- Hardcover: 320 pages
- Publisher: John Murray Publishers Ltd; First Edition edition (8 Oct 1998)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0719554756
- ISBN-13: 978-0719554759
- Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 16.3 x 3.3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 610,426 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
Ways of life disappear when no-one is looking. For generations of provincial theatre- goers, trips to London or Stratford were less important than going to the local repertory theatre. For generations of actors, playing whatever parts they let you in a small company and prompting and dogsbodying was the way you learned your craft.
Kate Dunn's study, based heavily on interviews with actors who went through that particular school of hard knocks, is particularly good on the way things worked--she spends a lot of time on the economics of management, the cheap costumes and the tiny salaries. Directors were often incompetent, pretentious, or drunk, or simply copying all the moves from French's Acting Editions of scripts; and yet good nights at the theatre often emerged anyway, and this is where many good directors learned their skills. Dunn is equally good at humanising the clichés--she has a particularly good, if perhaps rose-tinted, chapter on theatrical landladies, and their cooking. There are perhaps a few too many funny stories about costumes that fell apart, makeup that fell off, inaudible prompters and universal attacks of the giggles--faced with a wealth of good material, Dunn saw no reason to waste any of it. --Roz Kaveney
Product Description
Local rep has been the training ground for many of the best-known actors and directors, and in this book Kate Dunn draws on theatre people's first-hand experiences to trace the rise and fall of this great British institution.
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3.0 out of 5 stars
Exit Through the Fireplace: Great days of the Rep,
By Black Dog (Lincolnshire UK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Exit Through the Fireplace: Great Days of the Rep (Hardcover)
A good book for anyone with an interest in the theatre.
An ideal book to pick up and put down at odd moments or to have by the bedside. Kate Dunn has gleaned memories of days in rep from a host of celebreties by way of, I suspect, a standard and lengthy questionnaire then put the responses together into appropriate chapters dealing with every aspect of provincial theatre ranging from actors' accommodation through to gruelling rehearsal schedules, meagre salaries and hilarious anecdotes. The reading tends to "plod" at times but it's worth sticking to the end.
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