Acknowledgements. Introduction. 1. Theatre Background and Experience 2. The Director: Goals and Groundwork 3. General Directing Practices 4. The Actor 5. Stage Effects and Stage Effectiveness 6. The Technical Elements of Production 7. The Business of Theatre. Bibliography. Index.
Biography
Bernard F. Dukore is University Distinguished Professor Emeritus in Theatre Arts and Humanities at Virginia Tech, USA. He has written extensively on Bernard Shaw and other modern dramatists, including Shaw’s fellow-Nobel prizewinner, Harold Pinter. His most recent books on Shaw are Crimes and Punishments and Bernard Shaw (2017), Bernard Shaw and the Censors: Fights and Failures, Stage and Screen (2020), and Unions, Strikes, Shaw: “The Capitalism of the Proletariat” (2022).
Reviews of the original edition:
"The principles that Dukore is able to develop, and the mass of specific illustrations he is able to cite, leave no question that Shaw was quintessentially a man of (perhaps a master of) theatre, giving possibly more attention to every element of the vehicle for his ideas than to the ideas themselves". – Alan S. Downer, editor of The Theatre of Bernard Shaw
“Dukore’s book represents a signal contribution to Shaw scholarship. He has not written a controversial book but a definitive one.” – Frederick P. W. McDowell, Journal of Modern Literature (Sept, 1973), 120.
“. . . a full, fresh, scholarly and entertaining view of Shaw as a stage director. . . . The book is more than a history—it is a primer for all professional theatre people, technicians and actors as well as directors . . . an important addition to every theatre lover’s library. . . . No paragraph is irrelevant. To Shaw scholars it may well be a gold mine; to me and to others in professional theatre it will be a constant delight.” – Edwin Sherin, Shaw Review (Jan. 1972), 49–50.
“After reading Bernard Shaw, Director, one can more clearly see why Shaw ranks with the most powerful of playwrights, men who had practical knowledge of their theaters: Sophocles, Shakespeare, Molière, Ibsen, and Brecht. – Phyllis B. Hetrick, Modern Drama (Dec. 1972) 338.
