The Dramatic Imagination: Reflections and Speculations on the Art of Theatre

Rating:
Summary: a wonderful book to have on the shelf
Review: my set design professor described this as the book to read when one is disillusioned with theater and need to restore faith, and I have to agree. It reminds us of the total art of theater, where poetry is expressed verbally, visually, and through the _presence_ of actors in a setting. It describes the curious not-reality that theater should create. It was written in 1941, so some of the references ring a little false and the language can wax florid, but the essence of what theater should be is described here.

Rating:
Summary: take it with an open mind
Review: OK, you can't rate this book on the level of literature, cuz it's not. From that point of view it's horrible. But you can rate it on what it might teach you if you let it "speak to you." This is a book that can easily be taken two ways. 1) An inspiring look at theater and at life, and 2) the cheesiest, corniest, campiest thing ever. I myself have wondered at times how I really feel about this book. I have had it read it throughout this past quarter for my Stagecraft class, and it can say a whole lot or it can say nothing, depending on how you read it. The author's absolute passion for all aspects of theater often comes across as wishy-washy, but if you set that aside, you might, if you love theater, find that you can relate to what he is saying. Or you might make fun of it incessantly! Which I have done a few times. But seriously, it's the kind of book that if you tell yourself you'll take a lot out of it, you will. And in several ways, I have.

Rating:
Summary: take it with an open mind
Review: OK, you can't rate this book on the level of literature, cuz it's not. From that point of view it's horrible. But you can rate it on what it might teach you if you let it "speak to you." This is a book that can easily be taken two ways. 1) An inspiring look at theater and at life, and 2) the cheesiest, corniest, campiest thing ever. I myself have wondered at times how I really feel about this book. I have had it read it throughout this past quarter for my Stagecraft class, and it can say a whole lot or it can say nothing, depending on how you read it. The author's absolute passion for all aspects of theater often comes across as wishy-washy, but if you set that aside, you might, if you love theater, find that you can relate to what he is saying. Or you might make fun of it incessantly! Which I have done a few times. But seriously, it's the kind of book that if you tell yourself you'll take a lot out of it, you will. And in several ways, I have.

Rating:
Summary: Epically Poetic. Sweepingly Romantic
Review: This beautiful little book (one of the first theatre books I've ever read) is one of the great speculations and reflections on the theatre. While "The Dramatic Imagination" won't teach you HOW to design for the theatre, it will teach you (or remind you) WHY you design for the theatre -- you design to keep it alive. And while the copyright is c. 1940, the goal of the book for the design and performance arts today is as it originally was - to create a theater for OUR time. The goal of this book will always be relevant, it will always be a guide.

Robert Edmond Jones was not only crafting stage designs, he was crafting a vision of the human soul in flight in ways that had yet to be embodied on the stage, and this book is a testament to that goal. What's beautiful -- amazing -- about what Robert Edmond Jones has put down here, is a `vision eternal' of the theatre. He does not write of a `theatre of the future' -- he writes of an `ideal theater,' a theatre `not yet made with hands' . . . `not yet made with hands' because it is a theatre and a vision born of the heart.

I don't know if Robert Edmond Jones would agree, but it does not matter whether those of us working in theatre today achieve that vision of the heart - what's important is that we always have, that we never forget, that vision of the heart: the things of the senses, the "real," fades into memory and crystallizes into truth, beauty, wonder and . . . astonishment.

Read this wonderful, beautifully written little book.