New Resources

A list of the Nola Millar Library’s new resources is posted here approximately once a month.

Download the most recent list of new resources acquired by the Library here (177kb).

The past few lists can be accessed here.

New Zealand art and artists feature in the full list this month, along with film studies, performance theory, general art, costume and ballet history – amongst other subjects. There are several anthologies among the plays, including the latest from the Humana Festival (2010), and collections from Jon Fosse, Tom Murphy and Mark O’Rowe. Read on to see the highlights chosen for this month, or click on the link above to go straight to the full list.

A theatre scholar (with four post-graduate degrees – from universities in Greece, the United States and England) stage director, playwright and artistic director of Persona Theater Company (Athens) Avra Sidiropoulou is well-placed to write Authoring performance: the director in contemporary theatre. The book traces the changing role of the theatre director over the course of the past century, focusing on the emergence of the “director-auteur”. Beginning with the innovations and ideas of practitioners and theorists such as Edward Gordon Craig, Stanislavsky, Copeau and Meyerhold, Sidiropoulou then examines the work of Artaud and Beckett in more detail before discussing and critiquing the practice of contemporary director-auteurs such as Peter Brook, Robert Wilson, Elizabeth LeCompte, Peter Sellars, Anne Bogart, and Robert LePage.

This year the Australian Ballet celebrates its fiftieth anniversary and as one way of marking the event has published a large “coffee table book” which chronicles its history in both words and pictures: Luminous: celebrating 50 years of The Australian Ballet. This beautifully produced volume includes essays from a number of experienced writers beginning with a general introduction and background, followed by more specific entries looking at each of the company’s five decades in turn. However, the most notable feature is the inclusion of more than 250 full-page photographs from many and varied sources illustrating the company, its dancers, directors, choreographers and designers, both at work and at play, on tour and in various Australian venues. Details of directors, dancers, repertoire and international tours are also listed.

Visual storytelling: inspiring a new visual language is first of all (as one would hope from the title!) a visually inspiring book. Put together by editors Robert Klanten, Sven Ehmann and Floyd Schulze, with a preface and introductions to each section by Andrew Losowksy, the publication begins by showcasing the work of several designers and companies – reprinting a brief interview with each about the role of pictures in presenting information in innovative ways, before reproducing examples of their work. The second, and larger, part of the book is divided thematically into subject areas (news, science, geography, the modern world, sports) illustrated with many colourful and wonderfully varied examples of visual storytelling.

For details of these and many other theatre and dance titles, click on the link above to see the full list of new resources processed last month.