The Art of Stillness: The Theater Practice of Tadashi Suzuki

by Paul Allain

Overview

For over forty years, Tadashi Suzuki has been a unique and vital force in both Japanese and Western theater, creating and directing many internationally acclaimed productions including his famous production of The Trojan Women, which subsequently toured around the world. An intergral part of his work has been the development and teaching of his rigorous and controversial training system, the Suzuki method, whose principles have also been highly influential in contemporary theater. Paul Allain, an experienced practitioner of the Suzuki method, re-evaluates Suzuki's work, giving a lucid overview of his development towards an international theater aesthetic. He examines Suzuki's collaborators, the importance of architecture and environment in his theater and his impact on performance all over the world. The Art of Stillness is a lively, critical study of one of the most important and uncompromising figures in contemporary world theater.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781403961709
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	06/14/2003
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.53(d)

About the Author

Paul Allain is Senior Lecturer in Drama, University of Kent. He is the author of Gardzienice: Polish Theatre in Transition and The Cambridge Companion to Chekhov (as co-editor).

Table of Contents

Introducing Suzuki * Suzuki Now * Suzuki's Spaces * The Suzuki Method * Suzuki's Performance Practice

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"...Allain's work should lead the way to further study and is highly recommended..."—Susan L. Peters, Library Journal

Editorial Reviews

...Allain's work should lead the way to further study and is highly recommended...” —Susan L. Peters, Library Journal

From the Publisher

Allain (drama, Univ. of Kent, U.K.) provides an excellent introduction to a fascinating Japanese director/producer who has had a major impact on theater worldwide for the last several decades. Best known to Westerners for his staging of The Trojan Women, Suzuki has developed a method of acting that challenges the domination of the psychological approach. This method includes mind/body exercises, fixed positions, linking action to the breath and the text, ten ways of walking, and other practices. Allain discusses Suzuki's fascination with Shakespeare and Greek tragedy and shows how the Noh and kabuki theatrical traditions have influenced him. In addition, he offers an in-depth analysis of The Trojan Women and, because Suzuki believes in a theater group having its own "home," a chapter on his arts complex in the mountain village of Toga. The first profile in English of this theatrical giant, Allain's work should lead the way to further study and is highly recommended for all academic and large public libraries with theater collections. (Photographs only seen as photocopies.)-Susan L. Peters, Univ. of Texas, Galveston Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal