The Art of Resonance

Description

What is artistic resonance and how can it be linked to one's life and one's art? This latest book of essays from legendary theatre director Anne Bogart, considers the creation of resonance in the artistic endeavour, with a focus on the performing arts. The word 'resonance' comes from the Latin meaning to 're-sound' or 'sound together'. From music to physics, resonance is a common thread that evokes a response and, in general, is understood as a quality that makes something personally meaningful and valuable. For Bogart, curiosity is a key personal quality to be nurtured throughout life and that very same curiosity, as an artist, thinker and human being. Creating pathways between performance theory, art history, neuroscience, music, architecture and the visual arts, and consistently forging new thought-paths, the writing draws upon Anne Bogart's own life and artistic journeys to illuminate potent philosophical ideas. Woven with personal anecdotes, stories and reflections, this is a book that will be of interest to any theatre artist and anyone who reflects on the power of the arts, of theatre-making and what it means to be engaged in the artistic process.

Anne Bogart is a theatre and opera director, Co-Artistic Director of the ensemble-based SITI Company, head of the MFA Directing program at Columbia University, and author of five books: A Director Prepares, The Viewpoints Book, And Then You Act, Conversations with Anne and What's the Story. For her directing, she has won two Best Director Obie Awards; in 1995, she received the ATHE Career Achievement Award; in 2005 received the American Theatre Wing Award; in 2012 was the recipient of the Richard B. Fisher Award and the Doris Duke Artist Award; and in 2018-19 was a Leverhulme Visiting Professor at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.

This optimistic and brilliantly erudite book is essential reading for any serious theatre maker emerging from the pandemic in search of a new road map for theatre practice. Beautiful, fierce and inspiring - a love letter to the future. * Katie Mitchell, director *