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{ 173 } BOOK REV IEWS off-Broadway hit that launched Burnett’s career. In addition to helping raise money for the show and collaborating on the script, they designed the set and costumes, assigning the lighting design to the now-legendary Theron Musser. Perhaps the quintessential performing set designed by the Eckarts was that created for the 1966 Broadway production of Mame. Its stage manager, Terry Little, described its effect: “The scenery was choreographed to flow with the music and the lyrics. It was absolutely integral to the show” (178). According to Bill Eckart, “With Mame we weren’t doing anything new. It was just a distillation of all the things we’d done before. Only this time, we were doing them with more authority” (181). Following this high point, however, the Eckarts experienced what Harris identified as three years of “Disenchantment”(183), during which time they designed twelve stage productions and one film, with no major hits and culminating in a significant career change. In 1971, with the authority earned by a career forged in the theatres of New York, the Eckarts joined the faculty of the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, a major coup for the university. Seeking a respite from the instability of employment in New York City and a safer environment for their two preteen children, they stepped into the world of academia—a goal they had set for themselves at Yale before their twenty-year postgraduate work on Broadway. Harris expands his account of the Eckarts’ design legacy to include the stories , the political workings of their career, the network of people and events that tie one production to the next.While providing more than 350 photographs that speak for themselves, Harris writes the backstory of the work being illustrated rather than a description of the images. Employing a clear and conversational style of writing, Harris weaves a verbal and visual creation for Broadway musical aficionados as well as students of American theatrical design history. —PHIL GROESCHEL University of Missouri, Columbia Acting: An Introduction to the Art and Craft of Playing. By Paul Kassel. Boston: Pearson Education, 2007. 224 pp. $58.00 cloth. In his preface to the teacher and coach, Paul Kassel admits that acting textbooks cover pretty similar territory.“What has changed,” he writes,“is our understanding of human beings” (xi). Kassel examines these changes through \ { 174 } BOOK REV IEWS the flux of acting/voice/movement theories and methods developed over the course of the last century. Throughout the book he strives to synthesize basic concepts from such great teachers and theorists as Stanislavski, Laban, Feldenkrais , Brook, Grotowski, Chaikin, Linklater, Spolin, and others. He also foregrounds the Asian concept of ki or chi—an energy or life force that is as inextricably connected to performance as it is to living. Acting is steeped in exercises ranging from the well known (such as zipzap -zop) to the original. Kassel has documented the source of the exercise when known and has contextualized exercises with theoretical underpinnings with the intent of marrying theory to practice. His target audience (beginning undergraduates ) might initially be perplexed by the variety of sources within the book, but for teachers Kassel provides a welcome synthesis of material in an orderly fashion. Progressing through the entire book, the reader comes away with a gestalt of the art and craft of acting. The organization of the book makes it quite accessible, allowing teachers to pick and choose sections as needed. Part 1, “Preparation for Playing,” introduces acting, the creative environment, and the concept of ki as an energy force. In part 2,“The Tools for Playing,”Kassel divides chapters into body, voice, imagination, feeling, and action. Part 3, “Playing,” helps the actor integrate his or her tools into a scene or production and includes chapters on tasks, dramatic structure, character analysis, and basic integration into the rehearsal process. The bulk of each chapter is composed of exercises, contextualized with a brief synthesis of theory. User-friendly components of the book include a separate index of exercises, an appendix of action verbs and other aids, and a bibliography for further study.Visual learners will appreciate the diagrams of postures...

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