach to Working with Actors

Mason, Marshall W.

Humor & Entertainment

Heinemann Drama

For the first time since Harold Clurman’s classic The Fervent Years, a great theater comes to life along with the tumultuous age that engendered it. Founding Artistic Director Marshall W. Mason (winner of the Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement) dramatically reveals the inside story of the creation of Circle Repertory Company, arguably the most important American theater since The Group of the 1930s. The Transcendent Years takes a theater lover backstage to witness the discovery of some of the foremost actors of our time (William Hurt, Kathy Bates, Christopher Reeve, Jeff Daniels, Judd Hirsch, Swoosie Kurtz, Nancy Snyder, Jonathan Hogan, Trish Hawkins and Tanya Berezin were members of the Company). The story shares the process of how Circle Rep playwrights Lanford Wilson, Sam Shepard, Marsha Norman, David Mamet, Jules Feiffer, Paula Vogel, Craig Lucas, William Mastrosimone, Larry Kramer and William M. Hoffman wrote plays for the actors to perform. Meticulously documented, The Transcendent Years puts the birth of Circle Rep into the context of the world-shaking changes of the 1960s, the evolutionary era that became the foundation of the 21st century and that provided an impetus for creating timeless art.

The Transcendent Years: The Story of a Theater - Circle Rep

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

Goodreads Press

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Books by Mason, Marshall W.