The Theatah
An Academic's Love Affair with the Wicked Stage
by
Book Details
About the Book
***572 pages, 60 photos of behind-the-scenes staging of 51 productions-plays, musicals and operas and much more.***
At long last, after twenty-five years of creative retirement, author/director Brooking finds himself in
In this magnum opus of the stage, Brooking leads the reader through the roller-coaster world of academic theatre with passion and humor, sharing with the reader the director’s joys and despairs as he guides fifty plays, musicals and operas from the rehearsal room to opening night. Two galleries of dramatic photos illuminate these journeys. You will also adventure from the classroom into off-beat theatrical byways of Central America and post-WWII
“On stage, everybody. Curtain going up!”
About the Author
After creative and rewarding years of serving the theatre Muse, author/director Brooking retired to Pensacola, Florida, and the French Quarter of ”Big Easy.” These past two decades of world travel, painting, research and writing now include his fifth book, the theatrical memoir THE THEATAH: An Academic’s Love Affair with the Wicked Stage—Brooking’s homage to academic theatre.
The lure of the stage dogged his heels from early stage-struck days in Galesburg, Illinois, to actor training at the Goodman Theatre of Chicago and the University of Iowa. Then he was off to the mixed blessings grad school at Western Reserve University in Cleveland, all laced with weird and wonderful summers of stock. The following three decades were spent as a theatre prof. at the University of Kansas and Agnes Scott College in Atlanta, practicing what Stanislavsky, Appia and Brecht had preached.
Always the persistent lover, in his roller-coaster ride through the glories and nadirs of academic theatre, the Muse never deserted him. And he was always sustained by the thrill of working with collaborative designers and tech folks; of guiding the actor through three-dimensional space, sculpted by light, so that, through the performer’s body, voice and emotions, he could transmit the author’s message to an eager audience poised just beyond the footlights.
With this magnum opus in the mail to the publishers, Brooking is off to Brussels, Belgium, to holiday with family. This small clan of mimes, jugglers and musicians are
also charter members of Clowns Without Borders, which brings entertainment to children in far-flung disaster areas of the world. Who can doubt that “All the world’s a stage”?