Theatre Design & Technology - Fall 2020 - 46

BOOK REVIEWS

CATHERINE MANTOOTH, EDITOR

An Introduction to Technical Theatre
By Tal Sanders
Pacific University, 130 pages
Paperback $15.99; E-book (Free PDF
download at https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/textbooks/an-introduction-totechnical-theatre)
Reviewed by Erika Guay
Written by educator and professional designer Tal Sanders, An Introduction to
Technical Theatre is exactly what the title
states. The book is, in fact, an introduction to all elements of technical theatre
and is a great resource for high school
and college professors. Because this
Sanders work is available online for free,
every educator and beginning theatre student needs to download this book now to
add to their Online Education Resources
(OER) or Open Access (OA) bookshelf.
While there are many books out there
on technical theatre, this e-book provides
a broad overview of all technical areas
(scenery, lighting, costumes, sound, and
properties) with an extensive glossary.
This text also covers topics on collaboration, organizing structures, backstage
crew, stage management, and production scheduling. For a first-time technical
theatre student, it provides a broad sense
of the industry and the scope of the work
involved from pre-production to closing
night.
The book is broken up into 15 short
" modules " rather than chapters. Each
module covers a specific topic, so it is easy
to read the book in any order desired or
just pick a few to utilize. Sanders encourages the idea of mixing up the modules
as needed for a syllabus or production
schedule. Each module also has breakout boxes of " There's More to Know " or
" Consider This, " which include more information or good points to ponder. All
the modules have glossary terms in bold.
At the end of each module is a box called
" For Further Exploration, " which provides at least two resources so the reader
has clear direction to materials that augment the module. For any students looking for those " go-to " books in theatre, they

46 | THEATRE DESIGN & TECHNOLOGY | FALL 2020

For a first-time
technical theatre
student, it provides
a broad sense of the
industry and the scope
of the work involved
from pre-production
to closing night.
will find them in this text.
As part of this review for an e-book,
I downloaded and viewed the PDF, and
I also printed out a paper copy, in order
to fully review the ways one could utilize
this text. Overall, using the text was easy
to find online, easy to download, and easy
to print. The last point is probably the
most important as I have tried printing
out other electronic textbooks before and
had significant struggles with clean looks.
This book was clearly made with the idea
that many would want to print it (especially with the inclusion of a " front cover " and
" back cover " ) and is perfectly formatted
for 8.5x11 standard paper with a font size
that is comparable to other textbooks. At
only 130 pages, it is also not a huge paperwaster when printed double-sided, nor
are the images ink-wasters. I found the
PDF version okay to use, though it has
some shortcomings. Notably, it does not
have embedded links in the text, nor is
there a table of contents; so users will do
a good deal of scrolling to find individual
parts of the book or to refer to a term in

the glossary. Otherwise, the PDF is great
if you love reading on a screen.
As noted before, this book is geared
for educators and students, and as such,
Sanders uses a writing style that is easy to
follow and read. Sanders avoids assuming the level of the reader and explains
some rather complex theatre knowledge
with a voice fitting a seasoned educator.
Each module is under 10 pages, which
results in perfectly sized content for
each week of a typical college semester.
Some of the modules are excellent, notably the details and clean graphics for
the Scenery, Rigging, and Lighting sections. The modules on Collaboration,
Organizational structure, and Production schedule are about to become must
reads for my Introduction to Theatre
class as they provide clear connections
between technical theatre and the goals
of an entire production company. The
Costume, Sound, and Backstage crew
modules are a bit bare in comparison,
and these lack the clean images that are
included in other areas. In contrast, the
section on Scenic Painting tries to do it
all by including too much. Information
on color wheels, lighting gel, painting
tools, how paint works, painting techniques, and how to paint faux wood and
stone are rather cramped in 10 pages.
I applaud Sanders for creating a resource for our current students that is
affordable and accessible. As tools and
students continue to change, this book
is certainly one answer to helping the
knowledge of our industry spread in
the OER and OA platforms. As of now,
it is the only technical theatre textbook
available on oercommons.org. I, for one,
hope this textbook will inspire others in
our industry to create OER content or
find accessible platforms to share our
craft with students living in the newnormal world.
Erika Guay is an associate professor of
Theatre at SUNY Plattsburgh. She
teaches, mentors students, and designs
scenery, lighting, costumes, properties, and
puppets. You can reach her at egray004@
plattsburgh.edu

https://open.umn.edu/open-textbooks/textbooks/an-introduction-to-technical-theatre https://open.umn.edu/open-textbooks/textbooks/an-introduction-to-technical-theatre https://open.umn.edu/open-textbooks/textbooks/an-introduction-to-technical-theatre http://www.oercommons.org

Theatre Design & Technology - Fall 2020

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