Theatre Design & Technology - Winter 2008 - 63

book

reviews
summers. He knew and was known to generations of arts managers who labored with him, studied under him and read the
several editions of his book. Among both academics and practitioners, his writing shaped decades of thinking in the ﬁeld of
arts administration. Langley's untimely death at age ﬁfty-eight
and the out-of-print status of Theatre Management in America
that followed left a void that has been slow to ﬁll.
Coauthor David M. Conte is one of the many who worked
with Langley and beneﬁtted from his sage advice about careers
in the cultural sector. Given Conte's ﬁrsthand knowledge of the
author and the earlier book, combined with his own wealth of
employment experience (he is currently manager of the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre on Broadway), he is well prepared to
update and reissue Theatre Management. While not radically
altering Langley's 1990 edition, Conte has sensibly amended it
to meet the evolving needs of readers in the new century. Some
list-based material has been moved to the appendices to improve the ﬂow of the narrative, and chapters like "Presenters
and Presenting Organizations" have been extensively rewritten.
Overall, many things in the text have been appropriately left unchanged.
Although it is not unlike other books about arts administration, Theatre Management: Producing and Managing
the Performing Arts focuses on theatre. Five of its seventeen
chapters deal with the attributes of theatrical producing organizations (e.g., commercial theatre vs. community theatre vs.
summer stock), and none are speciﬁc to music or dance organizations. Occasional content in a few chapters alludes to the
world beyond the dramatic arts, but it is sparing at best. Oddly
enough, Conte trumpets the updated book as more wide-ranging than this. The introduction speaks to an expansive audience,
and periodic repetitions of this notion appear, not least of all in
the book's title. Yet theatrical topics and examples dominate the
discussions throughout. Even the chapter on presenting organizations emphasizes touring musical theatre. If Conte falls short
on anything with this new edition, it is in serving a diversity of
readers as directly as he intended.
Aside from its considerable detail about producing theatre, the book shines most in its presentation of marketing and
publicity material. Where most competing texts offer a single
chapter on promotions, Theatre Management offers three.
They range widely and carry a trove of information. Budgeting and ﬁnancial management receive two chapters, again more
than most other books allocate. With separate sections on ticketing, facility management, and venue planning and construction, Conte and Langley have also represented the operational
side of the theatrical business quite well.
While a reader with professional experience could ﬁnd
items to add to each chapter (or omissions to lament), that can
be said of any generalist text. For example, some commonplace

THEATRE

DESIGN

TECHNOLOGY

W I N T E R

2008

terminology from the realm of commercial theatre in New York
gets used in the book without enough detail or clariﬁcation.
The paucity of suggestions for public arts funding beyond the
National Endowment for the Arts surely disappoints, and the
brevity of the revised chapter on stock and dinner theatre raises
the question of why Conte let it remain. In some places, Conte
has removed content from some sections outright (e.g., how to
telemarket, how to interpret audience survey data) that could
have stood editing.
Despite those quibbles, Theatre Management would
make a wonderful desk reference for any arts manager, regardless of his or her job title or employer. The appendices
alone-all twenty-six of them-are impressive in their variety
and length. The updated bibliography also swells the size of the
text and guides the reader to a myriad of additional resources.
For graduate degree programs in arts administration, or for
mature undergraduates, it could buttress an extensive course
of study in managing cultural organizations.
In his introduction, Conte acknowledges that Theatre
Management is "not the last word on any topic." But he
and Stephen Langley offer excellent ﬁrst words-and lots of
them-that have withstood the test of time. It would be accurate to describe the book and its pedigree as Biblical in scope
and stature. Bigger, in this case, is indeed better.
Patrick Donnelly is director of the Louise and David
Roselle Center for the Arts at the University of Delaware.

Drawing & Rendering for Theatre

Practical Course for Scenic, Costume, and Lighting Designers
by Clare P. Rowe, with contributing author Peter Beudert; Amsterdam, Boston: Focal Press, 2007. 272 pp. Paper, $49.95.
Reviewed by Ellen Jones
Publisher Focal Press has found a niche with reasonably priced,
soft cover books with a strong practical base for the entertainment industry. Their latest offering, Drawing & Rendering for
Theatre: a Practical Course for Scenic, Costume, and Lighting Designers by Claire P. Rowe, who teaches scenic painting,
theatre graphics, and scene design at the University of Arizona,
is an essential tool for every designer who wants the skills required to communicate visual information.
This book is the ﬁrst volume to treat the topics of artistic visual communication by theatre designers in such depth.
Several of the more encyclopedic general production texts that
offer an overview of all areas of design and technical theatre,
for example, Michael Gillette's Theatrical Design and Production, include a chapter or two on drawing and rendering. For

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Winter 2008