This book is -roughly- divided into two parts, part one dealing with lighting, part two dealing with sound in the theatre. Part one provides the beginning lighting designer the essantial basics of lighting the stage, including sections on equipment, safety, the basics of lighting design and examples from actual productions. Included are also many illustrating pictures and diagrams, e.g. illustrating the effects of positioning lamps in different positions, making this book extremely useful and accessible; an invaluable help for beginning lighting designers. The second section is concerned with sound design. As with lighting, equipment, basic principles and sample sound designs are included. Additionally, the physics of sound are discussed, which is important to understand why we perceive sound the way we do. The author also discusses different methods of editing sound. What is missing here are definately current developments in digital editing and manipulating of sound, i.e. using a computer. Thus, this book is especially useful when you want to learn about lighting design. The section on sound design is useful to some extent as well, but appears a little outdated.